A Swift path to equality is needed
INTERNATIONAL Women’s
Day for me is a day for feminist reflection and this year was no different.
In the week leading up to IWD, I watched the Taylor Swift bio pic Miss Americana with my eldest daughter, Bella. I hadn’t imagined that Taylor Swift’s biopic would be, in part, a detailing of her feminist awakening but that is, in part, exactly what it is.
Much has been written about Swift and feminism.
Swift says she spent a lot of her younger years understanding that to claim and maintain success she had to be a good girl.
She talks about not rocking the boat, trying to be perfect, trying not to be controversial, she worked hard at smiling and waving. Swift says she was told that good girls never push their opinions on someone or make someone uncomfortable with their truth.
However, Swift decided to speak her truth, irrespective of whether it made people uncomfortable in 2018 in the US mid-term elections.
The Republican candidate in her home state had voted against fair wages for women and had voted against the Violence Against Women Act, and Swift spoke out against her as a candidate.
The moment she chose to speak her truth also came not long after winning a civil suit that had been brought against her by a radio DJ who sued her for $3m in lost wages after he was sacked from his job having sexually assaulted her.
After winning the civil suit, she said, “You don’t feel any victory when you win because the process is so dehumanising . . . this is with seven witnesses and a photo. What happens when you are raped and it’s your word against his?”
In response to the misogyny she had faced in her career and the need to speak her truth, she wrote her song The Man. It showcases in the context of her experience, spectacular double standards between men and women.
In the song she says in relation to the male experience, “And it’s all good if you’re bad, And it’s OK if you’re mad”.
In contrast she states in relation to the female experience, “If I was out flashing my dollars, I’d be a bitch, not a baller. They paint me out to be bad”. She concludes the verse with an acknowledgment of the validity of female anger in the face of the double standard, “So it’s OK that I’m mad”.
Not that long ago Grace Tame sparked a national discussion about whether women’s anger has a place in our society or at least on our faces. The reaction to her anger and our response as a nation has interested me. I have wrestled with it and reflected on it, and it has percolated in my brain.
I have struggled to understand why women are always judged through the lens of niceness and likability rather than whether what they are saying has substance and credibility.
My favourite comment throughout the debate was from Virginia Trioli when she said: “After hundreds of years of being raised in the arts of making nice – for safety, for self-preservation, for comfort and for the comfort of others – a new generation of women is stepping into their power fuelled by the unasked-for anger that is the by-product of their trauma. And they want you to see it on their face. And they don’t care if it makes you or makes me squirm. We are going to have to get comfortable with seeing a woman’s rage. And if this generation is offering to teach us all the dark arts of refusing to make nice – I want to join their coven.”
Recently I followed a former work colleague on LinkedIn.
In her bio she described herself as disruptive and ambitious. It was the first time I recall reading ambition as a positive word used to describe a woman, let alone oneself. I got really emotional reading it. I have never experienced the use of that word as a descriptor for a women being used in a positive way.
The idea that she owned the word and turned it into a positive statement of who she is, was genuinely inspiring.
The words of Swift, the visual anger and bravery of Grace Tame and the owning of who we are as women without apology has made me feel like there has been a shift, a new hope for gender equality, that people are finally listening.
If that is true, now is the moment to act. Please, let’s get gender equality done!
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I RECALL READING AMBITION AS A POSITIVE WORD USED TO DESCRIBE A WOMAN, LET ALONE ONESELF. I GOT REALLY EMOTIONAL READING IT.