by Laura Bates
Again and again, in life and even in death, women are defined, if at all, by their relationship to men. The impact ranges from the underestimation of female achievement to far more serious consequences. Medicine provides us with one clear example. New drugs are predominantly tested on male subjects, and their development is based on the needs of the male body. There is growing evidence to suggest that for decades women have been taking the wrong doses and experiencing more adverse side effects to many medications than their male peers. It was not until 2013, for example, that scientists realized women’s bodies metabolized certain sleeping pills far more slowly than men, resulting in a dramatic reduction of the dosage instructions for women.
Astonishingly, it was also not until 2013 that Swedish researchers created the world’s first female crash test dummy, meaning that all previous car designs had been based on best protecting the male form from injury. Tests suggested this left women at greater risk of harm from injuries such as whiplash.
Then there are women who experience still greater ‘othering’, from Muslim women whose veils seem to preclude some from seeing them as humans, to feminists who are painted as monstrous caricatures, to BAME women who face racist abuse intertwined and enmeshed with misogyny. There are women forgotten and allowed to fall between the cracks, from female prisoners to those with special needs facing issues such as forced marriage. And there are situations in which ‘female’ still seems to be seen as a special category, where men once again form the default and those few women who are included are supposed to be grateful for being mentioned at all.
Experiments that ask groups of children to draw doctors, astronauts, police officers, lawyers and any other number of professionals reveal that they automatically draw male figures. Again and again, our immediate assumption that ‘human’ means ‘male’ leaves women at best an afterthought, at worst erased, disadvantaged or endangered.
‘NORMAL’ IN OUR SOCIETY MEANS MALE – WOMEN ARE WRITTEN OUT OF THE STORY
It has famously been said that feminism is the radical notion that women are people. While this distinction may seem obvious, it remains a confusing area for some – not least sports reporter John Inverdale. Congratulating Andy Murray on his second tennis Olympic gold medal, Inverdale told him: ‘You’re the first person ever to win two Olympic tennis gold medals’, leaving Murray to point out that ‘Venus and Serena [Williams] have won about four each.’
Just days earlier, while commenting on the men’s rugby sevens event, Inverdale reportedly announced that the winning team would be taking home the first-ever Olympic medal for the sport, despite the women’s title having already been claimed by Australia less than a week before. All this has led to the mystery of the week, the question on everybody’s lips: has Inverdale forgotten that women exist, or does he just not realize that they are people? In fairness to Inverdale, he is far from alone. Women have a pesky habit of slipping minds at important moments – just ask those reporters who discussed our hypothetical new prime minister using ‘he’ and ‘him’ before being left red-faced by Theresa May’s victory.
It’s not surprising that Murray picked up on the error – it’s only three years since he was lavishly congratulated on the front pages for ending the ‘77-year wait’ for a British Wimbledon champion. Which is true. As long as you don’t consider Virginia Wade, who won Wimbledon in 1977, and three previous female winners since Fred Perry’s 1936 victory, to be people.
It is telling that we are so used to such omissions that Murray’s simple statement of fact about the Williams sisters has received rapturous applause across the media and the internet. Under the circumstances, it is remarkable and hugely welcome to see a man in his position be so thoughtful as to acknowledge women’s existence. But wouldn’t it be nice if it was the norm rather than the exception?
The problem isn’t confined to sport either. When Tim Peake was hailed in the media as the first Briton to blast off into space last December, it must have come as a surprise to Helen Sharman, who beat him to it by more than twenty years.
So ingrained is our society’s default male norm, in fact, that many media outlets choose to point out that people are female in newspaper headlines, as if the idea they aren’t male is as newsworthy as the event they were involved in: ‘Hero gas station clerk saves female doctor from suspected kidnapper’; ‘Female judge Constance Briscoe investigated over leaking Chris Huhne case, court told’; ‘Female Belgian rower falls ill after racing on Guanabara bay’; ‘Woman cyclist fighting for life after horrific crash at danger junction’.
The same shock manifests itself when subjects deviate from other expected norms, too, as swimmer Simone Manuel discovered when her gold medal victory was reduced in headlines to: ‘Michael Phelps shares historic night with African-American’. The implication is that white men are individuals – human beings in their own right, with personalities and quirks and rich, rounded lives – while other people are still defined as members of homogenous ‘othered’ groups.
This matters beyond the technicality of who gets named in a headline. It impacts on how sympathetic our society is likely to be towards those described. It contributes to the stereotyping and vilification of entire groups who are tarred, sweepingly, with a single brush. It writes out of history those whose contributions we most need to highlight in order to rectify inequality in sport, science and other fields.
Leaving women out of the story isn’t a simple slip-up. It is a consequence of a world that tells us they just aren’t quite as important. That their achievements don’t really count. It means that even now, some of us do still need reminding that women are people, too.
Originally published 17 August 2016
DAVID CAMERON WILL SUPPORT MUSLIM WOMEN – BUT ONLY WHEN IT SUITS HIS SCAREMONGERING NARRATIVE
David Cameron this week announced a £20m language fund particularly targeted at British Muslim women. The prime minister claimed that some 190,000 British Muslim women, or 22 per cent, speak little or no English, and suggested that a minority of men were promoting ‘backward attitudes’ and exerting ‘damaging control’ over their female relatives.
But while Cameron’s commitment to funding for English language classes was welcomed in many quarters (particularly in light of previous £45m cuts to the ESOL budget), he also drew unnecessary and unclear links between the English language skills of Muslim women and extremism, as well as appearing to threaten that migrants who failed to reach a particular standard of English may not be allowed to remain in the UK.
The conflation of these very different issues seemed to suggest that the rights and empowerment of Muslim women are only of particular concern when they are instrumental in protecting the rest of Britain from the threat of extremism, not to mention simultaneously casting Muslim women as suppressed victims and dangerous outsiders. Of course, measures to tackle oppression and violence against women should be applauded – and Cameron did make a point of stating that these are not issues confined to Muslim communities – but this was undermined by his singling out of Muslim women in particular, as many pointed out.
On Twitter, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi – former minister of state for faith and communities – said: ‘Women should have the opportunity to learn English full stop. Why link it to radicalization/extremism?’ She added: ‘And why should it just be Muslim women who have the opportunity to learn English? Why not anyone who lives in the UK and can’t speak English?’ She also highlighted the problem of a blanket suggestion that mothers who don’t speak English well might raise children who are integrated less or who are less likely to contribute positively to society, saying: ‘PS mums English isn’t great yet she inspired her girls to become a Lawyer, teacher, accountant, pharmacist, cabinet minister #WomenPower’ [sic].
A statement from the Bradford-based Muslim Women’s Council read: ‘Whilst we welcome the additional funding pledged today by the prime minister for English language support for Muslim women, we do not agree with the assertion that there is a link between a
lack of English and extremism. David Cameron is conflating these two issues and is further isolating the very same group of people that he is trying to reach and assist.’
Although the language funding has been generally greeted as a step in the right direction, it will do little to protect Muslim women from the hate crime that has spiked by more than 300 per cent since the Paris terror attacks, with women and girls as the majority of victims. Nor will it offset the Islamophobia that saw the winner of The Great British Bake Off, Nadiya Hussain, worry she had ‘put her kids in danger’ by appearing on the show, or address instances like that of the 10-year-old Muslim boy questioned by police apparently because he made a spelling mistake and wrote that he lived in a ‘terrorist’ rather than a ‘terraced’ house. Nor does it alleviate the inherent bias that plays a role in the economic inactivity to which Cameron referred among women of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage, who often face discrimination when seeking employment. Nor does it resolve the funding crisis that currently leaves 67 per cent of BAME women’s specialist support services uncertain of their future.
And while, of course, it is right to tackle instances of gender discrimination within British Muslim communities (a fight long led by Muslim women themselves), it is short-sighted to imply that this is the only direction from which women in the UK, Muslim or otherwise, are likely to experience sexism, discrimination, violence and abuse.
It is important for the prime minister to declare with such zeal that he wants to tackle the ‘minority of men’ who perpetuate misogynistic attitudes and ‘exert damaging control’ – but the same determination should apply to those exerting dominance and control over the one in four women in England and Wales who experience domestic violence.
Of course we should be offering language classes, and other forms of support, to anybody in the UK who needs it. But it isn’t enough to give with one hand and take away with another, or to extend support to Muslim women only when it suits a scaremongering narrative.
Originally published 21 January 2016
WHERE ARE ALL THE WOMEN, WIKIPEDIA?
It is often said that women have been written out of history. We have all heard of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, but few are familiar with their contemporary, Margaret E. Knight, a prolific American inventor who held over twenty patents and was decorated by Queen Victoria. Knight created her first device, a safety mechanism for textile machines, after witnessing a factory accident aged just twelve. She later invented a machine that created the flat-bottomed paper bags still used in grocery stores today. When she died in 1914, an obituary described her as a ‘woman Edison’. Somewhat dispiritingly, she has also been described as ‘the most famous nineteenth-century woman inventor’. But how many of us know her name?
If you were to try and research Knight’s life and work, you might struggle. Her Wikipedia profile is just under 500 words long; Edison’s is more than 8,500. Of course, Edison’s contribution to the development of the electric light warrants a significant write-up, and his legacy deserves a lengthy profile. But his Wikipedia page also contains minute detail about his early life, diets and views on religion. By contrast, information on Knight’s page is scant, though she too invented an item still widely used today. Her profile lacks many details (including any mention of her first invention), which are available elsewhere online, particularly on websites dedicated to commemorating the work of female inventors. That such resources exist says a lot about the erasure of women such as Knight from more mainstream information sources.
This week, it was revealed that only around 17 per cent of notable profiles on Wikipedia are of women. While we bemoan the sexist bias that prevented many historic female figures from being rightly commemorated and celebrated, there is a risk that history may be repeating itself all over again.
Perhaps the disparity is unsurprising given that only around 15 per cent of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors are female. Reasons suggested for the gender gap have ranged from the elitist nature of the ‘hard-driving hacker crowd’ to the overt harassment and misogyny faced by female editors on the site. When one editor suggested a women-only space on Wikipedia for female contributors to support one another and discuss online misogyny, other users vowed to fight the proposal ‘to the death’.
The trouble with Wikipedia having such a vast gender gap in its notable profiles is that it is one of the most commonly used information sources in the world. A 2011 study found that 53 per cent of all American internet users look for information on Wikipedia, increasing to almost 70 per cent of college-educated users. According to web-traffic data company Alexa, it is currently the fifth most visited website in the world. For such a popular source to present millions of students, researchers and journalists with a hugely gender-biased roster of articles could have a real impact on everything, from young people’s career aspirations to which high-profile figures are invited to speak at conferences and events.
There are ongoing efforts to solve the problem, such as this week’s BBC 100 Women edit-a-thon, which will see fifteen events in thirteen countries happening in multiple languages to grow the number of female editors and to add profiles for women who deserve to be recognized. Meanwhile, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has called for a more inclusive and diverse community of editors. Wales himself has pointed out that the process by which Wikipedia editors decide collectively whether a particular topic deserves its own article could lead to biased outcomes when those editors are overwhelmingly male. Various projects have been launched to try and address the problem, but progress seems slow.
Knight probably wouldn’t have been surprised by the disparity. In her own lifetime, she faced sexism and discrimination from men – in particular from Charles Annan, who spied on her paper-bag-production prototype and tried to steal the patent, even arguing in court that a woman could never have invented such an innovative machine. But she might have imagined that the gender gap would have improved rather more significantly by now.
Originally published 9 December 2016
FORCED MARRIAGE IS STILL A BIG PROBLEM IN THE UK. WHAT MORE CAN WE DO?
This month, a 34-year-old businessman from Cardiff became the first person in the UK to be jailed under the forced-marriage laws introduced in June 2014. Forced marriage is defined as when one or both spouses do not consent to the marriage, or when consent is extracted under duress – which can include physical, psychological, financial, sexual and emotional pressure. Iwan Jenkins, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s rape and serious sexual offences unit in Wales, said: ‘Forced marriage wrecks lives and destroys families. We hope that today’s sentence sends a strong message that forced marriage will not be tolerated in today’s Britain.’
According to the Home Office, in 2014 the Forced Marriage Unit – set up in 2005 to promote and enforce the government’s policy on the issue – gave advice or support to 1,267 cases, 79 per cent of which involved female victims. Over 10 per cent involved victims with disabilities and 11 per cent of cases involved victims under the age of sixteen.
Progress on addressing the issue is slow, and campaigners and academics have raised questions about the efficacy of the new laws, given that only one conviction has taken place in the year since they came into effect. Respond, a UK-based charity supporting people with learning disabilities affected by trauma and abuse, this month launched My Life, My Marriage, a project aimed at challenging the practice of forcing marriage on people with learning disabilities. The project will seek to raise awareness about the problem, and will offer advocacy to people with learning disabilities and their support networks, and training to professionals, practitioners and community leaders. It will include an educational roadshow and sessions in schools to educate young people with learning disabilities about forced marriage.
Luthfa Khan, who is leading the project, explained that the campaign came about in response to a number of cases Respond has dealt with over the years involving possible forced marriages. At the launch of the project in London last w
eek, Khan suggested that the number of cases dealt with by the Home Office is likely to be ‘just touching the surface’. Highlighting the complexity of the problem, she cautioned that the cases that Respond deals with are nuanced and varied, and may look very different from people’s conception of forced marriage.
The issue of consent is one of those complexities. While Respond is supportive of people with learning disabilities who are able to give consent and do make the decision to get married freely, Khan is keen to stress the importance of providing support for those who may be pressured into doing so: ‘Through our referral service, we aim to work towards removing labels which further victimize people, taking each case on its own merit and working with people to fully understand what is actually happening within each situation.’
She explains how nuanced some of the cases can be: ‘Within many families, there can be a belief that marriage is a rite of passage and some families may even perhaps wish or hope that it will “cure” the person of learning disabilities. Other families, particularly where there are older parents, might be worried about who will look after their son or daughter after they are gone. So through marriage they are hoping to bring in someone who will be a lifetime carer. Even if carried out benignly, they have not considered that the person with learning disabilities once married will have to deal with [issues like] sex, having children, a commitment to another person and compromises when living with someone else. And worse than this, they may face rejection once the spouse realizes that they have a disability or even worse they may be physically, emotionally and/or sexually abused. But also, increasingly, we are seeing people with learning disabilities becoming targeted for forced marriage through coercion or trickery in order to extract their finances or accommodation or even for passports or visas.’
