Category Archives: Equality, Diversity And Inclusion
Carnival, Festival Or Fiesta?
Different meanings apply to the words ‘carnival’, ‘fiesta’ and ‘festival’, but these are not always apparent in their day-to-day usage. The cultural, religious and indeed sometimes class-related nuances of these words influence decisions about what is appropriate for whom. But this may not help us to see that ideas of ‘excellence’ are not necessarily at all the same as the notion of ‘elitism’. Nonetheless, this distinction is very important, and never more so than in cities such as Liverpool, as they strive to re-invent themselves.
When is a series of celebratory perfomances a ‘Carnival’, when is it a ‘Festival’ and when is it a ‘Fiesta’?
My curiosity about these words was first aroused in the early 1990s, when we began to talk about resurrecting the Hope Street Festival in Liverpool. There is a tradition stretching back many years of Festival events in Liverpool – not least the Hope Street events (in some of which I was involved as a student) in 1977 for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and in the city as a whole through several decades before then.
Changing expectations
What rapidly became apparent when we began to talk with people in the 1990s however was that there were several very different undersandings about what a contemporary ‘Festival’ might be – and that most of them did not at all equate to my previous expectation that a Festival in Liverpool would be something along the lines of those in Edinburgh, Harrogate or, say, any of the Three Choirs cities.
Liverpool does indeed still have an annual ‘Festival‘, but that is a competitive event, mostly for children and amateur groups, and originally driven by a number of determined local citizens, such as the late Dennis Rattle, father of Sir Simon, and members of the Rushworth family (who had a music shop in the city). This performing arts competition, though in a fine British tradition, is neither a festival in the sense of a programme of formal professional events, nor a ‘fringe‘ in the sense that, say, Edinburgh has one.
Rather, it seemed that what people across the city expected from a modern festival around Hope Street was something in my mind more akin to a fiesta or carnival, perhaps along the lines of the event which has subsequently developed in Liverpool’s Mathew Street.
The formal definitions
These different understandings, which took a while to draw out from discussions, sent me off to look for the dictionary. What I found is interesting. The respective Oxford Concise Dictionary definitions are:
Carnival ~ festivities usual during period before Lent in R.C. countries; riotous revelry; travelling circus or fair; festivities esp. occurring at regular date
Festival ~ feast day, celebration, merry-making; periodic musical etc. performance(s)
Fiesta ~ religious festival in Spanish-speaking countries; festivity, holiday
All the terms I investigated arise from religious events, and usually Roman Catholic ones specifically – an interesting piece of background information in a city such as Liverpool, with in some parts its strongly Catholic, working class traditions.
Festivals are what you make of them
This has set me thinking. There is perhaps a tension here between what people in different places, with different previous experience, expect from a Festival. For the people of Liverpool, the large majority of whom have probably only a passing acquaintance with Edinburgh, Harrogate, Worcester, Salisbury, Cheltenham or other cities which host formal Festivals, the expectation is that celebratory performance will be community-based and, indeed, probably actually conducted on the street. A good example of this is the events offered by Hope Street Ltd, an arts training organisation in Liverpool.
Likewise, when the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra decided to start a summer concerts series some years ago, it chose to do so under canvas and on the waterfront, on a ‘Pops‘ basis. (Since then, the event has taken a course which means that the RLPO is scarcely involved at all.)
Expectations can be important
There are however potential dangers in this apparent democratisation of performance art. Firstly, if people in a city are not encouraged to expect Festival performances by visiting artists such as we might expect in Edinburgh, Cheltenham or wherever, they are unlikely to value them; and the message that ‘excellence’ (both indigenous to the city and offered by visitors) is not the same as ‘elitism’ may be lost.
And, secondly, Liverpool will in 2008 become the European Capital of Culture. We in Liverpool may well have much to show visitors from Europe and beyond about how to engage local (largely working class) communities in arts performance – and I am genuinely eager that we should. But it is unlikely that visitors from further afield will be impressed by this if it is not backed up by evidence that we can also provide what many of them, from their previous experience, may expect in addition – which is a fine array of first rate professional offerings very visibly supported by the local populace.
In other words, there is still a lot of audience capacity building to be done in Liverpool before 2008, if we are to impress our very welcome visitors as we would wish. And time is short. Carnivals and fiestas are great; but they need to be nurtured alongside festivals of the sort offered by other sophisticated and ambitious cities, if we in Liverpool are to take maximum advantage of the possibilities now on the horizon for our Year as European Capital of Culture.
No-Win Or Win-Win Gender And Babies Agenda?
Choosing if and when to have a baby has never been an easy decision, especially if both partners want to continue in employment. But the debate has shifted quite a lot in the past few years, and perhaps now a deeper understanding is emerging of what ‘work-life balance’ is really about.
Actually, of course, some folk would say it’s all-win for some, and never-win for others; but we do know, really, it’s not like that.
The question does however have to be asked, how can you get it right, if you’re a woman and a mum and a person who wants to make her way in the world?
History or Herstory?
Fact is, for the past fifty years it’s been even more complicated than for the years before then. Whatever is thought by those with shorter memories, the time from the end of World War II (1945) until the end of the sixties, and well into the seventies, was dreadful for women wanting to maintain their families and their careers.
The landmark equality legislation of the 1970’s certainly changed things for the better… but even I found myself in a situation, when ‘the family’ arrived, of having to resign my full-time post and then apply again for my job, as a part-timer. Maternity leave had never been taken by anyone at the college where I then taught, and anyway it was a mere four weeks or bust (which even after resigning was not much less than what I had, before I went back as a part-timer).
Strange then how, during WWII (I report here from the history books, not personal recollection), there was all sorts of support for ‘working women’, so it could be done when the will was there. But at that time of course, sadly, the men actually weren’t ‘there’ as well….
Improved, but still problematic
So I don’t go at all with the idea of some young women today that ‘it’s harder now than it was for our mums’ – who, it is I gather supposed, just had to work for ‘pin-money’, or else stayed at home supported by a bread-winning spouse who could earn for the family; for most of us I suspect that only happened on The Archers.
Nor of course do I believe that 1939-1945, with all its horrors, was a time when women always thrived. But classic films such as Rosie the Riveter (about a group of female engineering production workers in New York in the ’40s) demonstrate well the capability and willingness of women to take on ‘men’s jobs’ when they have to.
And nearer to home, I discovered in my own research in the 1970s that women who had entered academic science during the 1940s had a better chance of professional progression than younger ones, who had to compete with the men.
Complex judgements and issues
No, the issues now more complex than they were either when the need for skilled workers required women to take the job on, or indeed when the campaigns for basic rights (oh heady days!) were still to be won.
It’s rare for anyone today to announce their outright hostility to women – though there are many serious and shocking stories still to be told. The formal legal battles, if not the wage-related ones, have been quite largely secured. It’s beginning at last to cost those who don’t grasp equality a lot of money.
But that doesn’t resolve everything. We read daily of ‘reasons’ why women ‘should’ only have their children in a very narrow age-slot; and why they ‘must’ keep close physical contact with their babies for a considerable time. On a personal level these are harder things to deal with, than is straightforward sexist write-off. Psychological pressures can cause real personal pain; for fair-minded people sexism just causes anger.
Where’s the truth?
I don’t think there is a single truth in all this – except that no way is it ‘just’ a ‘women’s dilemma’. Whoever heard of a baby that didn’t have a dad somewhere along the line?
My recollection is that these psychological influences on decisions about having a family were always there, lurking in the scenes; but in previous decades we’ve had to concentrate on rights as such. Now young women (and their partners) have to make personal judgements, because genuine choice does at least to some extent exist.
It was never, ever, easy. But perhaps if real choices start to be made by women and men together, the climate might begin to change so that at least most folk understand and respect the dilemmas and decisions we all have to make, when we bring (or decide not to bring) babies into the world.
The expression ‘work-life balance‘ could be about to become genuinely meaningful at last.
A version of this article was first published in Diverse Liverpool: the gender issue, in March 2006, pp. 113-115.
Read more articles about Gender & Women, and see more of Hilary’s Publications, Lectures & Talks
Modern Civic Leadership Needs Gender Equity
Cities like Liverpool still seem to have a problem about ‘strong women’. On-going changes of civic leadership in the city offer an opportunity for the chaps to disprove suspicions that they continue to hold this antiquated attitude across all spheres of influence. Institutional sexism has no place in an adult and forward-looking city.
Recent turbulence in Liverpool’s civic leadership has set me thinking about what comes next. Do we want more of the same, or do we want something fresher and more responsive than the present arrangements?
This is a city with a tradition of behind-the-scenes chaps’ groups who met for luncheon and called themselves ‘The Big Four’ (or is it Super Six, or First Eleven, or Secret Seventeen?), and which has no, repeat no, really serious power-brokers outside Westminster who sometimes wear skirts. (There are some fine women out there doing excellent jobs, but they ain’t at the top of local government in Liverpool.)
Does Liverpool have a problem about women?
I’m certainly not of the view that women are necessarily ‘better’ than men in any respect, or that change necessarily means feminisation. But I do think, on the basis of many years’ experience, that this is a city which still has problems with welcoming the input of strong women. Maybe that’s not just a characteristic of Liverpool, but we are quite evidently trailing in the so-called Equal Opportunities stakes, as the Mersey Partnership Gender Agenda illustrates all too painfully.
Equality of opportunity is also best use of human resource
This isn’t just (though it is anyway) a matter of equity. This is a matter of the optimum use of resource, including talent, knowledge and understanding. In cities like Liverpool (I assume there are others too) problems seem to be ‘solved’ by top-down directives. Maybe that was necessary at one stage; but it won’t take us up to the next level – at least, not in my opinion a next level which in the long-run will do us any good.
Using human resources well means accommodating different styles and different perspectives. Even putting aside the compelling moral case, the fundamental reason that equal opportunities is critical is that any other way wastes potential to serve the best interests of everyone. (Has someone forgotten that over half the population is female?)
Sometimes men of influence are afraid of women who are strong
Men and women across the globe are in the end much the same; the variations within each gender are usually greater than the differences between the genders when it comes to work, decisions, personal choices and so forth. We (nearly) all want what’s best, we (nearly) all want decent, effective decision-making. So theoretically it doesn’t matter whether our leaders are men or women, as long as they’re able and of good faith.
But in one respect Liverpool at least hasn’t got there yet. The chaps who decide things – not all of them, but some – are not yet prepared to change their perceptions, to see individuals for what they can bring to the party, rather than what they wear (to be facetious, a skirt or a tie?). Whilst the city continues to be run by an unspoken convention about what sort of person is ‘appropriate’ for serious influence, leadership and decision-making – and challenge as you may, demonstrating this convention isn’t the case is very difficult – we are desperately missing a trick.
Influence and leadership across the board
Covert sexism in Liverpool applies whether we’re looking at the Town Hall, the local economy or community development and involvement. There is an inflexibility somewhere in ‘the system’ which results I suspect from insecurity and / or protectionism masquerading as traditional, definitive leadership. And this overall leadership, as we have seen, is hugely male-dominated.
Current civic changes offer a chance for those decision-makers who really do care about the best interests of us all now to deliver something more inclusive and thereby also more effective for the whole community.
We shall be a Grown Up City when, and only when, the Chaps are no longer afraid of Strong Women.
‘How Do They Do It?’ – A Way To Broaden Horizons?
Liverpool’s physical location and economic situation make it difficult for some local people to know much about what’s happening elsewhere. This is turn results in difficulties in determining locally which new ideas for the city are good, and which less so. The proposed ‘How Do They Do It?’ programme could help here… but only if those who are able to do so actively support the idea.
There was a letter in the Liverpool Daily Post of 10 February, in which local commentator John Elcock writes of his concern that we in Liverpool should not reject everything that’s new in the city. He refers to his sadness about the ‘growing culture of parochialism in a city that used to trade ideas with the world.’
John’s letter is specifically about proposed new architectural designs in Liverpool; but I fear his remarks might also apply to other parts of our cultural and civic life.
Liverpool pride
I came to live in Liverpool 35 years ago this week, having never before had the opportunity to visit this city. There was plenty to be proud of for Liverpool’s citizens – its University, its Royal Orchestra, its fine Cathedrals, Theatres and Museums, its wonderful architecture; and of course the conviction of those who lived here that there could never be a better place to be.
Pride in one’s city is a fine thing, and fundamentally necessary for well-being and future success. But, unexamined, it can also be an obstacle to progress. Despite the ravages of the 1980s, we still have our flagship centres of learning and culture and our wonderful buildings; but somehow their backdrop is now more self-defensive, more openly unaccommodating of new ideas and of the give-and-take of modern life.
And Liverpool parochialism?
Many people in Liverpool do not even know about the lives of their neighbours at the other end of their own city, let alone those down the road in Manchester, Birmingham, London or perhaps further afield. Perhaps in previous times this knowledge was less essential; but now, when our young people do know about the opportunities elsewhere, many decide to leave Liverpool for pastures new.
This is a serious issue of opportunity and of cost. It is a legacy of comfort zone living, being unable to move beyond one’s own boundaries because of lack of money, lack of knowledge of what to do or where to go to find out new things, small opportunity to see why comparing our own and others’ experience might be useful. The cost of such tight horizons is sometimes difficulty, as John Elcock suggests, in being able to judge which new ideas for Liverpool are ‘right’, and which ‘wrong’.
Opportunities to compare and learn
I don’t write these observations to criticise, but rather to suggest a new opportunity and a way forward. For several years there have been proposals for a civic and educational programme based in Liverpool and called ‘How Do They Do It?’.
The idea would be to support small groups of young and older people together, as they visit other places, as guests of that town or city, to see what has been achieved (public service, enterprise, architecture and culture, whatever…) and how it was done. This would then be reported back in whatever way to our own people in Liverpool. Likewise, citizens of other places could – and indeed through the European Capital of Culture programme will – come as our guests to see what we in Liverpool do exceptionally well, and to report it back to their own neighbours and fellow townspeople.
Travel these days is easy, few towns and cities, whether in Britain or in continental Europe, cannot find a way to welcome guests who come in goodwill to learn together. Which businesses, schools and colleges, residents associations, religious organisations, individuals or whoever, can join us in making this ambition to share experience, with all the benefits it would bring to ourselves and others, a reality?
The IPR Of Community Enterprise
Intellectual property rights seem only to apply to business ideas. What would be effect of a similar way of ensuring encouragement for community-engendered ideas?
Intellectual Property Rights are the Big Thing these days. Almost everyone in business and commerce who has a new idea now realises that they would be best protecting it and making sure it’s understood to be theirs. After all, who knows what riches an idea might lead to?
But how does this fit with social enterprise? Or with capacity building in the community? How are people who ‘lead’ commuities going to benefit from their ideas, when these are by their very nature communally ‘owned’ once they gain credence?
What sort of reward or encouragement is there for individuals in communities to put heart and soul into bringing constructive ideas forward, when, because there is no ‘protection’ for these ideas, they will simply end up being part of the paid employment tasks of officialdom?
Can we ‘protect’ bottom-up ideas?
At present I’m not sure what the answer to this question is. I pose it simply to see what others may think. But I’m pretty sure it’s an important aspect of developing a genuinely ‘bottom up’ stakehold in our communities and society at large.
What, I wonder, is the mechanism which would allow effective ‘top down’ support for social and community enterprise and engagement, without it becoming the ‘property’ of the officials and bureaucrats who so often dominate the subsequent development of good community-based ideas? How can we encourage people in their own communities to believe that good ideas really are worth having?
‘School Trips Change Lives’ Says The National Trust
School trips to look at local ecology seem to be very successful in encouraging children to appreciate their environment. If this works for local eco-issues, surely it can work also for wider social ones? The ‘How Do They Do It?’ scheme has been very slow to get off the ground, but perhaps its time has some. Who will help to make it happen?
Tha National Trust has been running a Guardianship Scheme for some fifteen years, with almost one hundred schools in its programme. The idea, now evaluated by Dr Alan Peacock of Exeter University, is that ‘trips’ out of school make a difference to the way children understand their world… and the evidence, reported in Dr Peacock’s evaluation (Changing Minds: The Lasting Impact of School Trips), is that such trips do exactly that.
Environments are social as well as ecological
The benefits of ‘nature walks’ and the rest, confirmed by Dr Peacock and his colleagues, will come as no surprise to those of us who have been lucky enough to experience these as part of growing up. Nature walks amount almost to an entitlement for all chidlren, wherever they live – the city has an environment and ecology just as much as did the village of my early years.
If even a passing aquaintance with the world immediately around us is of long term benefit, how much more can it benefit us to know something of our neightbours – the other side of our town, the other end of our country, or indeed the other side of Europe and beyond?
Preparation and support are the keys
But it’s not enough simply to ‘do a school trip’ – where teachers are still brave enough to undertake this daunting exercise. To maximise the positive impact chidlren must firstly have a real idea before they depart of what they are likely to encounter; and they must have opportunities to meet and get to know local people when they get there.
Such demands are a tall order. They require a genuinely integrated approach to the curriculum, and a degree of planning which goes well beyond that of the time table.
So why not start more simply? By all means carry on with the ‘holiday’ style visits which some schools try hard to provide for their students. But what about also looking at ways of integrating the ‘widening horizons’ agenda for both children and adults?
It’s part of the regeneration and renewal agenda, too
Provision of opportunities for learning about how other people do things is a recurrent theme on this website.
Those who would perhaps find the sharing of experience most useful are often those who can least afford and / or organise it. There’s a real need to do this… and if it starts by simply going to the other side of one’s own city with the intention of meeting new people and seeing new things, that’s great.
The professional challenge
This is a challenge for teachers, regeneration specialists, community development workers and many others. Can people be encouraged to move beyond their own experience in ways which are comfortable and positive, so that they are better equipped to make genuine choices for their own communities?
And, critically, are we as practitioners up to this ‘challenge’ ourselves? Do we agree, as the Peacock evaluation indicates, that direct experience is good, provided it is properly structured and supported?
How do they do it?
Are we ready to give time to a programme such as How Do They Do It? where, as I have suggested on many occasions, small groups of young and older people together go to new places and ask just that of something which seems to be working well? How can this idea be improved? Who will join forces to help it along?
Liverpool’s Princes Park Has Friends
The Friends of Princes Park is amongst an encouraging number of similar groups who are demanding that our green space be nurtured. Liverpool has a historical legacy of wonderful parks; and now its citizens are insisting more voluably that these are fit for the twenty first century city.
Today’s Liverpool Daily Post supplement has a long article by Peter Elson on the work of the Friends of Princes Park. The Friends have resurrected themselves after a fallow decade or three, and are making the same case for attention to their treasured space as are other groups in and around Liverpool. All power to Jean Grant, the Chair and leader of the developments! This is a park in Liverpol 8, adjacent to some of the least advantaged communities in the city. It needs nurturing.
Promising developments
There’s talk of involving local schools and of linking Hope Street to Sefton Park… a long discussed but so far not actioned development (but a route some of us take by way of a constitutional when time permits). There is an encouraging acknowledgement of the part the Park can play in sustaining social inclusion, health and an understanding of the history of our city.
Where’s the support?
One possible snag in all this however seems to be the continuing reluctance by the City Council to support, quietly and constructively, the citizens who care about this fabulous amenity. There are encouraging noises from that direction now – but the track record often isn’t good. Here’s an opportunity for the Council to play what (in my view) is its proper role…
Councils clearly have a formal duty to balance competing demands for support by citizens around the city; but they could also become facilitators, socially, financially and strategically of the people who want to see things improve. Now, that would be a new way to do things.
How Do We Cope When Someone’s Without Email?
The debate about social exclusion and e-technology continues. But there’s one issue which is rarely addressed: Is there an emerging protocol for when some people in a social or work grouping have email, and some don’t? And is the onus always on the email users to contact the rest? Or does it depend on who the people are and on the specific situation?
Have we become a ‘society’ completely dependent on e-technology? And are those who don’t have it ‘excluded’?
This isn’t a new question – it’s even cropped up on this very website before now – but it’s still a difficult one to crack. How, for instance, can geographically spread groups of people operate effectively, when some of them have email and some don’t?
There is more than one way to see this question; and maybe the hardest part of the problem is unpicking the ‘reasons’ people may or may not use e-technology. Have we reached the point where it’s as reasonable to expect people to have access to email, as it is to expect them to have access to a telephone?
Techno-avoidance, lack of skills, or lack of resources?
Does it ‘matter’ why a person won’t / can’t use email? Does protocol dictate a different response (from an email user) to the person who just doesn’t want email, than from the one who genuinely can’t easily obtain or use it?
Is it equitable to expect email users to telephone people who don’t use it, or should non-email people (generally, and assuming they are comfortably able) be expected to phone those who do use it? And how will they kow when to do so?
Email is so much more precise, and usually less obtrusive. Telephone conversations demand real-time connection and permit greater immediate flexibility, but are much more expensive (per item of contact) and intrusive.
Developing the protocol
I suspect that a protocol is beginning to emerge on these matters. But it is situation-specific.
In essence, the consensus seems to be that younger, and professional, people will use the www and email, or they won’t even be eligible to apply for jobs. Likewise, they use texting.
Others however still expect, and to some extent are expected, to use the telephone or ‘proper letters’.
Democracy and inclusion in action?
The problem arises when people in either ‘grouping’ want to be sure to include those in the other. Does anyone have good examples of how it’s done?
From where I sit, it looks like nearly all the work has to be done by the email users – printing out hard paper copies to post, phoning other people to tell them that emails are being circulated etc.
No doubt like many co-users of the internet, I got email to save time, energy and trouble. When I seek to be socially inclusive as a member of a group where most use email and a few don’t, it actually makes me into an unpaid secretary in the name of democracy. But I’m not sure everyone finds the energy to do the same.
Maybe the next big thing will be a technology which ‘translates’ emails and the like to voicemail – at the receiving end?
Modern Cities Need History And Style – So Let’s All Find Out How It’s Done
The strongly held views on Liverpool’s World Heritage Site and the Museum of Liverpool proposals have something to tell us about how we sometimes need to look beyond our own patch, to see what could or should be done. Perhaps ‘cultural exchange’ programmes within our own shores might be a start, so helping citizens to know each other’s towns and cities across the nation?
Lots of debate as usual about architecture and design, following the Heritage Lottery decision not to fund the Museum of Liverpool…. The views about the World Heritage Site and so forth have been interesting – as ever!
The last few days I’ve been in London with my family and, as it happens, doing the ‘visitor’ bit around the Tate Modern, the City, Covent Garden and Westminster. What strikes me so strongly is that most people in London don’t seem to have a huge problem about Big Buildings and Little Buildings, old ones and new.
The mix of old and new
Of course, ‘new’ buildings adjacent to ‘old’ ones (and they don’t get much more historic than some in the parts of London I was seeing) are often designed very well in a style which merges… but then you get the Gherkin. What an amazing construction! There’s St. Paul’s being done up, and behind it what you can only term a huge conical mirror. But I really don’t think it looks ‘wrong’.
In fact, one of the things that strikes me is how vibrant this miscellany of buildings, mile upon mile of them, is. Some young people I know who have moved to the Capital have actually chosen large drawings and (v dramatic) photographs of the Foster building and similar as the artwork for their own home…. and they’re exactly the sort of young professionals Liverpool would dearly have liked to keep here. But London offers so much more.
I definitely don’t think that all ‘modern’ architecture is appropriate wherever it’s put. It has to be excellent and well-positioned to earn its footprint. But I’d guess the folk in London are lucky in being (literally) more cosmopolitan in their approach; they’ve seen more of the world – in general, not all of them of course – than folk in Liverpool (again, in general). Expecting exciting and perhaps controversial architecture alongside a proper respect for the historic, and off-set by wide-open green spaces, probably goes with that wider mindset.
Where’s the wider experience and context?
When are we going to start to try to ensure that as many Liverpool people as possible have a wider context in which to judge their city? Isn’t it time actively to encourage people, young and older, to visit other places and experience (not just ‘look at’) other contexts, so that they can have a more broadly informed view of what goes on here, as well? It’s difficult to have a positive, balanced position when the basis of it is often so narrow, even perhaps parochial.
And is there something here for everyone? Would it be a good thing if we all tried to experience parts of the country outside our own patch? Never mind ‘foreign’ exchanges, worthy though these can be. What about learning more about where we actually live, as well?
The ‘Mummy Track’ To… A Tough Life?
Becoming a parent is something uniquely rewarding and unlike any other life experience. But does this mean that the parent who almost always shoulders the main day-to-day responsibility for family care should routinely also experience low pay and significant risk of chronic stress?
‘Even when their children have left home, the average hourly wage of their mothers remained at 72% of the male average,’ we are told today in The Guardian.
I imagine that no-one who’s actually considered this will be surprised. It’s part of the findings of a new large-scale research report, Newborns and New Schools (Brewer and Paull, Jan. 2006, Institute of Fiscal Studies / Department of Work and Pensions).
Having, and sharing life with, our own children is probably the most amazing and rewarding experiences most of us, men and women alike, can choose to have. But it’s not an equitable choice.
Stress is inequitable too
On another page of today’s Guardian we read that research on civil servants shows women are five times more likely than men to have the risk factors linked with stress in the office – and it’s most apparent in the lower-paid levels of employment. This study (Tarani Chandola, UCL), like the DWP one, was very large, so we probably need to take it seriously.
And my point is… the stressors identified in chronic stress, a condition which can damage the metabolism of sufferers in very significant ways, are gender-related, aren’t they? Lower employment status equals more stress; and motherhood, sadly, is linked with lower status at work.
The conditions which bring about these gender-related outcomes may be complicated, but we need to acknowledge and explore them more directly. For whatever reasons many people, women sometimes as much as men, are uncomfortable with the ‘gender agenda’. Maybe it’s threatening?
But ignoring patently significant work-related health risks is silly – and a lot more than just silly – by anyone’s standards.
Dreaming Realist 