Theme #9 for Feminist Fact Friday
For women, many indicators show a considerable narrowing of disparities and positive trajectories. Girls outperform boys at school and more attend university. The representation of women on private and public boards and in elected office has improved, although they remain significantly underrepresented. However, our evidence shows high levels of bullying, harassment and negative experiences reported in both workplaces and educational settings. We also found that subject choice for women at university appeared to be significantly gendered. So, while on the face of it women are experiencing more equal outcomes in many areas, their experiences of violence and harassment and the restrictions arising from perceived gender norms still have an impact across multiple domains of life.
Equality and Human Rights Commission Is Britain Fairer? — The state of equality and human rights 2018 page
We’re born into a sexist world. It can take a long time to wake up to the reality of a world in which your gender determines the way in which as a woman you will receive inferior healthcare, be perceived more negatively at work, earn far less and pay far more than men and likely be the victim of violent crimes that will go unpunished.
It takes so long to wake to this because it’s all around us and completely normalised – and because the effects begin far before we’re aware of anything about the world around us. This ignorance is allowed to thrive in an environment where we pretend that women have equal access and receive equal treatment – that over 100 years since some women won the vote, everything is fine and dandy. This is incorrect.
Following last week’s post on how Black women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth I’d like to take us back to the EARLY YEARS for the ninth Feminist Fact Friday theme, looking at childcare issues and where many of our stereotypes begin.
October – EARLY YEARS
Week 32 – Women do 3x as much unpaid childcare
Week 33 – Seven-year-old boys are 20 times more likely to want to become engineers
Week 34 – Rigidly gendered beliefs correlate with coercion and violence