Sarah Harte: We need more wonderful women who will speak up for themselves

A landmark longitudinal study, Children’s School Lives, undertaken by UCD’s School of Education, followed 4,000 children across 200 primary schools. It found that gender stereotyping is alive and well. Most children associate being a “good girl” with politeness, niceness, and caring. Being a good boy was associated with being intelligent, good at sports, being physically strong, and good at maths.

Maybe some readers feel this is just nature playing out. Personally, I find these results profoundly discouraging. I’ve previously written about how we must stop teaching small girls to be nice and how we need strong role models for girls. I also think that young boys are trapped into the straitjacket of gender early on too.

Women’s Aid recently released a survey about attitudes. Their study found that 40% of men have traditional views of the opposite sex, with 54% of this group agreeing that “a man’s worth is measured by power and control over others". That’s a grim finding, as power and control are at the root of domestic abuse. Rape is also a power-based crime. The men who are most likely to commit sexual abuse are those who fundamentally believe that social and gender inequality between men and women is justified and natural.

The fact that many young men surveyed between the ages of 18 and 29 feel that “real men shouldn’t have to care about women’s opinions or feelings” shows the amount of work to be done regarding attitudes.

A story broke recently about a young Cambridge academic who was attacked when she posted a photo of herself on X celebrating her completed PhD, “Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose”. The post attracted nearly 120m views, which is extraordinary, and many of her attackers were young men.

Ally Louks received negative comments on the specialised nature of her thesis (all PhDs are, by their nature, narrow but deep enquiries) and her personal appearance. Her presumption in undertaking such a study during her childbearing years also upset some people, with one tweet reading, “Too bad you’re not holding a baby. We need those more than we need a dissertation on racist smells.” 

As the admirably unflappable Louks wrote, “I was receiving a lot of rape threats, even death threats, but also there were just a lot of people forcing their views about what a woman ought to be or do on me, which were entirely beside the point.” 

Karens

Meanwhile, the Gregg Wallace story trundles on.

 On several levels, this story seems to involve attitudes towards women. 

Essentially, Wallace has been accused of making inappropriate sexual comments, with complaints spanning back nearly two decades, many made by contestants on Masterchef.

Production company Banijay UK is investigating as Wallace steps back, although how much the BBC knew or didn’t know about alleged complaints is also at issue.

At the weekend, cookery writer and broadcaster Prue Leith defended Wallace, saying she believed in due process. She has a point: the man should be allowed to defend himself. Trial by media is unhealthy.

I suppose, though, Wallace complicated things for himself by taking to Instagram to defend himself, dismissing his accusers by saying, “I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle-class women of a certain age.” I had a mixed reaction to that statement. Part of me threw my head back and laughed because I thought Wallace had gone full Alan Partridge. The other part was irritated because Wallace may as well have called his accusers Karens.

Who or what is a Karen? Karen is a meme or stereotype that originated in the black community as a way to call out middle-aged white women who used their privilege in social situations against people of colour to get their way.

But the term Karen quickly evolved from its original definition, moving into the mainstream to denote middle-aged women who complain, the kind of ladies who demand to speak to the manager, and it’s often used by white men in a derogatory way with ageist, classicist and, perhaps most of all, misogynist undertones.

I’m all for jokes that make people laugh at their own sacred cows and their own selves, but there is something dark beneath the Karen meme — some disdain for middle-aged women

The former Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark, who accused Wallace of telling sexualised jokes at work, came in for a lot of criticism online. Suddenly, it was Wark in the dock. I was in college when she started on Newsnight, and she was a role model for lots of us when there was a glaring shortage of role models.

Comments about Wark included ‘Welcome to the Puritan age’, ‘Oh no, a sexualised joke — how did you survive the trauma?’ or ‘it seems he’s been hung out to dry’. 

But one comment seemed to get to the nub of the matter: “She looks ancient. A life without laughter or a sense of humour is telling. She cuts a sad little figure.” 

One major attitude in our culture is that middle-aged women have less social value than men. Past child-bearing age, no longer attractive in the way society deems acceptable, we gradually become invisible. Ideally, we should keep our mouths shut, not that Wark, whose journalistic flair, razor-sharp insight, and flinty humour we enjoyed for over 30 years, ever shut her mouth. She has also been an outspoken figure on menopause and the challenges that women face. 

Both stories involving Ally Louks and Kirsty Wark say something quite powerful about attitudes towards women at various stages of their lives and roles. Young women are glorified for their appearance and fertility. Being fleetingly ‘hot’ is the one power that our culture reluctantly grants to women, although don’t try getting a PhD and being pleased about it because that’s not part of the social script. And middle-aged women who look their age and whose fertility levels have dropped should shut it.

One of the things that the anti-woke brigade says is that life has become no fun. Liberal idiots police others who are just having a good old-fashioned laugh. There is an element of truth in this, but the fact remains that there are super strong, often unhealthy, messages being pumped out to small girls and boys from cultural influences and social learning that limit and damage them.

I certainly don’t have the solution. But as a Karen who can take a joke, I say to my fellow Karens, let’s not stay in our lanes. Let’s reclaim Karen with her cellulite, sagging breasts, falling oestrogen levels, and desire to have her speak. At the very least, we’ll be good role models for young girls who we must teach not to be so nice, to celebrate their academic achievements and, most of all, to speak up for themselves.