To think sexism in the UK is not as bad as the UN rep says it is?

[AICM]

Yes I know you don’t have to look far to find many examples of sexism in the UK and yes the reaction of some men to this report has been awful but as I live my daily life I don’t feel as though I’m being oppressed and kept in my place by a patriarchy. I live the life I want, my OH does half (if I’m honest more than half of all domestic chores) my boss (a male) treats me with respect and my co-workers (who are nearly all male) treat me as an equal and don’t make any sexist comments.

Am I lucky or is my experience fairly common?

Ah Melonade I see what you mean In which case I apologise for my knee jerk reaction upthread.
However I think the reason that a lot of British women don't go abroad for adventures alone is down to not having the money.

I simply don't have the dosh to do everything that seems to be expected of me just because women from another country who are not affected by Tory cutbacks are doing it!

YY useless DH is currently undergoing tests because they found a coin lesion on his lung. So I cant exactly fuck off abroad. And im willing to bet that if British women suddenly started doing this in their droves because lets add another thing to the list of stuff that's now expected of women I will bet you a penny to a pinch of shit there would be ppl screaming about how a load of British women are fucking off abroad to have their "mid life crisis"

Because THIS IS PRECISELY the problem WE CANT win. We just end up getting gaslighted on a grand scale.

I went round South America on my own for several months when I was 19. My mum was a proper 1970s feminist and thought it was a great idea. MIL on the other hand nearly had a heart attack when I told her about my gap year (obviously several years afterwards when it was clear I had survived with no ill effects). MIL was also horrified when I went for a run round their local (busy) park in broad daylight alone. ANYTHING could have happened...!

DH went on a gapyear alone too but I suspect if he'd had a sister she would barely be allowed to the corner shop on her own. Luckily MIL only had boys so didn't get the chance to fully brainwash the next generation in to sharing her belief that girls can't do anything. However plenty of other people did so the cycle goes on.

So definitely seems sexist arrangement to have women only events.
Imagine an event for people with lower than average upper body strength or an event for people who are a bit shorter.

I believe this is called the Paralympics?

Sport is more interesting if the teams are evenly matched, so that's why you have leagues and divisions in pretty much every type of sport. Matching teams by average physical strength and stamina isn't sexist if the male and female (and disabled) teams get the same opportunities.

If you live near the French border, it's pretty easy to cycle to Italy and then say you've cycled across Europe though. I'm not sure the travelling thing is necessarily down to sexism, I think its partly class. Certainly a large number of my peers at uni had travelled - they were middle class (to me) gals on a gap yah though. I was working class and the first of my family to get to uni, I worked for three years beforehand to be able to afford it. I certainly think a lot of things in my life happened because I'm a woman, but I really don't think lack of travelling was down to it.

Although I suspect I'm touching on intersectionality now, which I'm woefully ignorant about...

I think the travelling or lack of may be a symptom of the expectations you grow up with. If no one you know has travelled then you might not do it. My Dad had worked abroad in his early 20's so wasn't too phased when I announced my plan to backpack around the world. Only a couple of my Uni friends (male and female) did similar.

Sexism is surprisingly insiduous. Many years ago I was living in a sexist part of the world and didn't even notice the sexism around me until several men arrived to visit from elsewhere and I found myself being repeatedly surprised at being treated like an equal. And I had been brought up by a feminist.

with regard to the travel/independence thing, my parents didn't allow me to go to the university of my choice, because it was too far away. When I pointed out that my brother went further afield I was told 'that's different, he's a man'. I'm only in my 30s, so we're not talking 50 years ago.

It wasn't really an issue about my safety, more that any unsupervised female on her own would be led astray, and as my parents it was their duty to stop me, and as a daughter it was my duty to obey them (although in fairness, the duty to obey parents would extend to male offspring too, it's just that they wouldn't place the same restrictions on a male).

Thinking about this a little more, I keep noticing sexist remark from some friends on FB. And I wonder, why do some men feel so superior, just because of their gender?

Well treacle I was musing about something similar today. The combined effects of the bedroom tax and Scottish unis being free to Scots I think will end up keeping most Scottish children close to home I think...

Jess
Sky and BT are not publicly funded.

A woeful lack of women in government, on boards and at senior level in the UK speaks volumes to me.

I have a DH who is enlightened and does his bit with childcare and domestic work. I am firmly in the minority among my friends, though. I know very few women whose careers havent taken a blow after kids came along - mine was irreparably damaged.

I think we have a very long way to go.

Yes I think sexism is that bad here.

Sexual harassment of young women is I think worse in the UK than it used to be.
The amount of women in our parliament and cabinet is shockingly low.
The amount of everyday sexism that goes largely unchallenged is shocking.

Anda ll surveys show that women still do more childcare and housework than male partners, even if they both work full time

Grennie I grew up in the 80s (left school in "89) and I agree with you. It is much worse than it used to be.
And so is the policing of womens bodies and what we "should" look like. I go to a slimming class and ive heard a consultant say things like Your clothes will hang better and you will look better if you excersise. Really the concentration should be more on health.
The celebrity culture (a culture I HATE living in I really feel I was born at the wrong time) and the diet industry feed off the sexist culture and use it to prey on womens insecurities.

In my experience more British women travel than Swedish women. The majority of my class mates traveled format least a few months, many of us live abroad.

In comparison few of the Swedes I know traveled as young people.

Possibly your Swedish and Dutch friends are people you met in the UK, or whilst traveling so they are more likely to be the traveling types?

Melonade's points are good ones although some women do travel alone. I've stayed on a pacific island alone a few times in my 40s, days though not weeks. I've gone abroad for work to places like Iran and Lagos, again in my 40s leaving children at home, not that I am a great fan actually of business travel (and that is nothing to do with sexism, just the waste of time and tiredness although it does let you see other cultures - eg women in full black burkhas on Kish island beach whilst the men are free in their speedos).

Sexism differs in different countries. Much of Africa thinks it's fine to beat your wife for example. We tend not to get that in the UK. Much of South America has very macho men (although a good few female Presidents) and women spending a fortune on plastic surgery. China has quite a few female entrepreneurs but with India kills many many baby girls a year before birth simply because they are female.

The original item was about women in the media, how girls are shown that what counts as a girl is if you've had your nails done and ironed your hair rather than can you lead a major organisation or perform heart surgery and I do agree it is pretty bad in the UK.

On melonade's point about older women (of which presumably I will be one soon going into my 50s, although I work full time and am fairly successful so I tend to get the more work, admiration, wisdom of age thing which is nice) that is certainly an issue in professions like the media but also teaching. One of the teaching unions has been talking this week about needing to consider women teachers in the menopause who once it is over have at least another 10 years of good work ahead of them.

We also have no culture of revering the old in the UK. Instead we either feel sorry for them or they are the butt of jokes from the young which is awful. We tend not to keep them about us nor live with them and we shunt them into homes to be shut away a bit like people did with disabled children in the old days, whereas those older people have a lot of knowledge. I suspect this will change now we have no compulsory retirement age although some women may well nto have jobs if they find it hard to get back into work after children which could make things even worse as men may well be working from age 50 - 75 and earning and being visible and enjoying a job and some women who find it harder to get back into work (the ones who take career breaks) will be even further marginalised and also short of money and in a sense hidden at home.

I think it ids far harder to see sexism in our own culture because we are surrounded by it every day, and far easier to see it in other cultures.

Darkestyes - I also grew up in the 70's and 80's and young women are often shocked when I say I think a lot of elements of sexism are worse now than back then. But they are.

There is a on fb for example a meme circulating of an ordinary catalogue page of girls toys in the 70's and now, with links to further pages. The girls in the catalogue are wearing a variety of clothes, not just pink and sparkly. The toys are a variety of colours and include toys now labelled routinely as "boys" toys.

As a teenager in the 80's, there were cat calls and sexual harassment. But it seems to have got much worse since then. We all thought then that it would get better as time went on.

It does make me sad and anger me how sexist the UK is. I like living here, but it does desperately need to change.

@MadamBatShit thanks for the link to the report - I haven't read the DM article - did she speak directly to them, or did they create the article based on that report?

It makes for interesting but then not entirely surprising reading. I think what people might take issue with is describing the UK as having worse sexism than African countries where female circumcision is widespread or forces marriages in Pakistan etc.

I think it is worse being a woman in somewhere like Afghanistan right now, in every way. But the gist of that report is what we all know on a general basis - the poorer you are, the higher the risk of DV and not being taken seriously by the police if you are a woman. Women are still second class citizens in this and EVERY country, and as another poster upthread pointed out, the 'I'm alright Jill' mentality is the single greatest threat to the advancement of women in the developed and developing world. Maybe until women are truly equal, there can be no such thing as a developed nation.

I found it extremely disturbing that despite her repeated requests, the prison service would not allow her to visit Yarl's Wood immigrant detention centre. That the media has not made light of this is very very worrying indeed.

I didn't read the DM article LadyRabbit, so I don't know.
I think it is one of those cases again of willfully distorting a message in order to deflect from the serious issue here. Very similar to what happened to Hillary Mantell talking about Kate and the role of the royal woman.
And, as I said above as well, I am very worried about her being denied access to Yarls Wood as well. About 2 weeks after a woman died there? I surely seems they do have something to hide. And the press does seem lazy or uninterested about it?

Why do so many threads like this get started and then, as soon as the OP realises that they have posted something which suggests they may not have thought the topic through very intelligently, they disappear? At least have the courage of your misguided convictions.

And with regard to the topic, it's absolute nonsense to say that because you don't experience something it is therefore not a problem, OP.

No doubt Scandinavian countries are far less sexist, but I imagine Eastern Europe paints quite a different picture. Europe can't be treated as all the same in this regard

That's not my experience of Eastern Europe, or at least the places I've been, women in general are not harassed in the street at all. Women usually work as well in professional jobs, former communist countries see all as workers. Their mothers or extended family may look after their one child (very low birthrate) although using nurseries is more common.

That's not to say life wouldn't be hard if you were a Roma girl stuck on an encampment without running water, these are poorer countries and so poorer women remain vulnerable- think of that little blonde girl found in a 'Gipsy' encampment in Greece who turned out to have been left there by her illiterate mother who was a migrant worker picking crops.

For the professional classes though, education and general cultural literacy is high and harassment of women quite low. I don't know why you stereotype Eastern Europe in this way, although it may differ between countries plus they are all pretty homophobic or at least, open discourse about gay people isn't possible.

MariaJenny I agree with you about the old.

But if elderly people were living with their families who do you think does the caring? Its women who are most likely to be carers and have the responsibility of this. Women are now expected to work full time AND have children AND care for the elderly.

It cant be done There are only 24 hours in a day. My mum left Italy in 1960 Her DB my uncle stayed living there with his own family but it was his wife, my aunt who did ALL the caring for her FIL when he lived with them I saw it with my own eyes when I was there in 83.

The same is expected here or certainly would be if all the residential homes were to shut tomorrow!

YY Grennie I knew I wasn't imagining the fact that a lot of things are worse now