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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— December - January
Sexual Equality in the 2010s
a concept that requires defi-
nition. To define it would be to limit it when it
is still in the phase of development. Rather too
much time is being wasted already on arguing
about whether this or that is true feminism or
not. The general discourse is not helped by the
kind of naiveté that believes that history pro-
ceeds by decades. Historically, ten years is not
a significant unit. To ask where feminism is at
the end of the last decade, this decade or the
next is not a sensible question. It makes even
less sense than asking where nationalism might
be at the end of some decade or another. The
only possible answer is ‘still there and still alive’
and that means still changing. There is, alas,
no such easy answer to the question of where
socialism is, now that we really need it.
Equality feminism is profoundly conserva-
tive. Its basic premise is that men have achieved
everything that is possible under corporate cap-
italism and all that women need or want is what
men have got already. When we hear successful
women demanding that women be equally rep-
resented at the highest level of government, civil
service and multinational corporations, that we
have as many female CEOs as we have males and
even that we insist on ‘women only’ short lists
and all female candidates for certain posts, we
should understand that the people supporting
such arguments are secure in the knowledge
that simply putting women in positions created
by and designed for men will have no effect on
the underlying structures whatsoever.
Remember Margaret Thatcher: the only man
in her cabinet, warmonger, probably war crimi-
nal, architect and prime mover of the crooked Al
Yamama arms deal? Did she change the British
Conservative Party? Yes, she did. She made it
tough, pitiless and aggressive. Did she change
the British working class? Utterly. She took it
upon herself to break the power of the trades
unions. She only succeeded because the trades
unions had already betrayed their own. Sex did
have something to do with it. One of the factors
in the defeat of the trades unions was their per-
sistence in discriminating against women. A
huge pool of unrepresented female workers who
had no way of defending their pay and condi-
tions, and no choice but to accept whatever deal
the employer offered had come into existence,
and would work for a pittance. When women
workers went on strike against grotesque
oppression in their workplaces, the élite trades
unions left them to fend for themselves. No fly-
ing pickets for them. Jackboots are still jack-
boots, regardless of the sex of the wearer.
Equality is not simply a conservative aim;
it is also illusory. Women who break into the
ranks of male privilege very soon discover that
they are intruders, and that the kernel of male
solidarity remains impenetrable. Women who
were accepted as traders on the stock exchange
found the masculinist culture of their fellow
traders intimidating. Bullying was endemic in
the corporate culture; bullying of women took
on a sexual character that many women expe-
rienced as utterly degrading. Women admitted
as partners in law chambers can tell a similar
story. Women in the police and women in the
army can tell the same tale. Even women in the
church. Yes, there are ways of seeking redress,
but make no mistake, the women who seek the
redress to which they are legally entitled for
discrimination in the workplace will not get
their old jobs back. Most of them have had to
kiss their career goodbye.
I have never been an equality feminist. I
have never coveted the lives that men lead,
whether they are down the mine, or on the cor-
porate ladder. Corporate capitalism creates
far more losers than it does winners, because
constructing the management élite is a process
of elimination. Management is the art of tak-
ing credit for other people’s work. Women in
the corporate world make the same mistakes
that they made as high-achieving students: they
work too hard. When they delegate, they watch
over the shoulder of the person to whom the
task has been delegated, and blame themselves
if they make a mess of it. Many high-achieving
“I have never
been an equality
feminist. I have
never coveted the
lives that men
lead, whether
they are down the
mine, or on the
corporate ladder”
Feminism is not about equality: it is the politics of liberation or nothing at all
g e r m a i n e g r e e r
women who have discovered that the corpo-
rate world is ruthless and unprincipled have not
taken the money and shut up. Instead they have
blown the whistle, with the result that millions
of innocent people lost their investments, a few
individuals committed suicide and a few more
went to jail. Enron was just the first domino.
Harriet Harman is Minister for Women and
Equality in Gordon Brown’s cabinet in Britain.
The very title of her portfolio indicates con-
fusion and contradiction, as if she was minis-
ter for difference and sameness or chalk and
cheese. Her latest speech in support of her own
Equality Bill argues that “looking after your
family is still the hardest and most important
job in the world”. Even as an avowedly femi-
nist politician Harman still thinks of women
as mothers, and as more important as mothers
than in any other function. Women who have
yet to reproduce are marginal, and women who
have brought up their families are invisible. All
indices tell us that women are having fewer chil-
dren and are having them later and later, but
for the minister they don’t figure until they are
candidates for maternity leave.
Maternity leave of weeks and doubled
maternity pay is not available to male parents,
although male parents may now work the latter
part of maternity leave if their partners want to
go back to work. Harman’s would appear to be
the politics of difference, but they are not the
politics of liberation. Harman must know that
nearly a quarter of British families consist of a
single woman and her offspring, but she has
not registered the possibility that this situation
represents a genuine, radical upheaval, that will
do more to drain the substance out of patriar-
chy than any legislation. Harman’s vision is still
essentially paternalistic.
When the law of unintended consequences
bites, Harman’s legislation will result in all kinds
of misery for working mothers. It may be illegal
for workmates to resent the increased workload
represented by absent mothers but it is inevita-
ble. It may be illegal for employers to discriminate
against employees working reduced or flexible
hours but they will still do it, one way or another.
If rearing your family is the most important job of
all, governments should pay parents to do it, and
not mere subsistence. The rate should be high
enough to pay for adequately trained and regu-
lated professionals to take over in the event that
the parent wants to go back to work and has work
worth going back to. This would pump money
into the child-care sector, which suffers from a
chronic lack of investment and resources.
Ms Harman might be surprised to learn that
feminism requires female people to be consid-
ered as important in themselves. Feminism is as
concerned for the huge numbers of women living
alone as it is for women raising families. Older
women spend far too much time apologising for
their existence already. If Ms Harman has her way
they are likely to spend even more.
GERMAINE GREER (born 29 January 1939)
is an Australian-born polemicist, writer, aca-
demic, journalist and scholar of early modern
English literature, widely regarded as one of
the most significant feminist voices of our
times. She is currently Professor Emeritus of
English Literature and Comparative Studies
at the University of Warwick.
Also in this section
Portmarnock ruling
Gay Rights
Abortion
Equality debate
The old guard
Women’s liberation
Claire Tully interviewed
Women in government
Germaine Greer, history-changer
