I was a feminist but can’t use a washing machine N
ANETTE Newman and a young Leslie Ash smiled sweetly for the camera in the 1960s and a gentle chorus sang: “Hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face with mild green Fairy Liquid.”
What was then an innocuous TV advert is now being given as an example of gender stereotyping which the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) wants to stop. It says adverts that suggest a woman’s role is in the kitchen “can restrict the choices, aspirations and opportunities of children, young people and adults.”
Attitudes have changed over the decades but those old domestic stereotypes linger on. Back in 1976 I wrote a feature for the Examiner about exchanging household roles with my wife Maria.
A photographer took pictures of me cooking, filling a washing machine, using a Hoover and serving Maria tea as she reclined on a chaise longue.
Of course I never completed any of the tasks for which I posed and even the teapot was empty.
After the photographer had gone Maria resumed control of the house and I still don’t know how to use a washing machine.
At the time I considered myself a feminist but saw nothing wrong in reinforcing the accepted role models. It was, after all, a bit of a laugh.
Besides, a bloke would look daft doing the Shake ‘n Vac instead of the blonde and vivacious actress, singer and dancer Jenny Logan.
This despite my support for the feminist movement since the Swinging 60s when young women burned their bras and I embraced The Female Eunuch. That’s the book by Germaine Greer.
Having two daughters in the 1970s reinforced my beliefs. Both went to university and our younger graduated in Women’s Studies and Social Policy. Both made their own choices. Both wanted to do social work although advertising remained biased, stores separated toys for boys or girls and career advice was often offered along similar lines.
It’s 50 years since the movement for equality started as part of a sexual revolution that initially got sidetracked in the sex part rather than women applying for jobs as engineers.
Advances have been made but its pace remains slow and glass ceilings are everywhere. Look at the wage differences revealed by the BBC last week.
Banning kitchen adverts may not be a turning point in the campaign, but at least it has added to the debate and may peel away another layer of gender bias.
Psychologist Emma Kenny said: “We need to regulate marketing and advertising standards so that they start to represent the reality of what it’s like to be a human being. And that means removing the restrictions that they place, funneling girls down one route, funneling boys down the other, because ultimately the majority of individuals fall somewhere inbetween.
“It is the marketers that have created those gender stereotypes.” One fun way to make the point would be to have a Fairy Liquid advert fronted by Gary Lineker taking pride in his soft hands and David Beckham doing the Shake n Vac.