Woman Power

I was at the beach today and a woman wearing a t-shirt which said "power women" or something like that jogged past me. It made me think - yes, I know, beginner's luck, but seriously though, I asked myself what did that mean exactly?
Now, I grew up in an era (some time shortly after Noah had beached The Ark) when women were not paid the same rates as men, although to be honest, I think they didn't do the same work as their counterparts - mostly that is, I'm excluding teachers, doctors etc here. The main reason for this discrepancy was that men were the bread winners and women were expected to stay home, raise the kids, do the housework and wait on their husbands. Women simply didn't need to earn as much as men, that was the reasoning behind this, in my opinion. So far so logical - well, sort of. I have to say, though, that even back then, women had important jobs and it wasn't long until we had women running countries: Gold Meier, Indira Ghandi and Margaret Thatcher for example.
When I worked in the civil service there were several women who were staff officers or had other senior positions, although no one was actually at the top. No one remarked on this, either, because it was "normal". They were qualified and they could do the job and that was all that was asked. It was not a question of gender equality.
I remember one of the first jobs I had where the men got two weeks holidays and the women one. I worked there for about a week or so before going to see the Managing Director (I was his secretary) and asking him why the female employees didn't get the same length of holidays as the men. He looked at me in total surprise, I remember, before saying "do you want two weeks holidays?" To which I replied, not unsurprisingly, "yes, we do." "OK" he said and that was that. From then on we all had the same number of days off. He simply had not thought about it.
If women would only realise that a lot of "man power" ideas were the result of not thinking, were based on norms and customs from past centuries, I think we'd all loosen up more. We wouldn't feel the need to wear the t-shirt, to be forever harping on about "women novelists, women playing football, the first woman to kill a bear with her bare hands" - yes I am most definitely exaggerating now. What are we trying to prove, here? Men and women have always been equal. It has just taken men (and women) a long time to see that. We had to convince men that we could be trusted to vote, that we could open bank accounts ourselves - I could go on - and we have made a success of that without any fuss or roll of drums. Incidentally, many women were quite happy to go along with the "little woman" image in those days because it saved them a lot of hassle. Their husbands paid for everything, made all the decisions in many cases, although I suspect that clever women could always get what they wanted.
So let's just relax, ladies, we don't need to prove a thing. Toss that t-shirt into the laundry basket! 

Woman Power - we'd better believe it

I'm just back from a trip to Germany to attend the christening of my youngest grandson.  It was a happy family occasion, as was to be expected.

I flew over as usual and caught myself telling quite a few people that the aircraft was piloted by a woman.  Now why did I do that?  I really don't know.  It is not as if I believe women are incapable of doing things which were mainly done by men yonks ago.  Women pilots have been around for years and no one comments any more.  And yet, this being the first time that I had sat in an aircraft piloted by a woman caused me to comment on it. At any rate, I shut up about it very quickly.

This got me thinking.  Deep down we are all impressed if a woman does anything we perceive to be out of the ordinary.  We have all these powerful female executives heading big corporations and making tough business decisions and some of them have been so kind as to write books on how to get to the top of the corporate ladder.  There is a lot of speculation that we might have a woman president of the United States if Hillary Clinton can be persuaded to run.  But is the media going to be more interested in what she wears and how she does her hair than in how effective in politics she will be?  Take Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia.  During her 3 years of office she introduced a variety of important bills and yet the media badgered her about looking dowdy and housewifely and were more interested in her relationship with her husband. 

Kind of off-putting, isn't it?  And I don't feel any too proud of myself to have been remarking on that woman pilot.  Do women still need encouragement and empowerment?  I have given up on the idea of women being equal to men.  It is never going to happen.  The working woman who has children at home knows all about the tug on her heartstrings no matter how supportive her partner is.  Children need their mothers because mothers play a different role to fathers.  We can't get away from that and once we have acknowledged it, we have a better attitude to both family and work.  It is no disgrace to be a mother first and foremost - if you have a good relationship with your children, they will always be there for you.  On the other hand, if the company you work for no longer needs you they'll chew you up and spit you out.  That's the reality.