Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (32 page)

And women and men do not develop their working lives in similar situations, either. If women could rely on their partners to create a haven away from work; if they knew that when they were not at home their children still had a committed and loving parent with them; if their voices and views were taken as seriously as those of their male colleagues, then their choices might also be very different. But right now the operation of systems and stereotypes that are bigger than the individual create such unequal situations that men and women are still not making their choices in the same world. If we concentrate on what appears to be ‘natural’ in these choices, we are deflected from looking at these social pressures and trying to change them. Our culture has entered a time when an exaggerated femininity often goes unquestioned, in which, from the very start of girls’ lives, a pink frilly girliness is being seen as purely natural rather than at least partly constructed, and in which as they grow into adults women are often assumed to have very different talents and skills from the men around them.

Writers who promote biological explanations for sex differences often caricature their critics as social engineers who would like everyone to conform to a tedious and unrelieved androgyny. This is nonsense. In order to challenge this culture in which feminine stereotypes remain so restrictive for women, there is no need to deny the pleasures of femininity, no need to retreat into a caricatured feminism of drab clothes, sexless pursuits and dour political correctness. All women can enjoy all the positive aspects of our femininity, whether those pleasures are physical or
emotional, but we do need much greater vigilance and much greater solidarity to ensure that these pleasures do not become a trap for us. We have to ensure that we do not see femininity as our only strength and only our strength. There are aspects of traditional femininity, from home-making to empathy, that should belong to men too. If we move away from biological determinism we enter a world with more freedom, not less, because then those behaviours traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity could become real choices for each individual.

10: Changes

Our society is not monolithic: despite all the evidence of a backlash, the gains of the past have not yet been lost. Feminists in the West have already set in motion the greatest peaceful revolution the world has ever known, by achieving political representation for women, rights to equal education and working opportunities, and rights over contraception and reproduction. There are women who are still achieving their own dreams in a range of different realms, whether they are creating art or literature, succeeding in business or politics, or finding intimate relationships that answer their own emotional and sexual desires.

This means that successful women in many areas are as full of optimism as they ever were. For instance, I discussed women’s current situation with Harriet Harman, just before she won the deputy leadership of the Labour party. ‘Young women now have good role models, they are forging ahead,’ she said. ‘Why do you think things are bad for them?’ I discussed it with Anne McElvoy, the deputy editor of the
London Evening Standard
, at a party to celebrate Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize. ‘Are you feeling pessimistic?’ she said incredulously, looking around a room full of
female writers and publishers and editors. ‘With all these women in powerful positions?’

Given the changes in our society that have already been achieved by feminism, and given the successes that have been achieved by many individual women, it’s not surprising if we often feel complacent even when confronted by the reality of renewed sexism. After all, even if you feel irritated by the sale of irons labelled ‘Mummy and Me’ in a high-street store, or angered by the opening of a lap-dancing club in your town centre, you may feel that it would be a little extreme to complain. You may feel that the joke on a late-night comedy show is degrading to female participants, but then again you might wonder if you are overreacting. Even when you hear about or experience an example of outrageous sexism, from discrimination to violence, you may wonder if it is just one isolated and unfortunate incident.

But rather than being lulled by the idea that such incidents are just the side effects of our freedoms and our choices, it is time to wake up to the fact that the resurgence of such sexism is reducing the choices available to young women. If we are to create a future which genuinely values women for their full human potential, it is time for more people to put their complacency aside. I think that this is already beginning to happen; while writing this book I have been aware that more people are now communicating and acting upon their anger. Many of the women I interviewed for this book felt fatalistic about the possibility of challenging the culture around them, but other women are now beginning to question the resurgence of old-fashioned stereotypes. These individuals are looking at the current situation and, rather than feeling silenced, are trying to challenge it.

Here are ten initiatives among so many that have started in the last ten years which have broken through the complacency around us. Some are small, some are large. Some focus on a single issue, such as the need for more support for women
survivors of rape or girls dealing with sexual bullying, others seek to revive understanding of the impact of inequality throughout women’s lives. Some focus on affecting the decisions of politicians in order to create changes in legislation or funding, others look at shifting the attitudes of ordinary people. Of course there are many, many more than these ten that I could have chosen, but each of these has the potential to have significant impact even in areas where many people have lost hope of seeing change.

• In 2003 a group of women who were concerned about the sexual objectification of women created the organisation OBJECT. Recently they joined up with a long-established feminist organisation, the Fawcett Society, to campaign for changes in the law regarding the licensing of lap-dancing clubs. Although they have not achieved all their goals, in 2009 this campaign succeeded in getting the government to propose changes to the licensing regulations that would make it harder for new lap-dancing clubs to open.
  

• In 2007 some women began to take direct action against lads’ magazines and advertisements for plastic-surgery firms by defacing them with stickers. Their witty stickers were placed on many advertisements and magazines, with lines such as: ‘You are normal, this is not’, and ‘Beachball baps; so much more exciting than equal pay’. This stickering campaign then moved on into a Facebook group, ‘Somewhat strident but who cares’, where they could debate issues from these advertisements for plastic surgery to pornography. Mainstream media outlets from the
  Daily Mail
  to
  Woman’s Hour
  have covered the actions of the group.
  

• In 2004 some women decided to revive the Reclaim the Night marches that had been a feature of the second-wave women’s movement. Since then they have gone from strength to strength, with annual marches in London and other cities including Edinburgh and Cardiff. Finn Mackay, one of the organisers, said to me, ‘I think that the women’s movement is definitely on the rise again. Young women are coming in from the anti-war and anti-globalisation movement, saying, well, where’s our movement? Where do we put our anger about the way that women are being treated?’ In 2005 one participant, Beatriz, was quoted saying, ‘As we were walking we passed Spearmint Rhino, a place where supposedly women feel empowered. I thought to myself, no, that is not empowerment, this is empowerment, and I could really feel it. When I stopped chanting and I could hear the women behind me shouting “Women Unite, Reclaim the Night”, I thought yeah, this is empowerment.’
  

• In 2001 Catherine Redfern set up the F-Word website, which provides a forum for women to debate all aspects of feminism, from unequal pay to gender stereotyping of children. Jess McCabe, who now edits it, told me, ‘At the F-Word we get messages from women like, “I can’t believe I’ve found you, I felt totally isolated, but at last I’ve discovered I’m not alone.” It’s a fantastic thing to know that you can reach out to people who are not already active in the movement.’
  

• In 2006 I set up an organisation called Women for Refugee Women, to campaign for the rights of women who flee persecution to seek refuge in the UK. Many women journalists, actors, lawyers, politicians and activists have been eager to listen to the experiences of migrants to the UK and to give them practical support. ‘If empowerment means anything it has to include these women, who have almost no power,’ one female journalist said to me at one of our events.
  

• In 2008, a group of women launched the first UK fund for women, Rosa, which aims to direct more money into women’s organisations and to campaign for the continuing need for the women’s sector. Maggie Baxter, the founding chair of Rosa, said of the launch: ‘There is a strong sense of self-interest in our society at the moment, a sense that “if I’m all right I can ignore those who aren’t”. But I think when you encourage people to realise that they can be part of a movement to grow a better society, they are drawn to that.’
  

• In 2002 Rachel Millward, motivated by the statistic that only 7 per cent of film directors are women, set up a new film festival, the Birds Eye View Film Festival, which has grown from being a small touring event to an international women’s film festival. In 2006 she launched the First Weekenders Club to encourage more people to go to see films directed by women on their all-important first weekend of release. As film director Gurinder Chadha said of the initiative, it ‘reminds audiences of their power to make a difference at the box office’.
  

• In 2004 Womankind Worldwide, which usually works with women across the developing world, launched a programme to tackle sexual bullying in schools in the UK. It has run workshops in several schools and provided advice to hundreds of others. Their work has contributed to a rise in awareness of the problem, and in 2009 Ed Balls, the education secretary, asked the Anti-Bullying Alliance to draw up guidance for teachers on the issue of sexual bullying in schools.
  

• In 2008 rape crisis centres and the Women’s Resource Centre launched the ‘Crisis in Rape Crisis’ campaign, to draw attention to the lack of proper funding for rape crisis centres throughout the UK. They wrote a letter to Gordon Brown to draw his attention to the issue, which was signed by women from the editor of
  Cosmopolitan
  to the chair of the Women’s Institutes. In 2009 a group of women ambushed the London mayor, Boris Johnson, to ask him why he had failed to keep his promise to fund four rape crisis centres in London. They filmed his reaction and uploaded it on to YouTube.
  

• In 2008 two sisters, Emma and Abi Moore, decided to take action against the culture of pink which they believe is restricting their children’s freedoms. They set up an online campaign, Pink Stinks, which seeks to raise awareness and focus dissent. In the ‘name and shame’ section of their website they draw attention to products such as the pink globe marketed to girls by the Early Learning Centre or the launch of a pink Monopoly game for girls. ‘We want to raise awareness about the way that girls are being really restricted by the whole culture of pink,’ Emma Moore told me. ‘We aren’t killjoys, but we don’t think that there should be this monoculture that tells girls that there is only one acceptable way to be, and it’s all about sparkles and make-up and princesses.’
  

These initiatives have touched many thousands of women. If you want to add your strength to any of them, you can go to page 264 to find the contact details for these organisations and give them your support.

Many other women who might not identify with any particular organisation are still being moved to take action when they see something that has an impact on their lives. For instance, they might complain to the ASA about an advertisement for a lap-dancing club placed opposite a school, or to the BBC about the removal of a respected female broadcaster. Often, this kind of unplanned swell of anger can produce real changes. For
instance, in 2006 Tesco removed a pole-dancing kit, with fake money and a pole to dance around, from the toy section of its website, after customers decided to complain in large numbers. In online parenting forums such as Mumsnet, women and men discuss the rise of sexism in children’s culture and support one another in complaining to outlets from W H Smith to Marks and Spencer. And of course it is not only women who are seeking greater equality and freedom, there are men working in all these campaigns and on all these issues, both publicly and privately.

Alongside this swell of campaigning, there are women who are not necessarily conscious activists, but who seek full respect as human beings and try to live their private and public lives without being pressed into one mould by the sexism around them. When these women make free choices – whether those are choices about what magazines or books they are going to read, what toys they are going to buy for their children or what behaviour they are going to challenge at work – they too have the potential to change the status quo.

Yet, as many women pointed out to me in the research for this book, while dissent both planned and unplanned, political and artistic, private and public, may be forceful and growing, it is not yet moving far enough into the mainstream. Many young women are not seeing their dissatisfactions reflected, and feel alone in their sense that the culture does not fully value them as human beings. But it feels to me as though we are at a crossroads. We can now see a groundswell in anger and solidarity that may, if enough people join, lead to real cultural and political changes.

What we can remember when we look at the past is that social change is always possible, and when an idea grips sufficient numbers of people, then it is inevitable. Despite all the disappointments of the last few years, there is no reason to give up hope or to stop believing that one day the future we desire
could become the present we inhabit. There is no need to think we must start from scratch; the feminist foundations in our society are strong. We can be aware of and grateful for previous feminist successes while building upon them towards a better future. Because the dream that feminists first spoke about over two hundred years ago is still urging us on, the dream that one day women and men will be able to work and love side by side, freely, without the constraints of restrictive traditions. This dream tells us that rather than modelling themselves on the plastic charm of a pink and smiling doll, women can aim to realise their full human potential.