Rebirth of the Reluctant Feminist

Until my 30s I believed whole-heartedly that if a woman complained of sexism it was an excuse. She wasn’t very good at her job or wasn’t good at navigating a male-dominated environment. But in my 30s things began to bug me. Female friends were passed over for promotion for no apparent reason. Friends with babies were exhausting themselves trying to excel in a corporate structure that seemed better suited to men. And most hideously, women sometimes conspired to prevent the success of female peers. It all annoyed me but the woman-on-woman rivalry was what compelled me to act. It’s common and shameful.

Anyway, without getting into details that will allow certain colleagues to identify themselves, I noticed women fell into two camps – those who compete with other women and those who collaborate. The ‘compete’ women look you up and down when you enter the room. The ‘collaborators’ invite you out for bubbles after work, make you laugh or cry (usually both and several times during any night) and remind you why it’s wonderful to be a woman.

One day, when I was exasperated by the behaviours of a few in the ‘compete’ category I decided to channel this energy into something positive by offering my voluntary help to an inspiring woman who is launching a gender equality project (more on that once she’s ready to go public). My offer was to produce a televised debate on the subject to help publicise her launch. I asked a senior producer friend if she would support my initiative and her immediate answer was “I’m not a feminist”. Ugh? Gobsmacked! If feminism stood for equality between genders why would a strong, intelligent, kind and successful woman like her not want to be a part of that? I tried to imagine a black African saying “I’m not for racial equality!” with the same horror and fear.

So while rivalry among women fuelled my emotions around this subject, witnessing widespread shame over feminism helped focus my actions. I don’t believe in asking people to change. Change has to be inspired from within. But I can do small things to help make feminism desirable again. Making feminism funky, inclusive and unthreatening seems like a necessary prerequisite to mobilising half the population (preferably more). It also seems like a fun and rewarding challenge and will allow me to work with some remarkable and inspiring women.

I also want to find out if my increasingly frequent observations of things being not quite right are substantiated by research. Sadly, the limited research I have done so far suggests the reality is far worse than I had observed. I’ve concluded I am not good acknowledging things that depress me!

And finally, I want to envisage how the future might look if this pattern of inequality that we have come to accept changes quite dramatically. It is worth thinking about this carefully because I suspect women aren’t going to like all the implications of a fairer world. That habit of desiring men who are rich and powerful may need to be revisited, for example. Maybe this is what we’re afraid of. But I believe we should trust our gut, as women are so great at doing, accept that the change may have some uncomfortable bits and journey fourth into the unknown with confidence.

Birth of a Reluctant Feminist

A few events in 1992 created a frustration that disappeared for a while but re-emerged around my 35th birthday. So I’ve decided to create something positive from it. I was an experimental post-graduate sociologist back then. A university tutor by day, a drummer in the weekends and a dancer every Thursday night but that was a bad combination. When my professional dance troupe got a nightclub gig (a harmless fashion show with a few of synchronised twists and twirls) I apparently ‘crossed the line’. My male students found it hard to concentrate and a significant number felt they no longer needed to show me respect. It wasn’t a tragedy. I just quit the dance troupe, died my naturally blonde hair red, and satisfied my urge to be attention's centre by performing as Roxie in the next door town’s production of Chicago. But this was my first experience of having to alter behaviour that felt authentic and harmless because professional success required me to. I understand. Men modify behaviour too. It doesn’t stop it feeling frustrating though.

The event that really sticks from that year, however, is when two post graduate students from the women studies department which shared our brown and dowdy sociology high-rise approached me after departmental drinks to ask if I wore deodorant. When I blushed and confirmed they looked at each other with disgust, flicked their henna-died Mohawks and said ‘we thought so’. It was better than being asked the question because I stank, I guess, but only marginally. This felt like women-on-women warfare. I was a traitor to the cause and nothing less than disregard for personal hygiene would be sufficient to show my loyalty to their superior league of Lesbos.

A few years later, one of their lecturers took her own life at that brown, dowdy, high-rise. I heard she jumped off the roof. Her tragic death bore no relation to anything I’ve said above but it became a symbol to me of the sad lessons I learnt in that place - that so often we women (probably all people, but I’m concerned here with women) focus more on our divisions than on our similarities, that we often confuse power with masculinity to the point where we don’t even know what it feels like to be powerful in a female way. Through our in-fighting, bra-burning and man-blaming, we have given feminism a shockingly bad name. On a bad day I’m ashamed of my gender. On a good day, especially after an evening out, with a group of compassionate, smiling ladies and too much champagne, I love us so much I feel an all-consuming excitement over what we women can contribute to this world, especially if we start drawing more effectively, unashamedly, without bitterness or hesitation on our unique feminine resources. I don’t believe in asking others to change – I’m definitely a ‘live and let live’ kind of a gal - but I figure I can lead by example, living every day in my own authentic way, drawing power from my female attributes wherever it feels right to do so and using my understanding of the media to highlight and celebrate other women who do the same – whether butch or girly, lesbian or straight, blackberry addicts or stay-at-home mums, quiet or as stroppy as hell. Let’s learn how to be powerful women our way (which will mean as many different ways as there are different women) but that diversity will just make this journey of discovery more exciting.