Last month I took my eight-month-old son William to a stay-and-play session at our local children’s centre. Hoping to get him crawling, I popped him down on a mat next to a box of toy cars. But when he shuffled over to a JCB, I freaked out that I might be unconsciously perpetuating gender stereotypes. Relocating to the kitchen area, I nodded in approval as he grabbed a plastic aubergine and tossed it into the microwave. But could this encourage a reliance on convenience culture? Maybe we’d have more luck with the dolls. As he reached enthusiastically for a blonde, blue-eyed, most likely cis-gendered schoolboy my heart sank — in the future, will he only hire employees who look just like him? Then he started banging its head against the floor, bashing this symbol of toxic masculinity into submission. Take that, patriarchy! If this sounds unhinged I’m not the only one struggling with the pressure to get parenthood “right”. Since his daughter … [Read more...] about When did raising kids become so complicated?
The simple truth about the gender pay gap
Fight Like a Girl by Clementine Ford
A slayer of man-baby trolls, polarising teller of hard truths and feminist flamethrower, Ford is rarely far from online uproar. Moreover, she fights back with élan, naming and shaming commenters who verbally attack or threaten her. If anything, the abuse acts as a spur of sorts. "Every time someone calls me a 'feminazi', I power up by five points," she tweeted in 2016. More recently, she commented: "I knew having a baby would confuse the angry scared little men." Her writing for Adelaide's Sunday Mail has been at one clear-eyed, caustic and fearless. A book was a foregone conclusion. Yet Fight Like a Girl arrives at a particularly curious time, not least because it's published on the back of an entire tsunami of similar tomes. It's certainly no bad thing, but bookshelves are awash with unapologetic feminist manifestos. Jessica Valenti, Laura Bates, Caroline Criado-Perez, Laurie Penny, Lindy West… when it comes to guidance and teachings, young feminists have rarely had it so … [Read more...] about Fight Like a Girl by Clementine Ford
Why your bank could hold the key to closing the gender pay gap
It was the moment the real truth about the gender pay gap in the city emerged – and it was far worse than most of us suspected. When UK-based businesses finally complied with the deadline to publish the difference between average male and female earnings within their organisations last week, the gap in some sectors was breathtaking. Particularly, of course, in the financial sector. HSBC’s pay gap was 59 per cent, NM Rothschild was more than 54 per cent and Credit Suisse International’s gap was more than 51 per cent, to name just a few. Read more BBC presenter 'incandescent with rage' that male colleagues paid more Worst gender pay gap offenders in each sector revealed How Belgium is defeating the gender pay gap But now that the pay gaps are public knowledge, many financial service providers could discover that reducing the gap makes good commercial as well as moral sense. A study carried out by the website SavvyWoman.co.uk revealed that more than half of women … [Read more...] about Why your bank could hold the key to closing the gender pay gap