Why it’s vital we teach children that men and women are equal
“MUM, boys are stronger than girls.”
Luke made this declaration one day after school with an unsettling level of surety. It was clear this ancient knowledge about male superiority – stronger naturally meaning better – had been passed on in the playground and he treated it with some reverence.
Stunned and indignant, my mind flooded with thoughts of equality and feminism and I badly wanted to respond with a statement of such gravity that it’d knock schoolyard thinking into the 21st century.
But all I could manage was: “Err well um physically maybe, but not necessarily, um err and of course it totally depends in what context you’re thinking ‘cos you know...girls can do lots of things and er...”
He looked confused, I was embarrassed at having let my sex down so badly and slunked out of the room.
The problem was I hadn’t been expecting such a gender-biased statement from a six-year-old and it temporarily paralysed my brain.
But then again the reason for the statement was because he and all of his friends are six and are trying to understand the world and find out where they fit in. Luke’s very firmly in the “urgh that’s pink and it’s for girls so I want no part of it” stage.
It’s natural, I know, and I did and still do talk to him about how girls can do anything boys can do, equality in general and how differences of all kinds, not just those of gender, should be respected and celebrated.
I probably bang on a bit too much because he’ll go “yeah, I know, I know”. But embedding the simple idea of equality in pliable young minds before all the negative stuff starts to encroach is the only way we’re going to change things in the long term. Lord knows it’s much harder work getting through to adults.
Take equal pay for example. When you’ve allegedly got bosses of certain enormous organisations still struggling to wrap their heads around the mind-blowing concept that women should get paid the same as men for doing the same work, it’s like there’s been no progress at all.
My mum once told me that when she started work back in the ‘60s the company she worked for had two pay scales: one for men and one for women. It was written in black and white that by mere virtue of being born with different reproductive organs women would be paid less for doing exactly the same job as a man.
It’s an astonishing fact and something not allowed these days, at least not officially. But try telling the BBC’s former China editor Carrie Gracie that. In evidence given to the culture select committee she stated she discovered she was paid £100,000 less than male colleagues in the same roles. She testified management told her this was because she was “still in development”. It seems society’s “still in development” too when it comes to equality for women. Anyone who’s watched the winter Olympics could not fail to have been stunned by the incredible, gravity-defying skills and courage of US gold medal snowboarder Chloe Kim. But a US radio host decided her best attribute was that she was “a little piece of hot ass”, according to reports, and was fired as a result.
Just last year Polish MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke told the European Parliament women should earn less than men because they are “smaller, weaker and less intelligent”.
Without any context it would be easy to believe that both of the preceding sexist comments came from the 1930s.
Even Piers Morgan called KorwinMikke “a very stupid man”. Ladies, things must be bad if Piers has to stick up for us.
How is it even possible that men still think this way in the 21st century? Even more worrying is the backlash to the anti-sexual harassment and inequality campaigns #MeToo and #TimesUp. It seems some men fear the pendulum has swung too far the other way. I disagree.
Society doesn’t need to become anti-men to be pro-women. That’s a ludicrous and highly agendised distortion of what’s happening.
All women require is a playing field which is demonstrably level to anyone with eyes and half an ounce of sense and not to be judged or valued simply on looks. Is that too much to ask?