And the global gender gap will close in....(and four other reads)
Five links on gender (in)equality and the backlash against feminism.
I don’t have a television, which means most of my TV consumption is of the binge-watching, on-demand sort, as opposed to the having-the-telly-on-in-the-background variety. Given the snap election in the UK and the Euros, I have been streaming more TV than I usually do these days, which means that I have been seeing more ads than usual. The other night, we were half-watching some post-match chat about the Austria v. France game, when an ad drew my attention in a deep, visceral way.
It showed a woman with a baby. It was night-time and she was up, alone, in the baby’s room. Something was wrong, I can’t remember the details, maybe the baby was crying and wouldn’t stop, but she was worried. Soon other women appeared in other houses and flats, also awake, also with babies, and they counselled and comforted her. In that first moment of seeing the woman and her baby on the screen, I had a strong sense of identification. I felt and thought something along these lines: I have been that woman with the baby, and the image shifted something about my sense of being that I cannot articulate.
I wondered what the advert could be for. In the seconds between not knowing yet and knowing, my mind filled with possibility, intangible and inexplicable. It was as if the world had expanded and for a moment I forgot I was watching an advert.
And then the twist was revealed: It was (of course) an advert for a mobile phone network, the idea being that you need your device to be on the group chat with all the other mothers desperately trying to get their babies to sleep. It’s not that the group chat idea doesn’t resonate—I spend as much time on WhatsApp as the next underslept parent. It’s just that there was something both exciting and comfortable about seeing the rare sight of the night-time life of a mother on the screen. When it turned out to be in the service of the most mundane and insidious of things, the phone and online world that I am so addicted to, this moment of expansion was punctured. I was watching something that embodied so clearly the limits of our economic organisation, where atomisation and physical loneliness is enabled, and where everything, even friendship, even the sense that your life experience as a woman and a mother is seen and recognised, can be commodified.
Thank you for indulging me. Now, on to the reads….
1) A women’s manifesto
Mumsnet, the internet forum for mothers, has been around for more than 20 years and is a cultural force to be reckoned with—as well as an arena for the playing out of various culture wars. With a UK general election on 4th July, Mumsnet has released its own manifesto, drawing from..
…what our 9m—overwhelmingly female—users have told us over the past four and a half years… 76% of our users tell us they think women’s voices are not heard at the top levels of government: we’re challenging politicians to change that, engage with these issues and prove that they are listening to women.
The document contains 12 asks of government—from a statutory inquiry into maternity care and immediate action to tackle birth trauma, to hands-on breastfeeding support for every new mum, improved paternity leave, decriminalisation of abortion, and making “women and girls safe”. Reflecting the divisive debate that is so live in British feminism, ask no.11 is “Reform of the Equality Act to guarantee access to single-sex spaces.”
Most British parties have launched their manifestos. A skim of the major parties’ election pledges shows that they all engaged in some way with at least some of the issues touched on by Mumsnet. What strikes me, however, is that addressing the terrible state of Britain’s maternity services, while being a top priority for this forum of mothers, is not at the top of the list for any major party (unless I have missed it?). Action on it is mentioned, yes, but no one seems to be making much noise about promising to fix the crisis, which affects the vast majority of people in this country in a very direct way. As the manifesto states:
We hear daily on Mumsnet from women who have had deeply upsetting experiences of maternity care. Medical advances mean birth should be safer than ever. Instead we have reached a point where women's expectations are so low that they feel they are ‘lucky’ if they walk out of hospital with a healthy baby - no matter the mental or physical ordeal they go through to reach that point
PS. Reform, the right-wing disruptor party led by political vandal Nigel Farage, has views on childcare, mothers and being at home.
2) Amnesty joins calls for a crime of “gender apartheid”
The global campaign for “gender apartheid” to be recognised as a crime under international law continues. This week, Amnesty International added its voice. According to the rights group:
The concept of “gender apartheid” was first articulated by Afghan women human rights defenders and feminist allies in response to the subjugation of women and girls and systematic attacks on their rights under the Taliban in the 1990s. It has become more widely used since the Taliban reclaimed control of Afghanistan in 2021.
Amnesty’s Secretary-General Agnès Callamard stated:
“Generations upon generations of women and girls the world over have been subjected to institutionalised and systematic violence, domination and oppression. Incalculable numbers have been killed, with many more denied dignity, freedom and equality in their daily lives.
“Today we are joining the calls of courageous trailblazers - including women of Afghanistan, Iran and beyond - who have led the way in demanding recognition of gender apartheid in international law.
“We are calling for the recognition of gender apartheid under international law to fill a major gap in our global legal framework. The draft Crimes Against Humanity Convention - a major treaty effort currently under discussion at the UN - represents an important opportunity to invigorate the fight for gender justice.”
3) And the global gender gap will close in…..
Every year, the World Economic Forum (of Davos fame) publishes its report on the how far we are from closing global gender gaps. The latest edition came out last week, and the findings are as you might have expected. As per the report:
The global gender gap score in 2024 for all 146 countries included in this edition stands at 68.5% closed. Compared against the constant sample of 143 countries included in last year’s edition, the global gender gap has been closed by a further +.1 percentage point, from 68.5% to 68.6%. When considering the 101 countries covered continuously from 2006 to 2024, the gap has also improved +.1 points and reached 68.6%.
The lack of meaningful, widespread change since the last edition effectively slows down the rate of progress to attain parity. Based on current data, it will take 134 years to reach full parity – roughly five generations beyond the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target.
The top five countries for gender equality globally were Iceland, Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Sweden. The bottom five were Guinea, Iran, Chad, Pakistan and Sudan. The Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks progress in four areas: economic opportunities, education, health and political leadership. Which of these evidenced the least progress? It was political leadership, by a mile. Across the world:
the “Health and Survival gender gap has closed by 96%, Educational Attainment by 94.9%, Economic Participation and Opportunity by 60.5%, and Political Empowerment by 22.5%..
You can dig into the detail here.
4) On female being
On her Substack,
has combined two of her great loves—Jane Austen and Taylor Swift—in an essay about the lack of female representation in popular culture, and what it feels like when you find it (see my intro note above, for instance). Here is her description of what it was like to grow up in a female body, and to understand what this meant:So there I was caught between my female body and a culture that taught me that no one with said body had done anything worth respecting. My body’s reputation preceded me and if I wanted to be treated like the human I believed I was (smart, interested and, most importantly, interesting — not like other women, because women are famously boring, yes all 3.95 billion of them), I needed to prove that I was not what this treacherous body made me seem. I learned to perform the best version of myself. I was never allowed an off day. I would be sharp, I would be funny, I would be boundless and boundary-less.
5) The nature of the backlash to Dobbs v. Jackson
On The Conversation, Linda J. Nicholson traces the reaction to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which ushered in a wave of abortion bans in states across the US. Nicholson was surprised, she writes, by the nature of the backlash: “People were taking their outrage not only to the streets but to the ballot box as well.” She writes:
Why have abortion rights so recently come to occupy such a centre stage in our state and national elections? I believe that over the past few decades, there have been major shifts in how women live, view themselves and are viewed by others. As long as Roe was in place, these shifts could coexist with the abortion rights Roe provided. When Roe was overturned, the clash between these newer versions of womanhood and the elimination of such rights led to major outrage at the ballot box.
Bonus: Where to put that $1bn
Thank you for reading. See you next time.