Turning a Blind Eye To Gender Bias

Hilary Clinton has been reduced to wrinkles in a pants suit. Maxine McKew's skirt is centre stage. What's the show called? "Misogyny in Da House".

I've considered starving the issue - negative media representation of women in politics - of oxygen but this is a problem that clearly needs further public airing.

Why? Because when a woman of Hilary Clinton's character, experience and intelligence is deemed unfit for the White House because of perceptions the voting public will be turned off by the prospect of watching a woman age before their eyes, it sends a message to the world that feminism is still several battles from winning the gender equality war. And, because far too many men just don't get it.

Lest I be accused of being a reactionary man-hater (again!), I say this from the perspective of a feminist woman who is actually rather fond of men. I also have evidence - in the form of a sexist backlash against my Crikey! story from earlier this week on the Canberra Times' attempt to diminish Maxine McKew's defeat of John Howard via a demeaning front page photograph selected unapologetically by Editor, Mark Baker.

My story about the fiasco attracted a significant number of comments on
Crikey! and a similar number of responses via my blog. Then
there were the emails...many of them were personalised, misogynistic rants that displayed the most extraordinary ignorance. At Crikey, where 30 comments were posted, over 60% of respondents were men. The vast bulk of identifiably male responses took issue with my critique of the Canberra Times' decision to run the tasteless "up-the-skirt shot" of Maxine McKew. At my own blog, while most of the respondents were men, their reactions were almost evenly split along positive/negative lines. But those expressing distaste for my opinion mounted similarly misogynistic arguments.

Some comments were so sexist they were laughable - like this one from Kevin Charles Herbert: "Julie Posetti is showing signs of her damage at the hands of the Catholic eduction system. I commend Mark Baker for not backing down to the hairy chested feminists who exist in every newsroom". (Note to Kevin: I went to public school and I don't need to wax my chest!)

And others’ like Tom Mclaughlin, helped argue my case: “I kno (sic) this is dangerous turf, and yes sexist photo, but here's the thing: Sexy tv presenter does not a serious public policy talent make”. This was my point: McKew was being judged by the Canberra Times in the context of her appearance and sex appeal as being unworthy of the sort of respect afforded to male politicians.

More seethe-worthy was the assertion from a number of male respondents that women offended by the Canberra Times' treatment of Maxine McKew were whinging about nothing and that her choice of clothing was the real problem - that is, she "asked for it". (Uncovered meat comparison anyone?).Take for example this comment from David: "Maxine sexualised herself with her choice of dress. Why should only male politicians should (sic) have a dress code?" On my blog, David was on about pants suits again: “…the effort of people like Julia Gillard and her modest pantsuits should be applauded for giving government the respect it deserves.” This “a lady should wear a nice demure pants suit” argument is amusingly ironic. Who’s wearing the pants in this story? What’s their point? That it really is a man’s world and the only way a woman can be taken seriously in public life is to adopt a male dress code?

Another correspondent, Rob Garnett underlined the problem when he asked of my story “What is this woman going on about. Maxine has been made a parly sec, Julia's the deputy leader, we have a female health minister and Penny Wong is on the world stage. Get some perspective.” Er, that was my perspective, Rob – all that womanly achievement and yet media representation that sexualises and objectifies women continues to undermine their status in comparison to men.

Meanwhile, as the media's commentary on Hilary's pants suits (a discourse which has distracted from coverage of her policies and intellectual gravitas) has proved, even women politicians who wear pants can't escape gender bias in the media.

This was a point echoed by a Queensland correspondent to my blog "...so outraged by Maxine's photo being published I can barely type...women politicians in Queensland are often described in the press in terms of their shoes...Hilary's pant suits have featured in the last four articles I've read on her campaign. My five year old daughter just doesn't get it and asks why they don't put photos of men's shoes in the paper?"

This is not a “pseudo-controversy” and I (like many other women who were equally offended) will not simply “get over it”. As Crikey reader MA Smith (gender unknown) commented, “The issue is not just her underwear. It's how a woman is portrayed on the front page when she has just taken on the most powerful man in the country, and won. As an aggressive whore.”

I wonder if this rampant sexism is another product of the Howard assault on respect for difference derided as "political correctness" by the former PM? Newsflash guys: feminism is no longer a dirty word! And, thankfully, this is a view shared by many men. Take, for example, the perspective of Crikey reader Malcolm Thurston: "I totally concur with Julie. Baker was caught out. His pathetic excuse in the Canberra Times,was exposed for what it was, when an appropriate photo of the same event appeared on p2 of the same days SMH,by the same photographer.The 'Times photo was crude".

But the most encouraging reaction came from a young male Canberra journalist who wrote to me "My two bob in - as a young male, I can easily recognise when someone has a dirty mind. The CT editor is one of them. ...It's frankly embarrassing to see editorial decisions like that being made. In a time where women are gaining more control in the newsroom, there needs to be a level of respect that news organisations have to abide by. XY reporter for the CT, echoed your sentiments...My news editor XX was spitting chips as well.”

When I watched my 3rd year students graduate from their journalism course this week at the University of Canberra I was struck once again by the gender shift among the ranks of junior reporters. Relevantly, I'm regularly asked by News Editors for the names of successful male students because their newsrooms are already "female dominated". But while the ranks of women journalists have swollen dramatically over the past 20 years, most editorial management and senior reporting positions are still occupied by men. Newsrooms remain sexist workplaces (something female Channel 9 reporters subjected to John Westacott's 'f**kability index' could testify to) and women journalists make life choices to avoid being crushed by the glass ceiling on a daily basis. But we shouldn't have to wait for equality in newsrooms for women to be reported equally by the media.

Men are just as capable of understanding the consequences of female subjugation and stereotyping as they are of appreciating racist representation of black men from a white male perspective. But they have to want to remove their blinkers.

Note: A version of this story was first published at Crikey!