Assuming sexism

Last night I was chatting on MSN to a friend of mine who lives in Dubai.  As a high flying, single, childless woman I wanted to know whether she was enjoying reading A Woman’s Writes.  Her reaction surprised me.  She isn’t a big fan of feminism it seems.  Thinks we should just get on with proving we are awesome and stop harping on about it.

This morning I read a blog post which, in my mind, demonstrates exactly the kind of pseudo-feminist whinging that gives feminism a bad name.

The blog came to my attention because it popped into my inbox as a Google Alert I have set up for one of my client’s company name.  I have deliberately left my client’s name out of this post so I can remain entirely true to my own feelings without needing to play safe with their brand.  The woman writing on the blog was accusing my client of sexism because they hadn’t hired her for a job.

As she tells the story; my client advertised for a computer technician competent in both Mac and PC.  The blogger applied for the job and tells us that having the skills to support both computer types is a rarity but one she possesses.

“I applied in confidence, and had no question that I would be contacted; after all, who else was likely to apply who had such substantial prior cross-platform experience? [...] Of course, they never contacted me. No phone call, no e-mail, zilch.”

The blogger makes a brief aside that:

“Recruiters routinely contact me wanting to place me in full-time desktop support roles, but I can’t work full-time do to my writing and fatigue issues, and so I have to turn them down.”

Before hitting us full throttle with her accusation:

“Understandably, I am quite thoroughly convinced that the vast majority of the candidates they chose to interview and contract had nothing close to the same level of prior experience I did. Obviously, then, if I was not discounted due to a lack of experience, skills, or availability, then Occam’s Razor surely applies:

“They chose not to contact me solely because they wish not to employ a woman in that capacity.

“Perhaps they think that clients won’t respect a female technician, or feel that they aren’t getting the best service for their money. This may be true; there are likely many clients who would feel that way. The problem is, that a business is not permitted to justify sexism on those grounds under Australian law, and thus this is a matter that will be referred to the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission. While I’ve had my suspicions regarding previous roles for which I’ve been turned down, none has been as blatant as this.”

No, you didn’t miss something.  Her immediate assumption was that her gender was the basis for the decision.  Despite offering no evidence of any behaviour from the company to indicate this, she reckons that my client is guilty of sexism.

Now, I am a woman.  I am a respected advisor to this company – and my role is in the technology space too.  I am also a feminist who (due to this blog as much as anything) is always on the watch for sexism in action.  I work directly into the MD of the company in question, who is quite possibly one of the last men I would ever accuse of sexism.   And yet she, who has no evidence or knowledge of any individual within the company, accuses them quite willy nilly of sexism.

I showed the blog to a friend this morning and their response was:

“Could it possibly be that she is over qualified and possibly more expensive than others? Did that thought ever cross her mind? Possibly she was in an area that they didn’t need support (considering it sounds like she lives at least 100km outside the city)… possibly the fact that she has ‘fatigue and writing issues’… “

I would like to add; maybe she actually *wasn’t* as good as the other applicants on paper.  Perhaps the heavy job losses in IT that we have heard about over the last six months made the position heavily oversubscribed and her application was simply outshone by 10 or 20 others.

No wonder men and women alike shrink in disgust from the word ‘feminism’ when the gender equality cause is used to defend the ego from every knock back in life.

****UPDATE*****

My client has contacted the blogger twice.  The first time she went mental and updated her post to say she had been threatened.  He wrote to her again and told her that even if she genuinely felt the way she did that there were appropriate channels to pursue the matter and defaming the company on the internet was not one of them. She has now sensibly removed both posts relating to the matter. I am proud that he didn’t run in fear of her accusations and stuck to his guns.

Unsolicited sympathy

I mentioned yesterday that I had my first knitting class on Monday. A friend was teaching two of us to knit over hot chocolates and a catch up in a book cafe, and it was very pleasant.

Once I had mastered casting on and while (rather unevenly) weaving wool around my needles, I mentioned that I am currently half way through Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. After giving some initial thoughts (which I will save for later for you) we started to talk about female stereotypes and my fellow knitting pupil said something I wanted to share with you.

“I am really fed up with receiving unsolicited sympathy for being a single woman in my mid thirties”, she said. “If my friend is in a loveless marriage, that is socially acceptable, but somehow the fact that I am very happy yet single is an uncomfortable proposition for people.”

I had to agree with her. I am usually a bit of a serial singleton, totally happy in my free-to-be-selfish state. However, for the last few months I have been happily paired up with a very socially acceptable man and it’s made me realise how much easier this state of couple-ness sits with people.

The friend in question has, in the past, been paired up at dinner parties with a spectacularly pear shaped man (“have you ever *seen* a pear shaped man?” she asked… “very odd.”) And her friend doing the pairing up seriously thought that she would be grateful for the partnership.

If she was a man of the same age, would she experience the same misplaced societal sympathies? Is an adult of any gender going solo seen as someone who hasn’t yet achieved their life’s goal, or is this a particularly female burden to bear? As always, your thoughts from both male and female experiences are solicited….

Off key?

This weekend, Australian radio station triple J aired it’s Hottest 100 of all time – voted for by listeners.

Of the 100 featured songs, only two were sung by female vocalists.

The station’s talk back show Hack then hosted a discussion on the lack of women in the league table.  It all prompted a conversation I had with a couple of pals last night (over our first knitting lesson – but more about that another time) – who was missing?

I struggled to come up with which women that I thought should be in there that were missing.  The list of really-rather-good female singers that we came up with at the time was short.  But I have now thought on it a little longer and there *are* people missing.

Blondie

Madonna

Tori Amos

Cher

The Carpenters

Fleetwood Mac

Bjork

PJ Harvey

Garbage

Amy Winehouse

Beyonce

Diana Ross

Shirley Bassey

Eva Cassidy

Carly Simon

Lauryn Hill (the ‘fugees)

Lulu

While everyone always contests the results of these things (should Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit rate higher than Lennon’s Imagine?) it is still incredibly interesting that the demographic that listens to one of Australia’s main radio stations should be attracted to only male singing voices.

I don’t imagine men massively outvoted women, which means we *all* voted for the men.  Can women not write or perform memorable songs?  Is the pitch of the female voice somehow inadequate at providing the emotional attachment required to label their song as your greatest ever?

The list (as you would imagine by the music Triple J plays) was dominated by a lot of rock – is that just more of a male genre?

But Triple J looked into their current playlist and found that female singers are strongly represented, making up close to half of the songs they categorise to be played regularly.

Why do you think women didn’t make the list?  To get you thinking about who might have been there, this is a nice alternative female only list – a little tongue in cheek!

News anchors

The front page of The Australian’s media section today features a news article reporting the possible promotion of Chris Bath to become the first solo female news anchor on commercial TV in Australia.

The ABC (non-commercial) already has a number of solo female anchors, but channels 7, 9, 10 and SBS all currently feature either male solos or a male/female double act.

OK, progress being made, good news.

But what bothered me was this quote from Seven’s news director Peter Meakin:

“There’s a school of thought that there is a risk putting a woman on her own, largely because of female viewers not accepting female readers as authority figures.”

Is that true?

The article also appeared on the news.com.au website where comments are allowed, and some of the comments submitted (71 so far) are equally concerning.

Steve of Brisbane: “A good looking female news reader beats a male news reader any day.”

Yeayeahwhotever of Melbourne: “quite honestly, TV and print news are a dying breed in any case. Too slow to react, too interested in creating sensation and hype. All that being said however, I do find Chris Bath very very tasty.”

RT: “The SBS newsreaders Janice Peterson and Neema Mairata and also Juanita Phillips and Felicity Davey of ABC are very professional and easy on the eye, as is Chris Bath. Good luck to her. I could watch them read the grain and produce market news and still be interested.”

Freda of NSW: “Television is still one of the last bastions of sexism towards women, Chris Bath should have been in the 6pm time-slot at least 2 years ago. She is much more pleasant to look at and listen to than any of the male newsreaders and I am a straight women.”

Jo Bloh: “We get Natalie Barr over here in the mornings and I can tell you I’ve never seen so many men watch the news of the morning, even after night shift!”

OG of Jerramungup: “Chris Bath can read the news at my place personaly any time she likes”

Helen of Queensland: “Love Chris Bath. Good looking and very professional. Just why has Australia still got a thing about gender? It is time Australians grow up. It is 2009 not 1909!!!”

David of Sydney: “My problem is that when Chris Bath reads the news I stop listening, and just look at her very beautiful face”

I have obviously just taken a selection, but I actually didn’t bother showing you the most silly sexist comments obviously left just to get a rise from other readers.

I am utterly intrigued that the appearance of a female news reader (indeed any female in the public sphere) appears to be of equal importance to her ability, yet no mention is made of the aesthetic merits of male news anchors.  To get their jobs these women have had to play the game by the rules – to get a good news job you need to be well presented.  But then once they get that job their unnaturally shiny hair and startlingly white teeth merely reinforce the stereotypes and discrimination that they have had to navigate themselves.  How can we break the cycle?

Holiday

I am off on holiday next week, but service will resume on Monday 13th July so do come back then.

If you haven’t called in before, take the opportunity to catch up on some previous posts while I am away and have your ten cents worth in any of the comment streams.

Who are men?

Sometimes in our own personal struggles to succeed as a women we forget to take a moment to think about men.  My personal feminist creed does not paint men as evil, and in fact many men I know share feminist beliefs closer to my own than some of my best female friends.

So I wanted to use today’s post to tell you about an initiative that has been running in Australia this week; Man Week.

Each night this week, Triple J, a radio station out here, has discussed a male related topic and then opened discussion online.  It has also prompted blogs from male bloggers across the country, discussing some element of their life or experiences as a man.

I have read a few of these and have been blown away by how sensitive and insightful they are.  Reading them also demonstrates how little men usually express themselves intimately, and it seems that this is as much to do with societal acceptance as their inclination. I would encourage anyone reading this who is interested in gender equality – rather than gender stereotyping – to have a read through some of these posts.

• Becoming a man: dealing with personal problems by Julian Cole (@juliancole)
• Being a dad by Matt Moore (@innotecture)
• Balls and bravado by Gavin Heaton (@servantofchaos)
• Fathers are funny by Franksting (@franksting)
• Media and males by Media Hunter (@mediahunter)
• Dealing with bullying by Matt Hazel (@matthazel)
• A man in advertising by Stan Lee (@BrandDNA)
• My greatest life challenge by Joely Righteous (@joelyrighteous)
• Return to Colombia (about being adopted) by Jye Smith (@jyesmith)
• My dad by Age (@AgeC)
• Balls on the line by Zac Martin (@zacmartin)
• Being young and learning about masculinity by Joel Connolly (@joelconnolly)
• Reachout’s Man Week blog

Enfranchisement

The recent European elections achieved electoral turnouts of just 34% in the UK. Across Europe, few countries performed much better. In Belgium, Luxembourg and Greece voting is compulsory, but even with these measures the Italians consistently turnout higher numbers than the Greek.

In Australia voting in all elections is also compulsory – with a fine for those who forget. This system ensures turnouts of around 95% at most elections. But last year’s American Presidential elections which, in notable contrast to the EU elections, so grasped the attention of the world still only managed to bring out 56.8% of the population.

So what are these numbers telling us? That despite fewer than 50 years passing since universal suffrage was achieved, we no longer care?

I would like to particularly make the point that we should pay attention to universal suffrage, not women’s suffrage, because although a monumental step forward, that which is labelled ‘women’s enfranchisement’ is only part of the picture. The Suffragettes have long been heroes of mine, but with black women in the US (for example) not being given the vote until the 15th Amendment was enforced in 1964, there is only some gratification the country can take in giving white women the vote in 1920 with the 19th Amendment.

Why is it that we can all appreciate the efforts of the Suffragettes in their painful and traumatic (and occasionally fatal) hunger strikes, yet not find the time to vote? How can Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech continue to resonate for individuals the world over… yet not drive them to the polling station?

These people were not campaigning for their democratic rights simply to make a point. They didn’t see the ability of citizens to have some say in their own governing as a ‘nice-to-have’. Something to put on the mantelpiece and look on with pride when we see riots in Iran and supportive green avatars all over Twitter.

In Saudi Arabia and Vatican City, women are still prohibited by law from the democratic process. In Bhutan each household has just one vote – and the societal conventions mean the decision is usually made by the male head of the household. In Lebanon women have to have proof of education to at least elementary level (something their male counterparts do not need) to be allowed to vote. In Brunai and the UAE no one has a right to vote, because there are no democratic elections.

I believe that the democratic responsibility of individuals, not just their rights, is a fundamental part of any democracy and forward thinking society. It is intriguing that the political ideology by which the majority of the world’s population judges the advancement of a nation seems to have such high levels of antipathy on an individual level.

Sporting rules

This morning the Sydney Morning Herald reports that the All England Tennis Club has made its decisions on the Centre Court schedule at Wimbledon, influenced by the looks of the female players.

According to the SMH:

A spokesman from the All England Club, Johnny Perkins, was quoted in the Daily Mail newspaper in London: “Good looks are a factor. ‘It’s not a coincidence that those [on Centre Court] are attractive.”

Female competitors who are better known for their strength and ability than their feminine wiles – Serena Williams for example – have been relegated to lesser courts while pretty unseeded players get to play early matches on the world famous Centre Court which can hold greater crowds, all of whom pay more for a centre court ticket.

Former Wimbledon competitor and oft-TV commentator Australian Pat Cash has joined the discussion in typically chauvenistic style saying that sexiness is basically all the women’s game has going for it.  Nice.

This latest demonstration of sexism from the All England Tennis Club doesn’t actually surprise me in the slightest. It wasn’t until 2007 that female players competed for the same prize money as their male counterparts.  In 2006 men played for £30,000 more than the women, in 2004 it was $42,000 more.

In 1973, Billie Jean King founded the Women’s Tennis Association aiming for equality for women on the professional tennis circuit.  It seems that that very same year the US Open offered equal prize money to both male and female winners.

In 1984, the Australian Open began offering equal prize money – although for some reason this equality was paused between 1996 and 2000.

Roland Garros and Wimbledon both waited until 2007 to equally reward women. 34 years after the US event organisers.

Women who think that the Battle of Feminism was fought and won by our mothers in the 60s when the contraceptive pill became widely available (in a couple of countries) miss the point entirely. If a woman goes through her life without encountering discrimination on the basis of her sex she is the exception, and more than likely she just isn’t noticing it.

I would be interested to know your thoughts on which are the main battles left to fight for women’s equality in sport.  Are there other tournaments where men are rewarded more than women?  Does anyone know the average value of sportsmen’s sponsorship deals compared to sportswomen’s?  And can anyone shed any light on why – at least in the UK and Australia – male sports are considered more mainstream for spectators?  While women’s netball is at least televised in Australia, and I believe soccer is seen as a worthwhile women’s sport in the US, do any countries regularly screen women’s rugby, hockey or anything else on mainstream channels?

Equalising language

Hat tip to Katy in Dubai for this one.

Gender inequality inherent in language was addressed with great success in a recent female empowerment campaign run in Lebanon, and Leo Burnett Bahrain, the agency behind the campaign, was recognised at last week’s Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

In Arabic the placement of accent punctuation above or below the word indicates whether it addresses a male or female audience. Increasingly no accent at all is used, which means the word becomes directed by default to a male audience. This means that official communications, marketing messages and public information all become addressed just to a male audience.

In the Khede Kasra campaign, the Women Empowerment organisation used a wide variety of marketing and communications tools to highlight the issue and encourage the use of the appropriate accent to include women into the audience. The campaign seems to have been highly successful and it’s really pleasing to see in the Khede Kasra campaign video on YouTube (embedded below) that it appealed to men and women alike. The scale of mainstream interest it gathered must surely have helped make progress in female empowerment within the region.

The name game

Hat tip to Felicity for sending this one through for my attention.

Seems Michele Hanson at The Guardian in the UK has got a bee in her bonnet about someone else’s life.  OK, ok, so that’s what journalists do, but this one doesn’t sit easy with me.

Under the auspices of standing up for feminist values, Hanson has called out the Sun’s editor (and soon to be chief exec of News International, apparently) Rebekah Wade on her decision to take her second husband’s name after her recent marriage.  Wade (sorry, Brooks now) is, in Hanson’s view, disrespecting the achievements of feminist and suffrogettes.

“she’ll be letting down all those thousands of women, from 1850s Massachusetts suffragette Lucy Stone onwards, who have fought for women to retain their own names and independence. But there’s clearly no arguing with her. She will be Mrs Brooks.”

I would like to say; indeed she shall, Ms Hanson.  Because that is her choice.

It intrigues me that while critisicing Brooks for being, essentially, anti-feminist, Hanson also levels abuse at her for her lifestyle which is nothing if not an extreme demonstration of a woman succeeding and seemingly having an absolute ball in a man’s world.

“one has to contemplate her lifestyle, because it is relevant. It’s so full of grandeur: flying backwards and forwards across Europe for lunch, chumming up with prime ministers, trying to have news of her promotion delayed until after the general election because it’s so momentous (the promotion, not the general election). She’s the last sort of woman you’d expect to opt to take the back seat, yet here she is, giving up her own name like an ordinary little wife.”

I reckon you don’t have to like all women and their choices to be a feminist.  But I do believe you have to fight for their rights to make those choices.  And please ladies – stop putting each other down!

If keeping your name matters to you then keep it.  If you want to change it, change it. In this modern era of pre-nups, law changes to give married women status and the like, changing your name no longer signifies handing over your independence in the way it once did.

There are many reasons a woman may want to take her husband’s name (and indeed vice versa – I read this article on the BBC a couple of years ago which shows it does sometimes work the other way too!)  I love my surname and, like Hanson, am the last one of my line – what with both my sisters being married off, having changed their name, then produced more girls anyway!  But I want my children to have the same name as both their parents and double barrelling isn’t really an option with my name.

The issue is not whether a woman takes her husband’s name, but whether she has the choice not to.  Brooks had that choice (and indeed exercised it in her first marriage to Ross Kemp when she resolutely stayed Wade for seven years).  Please can we let her have that choice again, and not insist that her life is decided for her by a public jury of feminists?