Feminist thinking: the checklist

It’s International Women’s Day and my social media feeds are full of messages of celebration. It’s wonderful; I love the positivity and happiness. I think it’s important to celebrate and to recognise where things are going well. Today, however, I’m sticking my neck out in a slightly different direction and explaining exactly why I call myself a feminist, and why I think everyone else (men as well as women) should also be willing to adopt a feminist standpoint.

OK, this is the why of it. We all know that women used to be oppressed. Less than 100 years ago, we couldn’t vote. We weren’t allowed to study in universities and we couldn’t own property. It used to be legal for men to hit their wives, and marital rape was only criminalised in 1991 in England and Wales. Yes, 1991. The law used to give us little protection and in fact allowed us to be abused physically, sexually and financially.

Things have got better in terms of the law. Although, in practice, pay is still not equal across the board, legislation is in place to prevent discrimination and we have maternity leave and rights to request flexible working. We also have brith control so we can limit the number of babies we give birth to or avoid giving birth at all. So, in terms of the structure of society and legal rights, things are looking up. And, yes, these things should be celebrated. We have come a long, long way in the last 100 years. Women have died in the struggle for equality and we are indebted to them. Of course, around the world, women are still suffering dreadful abuses and mistreatment and still losing their lives simply because they are female.

Now that we have equal rights in the UK, one might conclude that it’s better, easier, to be a woman. That, perhaps, we are happier, less run-down and more fulfilled. After all, everyone says we can have it all. We can choose whether or not to be married, whether or not to have children, which political party to support. We can buy and sell our own homes and we can pursue almost any career we wish.

I’d like to point something out, though. With the hard won freedoms we have gained new pressures. Before anyone starts shouting, please believe that I am not going to say that equality in terms of voting, property, education, finances or control over our reproductive life is ever a bad thing. Equality is important; it means we are, officially, human beings with the same worth as men. I see every single one of these freedoms as a basic right, not a privilege that comes with baggage.

The pressure I’m talking about is, I firmly believe, a natural consequence of the paternalistic society which we have been living in for thousands of years. It’s not the fault of men, in fact it’s not anyone’s fault. It’s the way things are, the way they’ve always been, to such a profound extent that we can’t imagine them being any other way. The only thing we can do is, very gradually and moment by moment, point out what is going on and ask questions. Shine a light on what we discover and refuse to be controlled by our inherited beliefs and internalised assumptions.

So how does this pressure manifest itself? I’ve compiled a checklist which I believe most women know represents the standards for a “good enough” woman. It goes like this. Every woman who wants to feel fully approved of, really fulfilled, needs the following:
1. A happy relationship
2. To be a good mother
3. A career
4. A beautifully kept home
5. A youthful, slim, attractive and well groomed appearance
This is “having it all”; it’s what we are now allowed to have, but I believe that we have, almost universally, translated the freedom into an obligation, seeing this list as a set of requirements which we ought to meet, in order to be good enough.

Any human being can see that it is actually impossible to achieve all of the above, unless you give up sleeping altogether. And then you would have a hard time achieving number five!

You may say, “I don’t have that list; I don’t care about my home/I’m happy without children/I like being single”. And I believe you. I, for example, am happily single and don’t take too much notice of what I look like. Or what my home looks like, in fact. I’d like to delve just a little deeper, though, and look at how we defend and justify ourselves.

I live in a rural village and, soon after my son was born, I worked full time outside the home. Most of the other mothers I encountered were full time parents. Apart from the fact we had little to talk about because our lives were so different from each other, we spent most of our time defending our situations. I explained why I had to work, and why it was ok, and they explained to me how they were going back to work soon, or how fulfilling it was being at home with the kids. None of us felt we had got it right; I was very conscious that I was missing out on a special time with my son, and they were all too aware that staying at home meant they were not working, interrupting, delaying or missing out on a career. The children are on our list and the career is on our list. We can’t attend to both of them adequately at the same time but that doesn’t mean they disappear from the list.

The same goes for my house. I’ve never cared much what my house looks like. I was brought up to think that there were many, many more important things in life than housework and tidiness, and I never thought it was my job to keep my home looking nice. As a result, I do lots of things, work, parenting, exercise, community stuff, all of which come way before even thinking about the house. Yet, when it comes to having visitors, I do feel that the state of the house reflects something personal about me, my character. The house is always on my list, even if I decide not to bother about it. It never drops off the list.

Then there is the tyranny of appearance. Naomi Wolfe’s important book, The Beauty Myth, has been around for decades. Wolfe explains how women who are CEOs and MDs of huge corporations still feel the pressure to spend hours of their day grooming, polishing and even starving themselves in the quest of a good enough appearance. A male friend of mine described only this week the women he works with in London who have demanding careers and fit in visits to the gym with dropping the children at school before work in the morning. They always look immaculate, but at what cost? If you are at the top of your profession you are expected to be slim, to have glossy hair and to go to work in heels (often) and makeup (always). Or, more accurately, you expect this of yourself and we all expect it of you. It’s on your list and, even if you ignore it, it’s still there.

I can’t say this vehemently enough: I’m not complaining that society expects these things of us. I’m not complaining that our employers, husbands or families expect them of us. I’m just pointing out that we’ve all got a list. We can cross several items off the list entirely, or we can decide that it’s ok to do a bit of everything. But the list is still there, unchanged and unchanging.

And what does the list do to us? It wears us out. If we strive to achieve everything on our list, we are going to be exhausted and frustrated; anyone can see that. If we decide to edit it, we have the pressure of justifying, ignoring, constantly breaking the mould. And the editing process itself, deciding what our priorities will be, can be heart-wrenching. Last year I attended a workshop at my old Cambridge college where a good deal of the discussion centred around women having it all. There was so much pain and worry woven into the tales of nannies, decisions to interrupt careers, and women finding themselves childless at 40. You can read more here.

My theory is that this list has grown up concurrently with the improvement of our situation in respect of legal rights. A hundred years ago, no-one expected us to have a career. Now, not for a second would I want to go back a century to that situation; I’ve had several careers and can’t imagine life without the freedom to be educated and to play a part in public life. And, of course, the freedom to have my say! But now that we are allowed to be educated and have careers, we are still expected to have a polished home. In fact, going by the number of magazines available, perhaps even more so than before.

A hundred years ago, a woman of my age (50) expected to have a thickened waistline and perhaps to walk a little more slowly. In fact, slim figures often only belonged to childless women. Again, I don’t want to go back there, I love exercise and I love looking after my body, but what I’d really love is for this to be truly a choice and not a requirement without which I haven’t quite made the grade.

It’s all about judgment. Of ourselves, of each other, of others. Assuming we’re being judged or resisting being judged. About the necessity to make a grade, to be good enough, at all.

This is what I want to do about it. I want, always, to remember that the list is there, to point at it and understand the effect it has. Then I want to make my own choices. It’s probably too much to ask to be able to – metaphorically – tear the list into little shreds and chuck it in the fire, so let’s take an easier step and keep it visible, stop pretending it doesn’t exist.

And the other thing is to reclaim, to sanctify, the term feminism. This is the subject of another article itself, but I do think it would really help if we could stop equating the word feminist with man-haters, women who don’t like doors being opened for them and blame. Could a feminist please be someone who, among other things, knows about the list and points out that it exists and that it is impossible to reach those standards?