What women still can’t do

Michele A’Court

Walking, drinking and women’s history are all near the top of my list of favourite things, so you can bet your Kate-Sheppard-embellished $10 note that I threw myself with gusto into a feminist pub crawl in Wellington last weekend. The Badass Bitches Walking Tour was part of LitCrawl, Wellington’s boutique-sized writers’ festival. Hosted by social history curator Jessie Bray Sharpin, it put the ‘‘crawl’’ into ‘‘lit’’ – again, in a boutique kind of way. It took place in four bars in the capital’s CBD, where we were offered appropriately selected craft beers (there’s an IPA called ‘‘Rebel’’) to match terrific stories about women who had once stood in these places.

I am a newly minted fan of Mary Taylor. She arrived in Aotearoa in 1845, did a little cattle trading, opened a draper’s store, and wrote a bunch of letters home to her old friend, Charlotte Bronte.

It’s been a long time since I went on a pub crawl. Decades. It was also in Wellington. I was a journalism student. The events were long and unruly, and I’m not sure how I got out alive. Almost didn’t once – it’s the story you can imagine – and I worked out this group adventure wasn’t safe for young women.

A pub crawl could only be a bonding rite of passage for half of us.

So there was a sweetness to last Sunday when we travelled in a sisterly pack (gentlemen included) and got to know each other, shared stories of our own – in voices perceptibly louder as we reached each bar – and arranged ourselves in different clusters. It felt part pub crawl, part Reclaim the Night march. Who knew those two youthful memories would wrap themselves around each other 40 years later?

On the same day as the Bad Ass Bitches went walking, news agencies reported that women in Iran were permitted to attend a football final for the first time in 35 years. In March, women were detained for trying to watch a game in a country where they’ve been explicitly excluded from sports venues, so their group, ‘‘Open Stadiums’’, handed a petition to Fifa signed by 200,000 people. ‘‘We have also,’’ the women said, ‘‘been excluded from public happiness and excitement.’’ Exactly.

There is explicit exclusion in some countries, implicit exclusion in others. Last month, activist Danielle Muscato asked women on Twitter what they would do if all men had a 9pm curfew. Go for a walk after dark, they replied, without being afraid. That’s it. A walk at night – in a park, in their neighbourhood, to a bus stop, to our homes. Instead, women have accepted their involuntary curfew and not yet dared to suggest we should try things the other way round.

A pub crawl is a good start.

Jeremy Elwood

Ihaven’t ever been excluded from anywhere, unless it was either entirely my own fault or entirely justifiable. The first category includes forgetting a ticket, losing an invitation, or having a couple too many aperitifs before attempting to go to a bar. I like to think I accept all three of those situations with a certain degree of grace. I have a simple rule when it comes to arguing with bouncers – don’t. Best case scenario, you wind up in exactly the same position as when you started; worst case, you wind up in a holding cell or a hospital. Your best approach is to just smile, nod, and walk away.

As for the second, I remember the first time I spotted a women-only gym that had opened in my hometown. I was a young man and for a split second, I grudgingly admit, I felt affronted. Women? Having their own space?

Then I thought about it. If I was going to go to a gym (please, keep your laughter to a minimum) I wouldn’t want to go to one filled with sweaty men posing in mirrors and leering at everyone either. So, after that split second, I shrugged and figured I’d just smile, nod, and walk away.

I also don’t go in for pub crawls in a big way, but my reasoning is that if I find a bar I like, I stay there. Why walk, and risk the next stop being a step down? I know, my attitude to exercise needs work.

So, outside of the obvious and the self-inflicted, there has been virtually nowhere in my life that I felt I couldn’t go if I wanted to. I never thought of that as a privilege. I never thought of that as a right. I never thought of it at all.

I’m not saying I’ve never felt threatened on a night out. I have. But it’s usually for good reason, not simply because of who, and where, I am.

We have a tendency to look at countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and many others and mark their slow progress in allowing women to do the stuff we take for granted with a mixture of exasperation, disbelief, and a little hope. Driving. Going to a movie. Attending a football match.

And yet, in our own country, there is another list of things that women avoid that we see as ‘‘common sense’’. Walking across a park at night. Taking a shortcut. Drinking alone in a bar, any bar.

So the next time you hear some angry bloke complain about International Women’s Day, or women-only events, or separate gyms, do us all a favour. Tell him he’s wrong. Then smile, nod, and walk away.