I’ve had bits of this post saved as a draft for a month now. It may be a bit disjointed but I hope the general meanderings will be understandable and I’m open to critique and discussion. Hopefully, some of you will evaluate your stance on the issue of feminism and what it means to declare yourself a feminist.

After a bit of a heated discussion with a friend recently, I’m appalled and ashamed to have discovered that there are still people out there who believe women have reached equality. Even worse, there are still women out there who believe it’s acceptable to be discriminated against on the basis that women lack a penis. So, here’s some quality gems I’ve heard lately and my responses to them.

Women physically can’t work full time like men if they have babies and therefore can’t expect to get paid the same without discriminating against men
WRONG. I have four children and when I’m not on maternity leave I work 5 days a week. I have to! We simply could not afford to live otherwise. Of course I expect to be paid the same as my male colleagues because I expect equal pay for equal work – anything else is discrimination. When having this argument recently someone responded, “Yeah but if you’re off work for a year and your colleague hasn’t been then surely they deserve a pay rise?” Well they may deserve a pay rise over me but what about the rest of the female workforce at that grade? According to Close The Gap” the full-time gender pay gap is 14%. The part time pay gap jumps to a massive 33% – that means women working part time receive 67p per hour for every £1 per hour received by a full-time man. Do you think that is okay? Do you think it’s fair and equal?

Accepting the pay gap does all women a disservice and wrongly assumes that all women are going to pop out sprogs at some point in their career. Current estimates show that 23% of women born in 1973 will be childless by the age of 45. Would you accept being paid less than a man purely because you have the ability to give birth even if you don’t want to have any?

Women have special women-only insurance companies, but if men had them they’d be sexist. How is that fair?
When quoting for car insurance, the companies are inherently biased towards statistically safer drivers. The Director of RoadSafe commented last week “As far as safety is concerned, women are much safer drivers than men in almost every respect.” So it is only logical to see that from a money-making perspective women are a safer bet, a women-only company can offer cheaper premiums and are less likely to have to pay out on claims. Do you have a problem with companies like Saga who discriminate by age? Or Esure who discriminate by accrued no claims?

I don’t believe that feminism is about man-hating hairy-legged lesbians promoting the rights of women over men. I believe that feminism is striving for total equality. Allowing women to be paid equal pay for equal work. Allowing parents to share post-birth leave instead of the current imbalance. Allowing women to work in male-dominated workplaces without being demeaned or ridiculed and similarly allowing men to work in traditionally female roles without being emasculated.

So you believe in equality regardless of gender, race, religion etc? Why do you call yourself a feminist? Why not an equalist?
Quite simply because the feminist movement is rooted in raising awareness of the disadvantages faced by women in society. I call myself a feminist because I am, feel free to call yourself something different.

Hang on, you are saying that you’re a feminist but you write a blog about cooking and sewing and parenting and stereotypically feminine tasks. Isn’t that double standards>
My husband writes a blog about parenting too. He also writes for GeekDad. Do these affiliations dictate that’s all he is, *just* a Dad? My blog started off as a tongue-in-cheek potshot at Pygmalion and My Fair Lady where the protagonist is coached in being a Lady before realising she doesn’t need her male puppetmaster. I choose to bake and sew because I enjoy it. I don’t blog about my work because nobody would be interested in that!

I could write about this all day but time marches on. The reason I am posting this is because today I have joined a group blog over at I blame the Mother which will focus on the things that we Mothers apparently don’t get right according to the media. I would love to see some of you over there.

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