Can Sexism Be Cured?

Last month Bristol was given a singular honour by the government. It was the only city chosen as a venue for a consultation exercise on the rights and needs of lesbian, bisexual and trans (LBT) women.

In practice this meant that women came from as far away as Leeds to attend, but Bristol was obviously well represented. I’m not sure how much the civil servants running the exercise will have got out of it, and I suspect they may just write it up as giving the conclusions they wanted to hear, but it was an interesting afternoon’s discussion.

The message that came through most strongly to me on the day was the need for education. Even seemingly unrelated discussions got back there fairly quickly. For example, we made the point that health provision for LBT women would only improve if trainee doctors and nurses were educated about such people and their specific needs.

I think the issue is broader than this too. We can rail all we like against sexism, against online harassment, against domestic violence and against rape culture, but how can we solve these problems if we keep breeding new generations of misogynist boys?

The way that sexism informs our life from an early age is insidious and relentless. While we might have got rid of mother-in-law jokes, and had a few days respite from Page 3, kids these days are faced with a firm message that some types of clothes, and some toys, are only for girls, while the rest are only for boys.

There’s no biological or psychological sense in this. As far as I can see it is just companies understanding that if they make products unusable by 50% of kids they greatly reduce the likelihood of clothes and toys being handed down in families, and therefore increase sales.

Much of it is subconscious too. You would have thought that in maths, of all subjects, students would be judged on merit. Yet a recent study by British and Israeli researchers showed that maths teachers give higher marks if they think the student is male, and lower marks if they think the student is female.

Education certainly can work. Recent projects in Africa have focused on encouraging girls to be better educated, better networked and more self-confident. One project in Kenya reduced the incidence of rape by 60%. However, to really fix the problem we need to educate boys too.

The Labour Party has recently promised to introduce compulsory “sex and relationship” education in schools with a focus on reducing homophobic bullying. Naturally this has been spun by the right wing media as promoting gay sex, which is silly, but I agree that the emphasis is wrong.

There is a Bristol-based organization called TIGER (Teaching Individuals Gender Equality and Respect). They help schools provide training on all aspects of gender. As well as teaching equality and respect, they encourage kids to question and break down gender stereotypes, to understand that there are no pre-determined life paths based on gender.

They teach that there is no right way to be a boy, a girl, or neither. From there it is a short and obvious step to pointing out that it doesn’t really matter who you love, it is the loving relationship that is important.

That’s the sort of education that kids need. And if they get it, hopefully they will pass it on to their children and we can break this vicious cycle and create a society free from gender-based discrimination and violence.

Image: honglouwawa / shutterstock