Fwd: A blow for feminism

 

News from the IOC yesterday that the highest hurdle of sexism will be removed from the Olympic games just in time for London 2012, and I wanted to celebrate that. For the first time since the games began, women are to be allowed their own boxing division. The ancient games, banned for being un-Christian in 389AD, didn't allow women to compete at all. The revived modern games have been much more even, with women's divisions in most sports but boxing remained a sticking point. People can love or hate pugilism, personally I think it is arguably the purest sport. Sport distilled. So I've followed this debate, on and off, and of course there has been some controversy around the idea. Some objections are ridiculous; the rules state that boxers must be naked from the waist up, and for many years it seemed that 5 minutes re-drafting that clause was too much like hard work. Others are well-meaning but misguided; e.g. it's too dangerous for girls. How helpful of the clever men to keep their young fillies safe like that. Boxing is of course dangerous, but to a certain extent so is every other sport. Like so many health statistics, the truth can be surprising but is always more useful than a layman's – I mean layperson's – speculation. Boxing is actually less dangerous than several sports in which women are already rightly welcomed, such as pole vaulting and show jumping. I haven't seen anyone telling the lovely Yelena Isimbayeva to hang up her pole in case she breaks her neck, and she continues to dominate her discipline impressively. Surely this is just hypocrisy, we allow this danger, maybe because we like girls to do nice, girly sports? Gymnastics (does sport get any "girlier" than that?) can have long term health implications that, with my nutritionist hat on, I find quite worrying. So I will be happy to tune in and watch the women's bouts from London, even with the now permitted sports bras in place. And what I would really love to see is an African or even Tanzanian competitor taking the first gold in her newly recognised sport, because this country is in desperate need of a bit more respect for and investment in women.

 

The terrifying, horrifying, beyond-adjectives health statistic I came across recently is that in a poll in 2002, around 50% of Tanzanian respondents agreed that it is OK for a man to beat his wife if she leaves the house without permission. And that was among the women questioned. That's an extreme example, but the sexism in this society is all-pervading. I thought of myself as a reasonably well-adjusted bloke before, but I becoming a lot more of a feminist. There are issues still to be faced in Britain of course, equal pay for equal jobs, better protection from violent partners spring to mind immediately. But we (Britons) have made some big strides in the right direction of which we should be proud. The news today from Mali is of civil unrest and threats to state buildings over a proposed law to make men and women equal partners in marriage. Meanwhile in Tanzania, women on average work a longer day than their husbands for much less money. So in simplistic terms, better education for women would allow this harder-working section of the population to do better paid jobs: better for their families, better for them, better for Tanzania. Women's and girl's education has massive impacts on health too, e.g. in terms of delayed and less frequent childbirth; hugely important to a country where maternal mortality is high, whose population is growing faster than almost anywhere else in the world, and yet struggles to feed the mouths already here. And how about some more respect. A few months ago in Mtwara, I went to apply for official residency in the country. I had to attend the local immigration department and discuss my case with a senior official there. When I told him that my wife worked, and for the moment I was looking after the house and doing some cooking, he laughed at me and called me a "queer". Homosexuality is, in another display of Tz's ability to stamp its foot and insist on stupidity, still illegal here, so technically this may have been slander on his part. Briefly I considered asking him if my European lifestyle is so laughable, how many SUV's does he own, how many PhD's does his family have and when did he last travel in an aeroplane? But that's not quite the point, and much of it doesn't sit too easily with my leftward leanings anyway. So I just assured him that teamwork was the most valuable thing in my relationship, and the same would go for many people where I live. And as I shook his clammy hand and left the office, I imagined his pudgy little form standing in a ring with Jane Couch MBE, "The Fleetwood Assassin", learning a thing or two about powerful British women.

www.myspace.com/fleetwoodassassin

Come on.