Male friend with whom I am having lunch: I have to fill in one of these pointless EU gender equality things.
Me[neutrally]: Mmm, what do you mean?
Pause to pass up a folder to older gentleman struggling to reach it from his barstool [lunch in the pub, some stereotypes are true].
MF: Ach, you know, just ticking lots of boxes and really, do we need it?
Me: Well, it depends, I suppose.
Pause to pick up the umbrella which has tumbled from the older gentleman’s grasp.
Older gentleman in patrician tones: Thank you very much young lady, you are like [pauses to search for top compliment from range available to him], you are like a really excellent P.A.
MF: Bite your lip, bite your lip, ok we need the gender equality thing.
But will the form help or will it just assist in massaging the figures? And what do we mean by equality anyway? Are we still in a world where status comes only from remunerative work outside the home and not from childbearing and raising? The big questions.
Btw, why was it you and not your male friend helping the old gentleman?
hehe – at least you didn’t remind him of his nanny…
please post more photographs of young and also of Hodge the Younger
The female students at our university just rejected the mentoring program that had been established to help women students gain good qualifications and support– especially in the (still) very male-dominated and technical fields (let’s not even talk about salary differences). Their explanation was that it is embarassing to them to have a mentoring program (not they did not say that they didn’t need it).
What do you do with that?
I’m totally shocked. If they had had a mentoring program when I was in college I probably would have stayed in physics instead of straying back to humanities. Is this a generational thing?
Dot, oh dear. I was nearer to him. Well, TM, maybe I did… Aunt, will do what I can. NC, I am really appalled. That’s dreadful. Why would they feel like that? It’s just bizarre.
Young women don’t realise the extent to which networks and informal mentoring are available to the young men as they move into professional/academic/business life. Maureen Gaffney has done some excellent commentary on this, women think that if they are good girls and do the work they will automatically be recognised (hollow laughter).
The young women in NC’s university probably think of the program as a sop to weakness and that they shouldn’t need it if they were good enough, men don’t seem to need one, and hence it’s embarrassing.