Women at Work: Could accepting progress lead to greater progress?

Over fifty years ago there were serious impediments for women trying to move up the social and economic ladder, and there are plenty of cultural reminders around to remind us. Cult TV series Mad Men has been widely praised by its sympathetic portrait of the very different struggles Peggy, Betty and Joan face in making it in a man’s world in Sixties America, a formula the makers of recent shows The Playboy Club and Pan Am have sought to replicate (with debatable success). Last year saw a ratings hit with the British film, Made In Dagenham paying homage to the real-life industrial action which gave rise to the Equal Pay Act 1970, balancing its feel-good ‘Britcom’ stylings with a reminder of how hard the struggle was.

So what does that mean for women now? Some women today would say that just because we’ve made huge progress from those past scenarios of shockingly backward attitudes and gross inequality, that doesn’t mean that there’s no progress still to be made.  So what if women seem more equal than the past, when women still seemingly face a glass ceiling when it comes to corporate boards or Cabinet positions.  While discrimination in 2011 may not be as overt, today we hear many complaints about implicit sexual discrimination in the workplace, and male dominated workplace activities such as meeting at the local strip club.  These more subtle cultural barriers, it is argued, continue to hold women back.

My concern, however, my concern is that such arguments miss the obvious fact that implicit sexism is very different from the explicit sexism of the past. Looking through the prism of historical gender inequity might be a mistake that leads women to create the vision of past problems that no longer affect us.

Take for example the Equality Act 2010, which is a comprehensive and exhaustive measure for stopping historical problems from repeating and fixing problems before they happen.  The problem is that the Act can’t stop isolated cases of chauvinism or prevent rarely held implicit attitudes that some men and women may have about the role of women.  But, more importantly, its very existence is evidence of a more global, institutional change towards women’s role in society. That legislation is so commonplace and high profile is surely proof of the progress all of us have made in terms of formal equality, and it would be petty to undermine that progress because isolated cases of injustice still exist.  While some feminists have claimed that the need for the Equality Act 2010 is actually an example of how little progress we’ve made in terms of attitudes towards women, you can also look at its implementation completely differently.

The Equality Act 2010 is not representative of an increasing problem, it’s representative of the way society is now keen to find solutions to problems gender inequality.  It’s representative of the fact that we live in a society whereby discounting a person on the basis of their gender is ludicrous. The fact that we have decided to have this kind of act in place is progress; and makes me wonder if we really even need the physical instrumental piece of legislature at all. We’ve clearly changed minds and agreed on the whole on what is unjust. The pieces of paper are really irrelevant.

Legislation, such as the Equality Act 2010, might even be problematic. The fact that we’re still gendering issues and pre-empting prejudice is keeping those issues alive and on the forefront of our minds.  So surely it would be wrong to mistake societal issues surrounding childcare – what was once thought of as a woman’s issue, but is now considered a more universal, gender-free parental issue – as evidence against what used to be popular beliefs about the unworthiness of women/ mothers as being capable of taking on a whole range of careers.

So, instead of obsessing about gender inequality, perhaps we should be looking at universally human issues like fair working conditions, child care, education, etc. By believing we need the Equality Act 2010, we’re not letting the problems of the past rest. Do we want the discussions we have about justice and equality to be constantly coloured by the increasing irrelevance of gender? If we genuinely want to eliminate the problem of gender inequity, shouldn’t we start by realising we’ve made enough progress that it’s okay to let this issue die out by itself?

Throughout October and November, The Independent Online is partnering with the Institute of Ideas’ Battle of Ideas festival to present a series of guest blogs from festival speakers on the key questions of our time.

Nina L. Powell is a PhD candidate and researcher in psychology at the University of Birmingham. She is producing the Battle of Ideas Satellite session Warning: Women at Work, organised in partnership with the Birmingham Salon, which takes place on Wednesday 12 October.

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