Gender Equality Starts With Parenting

I only heard this quote for the first time recently and it was something I felt deeply. It reminded me of a conversation I had with an ex-boyfriend many years ago. He has two children who at the time were a son, who was seven, and a daughter, who was five. We were discussing his fears and difficulties parenting, part of our conversation went a little something like this:

“I don’t know what it’s like to have to be wary of walking at night, of who is watching me, or who might have put something in my drink. That scares me, because I don’t know how to teach my daughter to be safe from these things.”

“Why do we need to teach our daughters how to protect themselves from men? Why can’t we teach our sons to be better people?”

I noticed from a young age that my rules were different from those of my brothers, they were often allowed to do things I was forbidden, and when I questioned, my parents would reply with, “It’s different; you’re a girl”. I could never understand why, especially when I was the smartest and most responsible of us! Yet, even with all their rules, they still couldn’t protect me from the harm of men.

I’ve heard said by many men something along the lines of, “my daughter won’t be dating until she’s 18, because I know what I was like as a kid”. I’m sorry, but surely that should mean some serious reflection and educating your sons to be better than you were, rather than attempting to hide away your daughters, because boys “just like you”, will treat them in a way you disapprove of?

I applaud those men and women who teach their sons to be little gentlemen, who teach their sons manners, respect, and humility. Who teach them never to raise their hand to a woman, that no means no, and that all women are someone’s daughter, sister, friend and to treat them as they would their own.

Men will never understand how it feels to be a woman. They’ll never have to feel the fight or flight response that kicks in when you see a man walking towards you at night, the anxiety caused by unwanted lewd comments and advances from a stranger, the stress of having a random man put his hands on you in a bar, or the fear of constantly needing to watch your drink so you don’t get spiked. Men fear that we will laugh at them, we women fear they’ll destroy us.

Margaret Atwood, the brilliant author who I’ve quoted above, also wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, a look at the way society treats women, from complacent sexual objectification, to brutal genital mutilation. The sci-fi story (and tv show) brilliantly intertwines real issues women face around the world, with a harsh and confronting tale of women being used simply to bare children. The book was written in the 80s, yet so little has changed in that time. It’s 2018, we can grow entire humans, travel in space, and create humanoid robots, yet we still haven’t figured out how to treat women as equals.

The #metoo campaign was powerful and it brought a lump to my throat seeing how many men stood with those women, but the question I prefer to ask is, “Have you?” Have you sexually assaulted a woman? Have you objectified and harassed? Have you committed rape? Women spoke about their experiences, I’m sure some, for the first time, but I still feel that we should be questioning the behaviour of certain men. With the statistics horrifyingly stating, one in three women are sexually harassed or assaulted, more than half of those at least twice, that is a huge percentage of the male population committing crimes against women. Again, why as women are we reliving our stories and why are we not instead, asking men to stop defending the behaviour of other men, and to step up and pull their heads in?

Yes, with the way the world is, we have to teach our daughters, our sisters, our nieces, to be safe. We need to teach them how to be street smart, how to avoid dangerous situations, and to always call the police, but more than that we should teach them what healthy relationships look like, what behaviour is unacceptable, and to never ever be afraid of standing up to a man and calling him out on his bad behaviour. More importantly, let’s teach our sons, our brothers, and our nephews empathy, integrity, and respect. Maybe then, all men, can look at all women and see not an object, but an equal.