Tag Archives: sexism

What Women Want

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Since 1913, March 8th has been the date of International Women’s Day, and the day itself has existed for a few years before that. It’s aim has always been equality for women, historically with voting rights, and continuously for equality in the workplace – including closing that darn gender gap which seems so difficult to keep shut. (FYI- Currently at 14% in the UK, and around 18% in the US.)

And luckily, we live in a time where no one believes in enforcing inequality or sexism at work anymore. Don’t believe me? Just go ask anyone in your office. Should women have the same rights, pay, and opportunities as men do? “Of course!” they’ll say. “What a crazy question!” they’ll laugh nervously. “I have a wife!” they might add, as if that somehow distances them from sexism in any way whatsoever.

So these examples which I’m about to give you, of the 100% real-life gifts which companies decided to hand out for this years International Women’s Day, should absolutely not be seen as sexist. They can’t possibly be. The men are just trying to be nice, stop getting so hysterical about it, are you on your period?

But just for funsies, let’s have a think about the alternatives which companies could have chosen, if they had thought about it a little more deeply, or perhaps chosen to invite a woman or two to the meeting where these IWD celebrations were decided on.

Nail Varnish

Happy International Women’s Day! We thought we would spoil you this year with something just for you… make up! Take twenty minutes later on in the day, maybe after you’re done with your chores, and paint those nails, girls. We’ve got both pink and red, so you can decide if you want to be soft and approachable, or sexy and vampish.

Next Year

“As the life course of women often involves economic inactivity, part-time work, unpaid work, lower wages and an average of five years’ shorter working life than men, they face a significant risk of poverty in old age. In the EU, 18% of women and 12% of men aged 75-plus are at risk of monetary poverty.”

How about we take a look at the old age provision for women? Maybe companies could offer extra incentives towards their pension funds, or provide better semi-retirement options for women in their sixties?

Baking Tins

Oh, maybe I’m being a bit harsh with this one. After all, baking is a fun activity which anyone can take part in. And hey, the company in question did buy tins for the men as well as the women. Oh wait, what’s that on the men’s ones? It’s a card which says “For the woman in your life”. Because imagine if a man tried to do all that stirring and measuring, gosh they would just end up using the tin as a football or something. Someone better tell the 81.5% of professional chefs who are men that they’re in the wrong career.

Next Year

According to a RandstadUSA study, “58 percent of women said the lack of a clear path to leadership roles was one of the key factors that contributes to gender inequality in the workplace. And while mentorship and leadership programs are known to be crucial to one’s career success, just 23 percent of women said they are offered these resources by their current employer.”

This one seems pretty simple. Start a mentor program for women, and establish leadership paths which work to combat macho gender stereotypes of leaders. The Sandberg #MentorHer campaign is a great place to start.

Pink Popcorn

See what they did there? Usually, the snacks at the weekly meeting aren’t dyed any colour at all. We just keep them their usual colours! It’s crazy that women understand which ones to eat at all. If I had a penny for every time a woman has tried to eat the whiteboard eraser instead of the chocolate cake. Seeing as it’s Women’s Day, we’ve tracked down woman popcorn! Hopefully by next year we’ll have those lady Doritos everyone’s looking forward to so much.

Next Year

In the EU, women account for only 7% of board chairs and presidents and 6% of chief executives in the largest companies. More people called David and Steve lead FTSE 500 companies than women and ethnic minorities put together. And yet, studies show that having more women in senior management improves the financial security of companies and makes them manage risk better.

Corporate leaders need to show that they are investing in change. Talks and workshops by successful women are one great way to show female employees that you want to empower them for career success, but actions speak louder than words. If you aren’t satisfied with the idea that the gender disparity in wages looks set to continue until 2059, follow the example of Salesforce CEO Marc Beinoff who spent $3 million last year to fix the pay gap in his company.

A Magnet… Of a woman shopping… With the word ‘Stunning’ on it.

What’s great about this IWD gift is that it can go on the fridge. In the kitchen. Where women live. And it’s got a picture of a woman shopping on it. Which is the only other place women go! Lots of thought was put in here, to ensure that it really ticks all the boxes. Plus it’s got a compliment on it, so the women know we haven’t failed to notice they have great legs in those uncomfortable shoes we like them to wear.

Next Year

A huge roadblock which stops the advancement of gender equality is that women are still seen as the ‘natural’ choice for childrearing duties and other caregiving responsibilities. “Almost every second working woman spends an hour or more caring and educating children or grandchildren, elderly or disabled people during the day, compared with only about a third of working men.”

Using all the time you save not buying sexist magnets, take a look at the parental leave you offer, and consider offering fathers more paid time off for emergency family care and paternity leave. How are your flexible working opportunities, and do they allow for women to balance having kids with advancing in their careers?

 

It’s not rocket science, and seeing as we’ve been asking for more than 100 years now, it would be great if we didn’t have to keep highlighting this disparity, as well as convincing the world that it exists in the first place.

If you work at a company who gave a tone-deaf International Women’s Day gift this year, say something to HR. If you were in on the meeting where the company decided to buy all the women some pretty flowers and a themed cupcake, own up to it, and do better next year. If you work in a position of authority in your office, take steps to make these statistics better for 2019. And if on top of motivation and policy change, you still want to give out gifts? Lovely! Just don’t dye them pink.

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Cause You’re There for Me Toooooo….

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The TV show Friends ran from 1994-2004, and won 60 awards, including a BAFTA. More recently, it’s attracted a whole new generation of viewers by being launched globally on Netflix, as well as a whole lot of judgement about the writing and cast. In fact, you might say that lately, it hasn’t been Friends’ day, week, month… or even its year.

dumb things

Somewhere inside me is the teenage girl who used to look forward to Big Thursdays on e4, call her off screen friends during the break in the show, before hurriedly putting the phone down when the advert for Ally Macbeal came on which meant we had 30 seconds until the cast was back on screen. And that teenage girl has found all the abuse hard to listen to.

Much like many of us following the #metoo movement have struggled to accept that some of our best loved actors and celebrities are actually kind of skeevy and gross, it’s kind of stressful to hear that the show that you believe was formative to your youth is actually just another example of Dustin Hoffman ogling an intern. Not quite illegal, but kind of disappointing none the less.

I’m not going to write about how Friends was a product of its time, although I do believe that’s true, and it seems unfair to judge it by our 2018 standards. But wrong is wrong, and I think we would all like to kind of delete The One with the Manny and pretend it never existed, and y’know, add more than 2 people of colour in the entire ten season back catalogue. And maybe just edit out some of the horrendous fat shaming. But I do think that if you look a little closer at this best-loved show, you’ll see that right alongside the issues, there are times where Friends was woke AF.

So join me, while I look at my favourite examples of when Friends pushed boundaries, and got us talking and thinking about issues that we may well have ignored otherwise.  I’d love to hear your own!

The One with Marriage Equality

Did you know that the wedding of Carol and Susan was the first lesbian wedding to be shown on television? Back in 1996, Ross’s ex wife Carol married her lesbian lover, Susan, in a gorgeous wedding scene which ended up winning them awards and critical acclaim, as well as the episode being banned on several NBC affiliates. There were no tired stereotypes, Susan and Carol were then, and remained, two women who fell in love, and wanted to celebrate that love with the world. This, two decades before marriage equality was actually passed into law in the whole of the US. The storyline which progressed, where Ross, Carol and Susan co-parented Ben together was so ahead of its time, that I still can’t think of another quite like it.

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The One Where There’s No Right Way to Have a Family

One amazing example of pushing the boundaries was Monica and Chandler’s struggle with infertility. Pregnancy in the world of television is more often seen as dozens of overly fertile women and teens who get pregnant after a one-night-stand, rather than what’s more often true to life, that it’s not simple for everyone to have a baby. Watching Monica and Chandler go through the adoption process, and then bring their twins home was a breath of fresh air which for many, has changed the way we talk about our fertility options. Plus, we got to meet Erica, the biological mother who was so clueless that she didn’t even realize she was having twins. “I thought that was just mine and the baby’s. They kept saying both heartbeats are really strong, and I thought well, that’s good ’cause I’m having a baby!”

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The One Where Monica’s Career Comes First

Remember when Chandler moved to Tulsa? (Frankly, I’d sooner be in any other State!) While at first, Monica was going to come along and play the supportive wife, (It’s gonna be hard to keep Kosher in Tulsa!) once she got offered an awesome job in New York, she stayed right where she was. Eventually, when the toll it was taking on their marriage got too much to handle, Chandler was the one who gave up his job and moved back to New York, with his wife becoming the breadwinner and hardly a male ego bruised in the process. Men of the world, take note.

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The One with the Animal Rights

When Chandler and Joey welcomed Chick and Duck into their lives, there was a clear agenda under the storyline. Under the laughs of the men’s new animal roommates was the sad truth that too many animals are bought for the holiday season, and then neglected or returned, where they end up being killed or abandoned. Of course, Phoebe kind of undermines that when she forgets about feeding them when the guys head to London, but let’s gloss over that part. Oh, and don’t forget, when Gary shoots a bird, it’s way over.

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The One Where Your Friends are Your Family

For me, anyway, Friends was always about a world where the people you saw everyday weren’t your family, but your closest friends, the family you chose. Everyone had crazy siblings (Did I buy a falafel from you yesterday?) or weird parents (‘Ah! Nora Bing!’) or drama going on with their blood relatives, (“You work and you work and you work on a marriage…“ “You work and you work and you work on a boat”) but the six of them were the true nucleus of each other’s lives.

Is it a perfect world? Absolutely not, and the writers should be held partially accountable for some of the elements of the show that make us all wince as we watch in 2018. (Joey’s man bag anyone? Alongside his man jacket and man shoes?) But this fan believes they should also be praised for the stuff they got right. And seeing as the show is old enough that Ben would now be 23, (!) that’s pretty darn good.

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Don’t you think we’ve done enough? 

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I know. It’s just two words. Two short words which could lift the veil, start the conversation, make people sit up and take notice of how very real this problem is. ‘Wow, I never realised that this affected so many women before.’ ‘Gosh, that neighbour, that colleague, that family member…’ ‘Really? I never would have guessed.’ ‘She’s so confident.’ ‘She’s so strong.’

That’s probably your best case scenario here. That no one ever knew the secret weight you were carrying around with you all of this time.The revulsion you felt when that man started licking his lips on public transport, and you followed his hands as they moved under his jacket, so strategically placed on his lap as he refused to break eye contact with you. That fear you felt as you turned your car key in your pocket as you crossed the street and walked a little faster, wondering what kind of weapon it could make if push came to shove. The confusion you felt when after years of kind words from your partner, push did come to shove in a frightening reality of strength and power, no matter how apologetic the tears were later.

Because of course, if some people’s “Me too” comes as a shock, it stands to reason that other people’s comes as ‘No great surprise.’ ‘I always thought there were something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.’ ‘Right, that actually makes a lot of sense.’ And now, laid bare for all your friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and friends of your parents to see, is just two little words which prove that you’re Other. So while you might be brave enough (or confident enough, or social media friendly enough, or naive enough, or drunk enough, or just plain hopeful enough) to post those little words, there’s almost a certain guarantee that many others wont be. And that’s fine, too. Except, now it dilutes the point. They say if everyone who has experienced it posts about it, then we will see the problem! It’s foolproof! It’s genius! Except, everyone won’t. So the very initiative hurts what it hopes to achieve. ‘I hardly saw anyone post that ‘me too’ thing. I knew it wasn’t such a big deal.’ And on the other side of it, the woman herself, ‘Maybe I should have posted that ‘me too’ thing.’ ‘I feel guilty, why are they all so much braver than me?’ ‘My experience isn’t that big a deal, not really, not in comparison.’

Because the problem isn’t that people don’t know about it. The problem isn’t even that we don’t talk about it enough. Unsurprisingly, like any situation of victim blaming, the problem isn’t ours at all. The problem is that WOMEN AREN’T BELIEVED. When dozens of women can finally stand up against one dangerous Hollywood executive and the response is raised eyebrows alongside words like consensual, career ladder, power mad, honey trap thrown around at the victims, what makes you think that those who don’t believe us suddenly have respect for numbers? If anything, it’s the opposite. ‘Omg, this ‘me too’ thing is getting out of control. Every woman who has ever been asked to make a cup of tea in the office is changing their status.’ ‘Y’know, my sister put it on hers, I nearly laughed out loud-have you seen how she dresses lately?’ 

And where it does work? We’re relying on these women, these brave, or hopeful, or drunk, but certainly strong women, to speak up and put themselves in the line of fire and scrutiny once again. We’re putting the work into the hands of the victims, the survivors, the very people who we are hoping to protect. And allowing the perpetrators and the bystanders to simply watch and judge, to believe or not believe, like we always have done.

I make my living with words. I love them, and I recognise the power of them, and the very real way that language can create reality. But I don’t believe an onslaught of ‘me too’ is the answer to changing the way we deal with sexual harassment and abuse. The onslaught we’re waiting for is from the other side, and it reads “I believe.”

“Well Done! Mister Suffragettes.”

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This week saw millions of women and men marching and protesting for womens’ rights, and boy, did the men have something to say about it. From the accurate yet stupid “There are women far worse off than you, why are you complaining?” to the always clever yet innacurate “Calm down, nothing ever got solved by being angry”. In 2017, there’s no shortage of men who not only understand the issues at hand well enough to have their own opinion,  but also who can let us feeble-minded ladies know what we should be doing, thinking and feeling as well.

I’m so happy to have so many strong men who marched alongside women this week, and don’t get me wrong, I certainly believe men should be able to voice their own opinions and thoughts on sexism loud and clear, even on the issues which mainly concern women. But when these opinions turn into simply telling a woman how to feel or react, or begin to take ownership away from women on their own issues, we’re in different territory.

Don’t tell me that you’ve never seen gender inequality at the office so therefore it “can’t exist”, ask the women who work with you if they have experienced it instead. Don’t scoff at how ‘tampon tax’ isn’t a big deal when you’ve never had to include them in your monthly budget. Don’t inform me it’s a compliment to be catcalled or groped as I walk down the street; ask me, and I’ll tell you it’s harassment. And don’t explain “the real reasons” why feminism exists, to women who have to deal with inequality every single day.

Here are some of my personal favourite male responses to the march this week. And if you think these are just individuals, take a look at some of the likes, retweets and shares that these men are recieving for their most excellent examples of mansplaining and misogyny.

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This guy is a delight. It took me a minute to realise he means people who are pro-choice.

felix-lapoma.jpg

Y’know how to make America great again? Domestic violence.

steve-jarrot.jpg

Always good to hear what a white man thinks about racial and gender discrimination. After all, he has all the experience and knowledge on the matter.

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May I make a suggestion…? Bathe.

oliver-gracie.jpg

Unlike Muslim countries, US women have nothing to complain about. Certainly not a little thing like a 22.4% gender pay gap which is actually widening year on year. (Up from 20.8% in 2016) Oh wait, we chose that. Must be the comfy lifestyles we’re all enjoying as part of ‘having it all’.

oliver-gracie2.jpg

Oh, but Oliver isn’t done. It’s our sexual frustration which is making it difficult for us to get paid and respected equally. Personal thanks to all the ‘good guys’ who touch us without our permission so we know you like us, call out obscenities on the street to help us feel sexy and tell us to stop being hysterical when we’re getting too upset. With your help maybe we can nip this damn feminism in the bud.

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This last photo is CNN, discussing the womens’ march. Can you see anything wrong with this photo? Imagine for a second this was a forum on the Holocaust, and they invited 9 Germans and a token Jew. Yes, the panel rotated throughout the night, but included in the male commentary was David Swerdlick’s comment “You got the sense that a more experienced generation was passing on a tradition of activism to a younger generation.”

Yes. A more experienced generation who are still fighting for equal rights. A more experienced generation who have seen some progress but not enough. A generation who watched their own parents fight for access to better birth control, more equal working conditions, safe sexual rights, a fair justice system for both genders. And yet somehow… still need to pass on all of these battles to their own children.  What a truly sad and inadequate inheritance.

Or maybe I’m wrong, I’ll have to wait for a guy to tell me how I really feel about it.

“What’s worse than a Male Chauvinist Pig?”

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” …A woman that won’t do what she’s told.” 

That’s an actual joke someone told me, before laughing raucously, in answer to my question “Would you call yourself a feminist?”

Until recently, I’ve never thought much of feminism. Not in a disparaging way, I mean it literally hasn’t crossed my mind that much. I suppose I’ve never noticed that much sexism taking place around me. I like to think that if I had been alive a hundred years ago, I would have been one of the women throwing myself under horses for the rights of women, but in all honesty I’d probably have been obliviously popping out babies chained to the kitchen sink like the majority of that generation.

We can vote, we can work, we have birth control at our fingertips, we can be presidents and prime ministers. (ettes?!) We pretty much have it all. Truthfully, I’ve always sighed at women’s lib organisations like Femen, and asked, what more do we want?

After all, Feminism in its original meaning doesn’t exist any more, does it? We’re not campaigning to be allowed a say in politics, or for control over our own bodies. In the western world at least, life is pretty good for women. We can have our babies and return to work. We can choose not to, and that’s fine too. We can have sex, and we can even enjoy it. Of course there is working woman’s guilt, mummy guilt, stay at home guilt, basically vagina guilt, but if we were really honest we would accept that it’s mainly self judgement, and that the rest of the world doesn’t care. Real issues still exist, the gender pay gap being a massive one, but for the most part we are doing pretty well for a gender who couldn’t even go to university when our grandparents were kids.

So if I’m happy enough to let other women deal with what’s left of inequality in the western world nowadays, what’s brought feminism to my attention lately?

Caitlin Moran (in her fabulous biography how to be a woman which you must all go out and read) discusses the kind of sexism that you don’t notice right away. You might leave a situation thinking, wow-they were a massive douche, and then it actually takes another few hours to sit bolt upright and realise that you missed the word sexist out of that description.

And since that written revelation, I’ve been absolutely bombarded by my own memory, to the point where I can’t believe quite how rife my life has been with hidden sexism. And that’s what I believe we should be fighting against.

Last month, I had the displeasure of spending a few hours in enforced company with an extreme male chauvinist. The kind you can’t help but notice. He had a mini fit when his son picked up a pink buggy to play with, complete with a baby doll inside. “Sorry” I just barely bit back from saying, “I didn’t realise you want your son to grow into the type of man who won’t care for his children or help his wife.” Later that afternoon, midway through an intellectual discussion between him and two other men, I joined the debate. After his look of shock dissipated, he continued talking, making sure to explain every word over two syllables with a condescending look in my direction and an apologetic head tilt for his superior knowledge. When I correctly answered the problem he had posed, he shook his head and basically told me I’d made a lucky guess.

I went home livid. How has he got to mid thirties without someone telling him he has a huge problem? And how can his wife let him behave that way without saying something?

Attitude. That’s what the war should be waged on. The next time someone is rude to you, stop and check the conversation. Is it rudeness, or sexism? More and more I can see that what at first glance was brushed off as ‘they’re an idiot” has a horrible undercurrent of latent sexism that maybe even the speaker isn’t aware of. Sentences like “what does your husband do?” before you’ve even asked about my own work, are not just rude, they are horribly sexist. And they paint a reality. A reality where the female intern gets the coffee while the male one assists the director of the company. A world where you plan an important speech for a meeting and two men stand up to leave before you’ve finished the first sentence. A world where it’s assumed you wont want to join everyone for lunch, so you’re left alone to answer the phones.

All of the above have happened to me in the last five years, and honestly, none of them are serious enough as stand alone events to even mention, without dealing with another sexist label, “the hormonal hysterical woman.” But put them all together and you have a quite frightening picture of a woman’s worth.

It’s easy enough to solve. And bear with me here because this is quite radical. Everyone has to see women…. as people.

That’s right. The same as any other person, male or otherwise.

It’s crazy! It’s insane! It will never work!

But taking every situation I’ve outlined above, I think it may be genius. Instead of my new favourite MCP noting that a dress and heels had joined the convo, if he had just noted that another human was now involved, the only change in conversation would have been a slight body shift to include me in the debate.

If I wasn’t immediately wife, but rather person, then obviously the first question would have been “what do you do?”

“2 interns? Flip a coin, decide between yourselves, take turns for gods sake.”

“Oh, a person is talking, I’d better wait to go powder my nose until they are finished. Perhaps I’ll even listen.”

“Ah, we’re going for lunch, every person is obviously welcome.”

I’m not for one minute downplaying the important work that feminists do for women, and I’m grateful every day for our ‘sister suffragettes’ that made my own freedom and choices possible. But the work needed nowadays is different, and I believe it is mostly down to menfolk to make the changes, although of course women can be just as guilty. To see women simply as other people who coexist side by side, separate but equal. To extend the same courtesy they would to any other person, by simply not being rude. To think about an unpleasant encounter in their day and ask themselves whether they would have made the same choices had a man been standing in front of them, or at the other end of the line.

So do me a favour, and pass on the message to the man in your life. After all, they probably will have stopped reading this by now. It’s written by a woman. 

sexism