Sexism in the City out on the streets
I’M waiting at a bus stop. A passing car slows down, a man in his early 20s leans out of the window to shout at me ‘Sexy b**tch! Come here and suck my d**k!’
The car speeds off, the man and his cronies laughing hysterically. I’m burning with embarrassment, feeling self-conscious, humiliated and utterly powerless. The one thing I don’t feel is shocked. An informal survey amongst my friends confirms that I’m not the only one.
Sarah, 24, a teacher from Belfast, was asked if she was “feeling cold” while a male friend stared at her apparently visible nipples through her t-shirt. Jessica, 30, a pharmacist from Tipperary was followed down a street in Dublin by a man repeatedly asking that she go on a date with him. When she politely requested he leave her alone, he spat on her and called her a lesbian. Rachel, 26, a fashion stylist, was subjected to a strange man exposing himself and masturbating in front of her on the London Underground.
These are extreme examples, and most men would never dream of behaving in such a manner. However, it’s not just sexual harassment that women have to endure on a daily basis. It’s the deluge of tiny, almost imperceptible slights on account of their gender, slights that seem so insubstantial that most people barely take notice of it anymore.
Thus, Ryanair distributes a calendar featuring female members of staff in bikinis. Crowd scenes in Hollywood movies generally only contain 17% female characters. An ad for a hair removal brand in the US suggests that women need to remove body hair to “feel womanly around the clock” so they don’t “risk dudeness”. A Barbie inspired plastic surgery aimed at prepubescent girls is released in which players can perform liposuction on an “unfortunate girl” to make her “slim and beautiful.”
After I sent out a mass email to friends while researching this article, the anecdotes continue to fill my in-box. Lucy, 27, is asked to make tea and sandwiches at her uncle’s funeral while her brother is not. Phoebe, 28, who works in the legal department of an international bank, found out that her boss had organised a golfing day, but only invited his male colleagues. Julie, 28, a manager of a music venue, was constantly asked by the head of a security company where the “real boss” was, because she was “too pretty” to be in charge. The negative impact these sort of comments have upon women’s sense of well being and self-esteem is undeniable. A paper entitled “Everyday Sexism: Evidence for its incidence, nature and psychological impact” published as far back as 2001 in the Journal of Social Issues found that women who had experienced incidences of street harassment, reported feelings of anxiety, fear, and anger, with an increase in reported levels of depression. A 2007 study by Fredrickson and Roberts, who developed what they called The Objectification Theory found that when women were continually subjected to harassment, they began to objectify their own bodies, internalising observers’ opinions and perspective on their appearance, with the women studied suffering from low self-esteem and anxiety.
One woman who has had enough is Londoner Laura Bates, of the Everyday Sexism Project. Founded by Bates in April 2012, the site is an opportunity for women to freely share their experiences of sexist behaviour without fear of censure. Within months, the website had collected 25,000 reports of street harassment, belittlement in the workplace, rape jokes, etc, and is now operating in 19 countries, continuing to grow each day. On her recent trip to Ireland for the Dublin Writer’s Festival, Bates told Feelgood that the project is based upon her own experience. “A series of incidents of harassment and sexism happened to me within a short period, and when I tried to talk about it, people told me I was ‘overreacting’ or ‘making a fuss’. I started the project so that everybody could see these stories laid out together and realise the bigger picture they create.”
Like many women, Bates finds street harassment one of the most offensive manifestations of everyday sexism, saying that, “It comes with such a sense of entitlement — there’s an absolute confidence there that this person has the right to rate my body and tell me loudly what he thinks of me without any kind of embarrassment or shame, and almost nobody ever steps in to help. I find that normalisation very frustrating.”
Despite the success of the project, she continues to face discrimination: “The most common form of everyday sexism I encounter in response to my articles and media appearances focuses on my looks and sexuality — whether it’s men discussing my sexiness while I’m giving a speech about politics, or telling me how I should be raped and killed — always completely irrelevant to the issues I was discussing.”
While the project doesn’t have a uniquely Irish branch, a similar project, Hollaback!, does. Jenny Dunne, the manager of the Hollaback! Dublin website, says that, “The reaction to Hollaback! in Dublin has been very positive for the most part. ... nearly every woman I’ve asked has a story about street harassment and we get quite a lot of people contacting us to say thanks for setting the site up because street harassment is a real problem for them.”
Niamh Gaskin, director of the Out on the Streets, a short documentary on harassment on Irish streets, agrees.
“I’ve been street harassed and while some people think it’s just a compliment, or as if I was bragging about male attention, mostly it’s made me feel uncomfortable, and as if I’m somehow to blame for attracting this unwanted attention. For the documentary, I found five women who were willing to talk to me on camera about their personal experiences. It became obvious that women are often made feel unsafe on the streets and that’s just one small example of a bigger culture of sexism. What is very worrying is a culture of sexual harassment in nightclubs and on nights out where men don’t accept a woman’s right to say ‘no’ or to reject a sexual advance. Many women told me they have had some form of sexual harassment on nights out, where the man wouldn’t accept any excuse other than ‘I have a boyfriend’, as if you don’t have the right to your own body.”
A 2007 study conducted by the George Washington University found that 99% of women had experienced street harassment at least once, with 67% reporting they experienced it on a monthly basis. A survey taken at an Irish employment law consultancy found that 75% of women had experienced sexism in the workplace, and although statistically Irish girls outperform their male peers at secondary level and are more likely to have a third-level qualification than men, Irish women are less likely to be in the labour force and, if they are, only earn 94% of men’s income.
Sandra McAvoy, professor of Women’s Studies at UCC, believes economics has a lot to do with it
“We need to be aware that in Ireland women are more likely than men to live in poverty, parent alone, take on unpaid caring work for both the young and the elderly, earn low wages and be in part-time and very poorly protected employment,” she says.
Despite making up 52% of the population, Irish women are woefully under-represented in politics, comprising only 15.1% of the Dáil. This level of female representation puts us 23rd out of 27 countries in the EU, and although the recent appointment of a female Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald, is heartening, there is still much more to be done.
So, men of Ireland, the next time the woman in your life complains about her experiences of sexism in her workplace, or on the street, please don’t laugh it off as a bit of ‘harmless fun’. Things may have moved on since the blatant chauvinism of the Mad Men era, but it hasn’t disappeared, just merely shifted into something more subtle, nebulous, and more difficult to define. There is still much work to be done before young women who wear skirts are not simply regarded as sex objects.
While the majority of sexist behaviour and comments are directed at women, there is a danger of women becoming guilty of ‘reverse sexism’. Here are some examples of how we can stereotype men:
We’ve all heard the statistics that men think about sex every seven seconds, but men are just as susceptible to outside influences as women are, such as stress or sleep deprivation, which may result in a lower libido. Expecting your partner to want sex all of the time puts extra pressure on them to ‘perform’ on demand.
While some men are naturally gifted at assembling your latest IKEA acquisition, many men are not — the ‘handy’ gene is not something that corresponds to gender!
Expressing one’s emotions is still seen as a bit ‘feminine’ in Irish society, which can have extremely harmful effects. Ireland has one of the highest rates of suicide amongst young men in Europe, and Pieta House say that a contributing factor to this is the reluctance young men have in talking about their suicidal thoughts.
This is hugely unhelpful as it results in the mother taking the majority of the responsibility for childcare, leading to a possibility of the mother becoming burnt out and resentful. A more equal allocation of duties would prevent this, as well as ensuring that the child has a chance to properly bond with both parents.
And women are the ‘nags’. These stereotypes are not only outdated, but deeply reductive to both sexes.
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