Feminism Book Club - The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard - 14 April 2010 9pm

[Molesworth]

Thought I'd set the thread up ready for next week

Link to book on Amazon

Synopsis

Today it is widely believed that feminism has achieved its aims, and that women and men have achieved equality. This, quite simply, is an illusion.

Women working full time in the UK are paid on average seventeen per cent less than men. Domestic violence causes more death and disability among women aged sixteen to forty-four than cancer or traffic accidents. Of parliamentary seats across the globe, only fifteen per cent are held by women and fewer than twenty per cent of UK MPs are women. The number of men paying for sex acts doubled during the 1990s in the UK. From body image to work to education to violence to sex, women in the twenty-first century are still on an unequal footing with men.

In The Equality Illusion, campaigner Kat Banyard has written an alarm call, arguing passionately that feminism is one of the most urgent and relevant social justice campaigns today.

Structuring the book around a normal day, Banyard sets out the major issues for twenty-first-century feminism and explores how they are woven into our everyday lives. She also challenges how we think about choice and empowerment - ideas that have been so successfully co-opted by both the beauty industry and the sex industry - and argues against the notion that biology is at the heart of most gender inequality.

Banyard draws on her own campaigning experience as well as academic research and dozens of her own interviews and case studies. The book also includes information on how to get involved in grassroots action and a list of resources.

(www.faber.co.uk/work/equality-illusion/9780571246267/)

Author Website

Hi all, hope you don't mind me dropping in! Had wanted to message earlier but have realised from trying to take part in this discussion that I'm quite a slow typer!

Anyway - just wanted to say it would be fantastic if any of you wanted to get involved in UK Feminista! It's a new organisation I'm helping establish to support grassroot feminist activism. The aim is to re-claim feminism and help everyone get involved in campaigns to end sexism.

Still early stages for the organisation, but you can check it out at www.ukfeminista.org.uk

The discussions on here - and, for me, especially the sex industry one - have been very helpful to me in starting to unpick this confusion around the language of feminism and the language of neoliberalism. Kat says in the book "but feminism isn't defined by a process (choice) but by an aim (ending the subordination of women)" (p.22). It was good to have that affirmed in the book because so often the argument comes up that feminism = 'choice', yet as SGM and many others have tried to point out on MN in recent days/weeks, choices have consequences.

Kat welcome! Are we allowed to interrogate you ?

If so (ahem)

How do you deal with the 'prude' accusation when you criticise the sex industry?

Welcome Kat, thanks for joining us!

I am thinking more deeply about lots of things now.

I really like that comparison of how our world effects our views to how it is in an individual abusive relationship. Having sadly read about these in the book and in Mumsnet I can see how the perceived reality of a womens situation effects her reasoning and clouds her view of her situation. I can see now examples of my thinking which stem from the way I was brought up. (EG around being houseproud etc).

I've been challenging myself to see the beauty in people this week - "unconventional" beauty/wisdom/experience etc.

Blinder - ask away! (though I may reply a little slowly. Novice question - do you have to keep re-freshing your page to see new posts?)

Re. prude accusations: it's just about making it clear that being accepting and open about sex is very different to being accepting and open about the sex industry. Sex should be about 2 (or more!) people who genuinely want to be having a sexual interaction with each other - for emotional or sexual satisfaction. The very premise of the sex industry is that one of the people participating doesn't really want to be there - otherwise they wouldn't have to be paid!

SGM, exactly right. The point about choices being constrained and about choices having potentially harmful consequences seems such an obvious one to make, yet it's one that has got lost in a fug of neoliberal crap. It seems that an awful lot of women have swallowed this idea that feminism is just about individual choice, yet this is surely some extreme form of libertarianism that few people would espouse if they really thought about it?

SGM, yes unfortunately, the analogy of the holocaust does work in this instance. Women are terrorised in similar ways today and also make choices that conform to the oppressors desires. I don't think it minimises the holocaust to draw that parallel tbh. I know lots of people will think that statement over-dramatic (internal naysayer says). 100,000 women are raped every year. Conviction rates 6.5% (p. 2). This equates to social permission to rape.

Who said 'women are prey'? Was it Marilyn French?

Kat yes - refresh to see posts

Re: rape, I thought the point in the book about rape being treated as if it is a "natural hazard" was very well made. It seems to me that the prevalence of rape and the pathetically low conviction rate are on their own proof enough that claims of equality are an illusion.

Kat - thanks for joining our first book club!

I was wondering what your thoughts were on the Equality Act which was published today?

Also any thoughts on the main political parties engagement (or lack of!) with Feminism?

Dittany - yes, social change isn't a straight forward path. More a labrynth. There are so many forces at play - like the amount of money that can be made from perpetuating sexism!

Hi Tabouleh I was working on the Equality Bill last year as Campaigns Officer at the Fawcett Society. We were lobbying hard for the bill to include measures to compel all companies to do annual equal pay audits - to root out and redress any pay gaps (currently the gender pay gap is around 23%). But alas it wasn't included in the bill. Still, it's an important bill with some useful stuff in there - particularly around dual discimination. Fawcett also has a campaign at the moment to ask political parties, 'what about women'? www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/

(trying to be clear as it sounds like a useful theory)

SGM so Langer claims that we sometimes make choices which unfortunately sacrifice others in order to survive in an oppressive culture (specifically the holocaust)?

Which means that we can effectively discount as choices those actions which contribute to the overall subordination of women by individual women who claim to be benefitted by those choices, i.e. voluntarily participating in the sex industry?

Interesting... not sure how the so-called 'happy hooker' would feel about it.

But obviously we must all 'compromise' with the oppression in countless ways. I don't go out much by myself after dark, for example . I wear lipstick . I walk past lads mags in my local shop and keep my head down .

I wonder if the current crisis of neoliberalism is going to lead to another reconfiguration of capitalism (back to more Keynesian style regulation?) which might provide an environment more conducive to feminist activism and feminist intervention than neoliberalism has been?

Not sure if that garbled question made sense, but it seems to me that neoliberalism has been rather successful in silencing feminism.

Kat - thanks for that info on the Fawcett campaign I'll have a look for myself to see what the political parties answers are to the What About Women Qs.

tabouleh - good idea about promoting the book/facts from the book on facebook. I'm in!