I came to feminism fairly late having spent my teens absorbing explicit and implicit messages that women had already won that battle. And indeed, it certainly seemed that way. I was lucky enough to receive an excellent education and all the expectations were that I go on to have a career and could do anything I wanted to. The idea of feminism was branded as a thing of the past and for militant bra-burners only. If you were really clever and successful, you didn't need feminism - you got on because you could, because you really were as talented and wonderful as a man! Moaning about women's rights and inequalities was just an excuse for not quite making it. It wasn't until I was older that I realized how skewed this idea was.
However, although my friends and I struggled against subtle ingrained attitudes and ideas, building our careers and living an empowered and emancipated life still seemed to be our primary experience. I think it really started to hit home for me when my friends and I met men and settled down.
My husband is an incredible man - kind, gentle, generous, intelligent, relaxed - and I would never want to be without him. But despite his progressive and modern ideas in so many areas (he's a conservationist committed to sustainable living and acutely aware of the interdependence and value of everything on the planet), we quickly fell into a default in which I did 95% of the shopping, cooking, cleaning and all other household management like bills and paperwork, despite working as long hours as him. When I asked around, it seemed it was a similar experience for many of my friends.
This was no doubt as much a product of my unconscious values as his. We'd both grown up in houses where the mothers did the work at home. But that is what got me into feminism and of course, when I opened my eyes and looked beyond my own privileged lifestyle and upbringing, I saw that on a global scale, it was an even larger fight.
Reading this article in the Guardian about a woman who has woken up to these attitudes far earlier than I did and who tried to initiate discussion over the topic by starting a feminist group at her school, I was shocked but not surprised to hear the response she received. Her incredulity at how boys (and girls) are being brought up not to respect women as equals to men strikes at the heart of the matter for me.
And what are we doing about it as educators? With echoes of the Twitter debate that has been raging recently, when the girls in the group received threats after taking part in the national project called Who Needs Feminism, in which they released photos of themselves standing with a small whiteboard on which they completed the sentence ''I need feminism because...'', the school asked them to remove the photos ''in order to protect their safety and well-being''. Really? Is this protecting the safety and well-being of young girls either now or in the long run? Would it not have been more appropriate to support them in learning how to deal with and stand up to such attacks, and to support them in continuing to vocalise and make public this incredibly important issue. Instead, their advice protects the attitudes and behaviours that stop out nation, and the world, making the progress that is so needed, not only for women, but for humankind.
However, although my friends and I struggled against subtle ingrained attitudes and ideas, building our careers and living an empowered and emancipated life still seemed to be our primary experience. I think it really started to hit home for me when my friends and I met men and settled down.
My husband is an incredible man - kind, gentle, generous, intelligent, relaxed - and I would never want to be without him. But despite his progressive and modern ideas in so many areas (he's a conservationist committed to sustainable living and acutely aware of the interdependence and value of everything on the planet), we quickly fell into a default in which I did 95% of the shopping, cooking, cleaning and all other household management like bills and paperwork, despite working as long hours as him. When I asked around, it seemed it was a similar experience for many of my friends.
This was no doubt as much a product of my unconscious values as his. We'd both grown up in houses where the mothers did the work at home. But that is what got me into feminism and of course, when I opened my eyes and looked beyond my own privileged lifestyle and upbringing, I saw that on a global scale, it was an even larger fight.
Reading this article in the Guardian about a woman who has woken up to these attitudes far earlier than I did and who tried to initiate discussion over the topic by starting a feminist group at her school, I was shocked but not surprised to hear the response she received. Her incredulity at how boys (and girls) are being brought up not to respect women as equals to men strikes at the heart of the matter for me.
And what are we doing about it as educators? With echoes of the Twitter debate that has been raging recently, when the girls in the group received threats after taking part in the national project called Who Needs Feminism, in which they released photos of themselves standing with a small whiteboard on which they completed the sentence ''I need feminism because...'', the school asked them to remove the photos ''in order to protect their safety and well-being''. Really? Is this protecting the safety and well-being of young girls either now or in the long run? Would it not have been more appropriate to support them in learning how to deal with and stand up to such attacks, and to support them in continuing to vocalise and make public this incredibly important issue. Instead, their advice protects the attitudes and behaviours that stop out nation, and the world, making the progress that is so needed, not only for women, but for humankind.