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.
Posted under me
This post was written by Vonnie on August 31, 2009
Really enjoyed reading this! It’s a bit late at night to be constructing a response but will soon. We should meet for a gab.x
I don’t know if you have read this, but it was a link I got from Jay Jay that might interest you:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/aug/25/feminism-relationships-sexism-women
Also this list of articles regarding “feminisim 101″ is good for a read, also:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2004/10/feminism-101.html
I, too, am sickened that we STILL live in an age where women are still underpaid and treated as second class citizens. It is still obvious, just slightly more sophisticated. More hush, hush and swept under the carpet.
As you mentioned, the majority have lost sight of this and believe that everything is fair and equality reigns.
It’s also upsetting that any interest in promoting and being interested in the rights of women make you a lesbian and a man hater.
I’m glad you tackle it in your blog, as you have said, people have this preconcieved idea that if you get your hair/nails done, like cooking and baking, look after your house etc then you can’t have a mind and an opinion on womens rights.
xxx
Been feeling a bit feminist sell-out recently, since I no longer work and wont be for the forseeable future, and so while it makes sense for me during my long days around the house to spend ten minutes doing the dishes, and clean up the place, I still resent it. I want to refuse to out of principle but objectively why would I NOT do it. I can spend a couple of hours tidying the place up and still spend the next 5 hours lying on the couch watching daytime TV, so to refuse to do steretypically housewifely tasks purely on that basis is petulant and childish but it doesnt stop me HATING IT.
Hello, I am one of those people referenced to in this post! I think the issue rather than pay is the level of job that women get. Women get paiud less on a whole because there are more men in higher status, higher paid jobs and more women working in supermarkets, bakeries, etc part time. You can’t get managerial jobs working part time and that’s a big reason for the pay gap when it’s all rounded up into one big average.
Also, feminist sociologists would say that you enjoy baking and sewing because they are female roles that you will have accepted as your place from being a small child from society around you and wasn’t your choice, but I’ll leave you to ponder on whether you agree with that or not
Just as an aside…the civil service has many part time management posts at all levels right up to senior civil service. They are out there and filled by both men and women.
You just need to know where to look.
See I have a connected but not maternal related issue. I don’t have kids, I worked for an organisation where they promoted family friendly policies, parental leave/short notice leave for sick kids, and people with kids got preference for summer holidays. Which meant as a non-breeder I got landed working all summer every summer as leave was rostered on a basis of you having kids. Well not officially but because the department had to be seen to be child friendly all parents leave got granted first. Leaving non for us childless people. Same with dropping to part time hours – only possible if you could prove it was needed as you had kids, screw the work life balance, but it did make for some interesting tide turning and meant the parents and equal rights “movement” lost a lot of sympathy in our office (P.S I’m not aiming this at parents more poor organisational targets and agendas).
On a side note I joined a wee debate on facebook and was arguing about FGM and feminism, might be worthwhile having a look on there. I’m not a feminist per se, more of an equalist hence my end post on the subject of FGM/MGM, but it would be good to hear some others viewpoints on the subject.
Also whilst I might be up on the whole equalism thing I’m not up to date much on my feminist reading, so admittedly speaking from a position of ignorance here.
Wow, they have laptops in kitchens now?
Ahem. Sorry. Good read, the one issue I have is with the car insurance point. It’s all well and good for the insurance companies to say they use statistics to justify charging women less, but they pick and choose the groups who benefit.
My sister worked for AXA for a while, and when the ‘stats allow us to charge women less’ argument was brought up, she asked that if statistics showed disabled drivers were in more accidents, can we charge them more? No, came the answer.
It’s not even 8am yet, so I can’t really be bothered going into any more detail.
as you know, I don’t label myself as a feminist (never been into labels) however I do agree with a lot of what you’re saying here (so maybe I am).
Oh and when I worked at SHIL, the 2 highest paid members of staff (aside from the CEO) were both women!
Oh I am so looking forward to blogging with you.
I’ve never bothered with the labels until now but I do think that anyone who is ANTI-feminist is a complete idiot (especially if they’re working/running their own business).
It’s worrying how keen some women are to disassociate themselves from feminism…I think it’s probably more to do with misconceptions about what it is(even I’m not sure which category I’d fit into!) and misinformation regarding woman’s situation in todays world…Women aren’t losing out on the top jobs and the top pay because they’re full of babies and only put in half the time – it’s unreasonable to think that anyone would be annoyed if that actually WAS the case, there’s more to it – go investigate.
Also, not to make little of any of the really important points you’ve made Vonnie but maybe the inequalities would have been better demonstrated from global statistics…I just think that sometimes people can forget about the world outside of our own. Women are currently producing close to 2/3 of the worlds food but only own 1% of the land and of the people living in poverty, 70% are women – these are just two simple little facts, it’s too early in the morning for me to be getting into war crimes, religion, genital mutilation and the general abuse of women outside the western bubble.
a couple of quick facts for pennydog – a female working FULL TIME in Britain, earns 82% of her male colleagues salary and female managers still earn on average £30,000 less than men IN THE SAME JOBS – those figures are from two years ago but it’d be a miracle if they’d closed those gaps in such a short time.
^^”It’s worrying how keen some women are to disassociate themselves from feminism”
oh god this, this, and this again. could not agree more.
re: feminist/equalist, i’ve never heard the latter phrase actually used before, and frankly find it upon first inspection to be a big bucket of missing the point, although i understand why people think it’s a good idea – it sounds awfy similar to that with which i used to associate myself.
Crying out from the rooftops that you think feminism is irrelevant because all you want is equality misses out a fairly important point, which is that women have been and are subject to specific forms of inequality and oppression which have their basis in patriarchy. And whilst this may be oversimplifying what is a fairly fucking complex debate – let’s address that first, shall we? All you want is equality, yes? well hey, that’s what the feminists want too. Only here’s the thing, you might actually have to look at some actual arguments that have to do with actual discrimination against women. i know, i know, it feels a bit like the 70s and you’re worried that the underwiring might not melt properly in the fire but GET OVER IT.
(seriously, it’s not as painful as you think. and i’ve found that you can keep on shaving your legs, have friendships with men, and even get married to one if you’re that way inclined. crazy, i know.)
On a related note, I have on a few occasions found a form of anti-feminism in the guise of what i suppose is called “equalism” used as a distractionary technique, deployed unwittingly by educated middle class white straight men* who don’t want to believe that they could ever be part of the problem. most of them aren’t, directly. these aren’t bad guys, they don’t mean harm, they feel excluded by feminism(s). But I’ve said it before and i’ll say it again – men can be feminists too. Feminism isn’t a monolithic concrete entity, it is a series of debates and principles with which one interacts, get involved. the hand of feminist friendship is outstretched.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the potential need for feminism to re-brand. i’m undecided. This “equalism” – which could be seen as a re-brand – runs the risk of ignoring the very real problems that women face, of sweeping them under the proverbial carpet because we’re afraid to challenge sexism and misogyny. We have not yet reached equality in the western developed world. Clearly we haven’t – and anyone who thinks we have is simply naive, deluded, or just plain fucking stupid – we’ve come a long way baby, yes, but don’t give up quite yet.
*(again, this is purely subjective. i know a lot of educated middle-class white men cos of living in a middle-class bit of scotland and going to university in said same place. [one scotland many cultures my arse.] I have no clue as to whether this is solely a white middle class boy thing.)
Wa-hey Vonnie, fantastic post, and some great replies! I think about this a lot as it happens, but am not that elequent so rarely discuss it. I class myself as a feminist, but it is such a huge umbrella. I’m a stay at home mum, through choice as well as circumstance, I would love to go back to work, but part time as we choose to have kids, my husband happens to be the biggest earner and will always be, so someone has to look after our children. Speaking very generally, me amd my husband are pretty steriotypical, even if i earn’t more, and he stayed at home, he’d struggle, he is built to switch off home life and go hunt. I am good at the house and kid stuff, and we both want to do our respective roles. Pennydog, I really do choose this as I think its best for our children. Its is hard to be taken as a feminist with this point of view, but I don’t see why. If I choose to be the ‘hunter’ I would expect to be paid for that, the same as every other hunter. It is undeniabley wrong that people doing the same job should be paid diffent wages. What we need is for childrearing to be taken as seriously as ‘paid’ work, and when it is done, for us(men and women) to be naturally accepted back into the workforce, not as having taken a break for a few years and therefore to be ignored and tolerated in meanial jobs, but as having purely done what is natural, and good for the whole future, after all, if we do our jobs properly and raise our children well, (whichever way is best) the future for EVERYONE will be better.
There definitely needs to be more feminism in my line of work. Trying to get an acting job as a married mother of two is near impossible! I have to remove my wedding ring and never mention the kids until I get the job – employers for touring work don’t seem to like taking on people who might have other commitments.
Oh, and don’t even get me started on the ageism, as shown on Strictly Come Dancing, and the need for female leads to be stunning size 12s and under.
Fantastic post and insightful comments! Look forward to reading the other blog.
Hi Yvonne,
Great post! it is all these reasons and many many more that have motivated us to set up Gude Cause (http://www.gudecause.org.uk) we need to make everyone aware of these inequalities and that we want things to change. Hopefully the Procession in October will get everyone thinking and re-engaging with the ‘political’ process – both local and national!and maybe even get some people to realise that feminism isn’t a bad thing and that being a feminist is something all self respecting women should be!
Fiona
I’ve had to come back and post- sorry! There have been some excellent comments and discussion which has been very interesting, but I can’t ignore the fact that I have just been insulted.
Chrissy’s comment seemed to be aimed at me and |I feel I need to address it. Firstly I am not anti-feminist per se, I just think it needs to be investigated more from other angles and with caution so that the balance isn’t tipped. How does this make me “stupid”? I can accept ignorant, naive or even brainwashed and I wouldn’t bat an eye, but stupid I am not.
Also how does political and social perspective affect if I can run my business? My turnover in my first year working part time for myself was £12,000. I understand statistics, the importance of clever marketing, how price structures and economics work, but somehow if I don’t share the same view as Chrissy, that means I am not equal as a human being? I am not a robot and I will not conform to the opinions of others just to fit in with the general opinion, why does that make me any less able to run a business?
Otherwise I respect the opinions of others as they have respected mine. It leads to an interesting discussion and life would be boring without it!
I’ve really enjoyed reading this post this morning, and thought that for anyone who wants to read a wonderful book which skirts around some of these issues, I can really recommend “Singled Out” by Virginia Nicholson. It’s a collection of stories/letters/memoirs of how 2 million survived without men after the first world war and is one of the best books I’ve ever read. It’s so eye opening – for some women, not having men around was the making of them and sadly for plenty of others they really did want to devote themselves to a husband but it was never to be. It’s an often sad read but on the flip side is so awe-inspiring, and dare I say it, did make me feel a little jealous on occasion!
This is a subject that makes me so incoherently angry I can’t construct an argument. While magazines like Nutz are sitting on the counter of the newsagents offering the chance to ‘win your girlfriend a boob job’, with whatever percentage it was on the news yesterday of teenage girls believing violence was a normal part of relationships,OF COURSE THERE’S A NEED FOR FEMINISM.
The first comment wasn’t aimed at you, I wouldn’t insult anyone by talking around them rather than directly at them – hence the reason your name was mentioned in the second post, THAT bit was specifically for your attention.
Maybe I should have used the word ‘ignorant’ but people shouldn’t be arguing anti-feminsist points before reading up on what it IS, what it has accomplished (and is still aiming to accomplish) and if they HAVE done their homework and continue to argue anti-feminsit points, then yeah – I’m gonna think they’re pretty stupid – especially if they’re a woman who enjoys the choice to actually work and own a business.
It doesn’t affect the way anyone RUNS a business, no need to prove something against a point I never even made.
Now YOU have just been extremely insulting, insinuating that I declared that non-feminists can’t function, aren’t human etc etc.
No one is asking you to be a robot and please don’t imply that those who share the same view ARE – just asking you to ‘think’ about it.
(this would have made a far more interesting response if you’d addressed the larger part of my post by the way – are you still declaring that men are more subject to discrimination in society today?)
I was saying that as a robot I would go with what everyone else is saying to fit in even if it wasn’t what I believed in, if it’s what you actually believe in then you’re not a “robot”, so that wasn’t to be taken to be insulting either- unless of course you’re saying these things just to fit in, which I’m guessing you’re probably not
Equally if I was arguing against the BNP, or against animal rights protesters, I would be equally as courteous even though I don’t particularly believe in what they do, everyone has a right to their own opinion.
I was talking with my OH about this this morning, as an employer it is increasingly difficult to work with the structure of maternity leave and the different laws around it, which it is why it is much easier to employ men as they are seen as more “reliable” in that respect. This is why men get better job opportunities. I’m not saying this is right, but it’s an easy choice for an employer that wants an easier life. However if this was to change to be completely equal, yes men would be discriminated against more if they weren’t given equal paternity leave and equal flexible working. It’s not an easy thing to decide suddenly that changes need to happen, because if not implemented carefully they could be detrimental to men also. I do also believe that my OH should be able to join the WI if girls are allowed to join the scouts, and that there should be men only car insurance as well as women only car insurance if there is to be full equality.
Just picking up on a couple of things
1) Employers have at least 3.5 months to organise maternity cover so that their business is not affected. The government pays statutory maternity pay, not the employer so financially they’re not affected. It is actually illegal to discriminate on the basis that a female employee *might* go off and have a baby and it’s also illegal to ask a women whether she is planning a family in order to make a recruitment decision. These employers looking for an easy life are committing illegal acts of discrimination. Wouldn’t you be utterly FURIOUS if you went for an interview, performed well and had a man picked over you purely on the basis that you might have a baby (even though you’ve stated before that it’s not on your agenda?)
2) Shared parental leave has been in the pipeline for a while, I don’t know what is happening with it just now but one of the reasons until now that long leave has been granted to mothers was to encourage and improve the rates of breastfeeding because in the long run, breastfeeding reduces the burden on the NHS saving the taxpayer money. Not the sole reason admittedly.
3) Equal flexible working – you’re totally right! The expectation should not be that women do all the childrearing because it’s an outdated and stereotyped view of a woman’s capabilities and flexible working should be the norm. Admittedly, Bob & I are both civil servants and we have forward-thinking benefits so flexible working is an option for us both but I agree it should be the norm for every working parent.
4) Kerry, nobody is just deciding now that changes need to happen. Mary Wollstonecraft (probably the first recognised British feminist) was calling for equality of the sexes 200 years ago. Change has been slow thus far – you and I only earned the right to VOTE 80 years ago, a change which women died for. To me, it disrespects these social campaigners to say that we don’t deserve equality or to think that striving for equality would be detrimental to men. Society as a whole would be far fairer and more balanced.
5) I can’t help thinking that you’re being deliberately provocative here
There are many men-only institutions (the Freemasons immediately springing to mind) that women have no access to. I also think you’re missing the point a wee bit – as Chrissy said in a comment above, although I chose to highlight issues of immediate concern to *us* women across the world are facing serious discrimination and having their rights infringed because of their gender.
At the end of the day though it’s your choice whether to try and see what we’re explaining or whether to stick with your own beliefs – it’s simply such an emotive subject for so many of us that we can’t sit down and shut up