The last few weeks have been devastating for women’s rights, dignity and emancipation in two of the world’s most developed countries - the UK and the US. A series of events have exposed the extraordinary levels of objectification of and contempt for women that are prevalent in the developed world. It has been hard to stomach the high likelihood that women’s right to abortion may soon be revoked after half a century of its existence in the US. Meanwhile in the UK, 56 Members of Parliament (approximately 1 in 11), including three government ministers, are being investigated for sexual harassment; MP Neil Parish resigned, having been forced to admit he had watched porn during parliamentary sessions in the Commons - twice; and, if that was not enough - on the front page of its weekend edition on 23rd April, the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper chose to herald a preposterous misogynistic comment made by Conservatives that Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner was deploying a “Basic Instinct” tactic of crossing and uncrossing her legs to distract Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Furthermore, she was accused of doing so as a way of compensating for the deficit in her debating skills (being a state school graduate “trying” to compete with the Eton- and Oxford-educated Johnson).
What all these events have in common is an obsession with women’s bodies at the expense of their minds. In the US the underlying premise of the impending change in legislation is that women should not be trusted to be in charge of their bodies when it comes to childbirth, while in the UK women in these incidents have been seen exclusively through the prism of their bodies. None of these sexist lenses are new, in fact they are centuries-old and have long been weaved deep into political discourse, ideologies and culture wars. Tragically, in both British and American society, the public, journalists and decision-makers distinctly lack interest in focusing on gender equality in comparison to other issues. In news media there is often a false sense that gender equality issues have been addressed or that they are of less importance than other more pressing societal matters. Events like those of the last few weeks reveal unequivocally the unfounded nature of these consequential beliefs.
The question I have started asking myself (and will continue to do so) is whether progress towards gender equality, resulting in women experiencing themselves as independent whole beings worthy of trust and respect, peaked in the 20 th century and has been blocked or eroded ever since? Might we be missing some important trends that are impeding women’s equal rights in the 21 st century due to a lack of interest in applying a gender lens to stories and disciplines?
I have found a mixed picture, where progress has been achieved in some areas, but parity is far off on all measures. Moreover, progress has stalled on some key measures, among them, women’s participation in the labour market – an important measure of women’s economic independence with significant ramifications for future generations. I have found that in this century women’s participation in the workforce has in fact declined. In 2000, more than half of women (51%) participated in the workforce globally, while in 2021 this had dropped to 46%. In the US the proportion declined from 59% to 55%, with the pandemic accelerating the decline. In 2003, women made up 39.7% of the labour force globally. 18 years later this proportion has remained broadly flat at 39.2%.
So to all those who have disengaged from the issue of gender equality because they believe that women’s rights have “gone far enough”, I would say: “think again”. The pro-male biases which, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s Gender Social Norms Index, are held globally by 91% of men and 86% of women, indicate that if we do nothing, the default mode will be to curtail women’s freedoms (and to judge their behaviours harshly) because, unfortunately, people frequently see gender equality as a zero-sum game where if “women win, men lose”, rather than a positive sum game, where all genders benefit when women are treated equally to men. Despite the majority of Americans supporting legal abortion and only a small minority not (54% vs. only 28%), the law is very likely to be overturned. Inaction feeds the systemic prejudice against women.
I believe that awareness is always the first step to change. Being aware that in this century progress towards equality for women in society has stalled will hopefully provide the impetus that some of us need to act in a world where a man can watch porn surrounded by female colleagues while deciding on the country’s most important matters; where it is OK to focus on how a woman moves her legs in parliament instead of what she says; and where it is OK to take control of women’s decisions about whether or not to have a child.
