A Moment of Painful Paradox
One moment we're celebrating the Taylor Swift economy or the revolutionary summer of women’s sport; the next we’re witnessing the horrors of femicide and a rape trial too harrowing for words.
ALSO IN THIS POST…
A surgeon general’s warning
The complicated thing about a four-day week
Even for someone who’s made a living out of doing so, it can sometimes feel impossible to find the right words to respond to a headline, data point, or event. Over the last few months, as wars have raged and claimed ever more lives of the innocent, that’s certainly been true.
As I’ve dwelled on the brutal new laws that have come into effect in Afghanistan, aimed at cracking down on the sound of a woman’s voice in public, it’s felt like nothing I say or write could adequately convey the injustice of what’s happening.
And then, last week, as I read about the horrors that Gisèle Pelicot had survived, and the horrors that had cost Rebecca Cheptegei her life, I certainly had no words to convey my thoughts.
We’re all generally too quick to jump to superlatives, but in terms of a woman’s role in society, this feels like a time of unprecedented paradox. One moment we’re celebrating the Taylor Swift economy or the revolutionary summer of women’s sport; the next we’re witnessing (perhaps even contributing to?) the normalization of hilarious tropes about childless cat ladies. Or, indeed, a barbaric domestic murder and a rape trial too harrowing for words.
While more women than ever before are ascending to the very top of the corporate ladder—and more women than ever before are in political office—online misogyny has never been more vitriolic and rampant. And rather than tamping down on the hateful content, the algorithms are actually amplifying it. Gender-based violence is happening in homes, on college campuses, and on the street. It’s ubiquitous, and yet we’re still struggling to call it what it is.
Here in the U.S., many are already planning parties to celebrate the first woman president—and a woman of color at that—while a man accused of sexually abusing women who has no respect for the basic tenets of democracy could quite feasibly win the presidency. Pithy statement tees aren’t going to save us. I’m hopeful. But I’m also terrified.
Time and time again in recent months, I’ve found myself recommending Susan Faludi’s seminal book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. Written in 1991, it chronicles how the progress made in the U.S. in the 1970s toward gender equality prompted the pendulum to come crashing back in the other direction, not unlike a wrecking ball. I’m becoming increasingly convinced that we’re living through a new, cruel version of this—a sort of Backlash 2.0—and those driving it are very angry, very scared and very dangerous.
Evidence is everywhere: on the streets and in the homes of Afghanistan, and in the courtrooms of France and homes of Kenyan athletes. But also—let’s not forget—in China where the government has, for example, banned feminist terms and content it sees as “harmful speech” or “inciting conflict between the genders.” And in Poland, where the ruling party has, according to Human Rights Watch “spearheaded retrogressive laws and policies, obstructing efforts to address gender-based violence, and using its politically compromised Constitutional Tribunal to undermine women’s and girls’ reproductive rights.”
On Wednesday last week, a coalition of NGOs published a report showing that more than 850 million women and girls are today living in countries rated as “very poor” for gender equality. Between 2019 and 2022, almost 40% of countries, which are collectively home to more than 1 billion women and girls, stagnated or declined on gender equality according to the report: a literal backsliding.
“From the explosion of domestic violence during the pandemic to the Taliban getting back into power in Afghanistan, from the brutal repression of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran and the repeal of Roe v Wade in the U.S., women’s rights are being eroded,” Chiara Capraro, the programme director for gender justice at Amnesty International UK, told The Guardian in response to the report.
Heather Barr, an associate director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, told the paper: “We have seen a number of conflicts which have had a devastating impact on women and girls and set back progress in those countries. We can see that with the horrific reports of sexual violence in Sudan, the rise in domestic violence in Ukraine and restrictions on abortion access.”
Of course we should never allow the atrocities of today to prevent us from working towards a better, brighter tomorrow, but it can—at times—feel difficult to muster hope and recognize anything even akin to progress. And sure, it’s important to celebrate the success of those women who are thriving: be they musicians, CEO, athletes or presidents. But no fight can be considered won if the unthinkable—the unspeakably inhumane—is still happening.
A Real Warning
Elsewhere, at the end of last month, I was somewhat encouraged by an unusual surgeon general's warning here in the U.S. on the mental health and wellbeing of parents. Encouraged, I should say, because it made me think that this could be a sign that policymakers and leaders at the highest echelons of business might at some point soon also wake up to the fact that parents are truly on the brink; that caregiving should be considered a communal responsibility, and that the parameters of the working world are largely failing working parents.
Over the last decade, parents have been consistently more likely to report experiencing high levels of stress compared to other adults, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Around a third of parents reported high levels of stress in the past month compared to 20% of other adults, it added.
“When stress is severe or prolonged, it can have a harmful effect on the mental health of parents and caregivers, which in turn also affects the well- being of the children they raise,” the department noted. “Children of parents with mental health conditions may face heightened risks for symptoms of depression and anxiety and for earlier onset, recurrence, and prolonged functional impairment from mental health conditions.”
The surgeon general himself, Dr. Vivek Murthy, published an opinion essay on the warning in The New York Times in which he wrote about his own experiences of parenting: the high highs, the low lows, the joy and the debilitating stress.
I was particularly struck by these few paragraphs:
“Something has to change. It begins with fundamentally shifting how we value parenting, recognizing that the work of raising a child is crucial to the health and well-being of all society. This change must extend to policies, programs and individual actions designed to make this vital work easier.
“In the past few years we have made progress, expanding access to early childhood education, maternal health programs and a mental health crisis hotline for kids and adults. We have much more to do, however, to make parenting sustainable. This means bolstering financial support for families, including child tax credits. It also means ensuring all parents can get paid time off to be with a new baby or a sick child, secure affordable child care when they need it and have access to reliable mental health care for themselves and their children. And it requires addressing pervasive sources of anguish and worry that parents are often left to manage on their own, including the harms of social media and the scourge of gun violence.”
Read the full warning from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services here and Dr. Murthy’s op-ed here.
A Four-Day Week?
Finally last week, I wrote for The Persistent about some vague new legislation that’s slated to come into effect in the U.K. giving employees the right to request a “four-day workweek.”
In terms of the U.K. legislation, though, there are many caveats. First, this isn’t exactly new (flexible working legislation has been around for a while in the U.K.) and second, it also won’t offer any sort of panacea for stressed out workers in pursuit of that sweet, sweet, work-life balance—especially not mothers.
I spoke to Heejung Chung, a professor of work at King’s Business School in London, and an expert on flexible working (she literally wrote the book), for for the piece, and she raised several really important points.
Sure, a condensed workweek in which people work more hours on fewer days might serve many people well, but long hours introduce a serious risk of fatigue and burnout. (Some studies have shown that, for good health, the optimal number of working hours in the day is actually as low as five.)
Chung also raised an important point about take-up: who’s likely to take advantage of these policies, and to what effect.
“If it's mostly women who end up working these condensed hours, then the policy's uptake might be stigmatized, which is what we've seen with remote working, and which could actually work against more gender equality in the workplace,” she told me. “But if both men and women take it up, including people in senior management, then it may well provide people with additional flexibility to adapt to their personal lives and crucially allow men to be more involved in the house and childcare on their extra day."
You can read the full piece and subscribe to The Persistent here.
That’s all from me (and my lingering sinus infection) this week. I won’t be publishing next Monday, September 16 but I’ll be back in your inboxes September 23.
Thank you so much for being a loyal reader!
Josie
Ps: As always, a last shameless request. If you’ve read WOMEN MONEY POWER, the book, or listened to the audiobook, I would hugely appreciate it if you could take just thirty seconds to post a review or rate it on Amazon using this link. If Goodreads is your jam, that’s just as great, and you can leave a review or rating here. Thank you so much for your support!