Women still on a see-saw of inequality
Prior to Greer, women were imprisoned in domesticity, faceless behind white picket fences. Now women are newsmakers alongside men, or newsreaders, or foreign correspondents. Or journalists as I was for 20 years during which time I interviewed many high profile Australian women from all walks of life to capture the calibre of our women – from Prime Minister’s wife, Hazel Hawke to cook/TV personality Maggie Beer, to a score of women writers including Anne Summers, Monica McInerney and Kate Llewellyn, to former Victorian premier, Joan Kerner and all those impressive Telstra Woman of the Year winners, too. Each were role models.
Yet, much is unnerving in our contemporary society. The Page 3 glamour girl, largely eliminated from mainstream press by feminism, has re-emerged as scantily clad as ever to objectify women again.
The greatest flaw to equality remains. Of the countless women I have interviewed, the ones whose stories linger are those brave enough to talk of domestic violence and the heartbreaking impact a “belting’’ from someone they loved had on their emotional well being, their self-confidence and the security of their children. It is shocking to learn the numbers of women and teenaged girls in casualty or emergency on any one night with physical injuries because of violence from a man they know. Yet they rarely name it. Violence, in its many forms, is so entrenched, it’s like a dripping tap in our own backyard no-one seems to be able to switch off. Women are still murdered by intimate male mates at an alarming rate. One of the last stories I covered after 20 years of women’s writings was yet another review into domestic violence. Sexual violence leaves emotional scars which can linger a lifetime and still little consequences for the perpetrators. Very few men are accountable for rape, or child sexual abuse – the manifestation of misogyny, deep disregard for women.
Add to all of the above, the sexualisation of young girls – a by-product of consumerism – which pushes children into quasi-adulthood when they haven’t reached double figures yet. A recent incident saw Tom Cruise’s wife Katie Holmes present her young pre-school-aged daughter, Suri, in high heels. Girls as young as 12 present themselves to the world as nubile nymphs, dressed in seductive, revealing clothing, often little more than loin cloths covering private body parts.
The other powerful cultural influence is the cult of celebrity, which is hand-in-glove with the objectification of women and girls, where men see women as objects of sexual desire. Unfortunately, the once feisty feminist voice has been silenced, although the YWCA is trying to stem what has become a tsunami of media and social influences promoting the Body Beautiful.
Tags: domestic violence, leadership, political women
womens lives | nadine 09/05/2010
1 Comment to “Women still on a see-saw of inequality”
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
By Felicity Collins, 12/05/2010 @ 9:30 am
I have been a scantily clad pin-up girl. I was abused by my father. I have been raped by strangers, and also molested when just a beautiful innocent child of nine. It’s hard not to walk around the streets and simply scream at any man who so much as casts me an admiring glance—and think how much I “hate man”. But then I remember… this is a disease. It isn’t something I can cure by shouting expletives at strangers. And it isn’t just explained in one word, ‘inequality’. Oh no, my friends, it is much more than that. It is a pattern of behaviour that we women encourage. And then we ineffectually rant, and rave. We march and cry out holding placards and giving the two finger salute, but nothing changes. For there is one fundamental problem in our thinking… we are trying to change the behaviour of others that we actually enable on so many levels… as Nadine points out.
What can we do? We can change the thoughts and behaviour patterns of ourselves. We can look at how we feel inside and we can make a conscious choice to stop the encouragement, but I warn you, that’s a deep rabbit hole to jump into—to stop all action on our own behalf that encourages this male behaviour. It is though, in the end, the only thing that will save us female and male. So women like Nadine Williams keep writing. Keep telling the story. Women like me will read it and hopefully, one day, we will make our own choice on a deeply conscious level, that we aren’t going to accept it anymore. And we will take our own small steps towards freedom. I won’t buy that magazine, and I won’t endorse that product, and I won’t turn a blind eye when my partner sneaks a peak at women young enough to be his daughter while he holds my hand when we are walking down the street. I’m 47, and I was a victim, until I changed my own thinking.