Game set and match
Women in tennis now get equal prize money, but play fewer sets.
I refer to Kevin Myers’s column on January 12, ‘"Equality" is the feminist right to whinge’.
How long before the stout bastions of the English Lawn Tennis Club fall to the assaults of abuse, whinging and feminist curses in which he rants about feminist ‘inconsistencies’ and questions women’s equality with men?
I am well aware that oppressed or previously oppressed groups can overdo it in terms of political correctness, and of course men are entitled to their ‘whinges’, too, but there are a few basics that I want to state.
Women do not have to prove that they are equal to men as men aren’t the prototype human being. Obviously there will be differences in the way women play sport; we have different reproductive roles and therefore different bodies. Why not celebrate the differences and stop perpetuating the gender war?
In countries where feminists have succeeded, women now have the human rights we were always entitled to: to be educated, to vote, to work and earn money etc.
If some jobs are dominated by men, so what? There are many professions dominated by women (nursing, social work, psychology – the so-called caring professions).
Should women make up tests for men to see if they are worthy of being equal? The essential fact is that if women don’t get pregnant and focus at least some of their energy on looking after children (the most important job of all), there would be no armed forces or coalmines or tennis matches.
Stephen Hawking is not alone in finding women a ‘mystery’. Sigmund Freud made similar comments. Such attitudes are created by societies where the sexes are polarised and by men with questionable social skills.
Women are no more ‘mysterious’ than men – we are human, which means that we can be as stupid, inconsistent, narrow-minded, vain, arrogant, creative, and – yes – innovative as men. Given the reality of men’s oppression of women (even now – note the article in your newspaper recently about the man who tried to cut off his wife’s arm to prevent her going to college), Mr Myers’s claim that women ‘invent almost nothing’ is appalling and inaccurate.
What about Florence Nightingale (1820-1910 sanitation, nursing), Ada Lovelace (1843 – computer), Josephine Cochran (1886 – dishwasher), Marie Curie (1903 – radioactivity), Mary Anderson (1903 – windshield wiper), Marian Donovan (1946 – disposable diapers), Sally Fox (1980s – Foxfibre cotton), Marnie Douglas (2003 – ErgoAssess, physiotherapy), Melissa Carpenter (present – stem cell research), etc?
Ann Fielding Co Cork
