Why we need feminism
A recent Grove Ethics booklet,Women, Justice, and the Church : An Apology for Feminism, is a actually compelling study past Kate Kirkpatrick from St Clare'due south in Oxford. She wants us to move beyond electric current debates about women in ministry to ask much more than key questions about the identify of women in guild—and in particular to be alarm to the different betwixt thede jureandde facto condition of men'southward and women'due south equality. Her study includes some startling statistics.
At that place is good news about equality, especially in teaching:
In the Great britain, for example, girls now outperform boys at all levels of teaching, from age 7 to university. In fact, in 2013, the growing disparity in achievement between girls and boys led to the proffer that the regime should commission a report on boys' underachievement. In 2010, for the get-go fourth dimension in history, women became the majority of the workforce in the The states. The majority of managers in the The states are now women and there are 3 women graduating with bachelor's degrees for every two men. (p 8)
This accounts for the failing interest amongst women in the label 'feminist.' Yet when we look at the workplace, there is still significant disparity:
The proportion of women in governments is rarely proportional to the number of women in the population, and the college the position of ability—at the national level of parliaments and senates, prime ministers or presidents, the fewer women representatives we discover. The Great britain is 58thursday in international rankings for women in such positions, with only 22.5% of its representatives being female person. The USA is 80th, with 17.viii%. Rwanda is in beginning place, with 63.8% women representatives in their lower house and 38.v% in the upper. In second (with a neat fifty% of representatives in a single political house), we observe Principality of andorra. Economically, in the UK a woman's mean gross hourly earnings are still 81p for every £1 earned past men. Despite the attending third-wave feminists have drawn to the gender pay gap, it is nonetheless there, and the discrepancy in pay widens over time—as women age their earnings drib in relation to men.'
Women today are nevertheless widely expected to perform certain types of work. Co-ordinate to a 2012 report past the Britain Trades Union Congress, 'Around 17.two% of men in work are depression paid, compared with 28% of women workers, with those women who piece of work office-time the well-nigh likely to be in depression paid employment.' There seem to be persistent problems of occupational gender segregation, both vertically and horizontally. In the Uk women are still less likely to have higher-paid professional person and managerial jobs; they are 'concentrated in a much narrower range of jobs than men, particularly the five "Cs"—caring, catering, cashiering, cleaning and clerical piece of work. For instance, 19% of women in employment do administrative or secretarial work compared with five% of men; 15% of women are employed in the personal services compared to two% of men; and 10% of women work in sales compared to 5% of men.'
And if we look at the domestic situation, things are fifty-fifty worse:
In United kingdom 8 out of 10 married women do more household chores, and just ane in x men does an equal corporeality of cleaning and washing as his married woman. The remaining 1 in ten men practice more housework than their wives. What this means is that while the past 50 years have seen greater numbers of women shouldering a greater proportion of the economic brunt of their households, patterns of household work take changed only slightly since the 1950s.
Kate explores the circuitous issues effectually these facts—and of form there is the huge effect of childbirth and parenting to exist considered. Mothers are e'er more likely to be involved in parenting, and what is it that makes us value 'paid employment' more the serious business of raising a family? So perhaps the almost startling, measurable issue is the role of the media in differentiating men and women.
Style over substance: the media is more likely to dedicate column inches to female politicians' way sense (or perceived lack thereof) than that of their male colleagues.
Personal lives and familial descriptions: journalists tend to focus more on female politicians' personal lives—their marital and maternal condition is given much greater attention, which many take to reflect double standards in society with reference to women's ability to balance their professional and family unit roles, and women politicians are often described in familial terms—as 'a grandmotherly redhead dressed in a sensible suit,' for example, whereas men are described in professional person terms, highlighting their experience, accomplishments, and positions on political issues.
Discrepancies in reports of speech: men'southward speech communication is likely to be reported using neutral speech verbs (eg say, tell, talk about), whereas women'south was reported with more violent/aggressive language (eg blast, slam, attack, charge).
Paraphrasing: journalists are more likely to paraphrase women's statements than men's.
Negative gender distinctions (ie a reference to one's sex that is described as a hindrance): men are more likely than women to be described in sex-neutral terms, in which the subject's sexual practice is irrelevant to how he or she is portrayed.
And, terminal just non to the lowest degree, in that location are the archetypal or clichéd images of women, which present a narrow range of iconic images of women: mother, blonde, teacher, iron lady, witch, ice queen, seductress, old maid.
Kate goes on to explore biblical and theological issues and resource. Simply the facts in a higher place are enough to show that we need to continue to have the 'feminist agenda' in some course seriously—whatever our theological presuppositions.
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