March has finally arrived, and with it, the sunshine, but there’s still a chill in the air. So I put a scarf over my lighter jacket and head out into the Birmingham city centre lunchtime rush. I find a place and it’s packed, but manage to snag a seat and enough space for the laptop.
I can’t help people-watching. To my left are two men – typical city workers. They’re discussing shares and I find myself almost immediately tuning out. Two young women are giggling over their drinks, and I smile. I have always found comfort in the sight of other women enjoying themselves.
My iced coffee arrives, and on the laptop I start reading through the results of King’s College and Ipsos’s latest annual study into the views of men and women in Gen Z: that is people born between 1997 and 2012. The results show that, among other things, six in 10 Gen Z men believe women’s equality has gone too far.
What constitutes too far, I wonder? And do those men at the other table think this? Another question comes to mind – why are we even asking these questions? Every year we have the same conversations and come to the same conclusion, that misogyny exists and that something needs to be done. Inevitably, very little is actually done.
I put together a list of women to read for Women’s History Month, books to look forward to – all by female authors. I don’t see doing something like this as especially radical. After all, I was raised primarily by women.
Growing up, I always feared the nuns who sat at the back during mass rather than the distant priest holding the Eucharist at the front. I read Toni Morrison and then Angela Davis and Virginia Woolf – my whole intellectual hinterland has been shaped by women.
At home, the bookshelves are like an account of my education. I studied Hume, Kant and Descartes as an undergrad, but I consciously chose to study fewer male philosophers and political theorists than is typical. This wasn’t some act of rejection, but a deliberate choice to seek out women’s voices in my intellectual landscape.
I wonder, watching those two men on the table over there, what female voices they have had in their lives. How did those two stockbrokers commemorate International Women’s Day? But why do I put so much thought towards these men? Why do we, collectively, place men at the centre when looking for solutions? The questions always seem to be “how do we get the men on side?”
I’m projecting my own frustrations at the state of the world on to two blameless strangers at the next table. But you have to admit, the results of that survey are troubling. Do large numbers of people simply lack the ability to care about other humans? Maybe. But then what good has pessimism ever done anyone?
It’s time to go. I order another coffee – hot this time — and head back out into the Birmingham sun. Two men are entering and one holds the door open for me. The other lets me pass. I smile and thank them as I leave.
Michaela Makusha is a freelance journalist who writes about politics, racial and gender issues
