by Laura Bates
‘When a customer at work tried to reach his hand down my shirt, I wasn’t taken seriously by any of my co-workers.’
Often, there is a sense that everybody is ‘in on the joke’, so victims feel unable to speak up for fear of being branded humourless, or a troublemaker: ‘While I was bending over to pick up stock, male colleague grabbed my hips & simulated sex. Everyone else laughed.’
The irony is that while such experiences are tolerated and brushed under the carpet due to normalization and a culture of acceptance, in fact everybody is legally protected from sexual harassment in the UK workplace, including protection against the violation of a person’s dignity or the creation of an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. Almost every one of the thousands of incidents reported to us would fall under these categories, yet again and again victims say they feel unable to speak up for fear of not being taken seriously or of losing their jobs.
Part of the reason for this, just as with so many other forms of harassment and assault, is victim-blaming. When workplace harassment hits the headlines, people often react by asking why victims don’t simply stand up for themselves – why didn’t they make a fuss or firmly put their harasser in his or her place? This attitude completely fails to take into account the power dynamics of many workplace harassment scenarios; the vulnerability of many victims and the fear of losing one’s job, particularly at a time when employment is scarce and public attitudes towards victims are unsympathetic. Even if some people are able to stand up for themselves in such a scenario, the point is that nobody should have to – these are serious offences, protected against by law, and they should be treated as such.
The entries we are receiving day in, day out, clearly indicate that the problem has reached epidemic proportions:
‘There will be at least three shifts a week at work where I am spanked, grabbed, groped or stroked.’
‘As junior doctor, asked consultant for second opinion on an X-ray. “Only if you sit on my lap while we look at it.” ’
‘A boss once cornered me in office after everyone left, told me wouldn’t let me leave until I agreed to go out with him. I was sixteen.’
It’s time to start taking workplace harassment seriously, listening to victims and, above all, placing blame firmly where it belongs: with the perpetrator.
Originally published 23 October 2013
FACEPALM FAILS
Every now and then an idea comes along that is so utterly stupid, crass or insensitive that it is impossible to believe it was waved through what must have been several stages of sign-offs and approvals. Into this category fall examples like the ‘Bic for her’, a pen designed especially for the fragile female hand; the UK government decision to force women to pay for their own rape crisis services using proceeds from the tampon tax; and the Cardiff buses advertised using a picture of a naked woman and the slogan ‘Ride me all day for £3’. The FA gets an honourable mention for its tweet welcoming home the bronze medal-winning women’s World Cup team with a message that began: “Our #Lionesses go back to being mothers, partners and daughters today . . .” In fact, I could go on and on.
What’s most shocking about these facepalm-worthy fails is that they aren’t accidental. People have sat down together around a meeting table somewhere and said ‘Hey, this seems like a great plan!’ And at no point from the initial idea to its execution has any policymaker, company boss or stakeholder said ‘Hang on a second, there might just be something a tad . . . sexist about that.’ In fact, in most cases, they clearly thought they were on to an absolutely brilliant idea.
That is perhaps the most eye-opening aspect of these examples. They don’t only reveal the extent of ingrained sexism in our society, but the widespread lack of awareness of the problem. Even when people are actively thinking about initiatives to engage women and girls in areas where they are traditionally under-represented, they don’t see a problem with using sexism and stereotypes to try to address the gap. The irony is astounding.
WHY ‘ENGINEERING BARBIE’S’ PINK WASHING MACHINE DEFEATS THE POINT
‘Math class is tough,’ declared Barbie in 1992, prompting a backlash from the American Association of University Women and a swift adjustment to the toy’s verbal repertoire. It wasn’t the first time the unrealistically proportioned doll had attracted criticisms of sexism, and it wouldn’t be the last. Barbie Babysitter came with a book entitled How to Lose Weight, which contained the helpful advice: ‘Don’t eat.’ And Slumber Party Barbie was supplied with a set of pink scales fixed at 110 lb (50 kg) – 35 lb underweight for her supposed 5 ft 9 in frame.
In 2010, a Barbie book titled I Can Be a Computer Engineer clearly had good intentions, but attracted derision after suggesting that Barbie couldn’t achieve technological success without the help of male friends. (After she crashed two laptops, the boys took over, telling her: ‘Step aside, Barbie. YOU’VE BROKEN ENOUGH, NOW.’) Barbie manufacturer Mattel apologized and withdrew the book from online sale.
So you might think that by 2017, following a recent relaunch supposedly aimed at bringing Barbie into the twenty-first century with more varied body sizes and skin tones, important lessons about stereotyping and sexism might finally have been learned. Apparently not.
Step forward Engineering Barbie, a doll designed to encourage girls into a field in which women are enormously under-represented. So far, so good. Except the products that Engineering Barbie encourages girls to build are limited almost entirely to the realm of fashion and household chores: dresses, a moving clothes rack and a washing machine. And, yes, they are all pink. Created by toy company Thames and Kosmos, the Barbie STEM kit also offers girls aged from four to eight the opportunity to build a jewellery holder and a shoe rack.
The contradictory messaging, which sets out with the aim of overcoming gender stereotypes before falling for them hook, line and sinker, is just the latest in a long line of very similar failures. The European Commission’s doomed ‘Science: it’s a girl thing!’ campaign tried to excite girls about chemistry with a pink lipstick logo and a video featuring giggling, mini-skirted girls dancing amid floating make-up. Then there was energy company EDF’s misguidedly named #PrettyCurious campaign, swiftly followed by IBM’s #HackAHairdryer.
How does this keep on happening? Who has enough awareness of these issues to sit in a production meeting and discuss the need for more progressive toys, but then doesn’t have the awareness to add: ‘Maybe it shouldn’t be pink and deal solely with domestic chores because that defeats the entire point’?
There’s really only one conceivable explanation: people still don’t see the problem with directing hugely stereotyped, patronizing and limited messaging towards girls and young women. There remains a widespread consensus that the way to attract girls to a male-dominated field is to focus on hearts, cupcakes and high heels. While recent attempts, such as Engineering Barbie, represent a major step forward in recognizing that action is needed to tackle the under-representation of girls in science, technology and engineering, it’s ridiculous to think that the solution lies in perpetuating the very stereotypes that are partially responsible for the problem in the first place.
Luckily, there are some good examples out there, from Lammily, the doll with acne, stretch marks and cellulite, to Roominate, a range of building and engineering toys aimed at girls. Online resources such as coding websites and apps for kids and the Science Museum’s online games also provide great starting points for parents who want to expose girls to science and computing.
The more these sexist mistakes pile up, the harder it is to excuse the next misguided campaign. It’s surely not rocket science to realize that if we want to attract more girls to STEM, we need to ditch the stereotypes.
Originally published 26 January 2017
HOW CAN WE BEAT SEXISM IN FOOTBALL? PINK WHISTLES AT THE READY!
The Football Association has revealed its innovative ideas for attracting more girls into the sport, which include pink whist
les, nice-smelling bibs and allowing girls breaks to stop and check their phones.
The plan, hosted on the Sussex FA website, also advises advertising ‘in places where girls go’, such as ‘coffee shops or the backs of toilet doors’, and suggests using discount clothes vouchers as an incentive. Possible slogans to attract girls include: ‘You won’t even notice you’re getting fit!’ and ‘Who needs Facebook friends?’
While the drive to think about making the sport more accessible to women is welcome, some young female football fans have already made their thoughts on the list clear, writing to let the FA know that ‘we aren’t all brainless Barbie dolls’.
As the debate continues, how about similar guidelines for helping women and girls get ahead in other tricky, male-dominated areas?
Getting women into politics
• Insert small cosmetic mirrors along the back of each bench in the House of Commons.
• Slip a discreet handbag-sized brochure of eligible male MPs into the graduation packs of female politics students.
• Encourage even more media coverage of the great shoes female MPs get the chance to wear.
• Suggested slogan: ‘You might be told to “Calm down, dear”, but it’s the taking part that counts!’
. . . and business
• Scented toilet paper in the company lavatories.
• Replace office Christmas tree decorations with miniature tampons.
• Launch an all-female office snowboarding trip so the organization can technically claim higher numbers of ‘women on boards’.
• Suggested slogan: ‘You’ll be having so much fun you won’t even notice you’re being paid 15 per cent less!’
. . . science
• More competitions about make-up and hairdryers. They’ve worked so well in the past!
• Nice-smelling lab coats.
• Run a blind-date night where each girl has to come as a different element of the periodic table and find another attractive element to make a compound with.
• Free tissues in the lab for when they start crying everywhere.
• Suggested slogan: ‘Science: it’s really just all about perfume!’
. . . engineering
• Create glittery tools that female engineers can buy for a bargain 150 per cent more than the mainstream versions.
• Specifically advertise roles where hairstyle isn’t likely to be affected by working conditions (and similar perks).
• Target potential recruits in places where women go, such as Topshop and Bridget Jones’s Baby screenings.
• Suggested slogan: ‘We’re only 9 per cent of the workforce and that’s before we get pushed out by sexism, but by golly our hair looks good!’
. . . space
• Astronaut suits with built-in feather boas.
• Free manicures to be performed by male colleagues during re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere, in preparation for media coverage on landing.
• A small but well-stocked shoe shop on board the International Space Station.
• Curvier, more feminine-shaped rockets.
• Suggested slogan: ‘There’s no washing-up to do in space!’
. . . maths
• Calculator displays that show flowers instead of numbers.
• Seat girls next to male students in the classroom so they can easily learn by peeking at the boys’ answers.
• More exam questions about working out VAT on chocolate and the rising price of women’s underwear.
• Suggested slogan: ‘It’s as easy as one, two . . . ooh, a pretty flower!’
. . . tech
• Raise girls’ aspirations by increasing the breast size of female characters in computer games just a notch more.
• Distract attention from sexual harassment at conferences using flashing lights and loud music.
• Create some kind of international online mob that can shut down any women who mention sexism in gaming, thus making women feel much safer and attracting them to the industry in hordes.
• Suggested slogan: ‘Equal opportunities means women can be harassed in virtual reality too!’
Of course, increasing funding and media coverage for some of our excellent women’s football teams might arguably be a good way to encourage girls into the sport. But where’s the feminine fun in that?
Originally published 12 December 2016
WHY SHOULD WOMEN HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE FOR ‘SAFETY’ ON A DAILY BASIS?
Scrolling through my social media feed this morning, I came across a picture of a jagged, dagger-like implement mounted on a plastic ring. It was being recommended as the perfect product for female runners. It is, of course, bright pink. The idea – according to Fisher Defensive, the company behind the Go Guarded self-defence ring – is that ‘it is a convenient, comfortable, effective way for women to defend themselves if the unthinkable should happen when they are out running, hiking or walking’.
Convenient? That a product intended as a weapon to fight off sexual assault can be described as ‘convenient and comfortable’ crystallizes just how blasé we have become about the idea that constant vigilance is a routine part of a woman’s reality. It is quite normal to come across products like this. Rape alarms. Pepper spray substitutes. Anti-rape underwear. Anti-Rohypnol nail polish. Anything to remind me to step up, open my wallet and pay the price for ‘safety’ as a woman in a man’s world.
The idea that I need reminding to take extra precautions to try to protect myself is laughable. Women do this every day, in hundreds of tiny ways. For most of us, it is automatic. When you’ve been shouted at, grabbed and made to feel afraid for your safety by men in the street a hundred times, responses such as crossing the street, doubling back, avoiding darker routes, clenching your fists, walking faster, and countless others, happen instinctively. It still doesn’t stop us from being harassed, assaulted and raped.
The reality of how heavily the threat of sexual violence hangs over women’s daily lives was laid bare today in new data from ActionAid UK. A poll of 2,200 people revealed that in the past month alone, 57 per cent of British women have experienced some form of harassment and just under one in six (16 per cent) have been groped.
These are shocking statistics. But even more dispiriting is the finding that over 70 per cent of all British women and 88 per cent of those aged 18–24 have taken steps in their everyday lives to guard against harassment. Sexual violence doesn’t only impact women’s lives in the moment of an assault or an incident of harassment. It affects us every day, influencing our behaviour, our travel plans and our peace of mind.
The poll listed ten different strategies women use to try to avoid harassment, from steering clear of parks or public transport to taking a chaperone or even failing to attend work, school or college altogether. A quarter of the women polled had changed their travel route and 28 per cent had prepared to use an everyday object, such as keys or an umbrella, as a weapon.
We must confront the idea that it is acceptable, normal even, to live in a world where women disrupt their lives to avoid sexual harassment and violence on a daily basis. We must recognize the absurdity and horror of a woman posting a review on the Amazon page for the ‘self-defence ring’ that reads: ‘I still have a small knife in my runner’s pocket, but I like the extra time that Go Guarded buys me before pulling out my knife.’
While we are repeatedly told to stop making a fuss because women are equal now, we are buying back-up self-defence weapons to give us time to reach our regular ones. The disparity between the notion that the problem is solved and the toll it takes on women and girls is absurd. So take a step in the opposite direction. Disrupt a norm. Listen to a woman in your life about her experiences of harassment. Talk to your son about sexual consent. Discuss sexual violence with men. And, above all, recognize that this is a reality women live with day in, day out, and it is one that won’t be fixed with a bright-pink ring.
Originally published 25 November 2016
STRIPPING MIS
S GREAT BRITAIN OF HER TITLE FOR HAVING SEX ON TV REVEALS OUR DOUBLE STANDARDS
Miss Great Britain Zara Holland has been stripped of her title after having sex with fellow contestant Alex Bowen on ITV2 reality show Love Island.
The official Miss Great Britain Twitter account released a statement saying that the decision had been taken with ‘great regret’, adding: ‘We pride ourselves on promoting the positivity of pageants in modern society and this includes the promotion of a strong, positive female role model in our winners . . . The feedback we have received from pageant insiders and members of the general public is such that we cannot promote Zara as a positive role model moving forward . . . We wholly understand that everyone makes mistakes, but Zara, as an ambassador for Miss Great Britain, simply did not uphold the responsibility expected of the title.’
As if Holland hasn’t already suffered enough after spending the past two weeks stuck on an island with a bunch of sexist men talking about ‘leathering’ the female contestants and boasting of ‘letting’ their girlfriends out so other men could admire them before taking them home. Now she has been hung out to dry by a group that has collectively dissected her sexual behaviour and found it wanting, publicly describing her decision to sleep with Bowen on the show as a ‘mistake’.
After facing a backlash from Twitter users accusing the pageant of sexism and slut-shaming the 20-year-old, the account tweeted: ‘To be clear we have no problem at all with sex – it is perfectly natural. We simply can’t condone what happened on national TV.’
Thus, Miss Great Britain provided a fascinating insight into the outdated double standards ingrained into the modern beauty pageant.
In fairness, the organizers of Miss Great Britain aren’t entirely ignorant of how archaic the pageant is; their website enthusiastically reminds readers that the first-ever winner won seven guineas and a swimsuit, in an exercise designed so that ‘men could enjoy watching pretty girls’. A quick glance at the 2013 finalists photograph on the website suggests that very little has changed: identikit women are lined up like cattle, with identification numbers to boot.