Why Facebook and Apple’s offer to freeze women’s eggs is the opposite of progress

The tech giants’ move to pay for their female employees’ eggs to be frozen so they can delay having children just confirms suspicions some women try daily to ignore – that employers don’t want or value women who have children.

Hannah Marsh has a radical idea – instead of changing biology, why not just change the system? We created it after all

I thought I was being paranoid.

“Of course nowadays we live in a fair enough society where successful women who are good at what they do can decide to start a family, take the time off they need to nurture their tiny infant and return to their job,” I reassured myself.
But it turns out no, I wasn’t being paranoid. For some companies – at least for Facebook and Apple – if you want to have a baby, it really does negate your value as an employee.

What other message is there to take from their announcement this week, that they would be offering to freeze female employees’ eggs so that those women could delay having the pesky children that so get in the way of being good at their jobs?

Oh right. They were being progressive. And fighting the good fight for equality.

Except offering to freeze a woman’s eggs is the very opposite of progress.

When Kirstie Allsopp spoke out about her feminist views earlier this year, she was roundly rebuked by many for airing opinions that included suggesting women skip uni, go straight to work, net a man, save for a flat and have a baby by the age of 27.

Her tone might have been a little, erm, unsubtle, but one thing she pointed out really stuck with me.

Her argument rested on the idea that women are expected to fit the one thing we can’t change – our biological clocks – around a working world designed by and for men, on the rather outdated assumption that child care wouldn’t be something they’d need to share in.

This move by Facebook and Apple just reinforces that system: except ‘progressives’ that they are, they have actually managed to suggest a way in which we can change our biological clocks.

And that puts the onus squarely on female employees, apparently forgetting that male employees are also part of the having-a-child-process, and says: ‘if you want children, you can’t work here, unless you’re willing to freeze your eggs, do it later and put yourself through a traumatic, often painful, emotionally fraught and very possibly unsuccessful version of trying for that further down the line.’

That’s not progressive in the slightest.

As a woman in my 30s, the child question is one I ponder regularly, and its a subject that’s chewed over by my peers too, both the ones with children and without.

I’ve seen my friends with children struggle to get back into work, witnessed how inflexible some of their workplaces are and how passive aggressive their colleagues can be. And that’s just the mums. When one of my male friends approached his boss about changing his hours to share childcare with his wife, he was met by blank confusion, and from some colleagues, outright laughter.

One former colleague admitted she came back to work four weeks after giving birth – yes, four weeks – because she was worried she wouldn’t have a job to come back to if she didn’t.

Which makes me think that real progressiveness, real moves towards equality, actually accept that children are a fact of life. Most people want them. Men and women. And we no longer live in a world where men dominate our workplaces.

Many women also want to work, and they’re not suddenly rubbish at their jobs because they’ve given birth. And many men too would like to spend more time with their children. They’re not rubbish parents because they’re men.

So real progressiveness means flexibility for both parents, and accepting that perhaps our old-fashioned system, designed for one parent to work in while the other stayed at home, is the real problem here, not the fact that women inconveniently happen to give birth.

It’s quite simple really, instead of re-inventing our biological systems, how about we just re-invent our own working practise?

There are so many reasons for doing this anyway. Every few years a new report comes out disproving the link between long hours and productivity – and yet we still think that a good measure of proof of our ability to work hard and appear committed to our jobs is to put in longer and longer hours.

It’s time for change. And that change really, really doesn’t have to be to the way we reproduce.

So here are some suggestions for any other companies wondering how they can be genuinely progressive, without emotionally blackmailing women into changing their biological systems to feel secure in a job.

• Put some of that money you’re spending on egg freezing towards paternity leave for your male staff. Once their baby is old enough not to be physically dependant on its mother’s milk, some men might actually like the chance to take some of the parental leave themselves, while their partner makes steps to returning to work, knowing that they’re supported by their loved one and that they’re not leaving their baby with a stranger.

• Pay women the same as male staff. Pretty basic. But still not happening. When women and men are on an even earning keel, it’s possible that some of the expectations on women to be the one to give up work might be lifted, and allow massive decisions like who’s going to jeopardize their career to be made in a more equal situation that’s personal to the individuals. Who knows, perhaps if we ever get to that stage, parents who stay at home, full or part time, won’t actually have to jeopardize their career because there will be a system that genuinely accommodates the inconvenient fact that is reproduction of the human race.

• Don’t proudly unveil policies that literally state that women who choose to have children naturally are pretty much guaranteed to not be valued by your company. It’s pretty unwelcoming.

• Don’t be so ignorant to think that by allowing women to have children later in life you’re solving their ‘problem’. What about the worries over whether our children will know their grandparents? And whether we’ll be fit enough to run around and play football with them? By pushing couples to have children later rather than supporting them to have them earlier, you’re ignoring a whole other set of anxieties and questions.

• Introduce more part-time and job share roles. And actively recruit men to them. I’m not a fan of one-gender shortlists as an ultimate solution to gender inequality, but I think they’re a great way of breaking down a barrier and levelling the playing field to a point where some progress can be made. If more men were recruited into part-time and job-share roles, it wouldn’t seem so taboo for them to go out and look for them, and, shock horror, plenty would also appreciate the opportunity to split work and childcare commitments.

Non of these suggestions are going to change the world. But they’d be a more progressive start than the policies put forward by Facebook and Apple.

If you have suggestions on how you might like to see change in the workplace – that mean you don’t have to alter biological functions – let us know.

World Cup blues

Like, well, pretty much everyone else, Hannah Marsh been well and truly caught up in World Cup fever.

It’s the same each time. I feign indifference, don’t feel that bothered, get caught up in the national anthems and displays of pride and occasional flashes of absolute brilliance in the early stages, remember how much I love watching international football compared to club football, and start rearranging my evenings to make sure I catch as many games as possible before feeling a bit desolate that it’s all over.

But this time, I found myself really pondering on something that started out as a niggle, and irritated me more with every game I watched.

Where were the women? I don’t mean on the pitch, obvies. There are issues I have with the lack of support behind women’s football, but this is not a blog focussed on women’s vs men’s football. I mean in the studio, on my telly, commentating, the pundits, seriously? Not a single female voice? The way I see it, a good team of pundits provide an expert version of the conversations football fans are having at half time in their living rooms or down the pub. They’re the professionals having the same conversations we all are, but doing it better, with more insight and expert knowledge. And an army of stat finders competing to find the most hilarious/utterly useless piece of info to throw in. And guess what, there are plenty of female football fans, myself included.

I can’t remember when I went off club football. I can certainly remember when I started loving the sport itself. I was seven years old or so, and on a family camping holiday we played our own Coca-Cola cup. The trophy was a glass Coke bottle wrapped in silver foil. Covetable. The competition was fierce and we loved it. We regularly played sport in the garden with our dad – mainly rugby or football, taking on the personas of our favourite players. It honestly never occurred to me that there was a reason I couldn’t be Rory Underwood.

Aged nine, I discovered MATCH magazine (I lived abroad, it was a big deal to get magazines from the UK on order in Kenya). Going down to the stationary shop in our local shopping centre to pick up my magazine subscriptions – a precious moment every time – was cause for big excitement, and I persuaded my parents to pay for a subscription to both BIG! magazine and MATCH. Again, it simply never occurred to me that this was a magazine probably aimed at my male peers. I just loved football and wanted to absorb every stat, player fact and match analysis. Around this time I also became devoted to a series of books that followed the mishaps of its football mad but tragically non-gifted in the sporting talent department hero, Luke, and his underdog team of dreamers. Did anyone else read those? What were they called? I know they’re still in a box somewhere at home!

I collected football stickers, chose Tottenham Hotspur as ‘my team’ (living in Kenya kind of gave me license to support who I liked, my brother was an ardent Notts Forest supporter, we didn’t have local clubs), and carried my most prized possession, a bubble-headed model of Darren Anderton, around as my mascot. Admittedly, it probably wasn’t the best choice as a good luck mascot. Not a player known for his luck.

It was a big moment when my dad took me to see Spurs play his team, Derby, when he came for a half-term visit when I was at boarding school – where a couple of friends and I had petitioned vigorously for a girls’ football team to be started. To their credit, our school and in particular our tutor, an ex-football coach, were incredibly supportive, and football remains the only sport I ever played for my school. I still remember the joy of tearing around the muddy pitch, the burning competitiveness, and our coach/tutor rolling his eyes whenever we lost a game, because he knew he’d have to get on a bus with a team of sobbing teenage girls, who’s bitter disappointment and wounded pride regularly resulted in uncontrollable tears of anger and self-punishment. It really saddens me to read the reports of how keeping girls interested in sports is such an issue. But it doesn’t surprise me. As a girl you really have to choose to be interested in sports, the ones you want to play aren’t always there for you to slot effortlessly into.

But I can’t remember when I started to feel that football wasn’t for me. I don’t remember finding a girls’ football team for me to join at uni, and having never played any other sport to any particular level, I split away from the sporting faction. Admittedly at this point in my life, I had plenty of other things going on. I think it’s probably an age when plenty of people start to drop hobbies and focus on other things as an exciting time thrusts new opportunities and experiences your way.

I do remember a few years later feeling my stomach curl with embarrassment watching football in the pub with an ex-boyfriend. Like many men there, the presence of a TV screen showing the football seemed to give him the green light on turning into that recognisable alter-ego of an aggressive brute, yelling at the screen and players, macho aggro spilling out of every pore, littering his abuse with violent swearwords and physically gesticulating with violent fists and fingers. I hated it. I still do. I hate that blokey, aggressive, angry thing. It makes me feel…small. And it makes me turn away. It makes me feel like this is not something that exists for me unless I’m willing to chug down pints and join in the yelling. Which just isn’t me. It’s really different from the attitude I’ve found watching the rugby, which seems to me anyway a more inclusive, better-natured and good humoured atmosphere than watching football.

The culture of football too has changed so much as I’ve grown up. The vast amounts of money, the bling, the tantrums, and of course the WAGS – the beautiful women most-associated with the beautiful game. I don’t find the culture around football something I have any interest in, which probably explains my lack of interest in club football. It’s so tied up in it.

At some point I slipped through the cracks, and football just sort of disappeared from my life.

Watching the World Cup this time around, I really started to examine the experience of watching football as a woman. Of course in recent years in the UK, football coverage has come in for a panning, and broadcasters have made some efforts to negate its reputation as the stomping ground for white, middle-aged men who crudely intimidate female colleagues and leer at and demean female professionals in the sport. So its no secret that it’s not exactly a fertile ground for fostering female talent. But there’s a more subtle misogyny than the blatant attacks made by Andy Gray and Richard Keys. Watching football as a women, you (or I) sometimes feel like a bit of an interloper, like I’m watching something that’s not really for me and that I have to defend my interest in so that I can stay involved. It’s a bit like being allowed to peep through a window into a world you’re not allowed to actually walk through the front for to and enter.

The BBC defended their decision to employ an entirely male team of commentators and pundits based on the idea that they wanted ex-professionals from the men’s game to be discussing the men’s game. I won’t go into personal attacks at some of their chosen experts, but suffice to say, I’m not sure that being a professional player are the only credentials necessary to be an insightful, skilled commentator.

And really, it’s a bizarre claim. To bust it open, you only have to look wider than sport to theatre, music, politics – basically anything where people write/talk critically about something, which is a pretty broad field. Paxman wasn’t an amazing political interviewer because he was previously a successful politician, Lyn Gardner never trod the boards professionally and Alexis Petridis hasn’t headlined Glastonbury. Sometimes being a professional critic or broadcaster gives you much deeper skills than having been a professional in the field you’re commenting on. That’s not to knock those who do make the transition from player to pundit. Some do it so well that an entire generation remember them better for their broadcasting than their playing, but it’s not a given, and I find it a weak argument.

You only have to look at the London Olympics, and it’s broadcasting heroine, Clare Balding, to realise that when it comes to the crunch, it doesn’t matter if a pundit or commentator is male or female or an ex-professional in that field. If they’re insightful, expert, charismatic and brilliant at their job, viewers want to hear what they have to say. Having been a racing professional didn’t mean she couldn’t comment with knowledge and passion about other sports. So really BBC, if that’s your argument, you should probably get a better one. Seeing as you disproved your own theory back in 2012.

We have a national women’s football team, and some great female commentators in both broadcast and print press. I can’t bring myself to believe that not a single one of them could have been approached and sounded out for a studio role for the World Cup. Who knows, the pressure of having to earn their stripes that they would have inevitably found themselves under might have even forced a more glittering performance than that given by the boys.

Either way, until women are given a voice in the studio, there are female fans who will feel like they’re pushing their noses up against the glass to watch a party they’re not invited to. So come on the Beeb and ITV, up your game.

‘Tis the season…to traumatise your fanny with hot wax and seasonal decor

What’s scratchy, spiky and glitters with baubles at this time of year?

A Christmas tree you say? Well you’d be correct in the wise eyes of Marie Claire, but only if you’re referring to the vajazzled Christmas tree you’ve had carved into your va-JJ with hot wax to mark the festive season appropriately.

For those poor unfortunate souls who are wringing their hands over how to keep up with the latest fur trim fash, the style bible that is MC have come up with Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Your Bikini Line.

From festive décor to how-to-make-your-legs-look-longer-by-trimming-your-pubes-into-a-flattering-strip (apparently this is a thing), they’ve really raided the crazy bin in their attempts to guide you on pruning your lady garden in a sociably acceptable way.

1. Apparently bikini waxing follows seasonal trends. ‘The heart Brazilian is always very popular on Valentine’s Day,’ chirps Chloe Scriminger, Salon Trainer at the not-at-all sinister sounding Ministry of Waxing. ‘Whereas at Christmas time we get a lot of requests for Christmas trees. One of the most popular shapes will always be an initial though, whether that’s their’s or a partner’s.’
There you go. If you haven’t got Santa Claus/the Easter Bunny/a Jack-o-Lantern (delete as appropriate according to season), you’re not short of options. You can always whip off your knickers to reveal your lover’s own initial artistically carved onto your fanny. Because that’s not at all creepy.

2. It’s not enough to strip your front-bottom of nature’s fluff. You now have to worry about your disgusting hairy arse. According to Marie Claire, the rise in the ‘belfie’ – in which s’leb Tweets a snap of their own shapely behind – means that bum waxing is on the rise. Just in case a rogue hair be seen nestling between your buttocks when you’re taking pictures of your arse in the mirror to post on Facebook.

3. It’s alright! This totes isn’t a sexist piece! The men get waxed too y’know! Ever since the Olympics, men have been wandering into waxing salons demanding ‘boyzillians’. Chloe Scrimager is quoted again. ‘They choose to remove all of their body hair’, she raves. Funny. I’ve not noticed. Have you?

4. ‘The effect of celebrities on society is becoming obvious’. Oh Marie Claire, you Einstein of the glossies. Except you forgot one thing. The effects are obvious because they’re peddled by magazines like you as worthy of copying. Because Gwynnie was seen looking plucked to child-like perfection under a sheer dress at the premiere of Iron Man 3, we should all take heed. You wouldn’t want to be caught looking anything less than pre-pubescent on your way to the corner shop now would you?

5. Guys! Waxing salons are like, so with it now you can book your sesh on Facebook! ‘And we use iPads to show our clients videos and past campaigns of our treatments,’ tells Chloe. Thems some videos I never want to see.

6. Bikini Waxing Can Be More Slimming than Control Underwear! That’s right! When the time comes to unpack your shrink wrapped self from its girdled cloisters for lurve, he’ll never notice your big fat belly because your flattering bikini line will make your legs look really, really long! Oh what? You didn’t know that your average man about to do the bad thang was actually looking for the next part of your imperfect body to judge? You do now. And you can be one step ahead of the dunderhead.

7. TV shows are controlling our desires. Everyone knows that Kim Kardashian is a great role model for everyday, attainable, un-airbrushed, non-manipulated image maintenance. Duh. So when she got her entire body lasered on TV, fans decided they too must lose every unsightly hair that dared to emerge from their skin. Plus there’s TOWIE and their infamous vajazzles – because your vagina’s just not quite twinkly enough without a tasteful sprinkling of Swarovski. “We are getting more requests for ‘completely hair free, with a bit of bling’,” confirms Chloe, proving that when it comes to fashion and sex, there’s nothing quite like revealing what appears to be a Faberge egg when you pull your pants down.

8. Did you know that despite having fewer pennies to spend thanks to that pesky recession wotsit, us girls are actually spending more on beauty treatments? I’m not sure what poll Marie Claire consulted for that little fact, but apparently now beauty is ‘affordable, accessible and makes people feel good, and confident about themselves’. Giggle. *Books bum-hole bleaching session for feeling of inner happiness.*

9. Now ladies. Did you know? Your inner labia doesn’t actually grow hair! Madness! It’s your outer labia that does the naughty sprouting of fur. You poor crazy, hairy, ugly fool! So you’re best to leave it to the experts, who know these things, and pay a large amount of cash to make sure you don’t try and traumatise your sensitive inner labia with a dollop of the hot stuff only to realise there was no hair there in the first place!

10. Double dipping. The hazards. Not everyone who’s qualified to wax your pins is trained enough to whip the ugly stuff off the underside of your vag. That bit requires a true artist. So be careful who you book with and take them to task if they double dip their wand in hot wax.

Neat.

Lady guitarist required…

Editor’s note: Hello Equalists! Sorry we’ve been away so long. We’ve been a bit busy moving packing up boxes, moving across the country, exploring new cities and starting new jobs – phew! Turns out it’s all quite time-consuming…

We’ve plenty lined up, and can’t wait to get blogging again, but in the meantime, we thought we’d share this brilliant piece from fab telly voiceover lady (she’s on ITV y’know), broadcast journalist and head of music at Brighton radio station Juice 107.2, Andrea Fox.

She’s written before for us about Taylor Swift and hairy tights (aren’t we lucky?), so enjoy the piece – and of course if you have ideas for a blog yourself, get in touch, we’d always like to hear ideas for blogs and articles: editor.theequalist@gmail.com

But now, over to Andrea:

“I’ve just finished reading Keith Richards’ autobiography.

It was ardent feminist writer Caitlin Moran’s interview of the Rolling Stones guitarist which led me to read it. It was an engrossing read, with Richards voice clear as day throughout, filled with fascinating and loving descriptions of music and writing process between him and Mick Jagger, who seemingly made pop songs out of thin air, and how that relationship broke down.

It’s also really bloody sexist.

I don’t even mean Keith Richards is himself sexist; he seems in awe of many women in his life including his female manager, but his description of the music industry through the 70s, 80s and 90s set my feminist alarm off.

His vernacular used to describe women is mostly ‘chicks’ and ‘bitches’ which doesn’t seem odd for a 70s rock star. But what struck me most was Richards seems to have worked almost exclusively with male musicians. Male musicians who play in bands with women (such as the Velvet Underground, teaming up with Nico) are dismissed as ‘just having played in chick bands.’

Interesting on many levels, but this picture of the music industry for women interested me most.

I am head of music at Brighton station Juice 107.2 so I get paid to play pick and play pop music. A gifted existence. Not the music industry as such but it’s on the venn diagram somewhere.

Our music policy during daytime is the best of the 90s and 00s and whatever this bit we’re in now is called.

Recently we had a new late night show which I had to schedule where our strict ‘nothing any earlier than ‘89’ policy was relaxed to play some classic tracks and I was able to go further from the daytime’s hit-based structure as it followed our new music show.

Excellent, I thought, Blondie, Kate Bush, how I’ve missed them. Shame the list of female artists didn’t stretch much further.

A look through our existing music catalogue (not put together by me) revealed an abundance of male artists and bands, and an almost total lack of female. Not something I feel has been an issue choosing new music. Where were the likes of Bat For Lashes, Tom Tom Club, Bjork, Gossip, Laura Marling? But no, working from the songs, it was, as they say, a sausage fest.

I browsed everyhit.com’s music trivia, hoping it was just my lack of knowledge. Of the twenty artists with the Most Number 1s only Madonna and some of the Spice Girls make the list.

Madonna is the only female on the list of ‘Artist with Most Weeks at Number 1’ or ‘Most Consecutive Number 1s’. Basically it’s all a man fest since the charts began in 1958.

The book, and the incident at work made me think. Ok, so in the past the music industry, was male dominated in the way that most industries, bar midwifery and sanitary towel testers appear to be. Have things changed?

Keeping a mix of genders from recent musical offerings never seems an issue. Taking a look at something like the Brit Awards, all the Critic’s Choice Award winner’s have been female and only bloke – Tom Odell – has collected it so far. But it’s only been going since 2009. And I really hope that girls don’t feel music is closed to them.

One of the Everyday Sexism twitter feed tales came from a professional female guitarist, checking out guitars in a store whilst on tour, only to be asked if she was buying a guitar for her boyfriend.

I can play grade three clarinet and I’ve many times tried to learn guitar, currently bass, as four strings must be easier than six (Keith Richards plays with five by the way.)

Someone once said radio is full of people who wish they were rock stars – I’d say that’s one hundred percent true. Maybe not Five Live.

I’m lucky, I’ve only once been patronised whilst working in radio for being female, and that was for taking a record back a quarter of a revolve before transferring to digital format. But radio, like the music industry it seems, is a mans world and I’m thankful that the recently set up organisations like Soundwomen has started asking questions about female representation on the airwaves.

They’ve found that while women working in radio are often better qualified than men (73% of women have degrees, compared to 60% men), they’ll be paid less – earning on average £2,200 less each year. They are also less likely to make it to the top and more women leave the industry in the thirties, never to return.

I hope girls don’t feel music industry is as closed to them as when the Rolling Stones were considered ‘new music’.”

Keef. Feminist icon?

The Misogyny That Runs So Deep it Lets Us Call Our Children Whores

Hannah Marsh

IT’S late, and it’s been on the news all day, heading up bulletins on Six Music as I’ve packed (or pretended to pack) up the flat.

But it’s also important, because something was brought to national attention today that marks the level of misogyny so deeply ingrained in our society that a female child victim can be blamed for the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a male paedophile in a court of law.

Barrister Robert Colover was prosecuting for the Crown Prosecution Service in the case of paedophile Neil Wilson – who walked free from court with a suspended sentence, more on that later – when he reportedly described the 13-year-old victim as predatory in her actions and sexually experienced.

His implication that a child could bring sexual abuse upon herself and was somehow asking for it or to blame for the vile abuse and breach of trust inflicted upon her by a grown man was seemingly upheld by the judge in the case, Nigel Peters, who took into account that the girl looked older than she really was and said she had been egging Wilson on when he handed out the lenient sentence.

In my mind there is only one predator here.

He’s a paeodophile named Neil Wilson, who was found to have child porn and bestiality on his computer and who pleaded guilty to two counts of making extreme pornographic images and one count of sexual activity with a child, not his vulnerable victim who was subjected to his abuse.

There are those who will defend the barrister and the sentence arguing that some young girls do look older than their years and who do dress in a way seemingly aimed at attracting male attention.

I’m not trying to say that all 13-year-old girls are angels, curly haired maidens collecting flowers and taming birds, for goodness sake I’ve been a 13-year-old girl, I know what some 13-year-old-girls get up to.

I know the confusing, embattled years as you attempt to emulate popstars and celebrities, braving the cold in as few clothes as possible, trying to get served in pubs and newsagents to buy fags and revelling in cat calls at your rolled up school skirt, be a grown up.

But nothing that a 13-year-old girl does gives any excuse for a decision made by a man in his Forties who decides to treat a child as a consenting adult.

She’s a child, and if she’s sexually experienced and ‘predatory’ chances are she has her own issues and is extremely vulnerable.

You don’t tend to be ‘sexually experienced’ at 13 years old when your experience of sex has been healthy.

We don’t know anything about the girl – that’s how our legal system works, anonymity for victims of sexual offences unless they themselves choose to lift it, and long may it stay that way.

But we don’t need to to make the judgement that Robert Colover’s comments were crude, offensive and plain wrong.

Sadly though, they’re indicative of a misogyny so ingrained in our culture and society that rather than being reprimanded by the judge hearing the case, his court colleague appeared to take a similar view, dishing out the laughable sentence, which is currently being investigated itself by the attorney general for possible leniency.

As a journalist and once-regular court hack that comes as absolutely no surprise.

Covering cases of abuse and violence it wasn’t uncommon for the (usually female) victim in such cases to have their character assassinated in such a way that left them blamed and attacked in a court of law, an unpleasant undercurrent running beneath that hinted women sometimes bring abuse by men upon themselves through their own behaviour.

The culture of victim blaming, of women – and children, children for goodness sake – as harlots, painted sirens, wicked women who lure and taunt helpless men into acts of violence and depravity is as insulting to men as it is to women.

It suggests that any man – your brother, your father, your husband or boyfriend – is capable of being having their head turned by a foxy, dolled up teen-child who sets out to use her womanly ways to seduce them.

It lends the man who preyed on and abused a vulnerable child a Carry On-ish air of ‘honest guv, I had no idea she was 13, you’d never have guessed it *giggle*’ and the judge the cartoonish aspect of sympathising with the caught-with-his-trousers-down fellow: ‘*nudge, nudge, wink, wink* Alright, we understand, now be off with you and don’t let me see you in my court again this week you cheeky monkey.’

On a more sinister note, it paints all men as potential paedophiles, the line between right and wrong simply the chance circumstance of a tempting teen with the sexual wiles of an adult wafting her tantalising titties in his direction.

Bullshit.

Of course David Cameron weighed in, describing the comments rather tamely as inappropriate, and giving the watery statement that we need a criminal justice system that stands up properly for its victims.

But to be honest it’s hard to take DC seriously on matters of sexual abuse and victim blaming.

I’m certainly not saying that the Sun Page Three equates to the sexual abuse of a child as in this case, but evidence has been building of the damaging effect the notorious daily appearance of a youthful beauty in just her pants has on young women and girls forced to endure its presence on news stands, on the breakfast table, on the bus and often it seems, thrust at them mockingly by their male classmates.

Of course its not the same as abuse at the hands of a paedophile but it’s damaging, bullish, offensive and powerful and smacks of an attempt to viciously patronise women, keep them in their place, control them by painting them as the Sun says they should appear and behave and reeks of the same deeply ingrained misogyny that needs routing from our society.

So if Dave is all that bothered about supporting victims, why doesn’t he change his tune on Page Three – for the record he said that he felt it was up to consumers whether or not they bought the Sun so there was essentially no problem with the best selling paper in the country featuring a large picture of a woman in her pants as its most prominent indication of a feminine role.

Maybe we need a Prime Minister who stands up for his country’s victims as well.

But more importantly we need a society that sees victims of abuse as victims, not perpetrators, that doesn’t seek to blame them for the dreadful abuses they suffer at the hands of knowing, culpable individuals with the choice and power to act or not act on their impulses.

One that doesn’t call an abused child a knowing, wily whore.

That’d be a good start.

Do I dare wear purple…?

Helen Mirren – realistic beauty ideal?

It’s often younger women who are thought of as under fierce pressure from the media, beauty and fashion industries to conform to a prescribed ideal of beauty.

With their peers thrust before them as pert-breasted, dewy-skinned Page 3 girls or stick insect thin catwalk models, and berated if they’re celebrities who dare to put on weight, cry in public or have a wardrobe malfunction, it’s easy to see how tough you have to be to wave off the pressure.

But Equalist contributor Jane Taylor explores how things have changed for an older generation – who once looked forward to retirement age as a chance to rebel and shrug off the pressure to conform to beauty ideals, but now often have to face up to new challenges.

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go…”

…the beginning lines of the well-known poem Warning by Jenny Joseph. How we laughed, my friends and I, when we first came across it in our early thirties.

It spoke to us of colourfulness, rebellion and not conforming. We all saw ourselves in the future as eccentric, wonderful old women, without a care for how we looked or came across. The pressures of society on women to conform and to change as we aged from one norm of womanhood to another was not for us.

We were feminists and could wear what we liked, now and in the future! Not for us the prospect of fading as we grew older into pale shadows of our former selves, nor that of moving on gracefully into genteel, non-threatening, invisible creatures. We were the generation who would be loud and funny and bright.

That was thirty years ago and in our hopeful optimism, we didn’t foresee that feminism and our reasoned debates about equality would become effectively marginalised and that we would end up sidelined as scary, hairy, bra-burning caricatures who hated men holding doors open for us. Though frankly, nothing wrong with being comfortable and, sometimes, in us taking a turn holding doors open for men.

We were trying to get over an important message about the reality of the pressure on women to conform to a certain ideal of femininity whatever the cost, even if it involved physically twisting ourselves into so-called acceptable shapes of womanhood, whether through bone-crunching corsets, foot binding or genital mutilation. How come saying a woman had a right to feel comfortable and free in her body could turn into something so embarrassing that the women who followed on from us decided they would rather not be called feminists, or if they were, it would be preferable to be known as post-feminists?

Over the years, the march of consumerism and the growth of the media have worked hand in glove to turn up the volume on the message to women to live up to socially constructed stereotypes of femininity. Women are encouraged to feel dissatisfied with the way they look in order to stoke up an insatiable appetite for spending a shedload of cash on the latest beauty products, the newest fashions, the tightest control underwear, the craziest diets and of course the most potent and painful tool for changing how you look – plastic surgery.

Somehow the message about choice got turned on its head and instead became a message to look good! Or else Trinny and Susannah, Gok and Nicky will get you, or heaven forbid if you’re famous, the Daily Mail certainly will.

The volume on this message has become so loud and all-pervading and has reached out its tentacles to include anyone with spending power. So now, those in their 50s and 60s and beyond are fair game.

Our pampered contemporaries in the public eye are singled out and paraded before us as examples of splendid women, who have made an effort and are to be congratulated on their good looks, their fabulous hairstyles, their well-toned bodies, their wonderful wardrobes and lovely complexions.

These gorgeous women protest that they embrace their wrinkles, despite little evidence of their presence. They declare ‘I never have plastic surgery…well maybe the odd bit of botox,’ that they are just ‘born lucky’ and happen to have mothers with wonderful bone structure or good skin. They announce that some sensible eating and exercise are all that it takes.

What this means is that us normal grey-haired wrinklies can no longer fade into invisibility, even if we wanted to. The mirror is held up for us too and if we don’t live up to form, then we have ‘let ourselves go’ – but beware if we try too hard we are ‘mutton dressed as lamb’.

Faced with all this confusing additional pressure, do I dare to wear purple, now I am old?

Well, dressing up, wearing make-up, playing with your hair can still be fun, but it doesn’t feel necessary. My friends and I can equally be comfortable and relaxed about how we look.

Sometimes the subliminal messages to conform can feel difficult to resist, but usually we just like to be ourselves and care more about having fun and being there for each other.

We even sometimes wear purple and I am especially fond of my new lavender nail varnish. I am not sure that anyone has a red hat!

Hairy Tights and Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift – tshirt slut shaming?

LAST week we gawped in amazement at the widely circulated pictures of hairy tights manufactured in China in an attempt to ward off unwanted male attention.

Presenter, super duper voiceover lady and music manager Andrea Fox muses on the hirstute issue, and a few other recent sartorial bug bears.

Two things have been playing on my mind recently, both concern feminism, men, and what women wear.

The Devil apparently prefers Prada, but according to one hosiery manufacturer in China, if you want to avoid unwanted attention, they’ve created the perfect thing. Tights which make your legs appear hairy. I know. Take a massive deep breath whilst you decide in which order to put the many offensive things this product flags up.

Hairy tights – putting off potential perverts?

Firstly, if we assume that a pervert’s attention ranges from lurid comments to continued harassment including assault, this product is essentially saying that only the conventionally pretty and smooth of follicle are at risk of sexual harassment.

Last time I checked, sexual assault was about power and violence, and nothing to do with what the victim looked like or how silky their pins were? Silly me.

What will women have recommended to them next? Paper bags for our heads? In countries where women chose or are required to wear a burka, problems of sexual assault are just as prevalent as countries in which Daisy Duke shorts are de rigueur. Half of women surveyed in Egypt reported daily sexual harassment.

Secondly, it appears to me just another bit of propaganda for the idea that victims can do something about attacks. That in leaving the house with hair free legs, you are asking for it. If only men had the same issues to consider when they took a razor to their chins. Lets stop discussing ‘advice for victims to avoid becoming victims’ and start asking the harder questions about what our society is doing wrong to create men and women who can sexually harass and attack other human beings. But that doesn’t sell ugly tights as some kind of solution.

I also feel weird thinking about this product because it makes an assumption about the reasons we put on clothes in the morning. I don’t dress myself for others, and I consider more than just whether something is ‘attractive’ or ‘unattractive’ when getting dressed. Plus, it’s just hair! What’s so unattractive about seeing a bit of leg hair? We’re all covered in the stuff.

If you haven’t seen them, here’s some coverage in from the Metro…

In other clothing based news, American clothing brand Abercrombie and Fitch chose to take the proverbial out of a female singer for having boyfriends. On a t-shirt available pretty much globally. That was until Taylor Swift’s fans demanded the garment be removed from stores.

I programme the music for a hits radio station, we play Taylor Swift. At home, I do not play Taylor Swift. I have nothing against the singer, she can sing and play an instrument and lots of people like her and she doesn’t appear to promote anything too unhealthy. Her fans also don’t appear to be as thick as Justin Biebers, or Chris Browns fans for example.

The t-shirt read “# more boyfriends than t.s.” in reference to the singer. I know. You’re rolling around in the aisles. It’s not massively offensive, or humorous, but that’s the point, it’s supposed to be funny, so why did they pick on Taylor Swift rather than say, Russell Brand, and what does this bad bit of PR say about Abercrombie & Fitch?

Funny guys those A&F japesters.

T.S. is 23. If the tabloids are to be believed, I can recall stories about her having had four boyfriends, including John Mayer and Harry Styles, who aren’t shy of a relationship or two either.

I’ve just checked my teenage diary and I had more boyfriends than that at 23. What’s so interesting about it that a company decide to waste money printing it on a t-shirt? Maybe I have an overactive imagination, but I can only imagine the discussion over the design involved some sneering individuals at meeting throwing darts at a board full of successful women’s faces in order to decide whose achievements they were going to undermine, by concentrating on the number of people they’ve enjoyed a candlelit dinner with. Grow up. Or get funny. Even Taylor Swift could think of a better joke than that.

The Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights’s chairwoman Nehad Abu Al Komsan:

“Sexual harassment occurs regardless of age, dress or time of day. Women are victims simply because they are women.”

@andrea_fox

http://www.iamandreafox.co.uk

Mrs, Miss or Ms…?

Women – still defined by marriage on an everyday basis.

Identity is important – but it’s even more important if you’re a woman it seems. Equalist co-creator Hannah Marsh explores the daily equalist challenges of ordering a new pair of shoes

My shoes hurt.

Bought for a mere £10 from a well known fashion retailer, my work-ready ballet pumps consist of slender soles through which every uneven edge of pavement can be felt, and through which the slightest bit of moisture on the ground quickly seeps. The paper thin foot covering is hardly worth being there, and there are plentiful pock marks where I’ve stubbed my toe causing myself to inelegantly hop on the spot in agony and instead of actively protecting my tootsies, the material has wimpishly given way and ripped.

So anyway. I decided it was time this cheap shoe wearing stopped. I was going to bin the buggers and buy myself a proper pair of work shoes, sturdy and supportive, nothing too flash, but something reliable that would suit any occasion. The Coldplay of the footwear world if you will.

But I digress. It was in the act of attempting to buy such a pair of shoes that I encountered a situation I’ve come up against countless times in day to day life. Something so innocuous I’m sure many of us just tick the box without thinking. But it’s something that always grates on me, and every time I find myself in the situation, I find a small rush of frustration rushes to my throat.

My chosen reliable high street shop didn’t have the shoes I wanted in my size.

So I trotted along to the service counter to order them for delivery.

“Surname?”

“Marsh”

“First name?”

“Hannah”

“Miss or Mrs?”

“Erm…”

Why, can someone please tell me why the actual FUCK, us women have to define ourselves in countless everyday situations by our marital status?

The equivalent of Miss for men is Master – a juvenile, infantile title reserved for little boys in short trousers, on their way to earning their adult title of Mr.

But once they attain the giddy adult heights of Mr-dom, that’s it. Their identity is safe. No one asks to know whether they are unmarried and therefore suitable only to be described by a child’s title, or married and therefore worthy of being upgraded to a suitably promotional title that applauds their success in landing themselves a spouse.

Clearly the only acceptable alternative is Ms, but I find that problematic too. It smacks of defensiveness, of aggressive refusal to comply and of course it’s relatively useless as it’s really only unmarried women who don’t want to infantalise themselves by calling themselves a Miss that opt to use it – rendering just one more distinction, that of Rebellious Female.

Instead of a Child-Woman, yet to find her true identity manifested through her husband, or a Married Woman (fanfare, applause etc), you still mark yourself out as unmarried and remain thus defined in society’s eyes. Which sticks in my throat.

Ms has balls, it makes a point, you don’t write Ms unless you’re making a very definite statement. It’s not casual, it juts its chin out and stares down shop assistants and census forms, stating with certainty and a touch of defiance.

Which is fine, but it still defines what category of woman you are and I’d love it if I didn’t have to.

Mr doesn’t have to. Mr just means I am an adult male. It gives nothing away about marital status and sets no store by it either.

I don’t see myself as defensive, and although I often admire aggressive refusals to comply with society’s norms, in my everyday life I’d quite like to just be able to answer a basic question without having to staunchly defend my marital status and whether I myself place value on it or not. I’d rather save my rebellious activity for bigger fish than ordering a pair of work shoes in a department store.

Although its tempting to reply ‘Dr’, or maybe even ‘Lady’, or for laughs ‘Sir’, it remains something that creeps under my skin and irritates me every time I stare down at those boxes or have to answer the question.

It’s one of those small, niggling, daily reminders that things are not equal. I am an adult woman. Why should I have to define myself further on casual forms and information documents? Why cling onto these archaic titles that still categorise women by their marital status? Or if we’re going for equality why not keep men as Masters until they get a ring on their finger and finally ascend to the lofty heights of Mr so that we know exactly who’s married and who’s not – hey, it could come in handy for those on the pull.

There is hope though. Last year France ditched the title Mademoiselle, the diminutive equivalent of our Miss. All French women now go by the title Madame, to match the male Monsieur, defined now solely by their gender and nothing else. What a triumph!

But until we decide to embrace equality on this bureaucratic level I guess I’ll be sticking with Ms.

No such thing as women’s issues…

Emily Wilding Davison – a hero for all?

Last week marked 100 years since the death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison at the hooves of the King’s horse after she ran out in front of the animal at the Epsom Derby in 1913.

Equalist co-creator Simon Bellamy takes a look back over history and ponders on what lessons we can take from Wilding Davison’s death and the women’s suffrage movement.

It is fascinating to flick through the list of notable deaths for the year 1913.

It is even more instructive to browse the list of notable births for 1872.

Not just for the prevalence of the upper classes, the Lord-Charley-this and the Baron-Cholmondley that. What strikes me is the fact that almost everyone on the list is a man. Women were not elevated to positions where they were deemed worthy of note.

Men were lawyers, lords and scientists. Men were Barons, architects and bishops. Members of parliament, journalists, dukes – the list goes on and on.

One name stands out on both of these lists – that of Emily Wilding Davison.

We’ve spoken in other posts about the smear campaign against feminists, and it’s interesting to consider the perception and portrayal of those early agitators, the Suffragettes.

These women were not Mrs Banks in Mary Poppins – well dressed and well spoken women who backed their cause, soldiers in petticoats until their husband came home from work, when it was time for tea. Emily wasn’t. She was hardcore. She was arrested a dozen times – for assault, arson, civil unrest – and jailed almost as many. She went on hunger strike, and threw herself down a metal staircase in prison as a protest against the treatment of her fellow suffragettes. She hid in the Houses Of Parliament so she could legitimately put that as her address on a census.

She protested with her fellow suffragettes, and used extreme measures when their voices went unheard.

The list of births and deaths show that the late 19th and early twentieth centuries were unquestionably a man’s world, but Emily was a fearless challenger of the status quo, suffering physical harm to herself to forward the cause of womens votes. So how should we view her, as Equalists, 100 years down the line?

She, and many others like her, were clearly inspirational figures, paving the way for future generations to take up the mantle and build on the changes bought about by their direct action. The first laws enshrining basic enfranchisement for women was passed just five years after Davison’s death, and legislation has continued to tweak and change what a woman is allowed to do ever since. A direct line can be traced from the actions of Emily and the suffragettes to any number of improvements, significant and anecdotal in the following decades.

But these changes, positive and liberating as they are, merely serve to show how unequal the position had been before the ‘breakthrough’.

Should we be celebrating the fact that women were awarded the vote, or mourn the fact that it wasn’t always thus? The equivalent changes when it comes to race issues seem to be a source of shame for the fact that a whole section of humanity was denied a right for such a long period. The abolition of slavery isn’t celebrated as a breakthrough, but a landmark shining a light on the shameful prior inequality.

Why is it different for such basic rights as participation in democracy, access to education, sexual oppression, acceptance in the workplace for women? Much has been made of her intentions on the day of the Epsom Derby – she had bought a return train ticket, and was planning a holiday a few days after. The evidence points to the fact that she did not mean to martyr herself, but may have just been meaning to attach a suffragette flag to the Kings horse, and died in the attempt.

But this debate has become irrelevant. She has passed into history as a symbol of the cause, a story that has passed into folklore. The intentions behind the action are small next to the effect the action had.

The anniversary of the death of Emily Davison should give the Equalist cause for pause. What strikes me most, looking at the history of the movement inspired by the Suffragettes and carried up through the ages by countless women, is the lack of men willing to take up the cause. The stories surrounding the changes made in society over the years are numerous – they are inspiring, saddening, heart-warming and heartbreaking in equal measure.

Emily Davison – the historical figure, the symbol of feminism and equality – is marketed as a hero to women. She should be seen as a hero to all, men and women alike, someone who fought, and died, to make society fairer for everybody. Suffrage, women’s rights and feminism are not just women’s issues, and Emily Davison is not just a symbol of women’s rights. She was a symbol of how out of kilter society is, and this is an issue for everybody.

New Rule #2 – Women’s issues affect everybody. Or – New Rule #2 – there is no such thing as Womens Issues.

The Personal is Political.

Jane Taylor considers whether her personal journey was political.

“The personal is political” was the rallying cry for feminists of my generation, recalls Jane Taylor.

Faced with a world where the barriers to overcoming inequality could seem insurmountable, where did you begin when everywhere you looked there was evidence both structural and in your day to day encounters that women were seen as subordinate?

We were expected not to mind when men patted us on the head or worse, on our bottoms! We were not ‘allowed’ to go into pubs on our own for fear of appearing like sluts. We had to accept that men were put on this earth to bring home the bacon and to succeed in their careers and that to this end we were obliged to support them by taking care of the children and all the domestic arrangements.

Finding women at the ‘top’ of their professions was like looking for needles in a haystack.

What could we do faced with the might of patriarchy? Well, we could make decisions to lead our individual lives differently, as far as we were able and maybe, just maybe influence change in that way – the personal is political.

So what did I choose to do? Well, many things, which sometimes got me labelled and written off as a loud-mouthed feminist. For instance, I campaigned for crèches in my workplace and sent out a gently worded questionnaire to all staff to find out what the feeling was amongst my colleagues about this idea. Oh boy, did that innocuous document get a few frothy replies! For example, how dare I suggest that women come back to work after having children – why have children if they weren’t prepared to stay at home and look after them?

And after all if they did come back they were taking up jobs that were rightly men’s! And this at a time of full employment!

But perhaps the most radical decision I took was to job share with my husband after we had children, so that we had equal responsibility for their upbringing and care.

Now I am the first to defend with all my heart women’s right to return to work and not to have to take on the day to day care of their children during their paid working hours, but Richard and I wanted to be at home with our children when they were little.

This was a big decision to take. It would mean our income would be halved, though losing one wage (the woman’s) was not so unusual in those days. Richard would be risking his career progression and as a highly talented person, who was marked out for the big time, that was a brave, brave choice. The risks for me in this step were far less, as I could keep my foot on some sort of career ladder, not an option for many women in those days.

In the end we job shared for eight wonderful years and enjoyed having equal knowledge of all the sweet, funny and exciting developmental steps of both our children – a girl and a boy.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. One of our managers made it very clear that he disapproved of our arrangement, by regularly making us both sit in his office for ages at our handover periods, when one of us was rushing in with a hungry baby on our hip to take over from the other.

Also we found ourselves in a bit of a double bind – the pressure was on us to work really hard to prove our arrangement worked, but not too hard as it made our colleagues feel uncomfortable.

I also used to find that I would say something at work and be ignored, then Richard (the man) would repeat it, as his way of supporting me and suddenly everyone would think it was a fantastic idea. I suspect even now that happens to women all the time. That really riled us, but then we also used it deliberately after a while to ensure my ideas were taken on board.

On the social scene, Richard found it hard to be accepted in the mother and baby groups and there was only one other man he knew, who in fact stayed at home full time to raise the children while his wife worked.

Certain women took their anger against the men who abandoned them totally to child rearing and all things domestic out on Richard and could hardly hide their glee that at last a man was discovering just how tough it was.

Meanwhile, other women would tell me how lucky I was to have someone as wonderful as Richard. I know they meant well, but sometimes that frustrated me – I just felt, well this should be the norm and other times I thought well maybe I could be given credit for being ‘wonderful’ too.

The worst thing was one very close friend being very angry. She didn’t say so, but she couldn’t look me in the eye or speak to me about what we were doing. I don’t know why to this day. Maybe she was angry that she didn’t get such support or maybe she just disapproved.

Anyway, we got through and raised two thoroughly well-balanced, wonderful young people, for whom the most natural thing in the world is to believe in equality and they are each doing their bit to make the world a better place.

And now we are retired looking back and wondering did we make a difference? Was the personal political? I don’t know the answer to that.

All I can say is we provided a model for those around us, including our children, that we hope may have made people stop and think. We have seen many changes.

Society is more accepting of crèches or nurseries these days, but they cost the earth and women still seem to bear the brunt of the housework and the child rearing.

Women are maybe not quite so blatantly patted on the head or the bottom, but seem driven to present themselves in overtly sexualised ways and I sometimes hear this excused as women being free to choose their image – girrrll power!

Women now enter the much more women friendly bars on their own, but then can find themselves blamed for ‘flaunting themselves’ and going out late at night on their own if they’re raped.

More women break through the glass ceiling, but that’s the exception not the rule.

Something like the Equalist gives this old feminist some heart. A younger generation are prepared to realise that all is still not well and want to do something about it. Maybe our voices down the years have taken some root and for that I am very glad.

Jane Taylor, 60, is retired after many years working in the Probation and Youth Offending Services. She has written local policy for Children’s Services, knows a thing or two about poverty and inequality in this wealthy society and continues to be outraged by the unfairness of it. She loves her family, her friends and her garden.