Regrets...and changes.

I have to say, I honestly don’t have many regrets in life as events so far have led me to where I am now, which is a good place.  One of my major regrets though, one that still plays on my mind, is not taking a former employer to tribunal.  I could have done so on grounds of disability discrimination, sex discrimination or constructive dismissal, but I didn’t.  I threatened to a few times, but was afraid to see it through because I was scared to lose my job (even when I should have walked out and fought the constructive dismissal angle).  Instead I hung on and hung on, getting more and more miserable and depressed.  I don’t know what it was that finally pushed me to take action – I left for a job which paid a considerable amount less and was only fixed term – but I have never regretted that, even when the job came to an end and I was unemployed.  I only wished I had faced my fears and done it sooner.

I knew at the time that things weren’t right, and that there were deep and ingrained problems within the office.  But over two years since I left, I can look back and appreciate just how horrible the place was and the effect it, and some of the people, had upon me.  The training I have had since, and am learning about now, on equality and discrimination (among other things) has also helped me to highlight things that happened in the past that were, if not downright illegal, a recipe for inequality, unfairness, resentment and destruction of morale.

I can tell some stories.

Stories where female job interview candidates were, following the interview, rated on their looks openly within the office by male managers.  Stories where people they met while travelling around the county for their jobs were described as “totty” and the day would be a bad one if they hadn’t met any totty while out and about.  Stories where managers stated that they didn’t want to employ any more senior staff on part time contracts (even though there was no real reason for this).

I could tell you about the times I tried and tried to put my name forward for projects and for work, saying that I needed more to do and I knew I was capable of achieving this, coming up with ideas about how it could be done – only to find out later that the exact project I had suggested had been given to a male member of staff, and nobody had bothered to explain this to me.  I was basically ignored every single time I suggested things or asked to be involved, and eventually I gave up.

I could tell you about the time I fought to be involved in a project, did all the groundwork for it, then when another member of staff came back from sick leave it was all transferred over without consultation or explanation and I felt completely undermined and devalued.

I could tell you about the time I left a load of my own work in my own pigeon hole to remind myself to do it when I got back from a single day off, only to find when I returned that it had been taken out of my pigeon hole and put in someone else’s.  Or the times that mail addressed to me was passed to another member of staff to deal with.

I could tell you about the many, many times that staff walked past me to ask questions of my equivalent male colleague who had just been appointed to do the same job as me, even though he was new to the job and I had been doing it – effectively – for years and (with respect to my colleague) had a wider knowledge base and capability.  I could tell you about the time that I spoke to my manager about this as it was upsetting me greatly.   I could tell you that he told me that I was being “silly” and over sensitive, something I highly doubt he would have said to a man.  I could also confirm that I was not imagining this, as my colleague mentioned it to me himself a couple of weeks later even though I had not said a word to him (as it was not his fault).

I could tell you that the same male colleague, doing the same job as me, was employed on considerably more pay and it took many months of fighting and being brushed off and treated as unimportant to get this put right.  Then the day after I was told I had won my fight and would be paid more, I was brought into the manager’s office on a charge of misconduct and sent home.  They then proceeded to tell lies about me throughout the subsequent investigation, and not allow me right of reply.  This caused me to have a bit of a breakdown.  Pretty understandably.

I could tell you about the hounding I got over a chronic medical condition that I suffer from, which is covered by equality legislation, and when my manager told me not to “make my problems the employer’s problem”.  I could tell you that the company’s HR department was woefully ignorant of equality legislation despite being the largest employer in the area, and was forced to change their policies when I threatened to go to tribunal.

I was ignored, trivialised and talked down to.  I was undermined, harassed and discriminated against.

I am not a troublemaker, I am not negative and I never liked having to complain or threaten action but I found myself doing this over and over again because nothing was ever taken seriously and nothing ever got any better.  This led me to get a reputation as negative and a complainer, while the managers continued to belittle and ignore both my valid complaints and the suggestions I made to turn things around.

I think I struggled at the time to recognise the cumulative effect all this was having upon me, even when I was sitting at home on a Sunday night crying about having to go into the office the next day.  I had no confidence, and I wasn’t in the right place to be able to see how low I was.  It is often hard to observe your own moods.  At the time I was often told it was my problem, my fault, I was regularly accused of moaning and being negative.  I see it now as a total failure of management to have any understanding, empathy, support or awareness of their own staff.

Since I left, I have been a new person.  I have done several fantastic jobs and received absolutely glowing references which cite me as overwhelmingly positive, enthusiastic and hard working.  I have won staff awards.  I have been treated as a human being with worth and value.

And you know what?  I know am intelligent, I strive for what is right, give a lot to my work and to the people I work with, and anyone who employs me is fortunate indeed.  Provided they treat me with basic respect and understanding.  Which isn’t a lot to ask, is it?

All the small things

I seem to talk a lot on this blog, and will talk in the future, about things that many people would dismiss as fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.  Why does it matter for feminism and equality that a beer pump has a naked woman on it, or that drills are advertised as a male gift, or that little girls are dressed in pink and boys in blue?  These things are small and we can ignore them, right?

Let's have a look at associative memory.

We all subconsciously have ideas of what is feminine and what is masculine, what it is to be female and male.  Even if we do not consciously subscribe to these views, we are primed to have the thoughts in our subconscious, arguably even before we are born but certainly from the minute we are exposed to the world.  It is what we take on from the world around us, soaking it up like a sponge.  Even reluctant sponges don't have much choice but to get wet when you pour water on them.

Research shows that people implicitly attribute maleness to certain careers and certain personality traits, and femaleness to other traits, even if they do not consciously pigeonhole people based on gender.  This subconscious thought process can lead to unintentional stereotyping and discrimination. 1

People are quicker to recognise traits that match their stereotype (a caring woman, an aggressive man) than those which challenge them (a nurturing man, a strong woman) 2

Associative memory basically means that from birth we are exposed even involuntarily to many cultural associations.  This could be something simple, like "red means danger", we are learning about our own culture and what things mean within it.

It also incorporates many ideas of gender, all of which contribute to us subconsciously gaining a fixed set of associations of what is female and male, which we are not able to change.

Even the smallest things can contribute to our development of this associative memory, from the language and voice your mother uses to speak to you while you are in the womb, to being given a doll or a toy car, to seeing women doing housework in advertisements.  Your memory will take all this on board, even if your conscious mind rebels against the associations.  As Cordelia Fine puts it, your memory "picks up and responds to cultural patterns in society. media and advertising, which may well be reinforcing implicit associations you don't consciously endorse".  These patterns are then passed on to future generations.

I bet you know what gender the children that I have blanked out in the photographs below are.  That you do know shows how ingrained gender stereotypes are within our society.

This helps to explain why people who may not challenge their own thinking and preconceptions act the way they do, why people accept stereotypes, and why stereotyping is so rigid and unchanging in today's society.  To change this, we need to make huge changes at the cultural level and also challenge the way we are already thinking.  A very big task, but we can start by highlighting all the pieces that make up the gender association jigsaw.

So some of the things I talk about may seem like trivial matters, unimportant matters, things that don't have any real effect on how women are seen and treated on matters of real importance.  But as you can see, I argue it is a combination of all the many small things that lead to the ingrained stereotypes, which in turn lead to more serious discriminations.




1 - Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender, published by Icon Books
2 - Assessing Stereotype Incongruities

Some Good News

Good news in the Guardian today.  Arcadia Ltd, owned by Philip Green, comprising Topshop among other retailers, has seen a drop of 40% in their profits.

No, it's not good news for the economy, you might say.  And I would tend to agree with you.  But I can't help personally feeling a bit smug about the news.   Just on this occasion, since it's Topshop that is struggling, I would be more than happy to see the whole caboodle go down the pan and Mr Green disappear from business.

Why?

First of all, Mr Green's well publicised avoidance of paying his income tax.

He is a UK resident and always has been, the companies are operated within the UK.  But he cleverly registered his businesses in the name of his wife, a resident of Monaco where the tax rate is a whopping, um, 0%,  Yes, no tax.  Figures for 2005 show that he banked £1.2billion personally, avoiding a tax bill of £285million.

Second, you could see Topshop's hopeful demise as karma for the appalling T-shirts they put on sale earlier this year, glamorising domestic violence and comparing women with dogs.

While they withdrew these from sale after a public uproar (one thing the media can be good for), this was reluctant and they were not sorry that the items had gone on sale, only that they had offended people.  See their statement:

"We have received some negative feedback regarding two of our printed T-shirts. Whilst we would like to stress that these T-shirts were meant to be light-hearted and carried no serious meaning, we have made the decision to remove these from store and online as soon as possible."We would like to apologise to those who may have been offended by these designs."

Light hearted, carrying no serious meaning?  Do they really believe this, as if they do, it is at best naive and at worst wilfully ignorant of the effect that casual misogyny can have on society.

So, with apologies to the people that Topshop employs (except the snitty ones who look down their noses at you for daring to set foot in the shop if you don't look skinny and glamorous), I encourage people to shop elsewhere and let's see if the final nail can be hammered into their nasty little coffin.

Ignorance is bliss?

 Did you know that Matt Smith aka "Dr Who" has split up with his girlfriend?  No??  Well he has!! Really! It was on the front page of the Sun this week.

Oh, but it isn't all disaster and tragedy in the world, so do not fear.  It seems that Lewis Hamilton has got back together with Nicole Scherzinger.  So we can sleep soundly in our beds after all.

We live in worrying economic times.  There are protests on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral about the distribution of wealth, protests about university fees, concerns about the benefits system leaving people on the breadline, reports that elderly people are being neglected and abused, enquiries taking place about newspapers spying on people for their stories, protests and deadly clashes worldwide, but also positive news about the effectiveness of our NHS despite low funding and the increased survival rate of cancer suffers.

There is so much going on in this world of ours, some reported in the media, some doesn't seem to even make it into the papers.  I was shocked after a visit to a local Crown Court recently how many serious sex crime cases were being heard.  The two trials I sat in on both resulted in a guilty verdict, both were serious sexual crimes against children, neither have been reported even in local media.

But we have front pages like this:

There is so much wrong with this that I barely know where to begin.  The headline itself is the usual xenophobic hate-mongering designed to stir up readers against people who might look "of a foreign nature".  This is just one of the groups of people they advocate hatred of.  No wonder there is so much distrust, fear and hate within communities in the UK.

Martine McCutcheon's weight gain also appears to be hot news, but if that's not enough to make you feel self conscious ladies, how about implying that your husband might secretly think you are grotesque?


There are also headlines like this:

I know this sort of "non news" sells papers, people seem to be genuinely more interested in who from X Factor is having illicit sex or taking drugs than the trifling matters of why people in this country are living in poverty when we are one of the richest countries in the world.  Why is this, though?  Are people so narrow minded because of the media, or were they already happier living in ignorance and the media is simply pandering to that?  Can we change things?  Should we?  And how?

Lots of questions, no answers, but worthy of discussion.

What it brings to mind, for me, is a vision of George Orwell's classic novel 1984.  We are living in a world where the proles are kept in blissful ignorance of the realities of life by news headlines like that shown above, and equal tat on the television.  And people often appear happy in their ignorance, not feeling the need or that they have the ability to ask questions about why life is like it is, or challenge anything.  That doesn't mean real contentment, and it doesn't mean it is right.

An Email To B&Q

Dear B&Q

Thank you for the leaflet you thoughtfully put through my door today providing me with valuable Christmas gift ideas.  I have, however,  just a few questions about the featured products.

First of all, my mother would rather like the drill featured in the flyer.  Unfortunately for her, however, the flyer clearly states that the drill is a gift for Dads.  I am not sure in that case what to do.  Do you offer any similar products designed for Mums?  I would appreciate any help you could give me on this matter as otherwise I may be forced to shop somewhere you can buy unisex tools suitable for use by both Dads and Mums, and presumably also by people who are not parents.

I am also having a crisis of confidence that I will then be spending far too much money on Mum as the gifts in your flyer all recommend spending between £1 and £7, whereas Dad’s gifts are considerably more expensive than this.  If I were to spend £50 on a drill for Mum, would this therefore mean that I would need to purchase a gift for Dad costing at least £400?  Please clarify.

I am disappointed that there are no gifts for my husband in this flyer as he is neither Dad nor Mum, nor is he a baby goat (although I am sure that there are many baby goats out there who will simply love the Hello Kitty and Buzz Lightyear sets).  However I am sure I will be able to find him something suitable from elsewhere, so I am not too concerned about this matter.

Finally may I ask whether it is your intention that your slogan “B&Q: Let’s Do It Together” be translated in practice as “Let Dad Do The Work While Mum Makes The House Pretty”, or whether this was an unintended consequence of your ill-considered Christmas leaflet.

Many thanks and I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely

Elaine

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.

"Stop going on about feminism!"

You might see a link between some of the posts I will be writing here.

I am unashamedly a feminist.  All women should be feminists.  In fact, hell with it, everyone should be a feminist.  People who roll their eyes either misunderstand what feminism means, or they have had the wool pulled over their eyes and genuinely think we live in an equal society now.  Feminism has, unfortunately, been portrayed as negative, whiny women who hate men making a big fuss over nothing.  Well, of course it would be portrayed as such, since we live in a patriarchal society and it suits some people for it to stay that way.

What does feminism mean to me?

It means all genders being treated with equal respect and being allowed the same opportunities.  It means not objectifying or trivialising someone based upon the gender they happened to be born into (and/or transitioned into).

We have had the Suffragette era, we have the vote, we have the right to work, we even have legislation to guard against discrimination.  So I should be happy, right?  Everything is all OK and much better than it used to be.

I disagree.  You will see why, over the course of some of my later posts, if you bear with me that long.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that things are getting worse again for the average woman.  Media portrayals and expectations, coupled with easy casual sexism in many places in society, insidious inequalities hidden in the working world and a lack of support from our own government, all combines to make it uneasy times indeed.

And for heaven's sake, especially to the women out there, don't tell me to shut up about feminism or sigh and roll your eyes.  It may not seem like a big deal to you, but that in itself is depressing.