Equal rights for women still a pipe dream

An article on BBC News online caught my eye. It dealt with the bias that women face worldwide. In a UN-commissioned report the findings were that women are discriminated against in almost every country around the world. The report was compiled by Fareda Banda, a Zimbabwean-born law professor based in London.

In itself this was not news to me, having come across various forms of discrimination myself. What really caught my attention was a comment by a reader that said: “Every woman I know has experienced discrimination or abuse.” That seemed a particularly radical statement. It made me benchmark that against the women I knew sufficiently well to be able to make a call.

Here are a few examples. My best friend, who lives in Cape Town, has been the main bread winner in her family unit ever since she got married at the age of 19. She recently took the plunge to extend her self-catering accommodation and bought the property across the road from her home. She had to have her husband’s signature on the documents as she did not have sufficient legal status to do this on her own.

My sister has not made any major decisions in her family through 40 years of marriage. She maintains that it is because her husband does everything so much better. Whether that is true or not, he makes the decisions — what religion the family practises, the number of children to have and what car is bought. They live in Germany; in other words, in a developed country.

Sure one could say that as she and her husband are in their sixties, this could be considered a different generation and that things have changed for younger women. So let’s have a look at the next generation down, women in their 20s. Here’s a situation to consider.

During November of the previous year, my younger daughter was a speaker at a Flash conference here in the UK and which I was fortunate enough to attend. During the final session, the organiser of the event thanked all involved and spent some time praising and pointing out the virtues of the relevant contributors.

Towards the end of this presentation he asked two of the handful of women speakers to stand up in the audience. He then proceeded to tell the delegates that if they would sign up for the following year’s conference, they would have the pleasure of watching these two speakers in a mud-wrestling competition.

The predominantly male audience, which is normal for IT conferences, was vastly appreciative in its response to this news snippet. I have no reason to believe that this was not a joke. However, none of the male speakers was subjected to this kind of sexual innuendo.

If one were to think this an isolated incident, then have a look at this report on a panel discussion at the Interactive Festival in Austin called SXSW in March this year. The topic was What Women Need to Succeed. The panel consisted of five women who have certainly made it in the interactive media industry and are well qualified to voice an opinion.

One of the panellists referenced a recent discussion that said if men were stupid enough to think with their penises, then as a woman trying to get ahead in IT one should exploit this. By the time this statement reached my daughter, who was attending the conference but had skipped this panel discussion, it had morphed into a description more aligned to what Monica Lewinsky got up to with Clinton.

One would almost be inclined to think that here is the answer to what has been bothering leaders in the IT industry for years, namely the lack of women choosing this career path. However, of course this is not the case. There are certainly other issues contributing to the fact that at any given time a room full of IT specialists will have about a maximum of 10% females among them.

Clearly these few examples do not make a totally compelling case. However, they are a reflection on the developed world where discrimination is still found. And I have to agree with the person who left the comment that every woman he or she knew had experienced discrimination. On examining my life and the women I know, the same applies to my experiences and knowledge of life.

I would imagine that the reason why I had to examine this statement more closely was the fact that discrimination can be so insidious that one doesn’t actually notice it any more. And in comparison to what women have to suffer in the Arabic, African and Eastern countries, the developed world does treat its women well. Nevertheless, reports such as this one should be noted.