Labouring for the rights of workers
Thanks so much for the vote of confidence, United Nations! Despite an international campaign to finally elect a woman as the secretary-general, none of the five female applicants on the 10-strong shortlist made the cut for the top job. Instead, Wonder Woman has been appointed the honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls.
Yes, Wonder Woman – a pneumatic DC Comics property who has just been reanimated by Hollywood for a blockbuster franchise due out next year.
But I don’t want my empowerment through a cartoon superheroine squeezed into Double-D corsets, even if she does have weaponised accessories. And let’s throw that lasso of truth around that ugly word ‘‘empowerment’’ and drag out the two useful syllables. It’s time women were empowered through power, thanks.
It didn’t matter that more than 1000 of the UN’s own staffers signed a petition protesting against this lame, reductive nonsense; it wasn’t important that many staff gathered in the foyer during the naff movie tie-in ceremony to express their dismay; it wasn’t effective when wellknown real women such as Gloria Steinem and French cabinet minister Segolene Royal condemned the choice as absurd.
Gloria Steinem told CBS she had been inspired by Wonder Woman as a girl and she was ‘‘all for symbolism’’ but this just didn’t cut it: ‘‘We are now looking for women with real terrestrial power.’’
No, the UN still appointed Wonder Woman to use her superpowers to ‘‘highlight what we can collectively achieve if women and girls are empowered’’.
Except, of course, for all those women whining in the background and getting in the way of all the ‘‘empowermenting’’ planned by this august organisation – where nine out of 10 senior jobs are held by men.
But the protesters ‘‘were just being silly’’, said Linda Carter, the actor who played the superheroine on TV. ‘‘Get over yourself already,’’ she said on morning TV. ‘‘It’s bull because they’re nitpicking on something that has nothing to do with anything.’’
Exactly, says every woman fed up with these empty gestures. ’’Empowerment’’ is an ungainly word and if it ever meant anything, it was reduced to pure bullshit many, many cynical campaigns ago. Anyone who uses it wants women to accept some kind of consolation prize, usually a brief surge of endorphins through buying stuff.
At Cannes’ advertising awards, they give out annual prizes for ‘‘femvertising’’, a disgusting portmanteau that at least makes explicit the fact that feminist goals can be co-opted for financial profit.
And it’s not just that beauty company’s awful #choosebeautiful campaign or the sportswear campaign that won plaudits for filming Gisele Bundchen’s boxing workout. It’s the endless prattle force-fed to teenage girls – often in school – about how they can ‘‘do anything’’, but the content is all about feeling positive.
It’s not about getting angry and demanding reform and control. It’s the hundreds of prizes and certificates and awards women can get within industries and corporations – which are nice, sure, but lousy substitutes for more pay and authority.
And it’s all the body-image drivel that dominates the time allotted for talking about women’s rights. Empowerment comes up for every burlesque photoshoot and naked selfie, from plus size to pregnant to Kardashian. Freeing the nipple might be fun, if that’s what you’re into, but it’s just a stunt that doesn’t change anything.
If we must talk about body image (which we do all too often), Wonder Woman is pretty much every trope of impossible hotness, no?
As the petition to prevent her becoming a UN ambassador noted, she’s just ‘‘a large breasted, white woman of impossible proportions, scantily clad in a shimmery, thighbaring bodysuit with an American flag motif and knee high boots – the epitome of a ‘pin-up’ girl’’.
But the United Nations’ Wonder Woman appointment doesn’t make me angry because she’s prettier than average. It would be nice to think ambitious women could forge their paths indifferent to the relative hotness of imaginary Amazon princesses.
No, it annoys me because an organisation that has been charged with improving real equality for women everywhere has stooped to the kind of vapid marketing synergies we’d expect from a skin cream commercial.
Because it ignored the protests of the actual real women the organisation employed. Because its own employment practices suggest it’s not committed to the goal of real empowerment for women.
Because it reminds us forcibly that so many of these campaigns are just empty words, cheap substitutes for real reform.
Yes, symbolic victories do matter in the fight for equality. I know there’s a serious biography of Wonder Woman, and that she carries some mythic freight. But I don’t want inspiration from a token babe member of the Justice League.
Like many women looking for some good news, I’m excited by the possibility that a real woman might soon be elected to one of the most powerful jobs in the world. She doesn’t have a magical backstory, a cosplay outfit or Hollywood good looks. She’s reached an age where women are supposed to be invisible and irrelevant. She isn’t even that charming. She’s actually hard to sell.
Her superpower appears to be working incredibly hard for decades to achieve her goal, unflinching in the face of an obscene amount of hatred. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, that could feel empowering.
Michelle Griffin is state topic editor for The Age newspaper in Melbourne.
It’s now just over a week since Helen Kelly died of cancer. In that week there’s been a wonderful outpouring of condolences and tributes to this extraordinary woman who was totally committed to her life as a trade union activist and leader. The words of admiration and respect have come from near and far, from individual New Zealanders who worked with Helen through to unions, employer groups, parliamentary leaders and international organisations.
The thing we will remember most was her fighting spirit. She was a gutsy union woman, standing up for what’s right no matter what the odds and the obstacles. In campaign after campaign, from the battle over the making of The Hobbit, the Ports of Auckland dispute, the disaster at Pike River mine, fighting for safety in forestry, against Talley’s, against the Government, Helen stood her ground for what she believed in. For what all of us on the Left believe in: the rights of working people and the wrongs of exploitation by the owners of capital.
As our leader, as the head of the CTU, we were proud to stand with her. We knew we had someone on our side who was formidable, who was fearless and who had our backs, too.
Friend and foe alike have spoken about the huge regard and respect they had for Helen, about her remarkable fortitude and her service in support of working people and their families. Helen’s determination and unswerving commitment to social justice and fairness hasn’t gone unnoticed.
But it’s important to remember too that Helen chose to be a trade union member, activist, and leader because she saw unions as embodying the values she believed in and as the best way to advance these values.
Helen was a deeply political person who didn’t just want to make a point, she wanted to make a difference. That meant becoming active, and Helen knew that working people couldn’t do it alone: that we need to act collectively if we’re to have any
An organisation charged with improving real equality for women everywhere has stooped to the kind of vapid marketing synergies we'd expect from a skin cream commercial.
chance of influencing strong, wealthy corporate and vested interests.
Helen’s deep respect for trade unions wasn’t simply about tradition, or about the workers of New Zealand. It was also very much about the nature of democracy, and how democracy must include the voice of working people to be successful. Helen was very concerned about the lack of this voice and the imbalance in power that she witnessed everywhere, from the boardroom to the frontline.
She grew up union. Collectivism came naturally to her. And she pushed unions to be more effective, more political and more active. Helen was always pointing out that democracies need trade unions, not just as bargaining agents, but as important public democratic institutions – a voice for the millions of New Zealanders in their workplace. Helen wanted to see unions protected and supported, not threatened and undermined as they so often have been since the early 1990s.
But she also had a strong message for unions: that we have to act like public institutions, and take on board the enormous responsibility to be the best we can be, to represent working people effectively in our democracy.
Yesterday was Labour Day. The day we put aside to recognise all of the good we have done together, collectively, and all the good we still need to do.
It’s wonderful that Kiwis have so warmly recognised Helen’s rich and important contribution as a trade union leader.
But she would have said that it’s more important to recognise that her call for justice was a call to action, a call for a strong trade union movement. And we must heed that call.
To paraphrase activist and songwriter Joe Hill: ’’Don’t mourn, organise’’. Helen wouldn’t want the nation’s sympathy. She would want people to stand together for a better world.
People have asked me how best to honour Helen’s memory. I give them the answer she would have: Join in union. Make a difference.
Richard Wagstaff is president of the Council of Trade Unions.