Questioning the Questioners

At university we were recently fortunate to be presented with a speaker introduced as an eminent professor and one of the foremost commentators on social inequality in the UK.

It was an interesting lecture and gave rise to lots of further reading and thinking, and he made many good points.

It is, however, worth noting that even he as a professor specialising in social inequality made several comments which could be related to female inequality, and he either did not pick up on this or misunderstood the current social position.

He first sympathised with the men in the room, saying that when he was younger he didn't have to compete with bright women, that men back then simply "married them and made them part time", whereas now men have to compete equally in the jobs market with women.

I would dispute this, since most research carried out finds that the significant majority of part time work is still done by women, and that there is still a significant pay gap of 9.1%  according to figures recently released by the Office of National Statistics.  While this is the lowest it has ever been and does not sound too dramatic, the figures also show that the median wage for a man is £10,000 more per annum than for a woman, and the mean (average) salary is £14,000 more for the average man.  There are over three times as many women working part time, and they earn on average £3000 per annum less than a man working part time.  Women who do work full time earn on average around £8000 a year less than the average man.  Nearly twice as many men as women work full time.  Only just over half of women in employment work full time, this does not take into account women who are not working and choosing to stay at home to raise a family.*

This really does give the lie to the Professor's claims that it is no longer a case of "marry them and make them part time".

He then went on to say how much he hated Downton Abbey on television as it was a platform for social inequality, showing great distinctions between social classes.  He referred instead to Strictly Come Dancing, which he said he enjoyed and it was "good to see Bruce Forsyth, a man of my age, still on television doing his job".

Isn't it a shame the same can't be said for Arlene Phillips?

The fact that the BBC, in this case through Strictly Come Dancing although it is not alone in this, promotes sexism through choice of presenters and judges seems to be lost on the Professor.  I can almost be certain that Tess Daly won't be presenting similar shows when she is Bruce's age.  The BBC tradition of young female presenters flirting with older male counterparts turns my stomach because of its inherent sexism - look at the recent Children In Need programme for another example.

Yes, older women appear on Strictly Come Dancing, but they seem to be portrayed as more of a joke act than serious contenders.

Finally he referred to biological differences between babies and young children, saying that his daughter had noticed the difference between her son and daughter almost at birth, suggesting this must mean that genders are hard-wired to be different genetically, thus implying that gender differences portrayed in this society are somehow justified.  I think this does not take into account the often held belief that we are all ourselves subconsciously primed to behave a certain way and have certain beliefs about our gender, imposed upon us by the society and culture that we grow up in.  We can unconsciously pass this on to the children we have, even while they are in the womb, even if we try not to.  It is too simplistic to say that differences in small children are all genetic and biological and to do so somehow suggests that women will never be equal because of these differences which will never be overcome.+

All this went through my head during the lecture.  As well as the rather depressing notion that I was finding a professor specialising in tackling social inequality to be, well, a little bit sexist.

My final question would be why didn't I challenge him instead of writing it on this blog?  I wish I knew the answer to that one!


* - Office for National Statistics
+ - For further reading, see "Delusion of Gender" by Cordelia Fine


Yes.  I am "sort of" referencing in my blog.  Shoot me now.