Why is gender equality failing to stop the hatred?

Virginia Haussegger

The Examiner

0
yesterday

Who else would think to stick a mirror reflector on the front of MS Magazine? It was 1975, International Women's Year, and editor Gloria Steinem wanted to make the first issue all about you, the reader.

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'It's Your Year' the groovy headline screamed. Anyone who picked up the shiny magazine found themselves staring at ... themselves. Brilliant.

Inside Steinem wrote about the "contagion of feminism" across continents. She pitched this newfound power of women working collectively against the scourge of sexism as "a natural and anti-nationalist force".

Half a century later, on International Women's Day, that anti-nationalist force needs a major turbo charge.

It's a fine thing to celebrate women and eat cupcakes today - a day dedicated to acknowledging women's strength and progress. But we're a long way from 1975.

Autocracies now outnumber democracies three to one. And we've quickly learnt that the autocrat's playbook starts with the persecution of women.

As soon as the manic male takes control, he actively uses political machinery to take a hammer to gender equality and roll back women's rights. Hello Donald. When extremists take charge, the first laws they enact are restrictions on women's bodies, clothing, freedom of movement and access to education. Hello Taliban. Hello Ayatollah.

When political parties lean on nationalism and 'family values' - very soon women's sexual and reproductive rights are in their sights. Recent attempts in Queensland and South Australia to emulate Donald Trump's reversal of abortion rights were only narrowly stopped.

These are unprecedented times of rampant hegemonic masculinity and rapidly escalating extremist ideologies, that are unashamedly anti-women.

Donald Trump campaigned against 'endless wars'. What has changed?

Australia's wealthy are funding a fragmented, failing political right

Would Labor be supporting this war if it were in opposition?

International Women's Day demands our attention. But it's not about gender equality now.

That is not the goal. It is not enough.

That is not to say gender equality doesn't matter. Of course it does. More than ever.

When women fully participate in public life, political leadership and the labour market, economies are stronger and nations are more stable, sustainable and secure. There is a plethora of data that now proves that.

Don't just take my word for it. Read through the numerous submissions to the Australian parliament's current Joint Standing Committee 'Inquiry into Gender Equality as a National Security and Economic Security Imperative.'

It is impossible to read any of the evidence and not appreciate the critical centrality of gender equality to Australia's future stability. (Sad as it is that we've had to have a formal inquiry to make this point!)

However, there is a bigger demand - a more brutal and muscular task - we must face up to for the sake of all women and men.

Our collective, 21st century aspiration should be the full-scale dismantling of patriarchal structures; and the eradication of misogyny, along with all that enables it.

The current tsunami of hatred and violence openly directed at women is out of control.

Gender equality alone can't combat it. Getting women around the table and into high places doesn't shift deeply held attitudes and discriminatory values. It doesn't stop men's fear of women's progress. In fact, gender equality possibly feeds it.

Australia's own 'feminist rockstar' Elizabeth Reid warned the world of the danger of narrowing our focus to simply fixing laws and counting the numbers of women in leadership.

At the first UN World Conference on Women, held in Mexico 1975, Reid - who made a splash as the first Women's Advisor to a head of government - led the Australian delegation, with Margaret Whitlam as her deputy.

Although wobbly kneed, Reid stood alone and brazen on the global stage as she lectured the United Nations about the greatest problem plaguing women everywhere - sexism.

"We can no longer delude ourselves with the hope that formal (gender) equality, once achieved, will eradicate sexist oppression - it could well merely legitimize it," she said firmly.

Reid went on to lecture the 135 nations represented about the "very real danger" that once laws and rules are changed and "formal equality" has been achieved, or is at least close, then a belief that "all problems are thereby solved" will settle in. When in fact the tougher objective of ending sexist attitudes that foster harm, humiliation and the abuse of women "still remains".

Fifty years after Elizabeth Reid's warning, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, stated unequivocally, "instead of mainstreaming equal rights, we're seeing the mainstreaming of misogyny." He has called on women to step up, take power, and fight back.

These are deeply troubling times for women and girls. Without sounding too bleak, I fear we are on the precipice of a critical 'moment'. We must meet it.

Women's rights - including here in Australia - have been swept up in an anti-woke backlash, at a time when our young women and girls are growing up in a world that has normalised hyper-sexualised misogyny. A world where women expect to be unsafe and know that physical violence is only a beer away.

The World Economic Forum says it will take 123 years to reach gender parity. In our region of Eastern Asia and the Pacific it's 179 years. And that's if progress remains steady!

Yet globally, 50 per cent of people believe "when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, things have gone far enough in my country." In Australia, 45 per cent of men believe that. Worse still, 56 per cent believe "women's equality" is now "discriminating against men".

The younger they are, the more males believe women have got it too good. Globally, nearly 60 per cent of Gen Z males (aged 14 to 29 years) believe "we have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men." They want the "giving" to stop.

It's time to flip the mirror and turn it on men. What do they see in that reflection?

Virginia Haussegger AM is a Canberra journalist and Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra. Her new book is Unfinished Revolution: The Feminist Fightback