Recently, Saoirse Ronan’s comment on The Graham Norton Show went viral. For an important reason.
Eddie Redmayne recounted a safety tip (involving use of his mobile phone) which he had been given while learning self defence, and Paul Mescal joked: who has time to think about reaching for a phone when being attacked.
Ronan simply said, “It’s what girls have to think about all the time.” which at first silenced the room, and was then met by applause after she followed with, “Am I right ladies?”
Ronan subtly redirected the conversation by addressing the reality that many women are often on high alert to threats to their safety. It was a powerful reminder that even decent men like Mescal, may not fully grasp the weight women carry, around daily concerns about personal safety.
This resonated with so many because it highlighted the often unseen, ongoing vigilance that women maintain in spaces where they should feel safe. Like for example simply going for a walk.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) isn’t just a “women’s issue” but a serious societal problem, impacting how women navigate public spaces and relationships
Saoirse’s remark was a gentle, but necessary reminder: even the good guys need to recognise and acknowledge the reality women live with daily.
While the clip may have gone viral, the discussion on The Graham Norton Show isn’t just a “viral moment”; it’s an important conversation starter. It invites everyone to consider how we can all be more mindful of the challenges women face and why it’s crucial for everyone, especially men, to be allies in creating a safer, more aware society.
And the simple answer was I learned about toxic masculinity and the negative effect is has on boys and men.
But in researching the subject, I also learned about the negative effect it has on women.
Toxic masculinity doesn’t just harm men—its impact on women is equally damaging. When boys are told not to “act like girls” by showing their emotions, or engaging in certain activities (for example boy who love to dance, or play with dolls), the underlying message for girls is that being feminine is lesser.
These subtle reinforcements and they are of course subtle – generally in life we are shaped by many many micro moments – shape how girls view themselves from a young age. Often for young girls, internalising the idea that femininity is weak or undesirable, can lead to feelings of inadequacy, pushing pushing to question their worth, especially in male-dominated spaces. This continues throughout the teenage years and into womanhood, until we almost believe it ourselves that we are less than.
And as girls grow into women, the effects become more pronounced.
Women may avoid leadership roles or downplay their achievements in fear of being seen as overly aggressive or unfeminine. Relationships, too, are affected, as women may feel their emotional needs are devalued or dismissed, leading to an unhealthy imbalance where they aren’t taken seriously. The ripple effect of toxic masculinity impacts gender dynamics at every level, making it harder for men and women to relate as equals.
Both genders suffer, but often people assume that toxic masculinity only affects men.
But the impact on women is equally damaging and the cost is often in their emotional well-being and self-worth.
I wrote How Frank Helped Hank thinking it would be a book for little boys, but realised just like my other books, it’s a book for all children, regardless of their gender.
Some time ago I came across the Instagram account of Karen Dobres, a director at Lewes FC. In 2017, Lewes became the FIRST professional or semi-professional club in the world to start treating its women footballers the same as its men – the same playing budgets, same pitch, same training facilities. And after just 2 seasons they had quadrupled the women’s gate figures! I wanted to know about this club, about Karen, and so I asked her to write a guest blog post. Grab a cuppa, and have a read: this is a great story (and not just because we learn that women were actually banned from playing football by the FA back in 1921! And mostly likely because women’s games drew greater crowds than the mens!). And do check out the links at the end where you can find out how to become an owner, because Lewes FC is 100% fan-owned and not-for-profit, using the power of football to create social change.
‘Thea Chops Books believes in sharing messages of equality and acceptance, and teaching our little ones that they can be whoever they want in life.’
Suzanne Hemming, Author, Thea Chops Books
Why has Suzanne asked me to write a blog post here about football?
What has football to do with self-acceptance and freedom from stereotyping? What has it to do with your children’s’ futures? And isn’t it one of the last places you’d look for equality and acceptance…?
Why Football?
Let me explain, with two examples from my own kids (boy, now 19; girl, now 23).
In 2017 three things happened in close succession.
1) My daughter passed her driving test, and took her younger brother out for a spin. Loudly and persistently catcalled by two white van men (‘Hey sexy, where you going? etc) she didn’t react at all, so used to it was she at just 18. He though – just 14 and a boy – was flabbergasted. Not only that they had shouted at his sister unprovoked just for existing as a woman, but because she hadn’t batted an eyelid. Now of course at 19 he understands that not only is this behaviour normal, but he must also look out for girlfriends’ and their drinks in nightclubs in case they are spiked, or worse.
2) My daughter and her friends would chat with me around the kitchen table about politics, social issues, and their lives, but seemed to morph into different beings over on Instagram. On that public platform they’d pose in nightclub toilets above captions like ‘Yeah’ and ‘chillin’’. All perfectly fine, but where on earth was the rest of them in public? The thoughts and reflections, the determinations they shared, the substance.
3) My local football club became the first in the world to pay their women footballers the same as their men and made international headlines for our small town. And I didn’t even know women played football.
Don’t judge though.
Unwelcome Women
You see, all my life footballers had been men – on the telly, on the back pages of newspapers, in jacuzzis with WAGS. Football was by men, was consumed by men, and featured men – women were decorations on footballer’s arms. And I’d been to just the one match (Brentford – my cousin played for them), felt threatened by loutish male fans, decided it wasn’t for me, and dropped it from my radar.
Looking back, I’d been meant to feel that way. At school in the 70s we girls weren’t allowed to play football. Only the boys would play – taking up the whole playground at break times to do it – and leaving us girls to jump rope or play hopscotch round the edges.
Following Lewes’ ground-breaking decision, I went down the road to The Dripping Pan to watch Lewes FC Women play and had an epiphany. These young women – strong, powerful, decisive, assertive, and working in a team, right here on a public platform – were the antidote to sexist conditioning that saw women and girls as decorations, and as lesser than boys and men.
The problem was that following this football club’s bold move to split playing budgets down the middle, critics (male ones) were saying the women didn’t deserve to be paid the same because they didn’t draw the same crowds. This was true – at that point Lewes FC Men got an average gate of around 450 and the women just 120.
However, the club responded by targeting and welcoming ‘unwelcome women’, like myself, to the game. But, as I was to learn, it’s truer to say BACK to the game.
Lewes FC Defender Ellie Hack
The Ban
I discovered that women were in fact banned from playing football in this country back in 1921, at a point when they were drawing crowds greater than men could muster. So the FA decided – in a 15 minute meeting – that it was ‘a sport quite unsuitable for women’ and could harm them gynaecologically were they continued to kick a ball and run around a pitch.
Knowing what I know now, as a director of the club, and working with footballers, it hurts and angers me even to write this ‘herstory’. But it drives me too. Because football with 3.6 billion fans (mostly men) around the globe is the world’s most popular sport, and a microcosm of our wider patriarchal society. What happens in football has a huge impact on the actual world. Why? Because it affects men’s heart and minds like nothing else. Think of the men in your life who are fans of the game: how much time and thought do they devote to it? How much passion do they have for it? So where is the best place to demonstrate and have a conversation about the power of gender equality with those who can really do something about it (ie, men)? That’s right, it’s the beautiful game.
Former Lewes FC player Georgia Bridges at The Dripping Pan
Fans Of Change
It took two seasons to quadruple the women’s gate figure by actually letting people know about women’s matches and what they could expect at them. By 2019 the women’s gate had quadrupled and the men’s had risen too, thanks to the boldness and buzz of ‘Equality FC’. There were clever match day posters designed to interest unwelcome women, and themes and campaigns to attract them in solidarity with our cause (Prosecco on tap, and world record for how many suffragettes at a football match anyone?). Both first teams were promoted the season after the introduction of ‘Equality FC’, and the men’s gate rose too. The media attention was overwhelming and remains high to this day.
As sexism and corruption are the wallpaper of football (there are too many examples to mention here but try the location and quality of pitches, TV exposure, pay, resources, medical care, newspaper inches, cup prize figures for starters) our club is streets ahead of others in terms of the way we treat our players, fans and owners.
The agenda of Lewes FC is set by its ownership model. We’re a not-for-profit community benefit society, and as such we use football as a vehicle for social change. We are NOT about making profits for private shareholders, instead we aim to create value for the community who own us. Hence the social campaigning.
L to R Ollie Tanner, Razzaq Coleman De-Graft, Joe Taylor
Call Him Out
The latest step in our gender equality work is our campaign to #CallHimOut.
Because the other side of female empowerment is, of course, the fight against toxic masculinity.
Having formed a ‘SisterShips’ network with like-minded groups empowering women and girls, we were struck as a club, by the outpouring of grief and anger following last year’s high profile spate of violence against women and girls. Our SisterShips were upset at the way women were effectively being made to take responsibility for the violence against them when the onus should be on the perps – who were men.
So, having strong male role models in Lewes FC Men, we discussed what the team as male allies could do. Our amazing male players decided to call out misogynistic language and behaviours in themselves and in their changing room, in the belief that these micro-aggressions could fuel a wider rape culture. They made public pledges on twitter to #CallHimOut, and are now working on the movement through dialogue and awareness training. They aim to mentor our under 18s boys team next.
Inequality is SOOO Last Season
As we welcome more girls and women to our historic ground, ‘The Dripping Pan’, as we tell our story to schools, colleges, journalists and business conferences, so we loosen society’s restrictions a little more. As more girls realise they have a bona fide choice between ballet shoes and football boots, so do boys. As more girls learn the leadership skills football has to offer, so boys learn that they don’t always have to be the strong ones – they can relax, be vulnerable, cry when they need to. As we pay and resource men and women the same in football, so we tell the world, and all our children – it really is ok to be you.
If you’ve reached this page I imagine you’re as keen as I am for our children to grow up in a more equal society? It can feel like turning an oil tanker around sometimes though can’t it? Promoting gender equality? Makes me think of amazing women like the suffragists and suffragettes. Of Gloria Steinham, Shirley Chisholm and Kamala Harris. If you’re anything like me at this point I start wondering, err I can’t be like them! But there are small things we can do and small changes we can make. So if you’re looking for some quick ways to promote gender equality at home, I’m going to write a series of short blog posts with some of these easy things that we can all do.
First up, don’t always say:
Give it to Daddy, Daddy will fix it
I’m so guilty of this one!! Mostly because usually in the moment I was asked, the toy in question was making too much noise; and I couldn’t be bothered to change the batteries and fix it! I realised though that I was showing Thea that only men know how to fix things! I needed to show her that women can fix things too, even if it meant that annoying plastic remote control would keep singing at me!
This desire to have a go, lead me to fix the boiler one evening when Rich was away with work. I mean true, he wasn’t actually there so what was I gonna do?! But I watched You Tube and I sorted it myself, and got the heating back on. Hurrah!
So if you’re in a male / female household, try to catch yourself from always getting daddy to fix it! #womencan
For easy ways to show boys and girls that girls can do ‘men’s jobs’ why not read them our book, The Queen Engineer, in which a princess wants to become and engineer when she grows up, much to the horror of her father, the king!
In a previous post, I wrote about how Toxic Masculinity is damaging to boys and men. And I mentioned that it can be equally damaging for girls and women. And here’s why:
If you tell a boy that he does something ‘like a girl’ for example cry / throw / run etc, and are using the saying to stop him from doing it that way, or to mock him, both the boy in question, and any boys or girls within earshot, internalise the idea that doing something ‘like a girl’ is bad.
To the girls internalising this message, they unconsciously take on board the idea that to be a girl is less than, that they are the other sex, second in line to boys. For the boys who hear it, they too internalise the idea that girls are less than they are. Not much room for men and women to view and treat each other as equals if they grow up with this unconscious bias.
And what if a boy enjoys doing something, like many girls are known to do? Play with dolls, wear pink, dance? Tell this boy often enough that he has to stop being like a girl, and at best, he will hide his true feelings, his likes and dislikes from you. He may deliberately act in a more ‘boyish’ way to further hide his preferences for toys or favourite colours, and internalise any shame he feels for liking something you’ve made fun of. At worst. this shame might lead him to mock other boys, or to take out his frustrations on girls, people who he sees being able to make the choices he can’t. Shame him enough and he might never show his feelings again, or choose to hide them with aggression to prove how ‘manly’ he is, which can only have a negative impact on the women in his life, be that a sister, friend or partner.
So while toxic masculinity is damaging to boys and men, it’s pretty rubbish for girls and women too. No one wins.
Not much room for men and women to view and treat each other as equals if they grow up with this unconscious bias.
Saturday 7th November was such an historic day as for the first time in over 200 years of US politics, a woman became the Vice President-Elect. Senator Kamala Harris will become the 49th VP since the office came into existence in 1789. And this is not just historic due to her being female, but also because she is a woman of colour; her father was Jamaican and her mother Indian, and it stops a pattern in the history of VPs:
How striking is that graphic. What a moment in history. What an achievement! She was a District Attorney in San Fransisco, The Attorney General of California, elected to the US Senate in 2017 and will enter the White House in January 2020 with President-Elect Joe Biden. So I was a bit surprised this week when I was scrolling through Twitter and saw this headline from The Telegraph Newspaper:
“Why Kamala Harris is the modern beauty icon the world needs.”
This stopped me scrolling, as I sighed that her ‘war paint’ was the thing they wanted to focus on: Kamala Harris as a beauty icon. And it’s left me feeling all… bleurgh, about my feminism!
Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes. It is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. And it leads me to believe that women therefore have agency over their choices. The choice to wear makeup, or not, is therefore the choice of the individual. As is the choice to read about the makeup regime of another woman, and thus the choice to write about it. But VP-Elect Harris is not a beauty expert, a makeup artist, a model; she’s a politican who’s been elected to the second highest office in the United States. So to write about her as a beauty icon, it just feels… well, bleurgh, again!
I did some googling while writing this post btw, and found another Telegraph headline: “The secret formula behind Kamala Harris’s winning politician hair.” Politician hair. Winning, politician hair…
Anyway…! So now I’m left with this feeling of conflict: I’ve since read a couple of pieces about why it’s not sexist to have written about Harris’s makeup. That the beauty and fashion industry, and the writers and journalists who write about it, are predominantly female, and that to suggest their work is misogynistic, is in itself a misogynistic act. Which, ooo, makes me start to feel all bleurgh again. I don’t want to be a misogynist!
For me, in trying to unpack these conflicted feelings, I’m leaning towards: why did they choose to focus on that, of all the things they could have talked about? It doesn’t sit comfortably with me. Now, people also talked about Kamala Harris’s choice of a white pant suit for her speech on Saturday night. And this I don’t mind so much, and here’s why: it was a nod to the white outfits worn by the women of the original suffrage movement. Paying tribute to those women who fought then, to allow this to happen now.
So talk about her outfit: good. Talk about her makeup: bad? A bit tricky eh? And one of the reasons why I think of myself as a feminist in progress, a term I first heard the wonderful human being that is Jameela Jamil use. I don’t profess to be an expert, I’m learning and self correcting all the time. I want to be able to have the confidence to say, you have a point, I’ll take that on board or, I think you’re right. But on this one, I don’t think it was a good call to lead with a headline about beauty, on the night the first ever woman was declared Vice President Elect of the United States of America. That pant suit was on point though.
Our new book, How Frank Helped Hank, tackles the subject of toxic masculinity. But what is toxic masculinity?
It’s a term used to describe the societal expectations placed on boys and men, that can have a damaging affect on them, and as a consequence, on women. It’s the outdated idea that there are traditional male gender roles, that men, strong men, manly men, winners, must behave in a certain way. That being seen to be this strong, manly type of man, is the most desirable way to be. So from a young age we tell our boys to ‘man up’. We tell them, ‘don’t cry like a girl’. We belittle them if they ‘throw like a girl’ or ‘run like a girl’. We throw around the word ‘girl’ (or other more sweary variations of the word!) as a derogatory term, intended to make fun of the boy or man on the receiving end. But why is this damaging?
In the simplest of ways it’s just bizarre in 2020 that we expect people to behave in a certain way, and not just allow them to be themselves. But there is a more serious reason.
In the UK, one of the biggest causes of death for men under the age of 45, is suicide. On the home page of their website, CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) states that every week in the UK, 125 people take their own life, and that 75% of all UK suicides, are male. These numbers are shockingly high; I was astounded, and so saddened when I first read about them. And I wondered why it is that boys and men are more vulnerable to this.
The CALM website lists 3 societal pressures that boys and men live under, which likely contribute to this:
They feel a pressure to be a winner and can more easily feel like the opposite.
They feel a pressure to look strong and feel ashamed of showing any signs of [perceived] weakness.
They feel a pressure to appear in control of themselves and their lives at all times.
It’s not a massive leap to understand that a childhood of being told to man up, and not cry like a girl, negatively impacts on a man’s ability to access and express his emotions, and seek help.
Blimey Suze this is all a bit heavy for a kids’ book isn’t it? We can think that, or we can start to change the messages that boys receive so they are not embarrassed to ask for help when they need it. And also, y’know, so they don’t grow up to be macho dicks with gigantic egos and a total lack of empathy for their fellow humans!
So if toxic masculinity is damaging for our boys, why and how does it negatively impact on our girls? More on that in our next blog post: Why Toxic Masculinity Hurts Women Too.
In 2016 a deputy principal in a New Zealand school, called a group of 15 and 16 year old girls into a meeting, and requested that their school skirts are worn no shorter than knee level.
On the face of it, this isn’t a particularly unusual request: there are dress codes that we follow all over the world every day. You wouldn’t wear white to a wedding, or a bikini to a baptism. But it wasn’t a simple school dress code alone that prompted this request. The reason given was to
“keep our girls safe, stop boys from getting ideas and create a good work environment for male staff.”
Parents and commentators were, quite rightly, outraged by this reasoning. It clearly sends the message to young women that they and they alone are responsible for boys “getting ideas”. That their choice of clothing is what will create a good working environment for the male staff (presumably meaning they will be less distracted?). And that if they don’t wear a skirt of the appropriate length, they will not be safe. That last one is really creepy because it’s almost a threat: short skirt? Expect the worst.
None of this reasoning puts any of the responsibility at all onto the young men or the male teachers. It, in fact, teaches boys that their actions are caused by girls, thus rendering them blameless. It’s effectively allowing them off the hook and teaching them that they won’t be held accountable.
But it’s also teaching them that girls are only there to be looked at, to be a distraction. That they are an ornament, something to gaze upon and be beguiled by. It’s teaching the boys this, but it’s teaching the girls it too.
A report published last year by The Children’s Society found that almost a quarter of 14-year-old girls have self-harmed (the term “self-harming” was used to describe a wide range of behaviours, including drug and alcohol abuse, as well as physical self-harming). The Girlguiding Girls’ Attitudes survey found that 71% of 11-21 year-olds would like to lose weight, with 52% saying they have been on a diet, and 38% admitting to having sometimes skipped meals to try and drop the pounds.
Let’s change the messages that both our boys and girls receive. BOYs you are responsible for your actions: if a glimpse of leg or shoulder is distracting, look away. GIRLs you are not only alive to be attractive to men: your body is an instrumentnotan ornament.
We would never tell a group of schoolboys that they can’t wear shorts as it’s distracting to the female teachers. It sounds absurd just reading that, doesn’t it? So let’s change the messages. Let’s try and create a more equal society for our girls and our boys.
UK organisations with 250 or more employees, have until midnight on Wednesday 4th April, to met their legal requirement to report their gender pay gap data. Of those who have already published their findings, 78% pay men more than they pay women.
The Pay Gap is not the same as as equal pay: since the Equal Pay Act of 1970, and the more recent Equality Act of 2010, it is unlawful for a company to pay people unequally because of their gender, and this applies to all employers no matter how large or small.
So a gender pay gap might exist where more men than women are in top level jobs (and vice versa of course). Now, this might prompt some people to say, well if men have worked hard and risen to the top of the management tree, don’t they deserve a salary to reflect that hard work, experience and responsibility? And surely no-one would deny paying someone in line with the requirements of the job?
So why are the government asking companies to assess and publish data? Why does it matter?
There’s no simple answer to this; it’s a complex issue and one which is reflective of societal issues as much as anything else.
The Fawcett Society (which is a group that campaigns for equality), says that caring responsibilities play a part, as it is more likely that a woman will care for young children, or for the elderly, meaning they are more likely to work in lower paid, part time roles, and which often have fewer opportunities for career progression. We have a divided labour market (women are still more likely to work in these lower skilled / lower paid jobs than men), and discrimination is another likely cause: it has been reported that one in nine new mothers were either made redundant (or dismissed) or treated so poorly they felt that they had no choice but to leave their job. This of course creates a gap in experience, and so when those women choose to return to work at a later date, it can lead to lower wages. And in general, more men than women, hold more senior roles in more companies, and the more senior a role, the more likely it is to have a higher wage.
A number of the companies who have already published their data, have said that their gap is due to that final reason: they have more men in top level jobs. Of these companies, some chose to add that men and women working in the same role are equally paid (which shouldn’t really need to said, as already mentioned above, it has been illegal to not do so since 1970!).
And so again, it might prompt some people to ask, why does this all matter? Why force companies to publish such sensitive data?
Because we can’t to do anything to address these differences (and their reasons) until we establish what the differences are. Why are there more men in senior roles than women? Why are around 54,000 new mothers losing their jobs each year? Why do 44% of managers feel that mothers could become a burden to their team?
I’m not alone in thinking that it’s because we live in a fairly unequal society, which starts in childhood. Boys and girls and treated differently from the moment they’re born. Girls are sugar and spice and all things nice, and boys are encouraged to be the leaders of tomorrow, confident and loud and strong! If we continue to tell girls to sit nicely and be quiet, we’ll have another generation of young women who don’t have the confidence to argue their place in either society or a company. If we continue to tell boys that they have to be strong, and lead and that girls are not the same as them, we’ll have another generation of young men who might think this pay gap isn’t a issue that needs addressing.
Some people of course won’t agree with this; some will say let kids be kids, stop putting your own labels and issues on them!! Some people will also say that addressing the pay gap issue by forcing companies to publish data, and encouraging firms to set recruitment targets or quotas, means that hiring the ‘right person for the right job’ no longer applies, that someone will only be hired because they ‘ticked a box’. That particular argument implies that currently, the right person is always in the right job! The simple law of odds means that can’t be the case! In a society that is roughly 50/50 men/women, why is it 54,000 mothers lose their jobs due to maternity discrimination each year, but the 54,000 men who become new parents don’t?
Companies who are shown to have a gender pay gap, won’t be ‘punished’ when their data is published. But it is likely that society, and the media, will ask them why? That potential employees will have concerns about working for them. That other businesses will have concerns about working with them. And given that a report published in 2016 stated that improved gender parity could add £150 billion to the UK economy, why wouldn’t both companies and society, want to close the gender pay gap?
