X Close

Women are being erased A 'progressive' agenda has become surreal and poisonous

A gagged woman protesting in Madrid (Photo by Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

A gagged woman protesting in Madrid (Photo by Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)


June 23, 2021   8 mins

Women over 50 become “invisible”. I see that assertion confidently stated all the time now, in magazines and websites, as if it were indisputable fact. It’s often followed by the crucial steps one must apparently take to fight off this encroaching disappearance. But what sort of visibility are we talking about?

It’s partly sexual, of course: a woman aged 50, however stylish or attractive, is unlikely to get the same level of male attention as a woman in her 20s. For many, this is a blow to self-esteem, but the consequences aren’t confined to personal feeling. Youth and sexual attractiveness remain an undeniable form of currency in the world, and in certain professional settings they are disproportionately valued — even more in women than in men. We are all familiar with the long-preferred pairing of the grizzled male newsreader with the younger, highly-groomed female counterpart. Not that younger women aren’t competent. But the professional qualities that accrue with age as palpable advantages in men — knowledge, contacts, experience — count for less in women. Instead, ageing often renders them professionally “invisible”.

It’s not only a question of age. The broader erasure of women, both young and old — along with everything associated with them — has become something of a publishing phenomenon. Caroline Criado Perez kicked it off with her best-selling Invisible Women: Exploring Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, in which she used a wealth of research to illustrate how big “data gaps” around women and their needs has led to a world predominantly designed around a “default man”. Everything from car and seatbelt design to the inadequate floor-space allocated for women’s toilets lead to worse outcomes for women: we wait in a much longer queue for public lavatories and, if unlucky enough to be involved in a car crash, are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, and 17% more likely to die.

Following Criado Perez, and featuring a quote from her on the cover, is a new book by the London-based Swedish journalist Katrine Marçal: Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored In An Economy Built For Men (out tomorrow). It expands on the hot topic of women being ignored, but delves into its own territory: how technological innovation has traditionally been seen as a male pursuit, resulting in female inventors being written out of history and new proposals being downgraded.

Marçal has a knack for pulling out sharp insights and illustrative stories. She tells the tale of Bertha Benz, who — without informing her husband Karl — manoeuvred the early automobile, or “horseless carriage,” he had built out of the factory — and took it on a trip to a town 90km away. Along the way she used a hatpin to clear a fuel pipe blockage and a garter to insulate an exposed ignition wire; and invented the world’s first brake linings by getting a shoemaker to cover the troublesome brake blocks with leather. But then, Bertha had a personal interest in proving that the “horseless carriage” worked: she had invested her entire dowry in the enterprise.

What repeatedly emerges in Mother of Invention is the complex collaboration, often between traditionally ‘male’ and ‘female’ skills, that permits technological innovation to happen. Expert seamstresses, for instance, worked with NASA to make the soft, 21-layer space suits that Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong wore for the first moon-landing. ILC, the company that made the suits, understood “that sewing was a technology, and that soft things can perform hard functions.” Yet while an emergent technology may rely on women as a work force, once it becomes successfully established, a new narrative often emerges — one in which the work becomes higher status, better paid, and increasingly designated as “instinctively” suited to men.

The first “computers”, Marçal writes, were women: banks of relatively low-paid female employees who sat for hours at a time doing calculation work. By the 1900s, the industry was female-dominated: the University of Pennsylvania alone employed more than 200 women as “computers”. In the war years, women made up 75% of the workforce at Bletchley Park, where they worked on cracking the Enigma code. Indeed, when the engineers there built the “world’s first electronic, programmable computer,” it was operated by female volunteers from the Women’s Royal Naval Service: in essence the first programmers.

At some point in the 1960s, however, the tide turned. As computers became increasingly central to industries and government, a campaign drive was launched to recruit “promising young men from the right social class.” The women who knew how to program were now “tasked with training up the young men to effectively become their own bosses.” With little prospect of promotion, women began to leave computing in droves, and a wealth of experience was lost.

It was not the first sea-change in sex and status within an industry — the historical shift in “secretaries” from male to predominantly female was another — and Marçal also makes an interesting point about what might be waiting in the future. The growing sophistication of AI and the looming “second machine age”, she says, could redistribute work status in a fundamental way. Robots — like Deep Blue, the computer that beat Garry Kasparov at chess — are good at “thinking” but bad at anything that requires complex physical movement, emotional intelligence or unpredictable situations. Work such as caring for children and the elderly, or cleaning houses, is therefore the least likely to be replaceable by a robot. Could it be that so-called “soft skills” will rise in prestige, and see male competition for entry?

Nothing can happen without this work. Those in jobs which offer the highest prestige, top earnings and longest hours are dependent on a raft of others: a compliant (usually female) partner who is willing to either perform or outsource a greater proportion of the domestic burden; a nanny, to help with the children; a carer, to look after elderly parents; a secretary, to manage appointments; restaurant staff, to make work-related entertaining possible, and so it goes on. Yet these essential jobs — disproportionately done by women — are relatively low-status.

The disparity of professional status between men and women, and why it might exist, is the central concern of Mary Ann Sieghart’s new book The Authority Gap (out 1st July). It opens with an uncomfortable moment between Mary McAleese, then President of the Republic of Ireland, and Pope John Paul II. As McAleese was on the point of introduction to the pontiff, he walked past her to introduce himself instead to her husband, and asked him, “Would you not prefer to be President of Ireland rather than married to the President of Ireland?’ The “joke” went down understandably badly with President McAleese (it can’t have felt great for her husband either). It’s an example, Sieghart argues, of the way in which women are “underestimated, talked over, ignored, patronized and generally not taken as seriously as a man”.

She collates an impressive bank of research to drive home the point, with some interesting social experiments: when social scientists sent out applications for a lab manager position to male and female science professors at top universities, identical save for the “randomly assigned” male or female names at the top, the professors — including the women — rated the “male” applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the “female” one. Students taking an online course rated their instructor more highly if they thought they were being taught by a man. And identical CVs with a man’s name at the top were more likely to lead to a job offer.

The experience of trans people strengthens her case. The trans men cited in the book found that their authority went up after transitioning, along with their pay: as men, people generally accorded them more respect and approval. The trans women had the opposite experience: post-transition, many were shocked suddenly to find themselves being talked over, queried and assumed to be incompetent. They had been used to different treatment.

Women in the very top jobs report that they are insulated from such negative behaviour by the authority that comes with the role itself. The book does succeed in demonstrating, however, that — below a certain professional level — many men and women have difficulty accepting female authority. Yet there are also men who are very supportive of female colleagues, and I did often find myself questioning whether it is valuable for professional women to nurse outrage over mildly insensitive comments, rather than simply ridicule or ignore them. The amplification of silly remarks, so that others might share performatively in the horror, has become fashionable. The author describes a dinner in which the older male banker beside her asks what she does, and she duly lists six impressive elements of her “portfolio career,” from sitting on the council of the Tate Modern to writing a political column. Perhaps stunned by this deluge of achievement, the banker replied, “Wow, you’re a busy little girl!” A bit patronising, yes. But the outraged Sieghart describes it as “probably the most egregious example of being (literally) belittled that I can recall” and ends up complaining about it on Twitter.

Status is inextricably linked to respect, pay and promotion, meaning the absence of it has material and psychological effects. It makes sense to want it. But there is a distinction between the professional authority that derives from seeking to do a job properly, and the egotistical authority that craves a particular reverence from those around you. The former is more admirable, but the latter is what often drives ambitious employees to ask for pay rises, apply for the top job, and treat not just the work itself but their own position with the greatest seriousness. Some people get to the top of hierarchies because it is the most effective way to have control over their work, others because they enjoy dominance over others. Although a dollop of ego is often a professional necessity, philosophically there is something faintly ludicrous about regarding a status achieved at work as a just reflection of one’s essential worth.

There’s sometimes a whiff of this tendency in “fifty of the world’s most powerful, successful and authoritative women,” whom Sieghart interviews for the book (invariably mentioning their startling intelligence). Frances Morris, the Director of Tate Modern, laments how, “As director of Tate Modern, I can spend all day as a powerful, articulate person who’s taken seriously, and I can leave this building and I am nobody. Because as a woman in the world out there, I’m not taken seriously.”

But isn’t that simply life? At home we have to unload the dishwasher and pay the bills. At parties we make conversation with people who have no idea what we do. We are all our context, to some extent. And the drug of workplace importance has a limited efficacy for men too: a month after retirement a male CEO will no doubt find himself in the garden centre, a silver-haired man in a baseball cap staring at a pair of garden shears, wondering where all the phone calls went. And if women are sometimes held back by bias, then strong social expectations of what a man should be, including successful and dominant in the workplace, also take their toll on the male psyche — something which may be reflected in the higher rate of male suicide.

The testimony in The Authority Gap is often interesting, and many of the social syndromes it identifies are recognisable. But it is mainly focused on the nuances of female status in the upper echelons of politics, business and the media. It eloquently describes the frustration of a higher-status woman being mistaken for a lower-status one, for example. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the former Danish PM, was confused with a secretary when she was an MEP. Dawn Butler, a black Labour MP, was told by a fellow MP, in a comment compounded by racial bias: “This lift really isn’t for cleaners.”

That focus only takes us part-way. One step forward will indeed come when men stop making uninformed assumptions about the roles that women around them play. But the next step will come — as Marçal’s book suggests — when the gulf in status between MPs and the secretaries and cleaners who make their jobs possible itself starts to narrow.

But it’s just as possible to step backwards as forwards. These books, which emphasise the historical precariousness of female power, have been published at a time when a rapacious market is more alert than ever to the cash-generating properties of female bodies. A number of US states have already legalised commercial surrogacy, for example, while a multi-billion pound porn industry churns out increasingly violent sexual images which have consequences in real-life behaviour: impoverished women especially are seen as holes to be drilled and wombs to be filled.

At the same time a belligerent “progressive” agenda is performing its own reduction in the name of “inclusion”, pressing for resonant words such as  “woman” and “mother” to be removed from institutional language that emphasises functionality: “people who give birth” or “menstruators”. Should women choose to express the view that their biological sex is meaningful and immutable, they are publicly shamed and threatened online with rape and other violence, while men who make similar points are generally left alone. A number of organisations have been startlingly eager to join in the punitive enforcing of “acceptable speech” for women.

In just a few years, with little official acknowledgment, the treatment of women in society has transformed into something chilling, surreal and often poisonous. And I can’t help thinking that, as things stand, these thoughtful, data-driven and necessary books about nuance and bias are a little like talking about redesigning a forest park in the middle of a wildfire. In the current cultural climate, many women are, quite rationally, now deciding that to be an invisible woman is the safest option they have.


Jenny McCartney is a journalist, commentator and author of the novel The Ghost Factory.

mccartney_jenny

Join the discussion


Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber


To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.

Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.

Subscribe
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

50 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Caroline Watson
Caroline Watson
3 years ago

Any woman who accepts the concept of ‘gender’, or pretends that mammals can change sex, or who uses the absurd terminology (‘cis’, ‘trans’, ‘non-binary’, ‘my pronouns are’),or who accepts the presence of males in female lavatories and changing rooms, is colluding with her own erasure.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
3 years ago

I agree.

Saul D
Saul D
3 years ago

Psychologically men and women are measurably different on certain key measures. If job performance is correlated with any of these key measures, then it would be rational to choose one gender over another for a particular job.
For instance, if empathy is more strongly female associated, and more important for jobs like healthcare or teaching, then you would naturally expect employers to show a bias towards female applicants based on inate gender characteristics – based on the evidence of their own experiences dealing with people.
That men and women have different characteristics that are orthogonal to intelligence or ability thus affects ‘fit’ in a broader sense. An important measurable one is risk aversion. Men are less risk averse overall than women. This has a negative that men are more likely to foul up big, but the converse is they are also more likely to win big by trying something new – they win more by entering more lotteries, not by being more lucky.

Caroline Watson
Caroline Watson
3 years ago
Reply to  Saul D

I have no empathy whatsoever, including towards pathetic women who live off men.

Simon Coulthard
Simon Coulthard
3 years ago

Isn’t that most women historically? Are those women necessarily pathetic?

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
3 years ago

No, but in times and cultures where the life of the sexes were very different and the traditions were largely invariable, there was no reason to allocate higher status to what the men did. However, at some time that is what happened and it was accepted.
I think men and women are complementary but should also have chices regarding their roles.

Franz Von Peppercorn
Franz Von Peppercorn
3 years ago

Historically women did work on the farm. And housework was real drudgery. Of course much of this was outsourced to other women ie servants.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
3 years ago
Reply to  Saul D

There are innate differences between the sexes obvious at an early age. Different career choices follow. I’ve learned that female stock brokers are better because they aren’t in risk competition with my money. But some individuals are not trapped by their apparent identity, good for them.

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
3 years ago
Reply to  Saul D

I agree; neither is called ‘the opposite sex’ was no reason.

Peter LR
Peter LR
3 years ago

“ female volunteers from the Women’s Royal Naval Service: in essence the first programmers” – they were data inputers, Turing et al were the programmers. I hope the other books mentioned have more accurate accreditation of facts than this.
I think I preferred Jordan Peterson’s analysis of the “gender wars” than those offered here: women making decisions based on quality of life rather than desires for power.
But do women do themselves mischief by submitting to the role of glamorous appearance? At the risk of sounding patronising, let me suggest that women find a loving and doting husband. Far from becoming invisible, my wife became increasingly gorgeous in her fifties. Beauty is in the heart of the beholder and the character of the beheld!

Caroline Watson
Caroline Watson
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter LR

No. I have always made decisions based on a desire for personal power.

Fredrick Urbanelli
Fredrick Urbanelli
3 years ago

This article, though well-written and well-“reasoned”, falls into the usual feminist boilerplate claims that only women are undervalued, underestimated and underpaid in the workplace. It is these very claims and the blindered insistence with which they are made that cause men to turn their attention elsewhere. How can you explain that being passed over, ignored and underappreciated in the professional world is standard operating procedure? Especially to a woman who is convinced that she has a sexist grievance and whose “sisters” nearly always agree with her. The two books cited here, though based on “a wealth of research” ( ahem), and filled with “sharp insights and illustrative stories” apparently do nothing to illustrate or attempt insight into the working lives of men. And why on earth should they? It would defeat the authors’ purpose. The anecdotes about female computer programmers being responsible for giving birth to cyber technology and auto mechanics are cute if fatuous. And ” welcome to the club” is just about the only reply one can give to the complaints about one’s supposed authority not being taken seriously. Anything else while we’re at it?

David Nebeský
David Nebeský
3 years ago

IT history described in the article is extremely inaccurate and misleading.

Philip Stott
Philip Stott
3 years ago
Reply to  David Nebeský

Yup. The author would have been better off mentioning Ada Lovelace who actually was a programmer, rather than the data entry clerks at Bletchley Park she falsely elevates to the ‘first programmers’.

Tom Lewis
Tom Lewis
3 years ago

“Women are being erased”
I supposed you think you are special ? Join the queue. We were here first (White, cis, males, British history/culture etc etc) and maybe, just maybe, feminists lead the charge ! What’s that old saying, about playing with a tiger’s tail !

Jon Redman
Jon Redman
3 years ago

men who make similar points are generally left alone

Rubbish.

Gunner Myrtle
Gunner Myrtle
3 years ago
Reply to  Jon Redman

Agree – that was the weakest point in the article. No one who says those things is left alone.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago

If the name of the review above was changed to “People Are Being Erased” it would then be useful and interesting to read.
There is a very strong idea that youth is the most important thing today and people reach the age of 50 feeling that they are past it and that it is only important to try to be youthful. They have surgical processes to rebuild youth (women more than men because when they were young they might have tried to use beauty to attract men but men are catching up fast with the surgery). Some women I know get together at weekends away from their families and get blind drunk for 48 hours because this is how they view the image of ‘youth’ today.
To me, young people are shallow and worthless and are lacking in character. Most just copy each other because it is the ‘cool’ thing to do. People, as they get older, develop characters and become worth knowing, especially if they don’t waste their time chasing the idea of youth. They become interesting when they get older.

Sue Julians
Sue Julians
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

interesting. I think it largely depends on your currency. If you have used your beauty to attain this, then of course you will feel aggrieved when it is lost and you will do whatever it takes to maintain a youthful appearance.
If, however, you wanted to be taken seriously for your brain and not your looks, then the loss of objectification is a blessed relief.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago
Reply to  Sue Julians

You might wish otherwise but very attractive women can find stupid, rich men and have a good life. Some may not want to do this but it is interesting that nearly all footballers have very attractive wives/girlfriends.

You could despise me for saying this. You could ignore me or call me sexist but you could not deny the truth of the matter. Does this mean that footballers wives/girlfriends come from extreme poverty? No. It just makes men stupid.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
3 years ago
Reply to  Chris Wheatley

Why stupid? Some might have chosen a nice, beautiful woman, over a nice, plain woman. Others might simply have different priorities.
From a published interview:
“Would you have married you husband, Mrs. Trump, if he had not been rich?”
“Do you think my husband would have married me if I had not been beautiful”?

Sue Julians
Sue Julians
3 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

I don’t have an issue with why people choose to get married: I was trying to make the point that if it’s mostly due to the beauty of youth and not character, you are expected to stay that way. Otherwise you may find you’re traded in for a younger model.

Last edited 3 years ago by Sue Julians
Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
3 years ago
Reply to  Sue Julians

No disagreement with you – anyway it was Chris Wheatley who talked about ‘stupid men’.

Sue Julians
Sue Julians
3 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Ah yes, apols. Meant to reply to him not you!

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
3 years ago

It is a fact that both men (and many women) respond more favourably to a woman (including in the workplace) who is attractive and presents well. I did the experiment and got immediate results. I’m not saying that that says the right thing about society, it just is what it is.
That said you should not go too far and I think things have gone too far…. If I watch American TV, many women are coiffed and made up and stretched and injected to within an inch of their lives …. and all look the same. I find this offputting.

Philip Stott
Philip Stott
3 years ago

Hey Lesley, does “I did the experiment” mean you spent some time in the morning going to work as you usually do, then some time going to work after spending more time on your appearance than normal and you noticed an uplift in positive interactions with colleagues (and especially senior colleagues) than normal?

Last edited 3 years ago by Philip Stott
Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
3 years ago
Reply to  Philip Stott

I did an extreme makeover at some cost and effort. I looked the same but better and updated my wardrobe more aggressively (I was in fashion aligned business so it counts). It changed interactions with colleagues and seniors and it also changed interactions with men and women.
I am not saying this is the only factor at play as I had done very well prior to this, but outward appearance definitely had an influence. As I became older and colleagues were then younger in relation to me, it became even more beneficial. I remained relevant and was never invisible right up until I retired. I worked in an ageist corporate.

Last edited 3 years ago by Lesley van Reenen
Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
3 years ago

Insightful and thought-provoking article.

On just one subpoint – status and authority:
Without denying the existance of stereotypes etc. etc. how much of that could be linked to presentation? Personally I tend to have a continuous, almost subconscious thread running, of who respects who, who is where in the hierarchy. As my favourite psycholinguist, Deborah Tannen, describes it, respect and status is the currency and main topic that runs through all male interactions, whereas female interactions are more focused around togetherness and intimacy*. Anyway, the upshot is that as a man you are used to challenging and being challenged, used to signal how much space you intend to claim – and be ready to back it up or pipe down, depending on how the world pushes back. I wonder if many who have not practiced this continuously since kindergarten (i.e. women) do not send out the signals that claim authority, and so discover that they do not get it. At the very top your role is enough. I clearly noted the nice chatty grandmother where I had to remind myself that she was the leader of an international standards body, or the gentle, soft-spoken man where it took a conscious effort to remember he was a top practicioner and owner and CEO of a company. But outside these extreme examples you might well go with your instinctual reactions. It is quite likely more complex for women, but for all the female lawyers who are mistaken for defendants or MPs who are mistaken for cleaners – how clearly do they signal to their surroundings which group they belong to?

*) This is deduced from observations – in the modern western world. There is no claim of this being based on biology.

Last edited 3 years ago by Rasmus Fogh
Alka Hughes-Hallett
Alka Hughes-Hallett
3 years ago

Extremely important, interesting & thoughtfully compiled article.
However there are no solutions. Our species (every culture, every country), male are the dominant sex & sexual equality cannot be achieved in the biological sphere. I feel we are hard wired to be at this position playing the roles we are currently playing. The society has also separated jobs as paid & unpaid. All the domestic unpaid soft skilled jobs, since there is no monetary value attached, it has a less respectable tag. Since women have been doing these jobs unasked & forever due to our biology , inadvertently women= less respect whatever their job. It boils down to respect, whatever job you are in, corporate or domestic, is key to self worth. I agree that both men & women failed to respect women whatever job they may be doing.
Maybe if we respected the domestic jobs more, made them valuable (well paid) ? I don’t have a definitive answer but I do see the point the author is trying to make.

Caroline Watson
Caroline Watson
3 years ago

Some women don’t want ‘the domestic sphere’ and have no desire to live with a man or anyone else, so need to earn enough to stay free of that nonsense. Most women only live with men and accept ‘the domestic sphere’ because they can’t afford the alternative.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
3 years ago

That is simply not true of ‘most’ women. I contribute equally to our household – in fact often inject more capital, but I was determined to find my match and set out to do so with focus. Although it took me a very long time, I succeeded.

Chris Wheatley
Chris Wheatley
3 years ago

How do you earn the right to speak for most women? I will tell you.

You have an opinion and you feel bitter about life. You get onto the internet and you look for articles which support your views. You make friends and acquaintances who think the same. Then ‘most women’ will think like you. Easy.

Lee Jones
Lee Jones
3 years ago

That sounds dismal if it is true (which it is not), what about companionship, friendship, shared interests, and if it still exists, Love?

Stephen Rose
Stephen Rose
3 years ago

There is a “Herr Merkel”, he is a professor,very unassuming fellow.She loves cooking and they both love music, a quiet couple.
A very thoughtful article, but I think feminism may have met its intersectional Waterloo.
I would hope that female competence and authority could be acknowledged in whatever professional sphere it chooses to operate in. However I find the expectation of an extension of status outside the IMF, Tate gallery, fortune 100 repellent. Losing yourself in the crowd is liberating,it also gives you a lesson in humility. Excuse me now, I have to go change the sheets.

Jacob Mason
Jacob Mason
3 years ago

It is unclear to me what Ms. McCartney and/or Ms. Criado Perez actually want for women.
I think most of us would grant that there are aspects of our society that are oppressive towards women (just as there are aspects that “oppress” any other group you might choose).
I appreciate some of the data points in the article, but would have appreciated some possible solutions.

The author notes (1) that women do not typically hold certain forms of social power or authority that men do, also (2) that women are not given the same opportunities for success in certain areas.
But (1) success and happiness in life is not a matter of power dynamics (unless you are a Marxist). Perhaps we should have more women in places men have traditionally held authority, but I would need to see actual reasons for pursuing that.
Additionally, (2) indicating that women lack the opportunities which men have to succeed in certain things is not necessarily a bad thing. (The same can be said for men – look at educational success, incarceration, job injuries.) We shouldn’t try to measure a woman’s worth by the same criteria men judge each other’s successes. That’s chauvinism.

I would appreciate more thought on what women contribute to society and how to leverage those things more effectively.
If we are going to be thoughtful about women in the modern social order, we would do well to look beyond the traditional ideas of social values thought up by a bunch of men. 😉

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
3 years ago

It was many years ago, but I recall a suggestion, I think by Elizabeth Badinter, that the big change in women’s status came in pre-history with the invention of the heavy plough for clay soils. Women could guide ploughs on sandy soils, but not the new ones. At the same time goddesses began to lose status v gods.

Maureen Miller
Maureen Miller
2 years ago

Kuow in Seattle aired a program on responses to the leaked Roe document. Throughout the program the host referred to “pregnant women”. This linguistic erasure of women is another assault to the threat to abortion rights.

Alan Hawkes
Alan Hawkes
3 years ago

I was struck by the suggestion that trans-women suddenly discover that there are downsides to identifying as a woman. Could it be that those who are most militant are in fact presenting with that easy, facile label, so routinely attached to protesting women: hysteria?

mike otter
mike otter
3 years ago

There could actually be a way out of this: In economies where women nearly all decide how to spend what they get they do a sort of “keep it pink” thing. That was a big thing in the 80s in USA and it got a bit of traction here too but fizzled out because the pink pound bought what all men buy with disposable income. Mens golf equipment design time far exceeds women’s as does their spending power. Harley Davidson had models with 26-28″ seat until the late 60s and bikes seem to have got worse not better. If the women who have a choice buy goods better designed for them that will begin with expense like organic food did and will settle down. Then the cheap knock off brigade that supplys the areas of the world where virtually no women get to choose what to spend on will be dragged along in their wake.

Julie Kemp
Julie Kemp
2 years ago

Any alteration to the created is abuse even ‘vanity’. Female majesty is something earned or ‘realised’; its a spiritual and psychological journey for each truly biological Woman, just as it is for each biological Man. Both meet at that elevated but deeply central place within each person and hopefully gracing their interpersonal ‘vesica pisces’. A quintessential hermaphroditic unified field.

Pete Marsh
Pete Marsh
3 years ago

“and, if unlucky enough to be involved in a car crash, are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, and 17% more likely to die.”
I’m pretty sure women are less likely to be in a car crash in the first place, so I’m not sure what such stats are meant to prove. And are they 47% less likely to wear a seat belt, and hence 17% more likely to die?

A FE
A FE
3 years ago
Reply to  Pete Marsh

Be IN a car crash, or cause it?
Insurance premiums for women rose as part of an equalising EU idiotic initiative to bring them in line with the much-higher rates demanded of men.Which, in turn, was due to the fact more men cause accidents through road rage aggression.

99% of tail-gaters I encounter are male.Country lanes, dual carriageways and motorways- it makes no difference.Usually in vehicles that are souped-up (young), status ( middle aged), or White Van Man style artisans.

They all see a woman in a small car (apparently) easy enough to intimidate.

Until opportunity dictates I can stop, get out and beckon them over.From that moment their testicles visibly disappear up and in…

That’s the down side.

The upside is men’s willingness to take more risks, thus protecting families and willingly taking on very dangerous, heavy duty roles such as firefighting, SWAT police, SOE counter-terrorism frontline, road and bin workers, mining, coastguard rescue and construction.
Few of which totally exclude women but are generally populated by men.

Who, incidently, tend to treat me as I allow them.
Tread quietly whilst carrying a big stick works well.

There are arseholes in both genders. What tips the balance are archaic religious demands and physical strength being misused, out of which grew a sense of male entitlement over space, resources and prestige.

I have to fall back on my own ìnner strength, boundaries and self worth to recharge.Dealing with the world is hard for us all.Gratitude and kindness oil the wheels as does the word, or thought,’ No’.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
3 years ago

The author ignores subjects taken at 16 years plus. The top 8 to 10 enginering, maths and physics degrees recruit students with grade A Further Maths A Level. How many women achieve Grade A in Further Maths A level ?

A FE
A FE
3 years ago
Reply to  Charles Hedges

Girls surpass boys at both Maths and Sciences…I believe at GCSE AND A Level.

Heather Erickson
Heather Erickson
2 years ago
Reply to  Charles Hedges

As a women with an engineering degree, I can tell you. Math is easy for girls! We love it. My male friends would not have passed calc 3 if not for me! However, I still think men are more logical, most of them can program circles around me.

Gordon Black
Gordon Black
3 years ago

Biology has evolved the following demarcations: visionaries who tend to be male and invent stuff, functionaries who tend to be female and maintain stuff. Take the example of Music. People invented – the tunes, the notation to write them down, the instruments, the methods to mass produce the instruments at a reasonable cost, the buildings to host the performances, the ability to record/play and sell the tunes – these people were mostly male. Then we need the skilled players, ideally suited for females.
Functionaries are vital for society in roles such as – project management (or any kind of management really), GP, solicitor, parliamentarian, musician, teacher, child rearing and a host of other maintenance jobs.

Caroline Watson
Caroline Watson
3 years ago
Reply to  Gordon Black

Nonsense. The origins of choral music were in monasteries and convents. The male protocols for recording that music; four part notation, with the treble clef at the pitch of a boy with an unbroken voice, have come down the centuries, whilst female-created music; probably in three parts (soprano, mezzo and contralto) have not survived because men controlled the means of production. That doesn’t mean that nuns didn’t sing or create music; it just means that modern choral music is still written in a way that excludes the pitch and timbre of adult women’s voices.

Nicholas Oglethorpe
Nicholas Oglethorpe
3 years ago

Why do certain likes buttons produce up to three increases in the total shown?
This doesn’t seem honest from a
new journal.
NRO.

Philip Stott
Philip Stott
3 years ago

I think it’s explained by the time taken to read the article and any likes garnered in that time.

Tom Krehbiel
Tom Krehbiel
3 years ago

I’ve clicked on a few like buttons that have produced as many as, I think, seven. So, yes, I’ve wondered about that too.