Released On 29 March 2018
Caroline's blog: Fairies, unicorns and gender inequality
Along with the birds and the bees, the Middle East peace process and the economic arguments for and against Brexit, gender inequality was low on the list of topics I had expected to discuss with my tots in the near future. After all, my husband and I both enjoy our chosen careers, and the tots attend a co-educational school. Other than occasional gripes about why girls can’t join the boys’ after-school football club, in their little lives they haven’t come across any difference in treatment or opportunity on the basis of gender.
As a 21st century girl, it’s always been in my mind that I should find ways to encourage my daughter to appreciate the greater opportunities she has than, say, her great-grandmothers. Some of my attempts may not quite have hit the mark. For example, in a previous London mayoral election, after work I bundled my daughter into the car and we went to the polling station together. After all, women had died fighting for the right to vote, so idealistic me felt it was vital for her to grow up understanding the privilege and importance of universal suffrage. My idealism may have been slightly lost on her. The polling station was the local tennis club, and my little pre-schooler stood there in bewilderment in her pyjamas looking around her, trying to process what I had told her, before saying: “Mummy, does that mean you are going to vote for Andy Murray to be mayor”?
Time moves on and last year, like a number of tots in her class, she started reading “The Week Junior”. I was all for this on the basis that it is a brilliant publication. My husband was warier. Our daughter is a sensitive soul with a happy, sheltered existence. He was rightly concerned that she needs space and opportunity to talk about, process and respond positively to what she reads. So far, 2018 has seen many gender issues hit the headlines. We’ve got familiar with the hashtags, larger UK organisations now have to report on their gender pay gap, and we have celebrated the achievements of Emmeline Pankhurst and the centenary of the right to vote for some categories of women. None of these issues in print have passed my daughter by. I’ve felt amusement, bemusement and pride in equal measures in helping her try to process, within her limited sphere of experience, what she has read. Take a recent bed-time conversation:
Me: How was school today?
DD: I got angry with the boys in the playground.
Me: Why’s that?
DD: They say that fairies and unicorns don’t exist, but I know that they do.
Me: How do you know that?
DD: Because I’ve seen them on the television.
Me: Well maybe they haven’t seen them – do you think that’s why?
DD: Maybe, but something else has made me even angrier.
Me: What’s that?
DD: Gender Inequality. It says in “The Week” that in Shangri-La, women aren’t allowed to drive or go to the gym, and that’s awful.
Me: Shangri-La?
DD: Oh no, that’s a Michael Morpurgo book. I mean Saudi Arabia. I mean, what would happen if you or Chloe couldn’t take me to school? And it’s not as if men want to go to the gym anyway.
That led to a conversation about the right to education, and her desire to make a difference. She wanted to do a sponsored event and identified reading and sharpening pencils as things she was good at and could be sponsored to do. We steered her towards the former. The result is that on Thursday she is being sponsored to read stories to the Reception class at school and to the children at her old Nursery, to do something she loves whilst showing how important it is to be able to read. She’s made a passionate video on her giving site, explaining what she is doing and why, and is putting her Key Stage 1 maths to good use in following her fundraising.
I’m proud of her. She’s smashed her fundraising target and raised enough for more than 5 girls in Africa or Asia to go to school for a year with her chosen charity, which thrills her. What thrills me far more is that fact that she’s learnt that she can respond to unfair things in the world, influence others and make a difference about something she cares about. That’s real girl power!
Caroline is the proud mum of a 7 year old Disney Princess and a 5 year old Superhero. She is also a senior associate in the pensions team at a magic circle law firm where she tries to balances work and family life by mixing office and home-based working for four days over five days each week.
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