Feminists are few and far between. It has become almost a taboo to admit that you are a feminist. Feminism is the butt of many chauvinist jokes and something which many people claim that they ‘don’t think about too much.’
Yet men still earn more than women; in 2010 full time male workers earned just over 10 per cent more than their female counterparts. Men are still more successful than women; four out of the twenty nine cabinet ministers are women. Even women who do battle through the glass ceiling have to make choices between their career and having a family. Women are forced to reject their femininity and assume more 'masculine' qualities in order to succeed in a male dominated society. Girls outperform boys at GCSE by 72.4% A*-C grades compared to 65.4% for boys (2010 Guardian Study of GCSE results) and then again at A-level. So why are women less successful in the work place and why do their feminine traits hinder rather than help their progress?
It wouldn’t surprise me if you told me you’d heard this barrage of information before. Anyone who studied Sociology A-level will no doubt be tired of hearing about the ‘gender gap.’ Yet, despite the fact that nationally we are aware that women are earning less, we still argue that feminism is no longer needed in today’s society. Despite all the evidence of a patriarchal society Feminism is still a dirty word. Why?The stereotype of a feminist is the Radical Feminists of the 1970's. These women publicly burnt their bras and hated men. Statements such as, 'All men are potential rapists' and 'a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle' made this approach to women's rights unpopular. After asking several of my male and female friends what they most associate with Feminists the most popular choices were, 'bra burning', 'lesbian' and 'man haters'.
So I looked up Feminism in a dictionary. The dictionary definition of Feminism is 'the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.' Nothing about burning your bra, hating men or being a lesbian then. In fact, surely every well informed person would believe men and women are equal and should be treated as such.
Emily Davison of the suffragette movement died under the king's horse in 1913 for women’s right to vote. A century later and women are rejecting the idea of Feminism all together. The word 'Feminist' has been misconstrued. To be a feminist you do not have to wear trousers or dump your boyfriend. And for men, being a feminist doesn't make you a 'poof'. Every person I know believes in equal rights for men and women. Therefore every person I know is, by definition, a feminist.
Our generation has seen the world change in countless ways (with the birth of the internet, the invention of the mobile phone etc.) yet we still live in a society in which women are treated differently to men. We jumped at the chance to march against the increase in Student Fees, but a ‘Rights for Women’ march would probably have been less popular. The word ‘Feminist’ needs rebranding. It has been claimed by patriarchal society and filled with negative connotations. Surely in 2011 men and woman can stand up for equal rights. Surely, the word feminist need no longer be a taboo.
My name is Alexandra Wilks and I always wear a skirt, love wearing red lipstick and enjoy receiving flowers. My name is Alexandra Wilks and I am a Feminist.
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5 comments:
I agreed with literally every word of this, and I think you deserve some sort of award. I've been saying this for years, anyone in their right mind would be a feminist if they actually knew what it would but it got taken over by a crazy movement that actually had very little to do with the true cause. Well done for saying so madam!
Thank you for your kind word Ivy! I'm so glad you agree as its an issue very close to my heart! xx
This makes a lot of sense and definitely still needs to be discussed. There was an article in Psychologies magazine recently about how 'ambition' was still seen as a dirty word for women, and being ambitious evokes thoughts of being cold and ruthless, ridiculous as you can work hard and still maintain your personality and kindness etc.
e problem is that the term "feminism" has been, at least in popular conciousness, been hijacked by those that want women to be more equal than men, which in my view is just as bad as wanting men to be more equal than women.
Counter-intuitively perhaps there are a few areas where men need equal rights to women. For example with regards parental leave - it is far more difficult for a man to take sufficient leave to be the primary child raiser. Until very recently (far too recently to have had any impact on the big picture) the female partner could get at least three times the maternity leave than the man could get paternity leave (even post-birth; pre-birth women need more leave than men due to unchangeable aspects of biology). This means that even if he wanted to be the primary child raiser it was financially not viable for anyone other than the woman to be. And this is ignoring the impact on his career (while it is acceptable without question for a woman to have a career gap due to maternity leave, it has been (and may still be) much less so for a man).
At lest part of the pay gap issue is also due to time taken out of the workplace to raise a family. While someone is not working due to raising their family they are not accumulating pay rises and promotions that their working partner is. Given that the people who are taking this time out are overwhelmingly female, this has a huge impact on the total figures. This is not the entire story of course, as there are still women and men with the same experience getting paid different amounts for doing the same job (which is completely unacceptable), but I've not seen any analysis of the figures adjusted for this.
It's not just big things - it's little things as well. A woman wearing men's clothes is far more socially acceptable than man wearing a dress. Women have far more flexibility with clothing than do men - look at a formal event, the men are all in black suits with white shirts, the only individuality they can express is in the choice of tie. Compare this to the variety of clothing worn by the women present - skits, dresses, trousers, different colours, a choice of patterned or plain, shirts or blouses or tops, no two are dressed alike. A woman has far more freedom to express her opinion about how sexually attractive she finds a male film star than her husband has to express the same about his female co-star - at least in mixed company.
This is not to say that women aren't discriminated against - they are - and they are probably discriminated against more than men are, but men are discriminated against as well. The answer lies not, as some ball-busting feminists would have it, in discriminating against men to make up for past discrimination against women, but to remove discrimination against men and women equally. [continued]
[continued] The issue I have with many (but not all) feminists is that they see women as either more special than or more deserving than men, either innately or due to past injustices. Women are no more special than men than men are more special than women. We should not have "Women's Officers" and a "Minister for Women", we should have people who are charged with making things equal for both sexes. Don't seek to make women equal to men - seek to make women and men equal.
There are also those that say women are the same as men, or seek to make it so. They are not. Biology makes us different - men are (on the whole) physically bigger and stronger than women; women live longer; women get pregnant men don't; women are (generally) more emotional.
This affects the way we look at the world in many ways, an example of which is expressed very simply in the following quote for which I've been unable to find attribution -
"A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs, a woman will pay $1 for a $2 item she doesn't".
It's not as simple as this, as this is at least as much to do with gender (a social aspect that is a continuum rather than a binary male or female) as it is sex, but it illustrates the point.
This does not mean either men or women are more or less capable of achieving most things, just that they will approach it from a different angle. It also means that there will never be an exact 50-50 split of the sexes in all professions. Primary school teachers are always going to be predominantly female as more women then men want to be primary school teachers because the heavy nurturing aspect generally appeals more to women than men. Similarly a job that involves very heavy manual and mechanical work and getting filthy, oil rig workers is what first comes to mind for some reason, will generally appeal far more to men than women, and so it will always be more male dominated.
There will always be though men who want to be primary school teachers and women who want to work on oil rigs, and this should be encouraged for the different perspective that they offer.
This is one reason why girls do better in primary education than boys - primary teachers are primarily female and so they understand how girls learn better than boys and so the system is set up in a way that benefits girls. This isn't that they want to disadvantage boys, that they are is just an unintended side effect of helping girls. I suspect that the opposite is true in a lot of businesses - they are dominated by men and so they are set up in a way that works for them, without intending it this makes it less well suited to women, purely because men are not women and so don't understand women as well as women understand women.
Men and women are not, and never will be, the same. Men and women should be, can be, and in many cases are equal. Men and women should work together to make it so they are equal in all ways they can be.
I'll stop here - I think my response is already longer than your original post - before I go on all day. But my point is that, in my view, the way forward is not "feminism" or "masculinism" but "equalism".
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