Sexism remains a pesky hurdle

Talking about the "first woman" to excel in certain fields ignores the vast majority of women who must follow, writes Shelina Janmohamed

British artist Tracey Emin is one of the few female artists whose work doesn't deal with women's issues, writes Shelina Janmohamed (REUTERS/Paul Hackett)

Have you heard the story about the boy who needs an operation because he was in a car accident with his father? The father died in the crash. The boy arrives at the hospital. The surgeon is utterly shocked on seeing the boy and turning to the medical staff says “I cannot operate on this child. This boy is my son.” Were you one of the rare few who realised that the surgeon was female, the boy’s mother?

We are finely tuned to think of leaders, influencers and authority as male. I’ll be honest, when I first heard this tale, I thought the same thing. Until I realised I had internalised the male as an authority. Why on earth didn’t I think of the surgeon as his mother?

The male dominance persists despite a large and growing proportion of the medical profession being female. The first female doctors and surgeons in the western world began practising medicine in the early 19th century. What about all the other arenas where women still need to break barriers?

“First female to ...” reports appear with increasing regularity in our news cycle. I love them! The cockles of my heart get warmer each time another barrier is broken, another woman is recognised for her individual achievement and women as influencers, leaders, achievers and pioneers become an idea that is more and more normal.

Now we have to start preparing for the fact that these firsts will eventually reduce in significance, but the structures that had to be surmounted to achieve these “firsts” remain intact, their foundations unchanged.

The institutions, attitudes and expectations we have must be restructured to allow women to rise up as a matter of course rather than the exceptions reinforcing the status quo.

Tackling such structural sexism is a huge task. The arenas range from football to academia, the arts and literature. The recent women’s world cup was higher profile than ever, but our levels of excitement and global coverage, not to mention the pay gap are constructed to see it as second best. Women’s art and literature is often described as dealing with women’s issues. The work of artist JK Rowling and author Tracey Emin are one-offs.

Most academics, business leaders and politicians are male because the structures continue to favour the way men work.

One simple example is childcare: working patterns favour those without childcare responsibilities. Childcare falls disproportionately on women. Because men hold power in the workplace, work patterns are instituted for those who do not carry the childcare responsibilities. Women therefore fail to conform to those work patterns and are then seen as less competent.

Structural sexism is why, when any woman makes it, we celebrate, yet the norm hardly shifts.

Paradoxically, it’s also why we’re just happy when a woman succeeds, any woman at all. What we really need is to shift to assessing women’s success and leadership on its own merits and being able to critique women in positions of power and authority without worrying about betraying the sisterhood.

“Firsts” are exciting. But we now have to pave the way for the seconds, thirds, fourths ... all the way to normalisation.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk