← A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard
A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard
Julia Gillard and Caitlin Moran: an International Women's Day conversation live in London
00:51:35
Loading summary
Transcript79 lines
- [00:00]
A
Early birds always rise to the occasion
- [00:02]
B
for summer vacation planning because early gets
- [00:04]
A
you closer to the action. So don't be late.
- [00:07]
B
Book your next vacation early on VRBO and save over $120.
- [00:11]
A
Rise and shine.
- [00:12]
B
Average savings $141 select homes only.
- [00:19]
A
One of the big differences between again, the female and male cultures over the last 15 years is we have taught our girls, particularly over the last 15 years, that if they hear someone saying, girls don't do that. Girls don't do sport, girls don't do maths, girls don't do science, girls can'. Bosses. We've taught them all to put their fists on their hips like Matilda and go. Girls can do anything. We haven't yet taught our boys to rebel.
- [00:43]
B
Hello and welcome to a special episode of a podcast of One Zone, recorded live at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London. Recently, JUUL released its annual research into global attitudes towards gender equality in conjunction with Ipsos uk. At a fantastic launch event, Julia had the great pleasure of interviewing interviewing Caitlin Moran. They discussed her hippie childhood, how she found her voice, the future of feminism, and her book, what About Men? You'll also hear them discuss the fascinating research findings with Kelly Beaver, the chief executive of Ipsos UK and Ireland. We hope you enjoy the conversation.
- [01:24]
C
Caitlin, fabulous to have you here. Thank you very much for joining us. And we are going to talk about the things that come out of the research. But before we do that, I'd like to start in the beginning and I want to talk to you about the influences that made you and sort of built your perspective. Before we get your perspective on the research, you've described your childhood as chaotic but creatively rich. Now, looking back, how do you think that shapes the world that you see today?
- [01:58]
A
Well, I think being home schooled was a massive influence on that. First of all, I mean, I recently realized that I've got adhd and I think having been home educated, that put me to an advantage for dealing with it. Because if you're homeschooled, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You can just like, if you don't like maths, it's like, nah, I don't need to do it anymore.
- [02:18]
C
Sounds like the school bit wasn't playing that much of a role.
- [02:21]
A
No, there's definitely two types of homeschooling parents and the first are the ones that go, schools don't educate enough. They're wasting their time. Like, if I brought my child home and home Educated it. If we went for a walk in the woods, we could learn about nature and geology and geography. And when we go home and we do baking, we can learn about chemical reactions. And like every moment could be an educational opportunity. And that's why I'm taking my children out of school and home educating them to give them more education. My parents definitely weren't those kind of home educators. I think that their basic reason for bringing us out of school was that they just found out they were very resentful about the idea of having to get eight pairs of socks and pants ready at 7:30 every morning. So yes, I was the oldest of eight children brought up in a council house in Wolverhampton and my parents were big hippies and they took us to all out of school in 1985 and we didn't have a single lesson. So most of my education was either sitting and watching the television and watching classic Bugs Bunny Daffy Duck movies, eating vast quantities of cheese, but then going to the library every day and reading every book in there, which we all made the point of. We read all those books with our eyes. We thought listening to audiobooks was cheating. So I was able to specialize. I was just able to pursue any interest that I had very assiduously and I didn't have my time wasted with things like maths, which means that I still don't know my three times table. But I have an accountant now, so that's.
- [03:35]
C
Kelly can always help you with the statistics if you need any assistance given that. Was there a moment when the penny dropped that boys are treated differently to girls? Did that happen in your household or it was only after you'd emerged further into the world that you kind of hit that?
- [03:52]
A
Oh no, 100%. I mean, my dad was a hippie and I think it's sort of widely under acknowledged how sexist most old hippies are. That whole thing of being barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, the flower children, you know, the women didn't get much of a say. If anybody's watched the recent Bob Dylan biopic and sees how he treats Joan Basie, that's kind of. That's all hippie men really. So yeah, so he was so the first that I knew of feminism. I believe that Jermaine Greer was some kind of devil. Because whenever my mother had an opinion, he would go, all right, Jermaine Greer, put a sock in it. That was my main point.
- [04:25]
C
I'm taking that as an anti Australian slur. I just want to.
- [04:29]
A
Every single possible bad thing you can throw at him And I noticed that the division of the jobs in the house. So there were eight children and the girls, there were five girls, three boys. The girls had the jobs that were endless, like childcare, looking after each other, cooking, which has to be done every day. The laundry, which has to be done every day. The boys only had to empty the bins.
- [04:47]
D
Such a dos.
- [04:48]
A
Easy job, just like it's done then back down in front of the TV. Whereas, you know, cooking for 12 people, that's a real job. So I remember being very resentful at a very early age about. Yeah, that was my first acknowledgement that the idea of boy jobs and girl jobs, boys jobs, seem to be a lot easier than girls jobs.
- [05:05]
C
And so when would you have first heard the word feminism or applied it to yourself?
- [05:10]
A
Well, negatively all the time. For my father, re his continuing feud with Germaine Greer in his head. And then, as is the way when you get into your teenage years, you're like, okay, whatever my parents stand for, I will rebel against it. So I went to the library and got out the Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. And that's. I mean, I had, again, from the way that my father had talked about it, I presumed. And also the conversation around feminism at this point, this is like 1988. The presumption was that feminism was just simply a very small group of very angry lesbians in dungarees who hated women. First of all, if you want something done, go and ask an angry lesbian in dungarees who hates men. They get shit done. Like, they're my queens. But my understanding that there could be more to it than that was reading the Female Eunuch, and no one had told me that Germaine Greer was a rock star. Like, and this book is just incendiary. It was just like glitter cannons going off. She's so funny. She's so filthy. She's so optimistic. She's so full of rage. And it was such a vivid explanation of all these things. And I think. I mean, everybody. I can remember someone once saying that the process of sort of, like, coming into feminism is that there's such a thing as your feminist glasses. And the first time you put them on, you see the world as it really is. And your first reaction is usually, ah, it's horrible. And you take them off, and then the next time you put them on for three minutes and they go, oh, I can't handle it. And slowly you build up to wearing your feminist glasses all the time. And, yeah, so that. That was my first experience of putting on my feminist glasses and realizing that. That I think what is a very common thing, if you're going on a feminist journey, is all these things that you thought were your fault and things that you were screwing up and faults that you had and ways that you weren't managing situations and reactions that you had provoked in other people, particularly men, were your fault. And when you start reading feminism, you start realizing, oh, no, this is happening to all the other women. This is a communal experience and it isn't down to me, it is down to my gender. So that was the beginning of the canons going off and going, yes, I'm a feminist.
- [06:58]
C
And you ended up in journalism. And you've talked about coming into journalism. You entered it very young. You were from a working class background, this quite different background. And you said that being a journalist helped you try on different voices before finding your own. Can you explain that to us? It sounds so intriguing.
- [07:18]
A
So I was 16 and I'd entered various competitions. I'd also written a novel because if you're home educated, you have a lot of time on your hands. But I needed to have regular employment. And when I. When my book was published, the journalist came to interview for me for the Times. And I explained to her the misapprehension I'd been under when I wrote a book, that I believe that if you wrote a book, you probably got a million pounds. And that when I'd finally finished writing this book and they paid me for it, they gave me £1,000. And so this journalist came to interview me like a teenager's written a book. And I went, look, sidebar, turn the tape recorder off. How do you earn money writing, like, this whole book thing, it was long and there was not much money in it. And she went, well, you need to be a journalist, you need to be economist, you need to have a regular gig. So I was applying to all these places and just sending reviews and features and articles to people. And in those days, the music press existed in this country. There was the Weekly Music Press, Melody Maker, Enemy, and you didn't have to have gone to Cambridge or Oxford. You didn't need any contacts. If you sent them a review and they liked it, a week later they would print it and you would get 28 pounds and 42 pence. So I was like, OK, I'm hustling this. And so I sent them three demo reviews. And at the time we were so poor and that I didn't really have enough music to review. I certainly didn't have the cool bands that I was reading about in the magazine. So I borrowed two cool CDs from the library, the Happy Mondays and Jane's Addiction. And for my third review, I reviewed the soundtrack to Annie the Musical and I got the job. And then I turned up in the offices and I was a 16 year old girl from Wolverhampton with a very strong Wolverhampton accent. Like, I've got rid of it now. I talk like Victoria Coren, but like kind of at the time, this was my accent. And so I turn up in a very large hat and I'm a child and I'm slightly insane because I've been home schooled, so I'm incredibly socially anxious. I turn up with a bottle of whiskey and a packet of cigarettes because my only understanding of how to be a journalist is from watching the movie. Here's Girl Friday and Rosalind Russell is always drinking shots and smoking cigarettes. And everyone else in the building is a really cool. I thought they were very elderly men. I was like, these are old, old men. They were all like 28. One of them had a house. It was like, oh my God, this is unimaginable. He was 32, but they all wore black leather jackets. And the tone of music journalism at that time was generally very nasty. Basically we had the 20 or 30 bands that we loved and we'd be up their asses 24 7, but everybody else was fair game. And in order to blood yourself in the same way that the aristocracy will make you go out and kill a fox and then you have its bloody tail wiped on your face, the deal was, if you were a young journalist coming onto the music press, you would have to be, you'd have to go and do your first kill, you'd have to be bloodied. And so I was like, okay, well, if that's the game and that's how I'm going to earn my 28 pounds 42, this is what I'll do. And I wrote a series of escalatingly vicious reviews that culminated in reviewing a band called Ned's Atomic Dustbin, who were from the Stanbridge area. And the conceit of the review was that I was the priest at the funeral of the lead singer and that I was reading out the eulogy to his life, his obituary, all of which was a scathing takedown of just how awful he'd been and how stupid his hair was. And the last sentence was, me as I throw the earth on the coffin. You know, I, you know, I'm so glad to be burying the career of Ned's Atomic Dustbin today. And I thought I was like, okay, I've won now. Like, kind of like, this is the job. And I did this. And I went into the editorial meeting and everyone was a bit quiet about this. All the elderly men in their leather jackets were a bit like, we've gone a bit too far. And then out in the corridor, this one boy at the paper, he was a bit of an outcast because he wore woolly jumpers and called his mum on the phone for free. Came up to me and went, oh, that doesn't feel like that was you. Like, kind of. I don't. You are a really nice, warm, optimistic person and you love music and I don't know why you wrote that review. And, like, I just thought it was a bit off. And that became my husband.
- [11:08]
D
Aw.
- [11:11]
A
And he was right. And that was the first time that someone. And then subsequently, a couple of years later, I had the thrill of meeting Russell T. Davies. He's the writer of Queerest Folk and Doctor who. I'd become a TV critic by that point and I'd done a couple of hatchet jobs on some TV shows. I'd forgotten this lesson. And Russell T. Davis came up to me at a party and basically said the same thing. He went, I'm going to tell you what you are now. You are an enthusiast. Like, the thing you do best is write positively about things. And he went, it's the hardest thing. And there's this thing in writing that the heart of happiness, writes White. It's the hardest thing to be positive about something. It's really easy to get cheap gags out of a hatchet job, but to try and get the kind of tension and release and the kind of dynamism and energy in a piece when you're being passionate about something or positive about something or even just fair about something is technically much harder. And having Russell T. Davies going, no, you have the skills to do that. You write at your best when you do that. And that is your nature. That is what you should be. It was like having Glinda come and, like, bestow the kiss on my forehead. Sometimes you just want a really lovely man to come up to you and say, I'll tell you what you are. That was a life changing moment.
- [12:16]
C
Fantastic. Now we are going to come to your most recent book. But before we do, the first book, the one you wrote as a teenager.
- [12:24]
A
Yes.
- [12:25]
C
Can we run into, you know, Waterstones and buy a copy still?
- [12:28]
A
I don't think so, no. I think it's available on ebay for Maybe up to 49 pence. Yes. Right.
- [12:32]
C
Okay. Okay. Searching ebay to make sure that we've read everything you've written.
- [12:44]
A
The problem with radio is we can't show you our new box packed with a KFC snacker, five nuggets, fries and a drink for just $7. So you'll just have to trust us when we say the crispy golden fried breading will make your mouth. You'll have to trust us when we say this is a ridiculous amount of chicken for such a small price. And you'll have to really trust us when we insist that, yes, it really is only $7. $7 box feast from KFC. Trust us. It's finger licking. Good. Prices and participation may vary. Tax tips and fees extra.
- [13:25]
C
Your most recent book is called what About Men? And it was published in 2023. And you start the book by saying that you're out in the UK doing speeches, doing shows. You throw for audience questions and you're starting to get questions from the audience about what advice would you have about parenting teenage boys or what advice would you have for men? And you record in the book that your original reaction to this was to deflect with humour. But really inside you were doing an eye roll and thinking to yourself, hang on, I'm the feminist woman. I'm here to talk about women. Do we also have to fix men? Isn't there anything that they're going to do for themselves? Like, is this my job too?
- [14:14]
A
It wasn't even internal eye roll. When people would say, what about men? I'd go, I don't care, they seem to be fine. Then when they would push, I would go, look, the ultimate irony of feminism would be we've, we solved all the problems of women and then we had to solve the problems of men as well. Like, I'm really sorry, but as a woman, I will not solve the problems of men. And then five years later I was like, okay. Because as I went, in my world, being a feminist and doing these feminist talks, particularly around sort of International Women's Day, I'd be going in and doing talks in schools and colleges with mixed gender audiences. And for the previous five or six years, when I'd go in and go, we're going to talk about feminism, problems of women and girls, everyone would listen. And a couple of years ago, I first started to see boys in the audience just sort of looking first of all like they didn't care, then becoming openly hostile and in the end just going, literally just shouting out at the beginning, no, feminism has gone too far. We don't care. Like, women are winning and boys are losing. Like, kind of, that's what you should be talking about. And they were angry. And once I got over my shock, I became intrigued. Because when you're dealing with a cohort of people who are angry, it's always worth bearing in mind that angry people are really scared people. Anger is fear. That's come to the boil. And so the question that I was asking myself was, why would. In a world where we know the statistics still, you know, women have come so far, but we still know all the structural, political, economic, sexual safety problems, you know, parenthood problems that we face, what could it be that would make young men think, with all the facts that we have available about how women are still disadvantaged, think women are winning and that boys are losing? And at that point, I was like, okay, I need to find out. I need to be able to answer that question myself. And so I scrapped the project I was working on and went, okay, I'm gonna write a problem. I'm gonna write a book about men and boys.
- [15:51]
D
Let's do this.
- [15:52]
C
And the book takes us through you to a number of conversations that you've had. You got your daughters to bring together a group of young men that you could talk to. You talk to men in your life. You record all of these conversations, often smoking. We had that discussion that we have given up now. Yeah, Julia was very concerned.
- [16:14]
A
She was like, are you still smoking?
- [16:15]
C
No, I'd given up, literally. Many of you have probably read the book, but for those of you who haven't, I reckon every 10th page there's a recording. And then I had a cigarette. And then we had another conversation, and he was really stressed, so we had another cigarette together. So I did want to inquire into your health, and I'm very glad you've given up smoking. But can you take us to some of the things that really surprised you in this conversation? The tone of the book is often that you're quite taken aback by the things men are saying. And also the kind of narrow pathway their lives end up being socialised on and running on, and that they don't get the benefits of broader networks. Many people to talk to about feelings, many people to work through problems with.
- [17:08]
A
I mean, honestly, every chapter is basically could be called I am surprised because each topic that I came across, I was really surprised. Like, what I thought I was going to find when I went out, that was not what I found. And I started at the beginning by collating a load of statistics. So I was like, okay, if boys are saying that women are winning and boys are losing, let's go and find out, like, what are the facts and stats on that? So I sort of collated this very dolorous list of the problems that face boys and men. Say, statistically, boys are more likely to be put on medication to control disruptive behavior. They're more likely to be excluded from school. They're less likely to go on to further education. They're more likely to be in a gang. They're more likely to experience knife violence. They are more likely to become addicted to drugs, alcohol, or pornography. They make up the majority of the prison population. They make up the majority of the homeless population. One in four men over the age of 50 say they have no close personal friends. And the leading cause of death for men under the age of 50 is taking their own lives. So that was the start of the. That was like, okay, that's the factual problems that we've got here. Let me go in and start trying to work out why, you know, as a journalist, you're kind of trying to go, okay, why have these things happened? Why isn't there a conversation about this? That was the thing that struck me the most when I looked at those. That list of problems. Kind of like women. We've got a list. We know all the problems that we have in terms of, like, you know, motherhood, pay gap, you know, our personal safety, sexual assault and rape. The fact that rape is essentially legal in this country now because the prosecution rate is so low. We all know those facts. It seemed that men did not know this list is a fact. And also they were not doing anything about it. Again, like, as a woman in the. Any woman that I know that has any kind of public platform or is in the public eye, we have two jobs. We have our paid job. And then the second half of that, which is equal, is unpaid feminism, basically. You know, we're constantly mentoring, whether there are petitions, you know, there are sort of parliamentary groups. You're presenting evidence like, kind of being a woman and being a feminist is a huge part of our lives. This is what we do. That whole movement wasn't there for men. There isn't that culture there, the culture of women. I started to realize there is such a thing as the culture of women and the culture of men, and that's not there. So I was like, okay, well, can we take that down to the root of it? Why do men. Essentially, what I'm seeing is men are not able to talk about their problems, and they are not able to organize, to talk about them. There is no sharing of experience and they can't organize to do that. What is the root cause of that? And eventually it was talking to teachers that I think that I found across the root cause of it, which is they. And teachers are amazing to talk about changes in the way that children are brought up. Because as parents, you parent for 20 years, teachers are there for decades, they see all these changes. And they all said across the country, independently, all said the same thing, which is that it starts at 6, before the age of 6, children are basically the same in both genders. They will cry, they will hold hands, they will hug each other, they will talk about their problems, they will kiss, they're very open, they will say what they're scared of. They're basically the same. Then round about the age of six, for the first time, you hear in the classroom someone saying, boys don't do that. Boys don't hold hands, boys don't cry, boys don't complain. Man up. And the teachers all said the same thing. The first person who says that is always the most screwed up kid in the class. It's the kid that comes from the most abusive background. It's the kid that has an abusive father or a non present father or an abusive older sibling. And so. And for years I'd been using the phrase the patriarchy without really knowing what it meant. Like it would be my go to thing to blame if I stubbed my toe or kind of the patriarchy. And in that moment I suddenly, to me, I was like, okay, now I understand what the patriarchy is. It's the most screwed up man in a room or in an organization dictating the behaviors of all the other kids there. And you see that in politics and you see that in business and you see that in social groups. The first and most vocal person man to speak out, the one with the most dolorous view, the most restrictive view being a boy, is the one that sets the tone for everyone else. And the second thing that I noticed about that is the phrase boys don't do that. One of the big difference between again the female and male cultures over the last 15 years is we have taught our girls, particularly over the last 15 years, that if they hear someone saying girls don't do that, Girls don't do sport, girls don't do maths, girls don't do science, girls can't be bosses. We've taught them all to put their fists on their hips like Matilda and go, girls can do anything. We haven't yet taught our boys to rebel. After I wrote this book, I had so many friends who've got boys going, my boy's about to. They'd read the thing about it happening at 6 and they were like, I'm so scared. My boy's just about to turn six. I presume this is going to happen. My boy's a good boy. What do I do when he hears that in the classroom? I literally don't know what to do. And I was like, you have to teach him to rebel in the same way that we've taught our girls to rebel. We tell our girls, you're going to hear people saying these things and you turn around and you go, no. You establish your culture, you allow yourself to be vocal, you challenge that narrative. But we have not prepared our boys for that. And that's the key thing that we need to teach them to do. But that's the big difference between that list of problems that we see and the fact that there has not been a men's movement. There isn't a progressive men's movement. It's because at the age of six, men's abilities to do the two things that have allowed feminism to flourish, which is share our problems and then organise to solve them, are cauterized. Boys are not allowed to share their problems with each other because that is seen as weak. And once you can't share and bond with each other over a shared experience, you can't then form a movement that would improve these things. And so that was when I got down to that thing. I remember sitting there, I did light a cigarette at that point and went, I think I found it. I think I've cracked it. I think I've worked out what the problem is. This is the whole problem of men right here at the age of six
- [22:34]
C
and whose job is it to build that men's movement?
- [22:38]
A
Well, so I can remember when I wrote how to Be a Woman, which was like a really simple format, which is that I would tell my life story and every chapter is something that will generally happen to women in their lives. The first time you get periods, the first time you're sexually objectified, having an abortion, having a miscarriage and childhood marriage, having a bad boyfriend. And so each of them starts with a vignette from my life and then we look at the problem that I'm having there and then we go, okay, what's happening here? We, we try and understand it and we deliver a polemic. And I was like, this is such a rip offable format for men. Why isn't there a book called how to Be a Man? Men need exactly the same thing. The story of a normal life. And that was one of the things that I found really interesting when I started digging into men's culture. If you look at the books and the movies and the TV shows that women and girls enjoy, they're usually about normal girls having normal lives and the problems that happen in them. Like, kind of like they're all coming of age movies. Like, you know, at some point we have a very vital makeover. We have a gay best friend. There's a bad boy and a good boy. We're good. We know our friends will help us out. But kind of like fall for the bad boy first. Yes, but then we learn to go
- [23:38]
D
with the good boy.
- [23:38]
A
Exactly. But those are the stuff that women and girls read and absorb is about, usually about normal girls overcoming the normal problems in their lives. When you look at the things in the men's culture, those are stories, aren't there? There aren't really many stories about normal boys or normal men. They're all just like, they're in space, they're in the mafia, they're kind of. They're pulling off a heist. And so, and so I was talking to all my male friends and going like, kind of like, you know, don't you find it? The amount of advice that women get from our own culture, the culture that we have created, gives us advice. We go through this thing together. Like, don't you miss the being stories about normal boys? Like, I can't think of any off the top of my head. And they were like, no, because normal men's lives are boring. Like, I find my life boring. I would not talk to my friends about my life because I'm just a normal person and I find my life boring. And that was another one of those moments where I was just like, quite shocked. I was like, do men really find their normal lives boring? Because women find themselves fascinating. I mean, we don't even need friends to talk about to each other. I can sit and talk to myself in the mirror for hours. We will. And that's another different part of the women's culture. I think one of the reasons why we tend to be less violent and murderous is kind of like as our lives go on, we built up all these tensions and stuff. Kind of like the way that we talk to each other and share our problems and complain about them and complaining and bitching is a really important part of being a healthy woman. It's like releasing gas constantly. We're kind of constantly doing little tiny, little bitchy farts. We're kind of releasing the gas and the tension, whereas men bottle it up. And one of the big tropes that I came across to men, I was like, when would you, you know, why don't you talk? Women are constantly talking about their problems to each other. We're constantly releasing this gas. Whereas what my understanding of men is that you're allowed maybe once you save up all your tokens of stress and, and unhappiness and anxiety and fears and inadequacies and shame, and you're allowed to maybe once or twice in your life admit that you're having a bad time. But that's it. Like kind of once or twice and that's it. And then you can never go back to it again. Whereas women, we would, you know, we're constantly talking about these things. So it was, as I went through the book, it was finding the difference between the male and the female cultures within that. It seemed to explain every problem that we see listed in there and also the problems that we now see in the younger generation. Like, kind of like particularly with young men, because these, when adolescence came out, people started talking about a crisis in teenage boys. And I was like, no, this is a crisis in fathers. This is my generation that we screwed that up. The mothers were my generation of mothers. We were so good with our teenage girls and our little girls growing up. We were like, here's an article about 50 women who are changing the world. Here's a book called 100 Kick Ass Women from History. You know, we're going to keep saying the future is female, the future is female. But then you realize if you had a teenage girl and a teenage boy in the house at the same time, we weren't talking about the teenage boys at all. And the only time we ever talked about boys was with the phrases toxic masculinity, fragile masculinity, typical men, typical straight white men. And so in that vacuum of my generation, of all the progressive attention going into our girls, those boys were just left in a void. And so when someone like Andrew Tate rocks up and goes, I'm ready to talk about men, I'll talk about masculinity. They had an audience there waiting for them.
- [26:46]
C
I was moderately concerned where that gas analogy was going, but I'm glad we've landed.
- [26:54]
A
Sorry, I never know what I'm going to say. I was as surprised as you.
- [26:59]
C
But I want to pull on two threads from your answer. The first of the one of them is men's. Movement. Yes, but there is something broader going on. You know, you could have said we need a men's movement 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. But there are some other things going on at the same time. One of the things points you make powerfully in the book is that the cultural imagery around men's body shapes now, and we saw it reflected in the research is you know, at a real extreme about, you know, being physically ripped, being able to project force physical prowess. And you, you use a whole lot of wonderful word pictures. You talk about watching Star wars and the actors, you know, Harrison Ford, et cetera, playing Han Solo and Luke Skywalker generally looking like they couldn't outrun a fit 12 year old han Solo looking like he occasionally needed to stop for a fag, being outpaced by R2D2 unless R2D2 railed it in. And now of course if you go to any of those in space or superhero franchises, you know, people are, they make Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger look like they're 10 pound weaklings. You've got to be enormous.
- [28:29]
A
Well, even within the Star wars franchise, like when those original figurines came out, when Star wars first came out, which you know, I had in my house, like, you know, the little Luke Skywalker looks like a callow youth who's writing slim volumes of poetry. Like he's like, you know, he's not a fighter. And they re released all of, they rebooted all the Star wars merch three or four years ago and the new Luke Skywalker figurine now he's like got his thing open to the waist and he's just like got pecs and abs and like kind of. So even within our memory there's this kind of like a literal arms race of the kind of like figures that you see. And I went for a very interesting boozy and I regret to say also we smoked a lot of cigarettes, lunch with a director of one of the very biggest superhero movies and he had previously worked on a franchise with a lot of women in it. And he was saying I thought women had body image problems. I worked with an all female cast and they were competitively anorexic and had body disorders. Disorders like kind of. And like I thought that was as bad as it was ever going to get working with actors. But now I'm working on this superhero movie. I have to say the men are going through worse because they are having to work out so much like kind of like they are, they are doing like Olympic routines from like 2 till 6 in the morning, then they're going on set and acting in front of a ping pong ball on a green screen. Before they go on set, they're having to dehydrate for four or five hours because that's what makes all the muscles and veins pop. They're eating so much protein, they're constantly constant constipated. And then they have to go and sit in an ice bath afterwards. And the difference is that there's no, again, like kind of like, you know, we still know how screwed up women's body images are, but again, we learn to rebel against that, you know. You know, if you watch Tina Fey and Amy Poehler presenting an awards ceremony, they are constantly making jokes about the fact that the women who were there have not eaten and kind of like what you have to do to slim into a dress for awards season. I have not seen a single man stand up and say, look at every single male image that we're seeing on the screen. Now, again, there isn't this sense of rebellion. I find it really odd that men are seen as the kind of swashbuckling, daring kind of word masters, but actually it's women that have learned to rebel against these stereotypes.
- [30:24]
C
I'm interested in your view though, because in the book you make the point. It's not just, you know, actors playing superheroes. You know, in for most of history, you know, when I was young, growing up, you know, if you were gonna do a characterise someone, say, close your eyes and imagine a millionaire or a billionaire. I'm not sure we had billionaires back then, but you know, you'd imagine like an older guy in a suit, probably a little bit fat, but just, you know, like a banker, you know, like an old fashioned banker image now. All the uber rich on the planet, men gone out of their way to get ripped. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the list goes on. So something. What, what has caused that change? Because we could have had everything else going on without. Also that change in masculinity must mean this kind of body type. What's caused it? Is it social media? Is it something else? What do you think?
- [31:27]
A
I mean, first of all, there's a lot of money to be made by making people feel insecure, isn't there? And like, kind of like I felt that they sort of like, you know, whoever's in charge of like wellness and fitness and gym gear and all this stuff just looked at the stats and went, okay, we can't make women any more insecure than they are now like, we have absolutely topped out. We made every last woman we could possibly feel anxious and unhappy about their body. Anxious and unhappy. We need to find a new market and it's men. And I do feel that, like, kind of like that men. I do wish that men had been able to learn from again, female culture because, like, kind of like, I don't know if, you know, it's eased off a bit now, but a couple of years ago, men were wearing trousers that were so tight, the kind of post love island super tight trousers that just looks like they're wearing 60 denier tights that kind of like really unfortunately shows every single part of your body. Like, you can literally see, like, kind of like, you know, just like to which side a gentleman is dressing. Genitals pressed so tightly against the fabric, it's like Han Solo's facing carbonite. Just kind of like pressing against the seamless. Just like. And I just felt like going to every single one of these men and going, did you learn, if you'd listen to women, like, did you learn nothing from our years of bodycon dresses? Like, kind of like we learned not to wear super tight clothing because it makes you feel really insecure. And now at the same time, sort of like there was a definite crossover between men starting to wear very, very, very tight trousers that showed everything that was going on in their thighs, and then men suddenly going to the gym starting to worry about their weight. It's like, yeah, if you're wearing super tight trousers, you will start feeling insecure about your bodies. We could have told you that 50 years ago. But then again, even the way that there's loads of statistics on the amount of young men now who feel incredibly insecure about their bodies and they're going to the gym so intensely that it then tips over into body dysmorphia. And I'm trying to remember what the exact statistics work. So I'm not as good as you at the statistics, but it's something like 70% of young men who go to the gym more than five times a week have felt depressed or suicidal about the fact they are not big enough. And this phrase is called bigorexia. And it's such a. I feel that we constantly underserved men with the names that we give these things, like, bigorexia does not sound like a serious condition, but it is. And there are so many young men who are so incredibly miserable about the way that they look. And yeah, I just wish that men had learned for women, like, kind of don't wear really tight clothes. Don't be on the social media feeling insecure. We're just starting to get over that and now it's been passed on to you.
- [33:43]
C
Bigorexia sounds like a dinosaur. Jurassic Park. The bigorexia's got out of its pen.
- [33:55]
A
With Verbo care.
- [33:56]
C
Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so
- [34:03]
A
support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind. Say hello to Mia. Hey there. Mia runs a pet grooming service in Chicago. But getting new clients was rough until I started using acast. I recorded my ad, targeted pet owners in the area and let ACAST do the rest. Now people all over the city know about my grooming services. Mia's business is looking sharp. What's your secret for happy pets and happy clients? A fresh cut, a friendly vibe and a well placed podcast ad. Get the word out about your business through Acast. Visit go.acast.com advertise to get started.
- [34:52]
C
The other thread from your answer I wanted to pull on is you referred to masculinity. The future is female. I mean, how, how self critical should we be as feminists and activists that we, and I feel this myself quite deeply that we got a whole lot of things wrong. We were, you know, creating programs in schools for girls because we thought those programs were needed and they were needed. Girls, leadership programs, science programs, those sorts of things. But clearly when you look at this research and at your book, it's got a negative reaction and a backlash from young men. You know, phrases. I never used the phrase. I never felt comfortable with the phrase toxic masculinity, but it came to be used very commonly. The future is female. All of this has obviously gone on to create an impression that more for women must mean less for men. So how self critical should we be about that and what's the path forward? That actually gets the message that we want out there, which is that a gender equal world is a better world for everyone.
- [36:07]
A
I mean, obviously as women automatically we completely blame ourselves for this. Like, kind of like, you know, I'm sure every woman is just kind of in the feminist movement is going, oh no, that's on us. That's totally on us. But again, had there been a men's movement, like kind of like, you know, just in all the years that sort of like women of my generation were talking about women's problems, the men could have like seen what was going on and done the same thing. But there was just this, I mean, I think part of it, you Know, I always look on, I always tend to believe in the better side of human nature. I think a lot of it was politeness from the progressive men of my generation. They were like, the women are speaking now. Feminism is having a movement. It would be rude of us to say, actually, what about the men? So I think a lot of it was politeness, which I read into a positive thing. But in the span of time, we're still so early into feminism, this is such a. I did an event recently with Professor Stephen Whitehead, who was the first man to use the phrase toxic masculinity in an academic report. And he said, we're talking at the moment about the rise of toxic masculinity. We're really worrying about this young generation and those statistics we've seen for Gen Z. But he's like, from my point of view, what we call toxic masculinity now was all masculinity 200 years ago. Like, we forget that 200 years ago, women's lives, you know, we were legal property of either our fathers or our husbands. We couldn't have a bank account, we could not have jobs. We could be assigned to a mental asylum on the safe side of our husbands, Our children were their legal property. We could not form businesses, like, kind of like we could not vote. And 150, 200 years later, you know, we're in space, we're wearing trousers, we have contraceptives, we're smoking cigarettes. But I have given up now. Like, we went and took all the things of men. Our lives have changed so rapidly. And so when we see those statistics, like there's this statistic about, I think it's 1 in 4, 1 in 5 boys are a fan of Andrew Tate and those four that aren't are. Because feminism came along and changed men's ideas of women. Like, kind of the impact of feminism is still so underestimated in the way that it's changed what we think is normal. So as an optimist, I'm like, A, we've already had so much amazing change, and B, this is still a relatively short thing after 100,000 years of post aggregation society. Feminism is such a recent thing that, yeah, we might have slipped up in these last 15 years and not talked about teenage boys, but surely this point now is where we push back on that and we go, okay, now we remember boys, now there needs to be a men's movement now. We need to remember to talk about these problems of boys and men. So as an optimist, I just see this as the continuation of a program. It's three steps forward, two steps back, five steps forward, three steps back. This is where we are right now.
- [38:32]
C
Well, with that, I'm going to invite our favourite optimist, Kelly, to come and join us back on stage.
- [38:41]
D
Fairy wedding.
- [38:45]
C
And we're going to talk about some optimistic things and some kind of less optimistic things. Kelly, one of the dynamics in the research that you didn't talk to quite so much in the presentation, but I'd like to draw out a little bit now is it's very clear from the presentation that traditional, more attraction to traditional gender roles is happening amongst Gen Z men. And you presented those statistics and as you dig through the research, if you do the comparison Gen Z men with baby boomer men, so the youngest of whom are kind of in their 60s, baby boomer men come off as more progressive on a series of things like, you know, is a man who cares for his children less of a man? Should. Should a woman ever initiate sex? They actually baby boomer men come off as far more progressive. But also when we look at it, whilst Gen Z women are more progressive progressive than Gen Z men, they are often less progressive than baby boomer men or baby boomer women. So there's two dynamics here. We've got to worry about the boys, I agree, and the young men who are clearly more attracted to traditional gender roles. But young women are more attracted than older cohorts too, though not quite as attracted as young men. How do you think about that?
- [40:19]
D
So there's a lot of research that we've done on this and what I've shown you today is literally just the tip of the iceberg. So I do urge you to go on and have a look at the full documents. But even with the Gen Z men being more into traditional values and norms, there are still nuances within that as well. So, for example, Gen Z men are also more likely to say that they find women more attractive who have a career, but they should also obey their husband. So, you know, there's some real nuances and this is why it is not. You cannot just produce a set of numbers on this. There's real depth of understanding required around how people have shaped some of those values and those behaviors, including with Gen Z women, as you rightly say, who are actually more traditional than you may think on some of the indicators that we checked.
- [41:08]
C
I wonder. And Caitlin, you might have a view on this. I wonder. And we did do some research on. Listen to me say we. I don't do any research. The team at the Global Institute for Women's Leadership. Heejung and the researchers did the research. No one lets me loose on research for obvious reasons. It'd end badly. Did some research on trad wives and just joining that research to this, one of the things that came out of that wasn't so much that people, young women, really wanted to be a trad wife, it is that they rightly identify that being a woman today, trying to balance work, family, having kids, they've watched older generations of women try and do all of that and seen them go stir crazy and not have a minute for themselves, and they obviously think that's all too hard. So what's a pathway out of it? Do you think that's.
- [42:09]
A
Well, there's two things with the tradwifes. I don't think you can underestimate how pivotal the niceness of the outfits of the tradwife is on younger women. Kind of like, I think it's constantly underestimated how the outfit associated with some kind of movement will influence young women. Those prairie dresses are really appealing and a headscarf means you don't have to wash your hair. I absolutely would have signed up to a movement that meant that I was wearing a flattering dress of that age also. Secondly, we're talking about young people and I say this as someone who was a young person myself, like, young people are idiots. Often you will say things that you don't know. When you have lived some more lives, you will take back half of what you believed at that time. And the thing with the trad wives is it's young women saying, I quite like the idea of being a trad wife. You will notice There are no 50 year old Trad wives, 60 year old Trad wives, because we've seen all the divorces. You know, it's one of those things, as you get older, I suspect you won't want to be a trad wife. There are no trad hags.
- [43:08]
C
I think I would have been out of the tradwife thing when it came to milking a goat and making yoghurt. Like, I am so not doing that, Kelly. So on that.
- [43:17]
D
You're absolutely right, though. And your research follows this massive study that that's done all across Europe, which is called the European Working Conditions Study. And what it does is track how people are going to work day to day and what they're experiencing. And you can see, as more women join the workforce over decades, you see this rise in anxiety, overload, et cetera, that just runs right alongside it. So it's Not a surprise that your research is picking that up on the trad wife dynamic and the optics of looking at people who've gone before who are trying to desperately juggle career, work, life, et cetera, I'm thinking, actually, trad Haig sounds lovely.
- [43:55]
A
I mean, I think a lot of the trad wife movement as well, within that generational cohort is that it's the mums of my age who just so constantly bitched about how hard it is to both have a job and look after children that our daughters have gone, okay, well, I'll pick one or the other. Like, I mean, I do see a lot of it as an act of rebellion. And if I'd moaned slightly less, maybe my daughter would not now be wearing a prairie dress and milking a goat.
- [44:16]
C
The political moment we're in, I'd be interested in both your views about how that intersects with the research. I mean, when you started with your very optimistic Kelly telling us about the things that we really are very happy to hear, one of them was the statistics about how many people think, both men and women, that a world where women had more power would be a better world. And, you know, we obviously can't conclude all causation, but I think maybe looking at the news and some of the current male role models and the consequences caused by those male role models might cause people to think to themselves, it really couldn't be much worse. It could even be a hell of a lot better if there were a lot of women around. But the other side of that coin, I think, is it is knitting into this imagery about traditional roles. So, you know, men lead, women follow, as well as the traditional dynamics we're seeing about household roles, trad wives, husbands who are obeyed. How do you think about that role modelling piece and its duality?
- [45:28]
D
So what we have to, I guess, bear in mind is that this whole piece of on gender equality completely intersects with everything from your home life to your work life to how government interact with you, from policies, et cetera. And so when people are looking at governments, for example, and people who have got positions of power in those role models, they have to navigate how shifts in gender equality, how policies in gender equality, are going to impact on all of those particular systems, and ultimately that causes a great degree of tension, those role models are critical. But at the point wherein, certainly in the uk, where the government here is under a huge amount of pressure, starting to put things in place that are perhaps more dynamic around gender equality, as somebody who is in a leading role is actually quite controversial because of the intersections with family life, with work life, with employers, etc. So those, even though there are fewer role models around who are citing DEI practices trying to push gender equality, it's also because of the environment they find themselves in where their own political. They do not necessarily want to push on something which could have a significant backlash effect, because all of it is the balance between all of those different intersections.
- [46:46]
C
And I think part of that, how difficult it is in terms of the politics, you know, in this world where we are just in a rolling crisis environment. I mean, you literally do wake up in the morning and you're only looking at the news with one eye because you know it's going to be something truly horrific. And of course that's true right now with what is happening with war in Iran and the Middle East. But it's been true for, for a long period of time now that the news has been negative in that environment. I think it is also quite hard for governments to say we're going to foreground gender equality because people are going to say, oh my God, you know, the economy's not creating the opportunities that we need, there's a cost of living crisis, the healthcare services isn't working the way we want it to, we're worried about education, we're worried AI is going to take our jobs, we're worried about climate change, we're worried about peace and war. And you're going to stuff round with gender equality. I mean, I think that that's a dynamic to it and we need to get our way through that.
- [47:59]
D
Well, that's right. And if you look at the sort of populist movement that we're seeing across a number of countries in the uk, but also more broadly across Europe, traditional values, religion, some of those factors also intersect with this dynamic of gender and equality. And so it is more of a catalyst for perhaps disaffection amongst voters than you might think. When you look at what is so obvious to us, when we look at it, about the kind of things that you might need to do, actually doing it in the current environment is very politically risky.
- [48:30]
A
Well, so much of it is economic as well. I think that is the root of it. I think if everybody had more money in their pocket and felt more optimistic about the future, you have the room and the space and the bandwidth for these conversations. I can remember I did an event last year and during the course of us talking about stuff, I kept using the phrase when things get back to normal, and most of the people on the panel were people my age. And at the end, the first question I got from the audience was from a very young man in the front row who went, I'm really sorry, but I'm not being a dick or anything, but you guys kept saying the phrase, when things get back to normal, like, what does that mean for you? And I was like, well, I don't know. Just like, things being generally stable, a sense of optimism, houses being affordable, A pint is utopia. You know what's number one in the pop charts? Like, kind of like, you know, like Damon Albarn's looking sexy. Like, kind of like that's. And he was like, I'm so sorry, that's not normal to me. And I was like, well, what year were you born? And he was born in 2000. So he was 8 at the time of the economic crash. He was 6 months old when 9. 11 happened, 8 when the economic crash happened, 16 for Brexit. And I was like, oh, my God. Yeah. My sense of what is normal. I came from a period of stability and optimism. Optimism. And that is absolutely not the experience of Gen Z. And then the main thing on top of that is that people who feel poor and anxious about their futures, they will see. They see feminism. Feminism is often seen. Equality is often seen as a luxury. Progressive things are often seen as a luxury. And the thing is that progress, inequality and diversity are not luxuries. They're not like life's cashmere bed socks. They are necessities like food and water, water and oxygen, because those are the things that will drive economic expansion and change and more ideas and a sense of optimism. Like, culturally, we can't underestimate however much politics and the economy is important. All those things are downstream of culture. And when something is happening culturally that feels progressive and exciting and optimistic, that people have something that unites them and you feel like we're all engaged in something communally that's happening. Like, those are the moments, and that is usually culture and diversity and everybody being involved in that that drive these moments of change.
- [50:29]
C
I'm glad we now know what to buy you to thank you for coming tonight, though. This is a university and funding short, so you probably get it one sock at a time. We'll have to save up. Please do have a look at the depth of the research online. Kelly does magnificent presentations, but there is so much in the polling research, we can only ever bring a snapshot of it to you in a format like this. So please do have a look at the research overall. Please do read Catlin's book. It's a great book or do what I did. I read it a while back, but to refresh myself for tonight. I've had Catlin's voice in my ear for the last few days listening to it on audiobook and it's a great listen as well. And thank you for coming and joining me and showing your support for the Global Institute for Women's Leadership here at the King's Business School at King's College London. We're always delighted to see you and for the weekend to come, even though it's a very difficult and pressurised world, I hope you find some time on the weekend to say Happy International Women's Day to each other. Would you thank the panel for me? Thank you very much.
- [51:50]
B
A Podcast of One's Own is created by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University, Canberra, with support from our sister Institute at King's College London. Earnings from the podcast go back into funding for the Institute, which was founded by our host Julia Gillard, and brings together rigorous research, practice and advocacy as a powerful physical to advance gender equality and promote fair and equal access to leadership. Research and production for this podcast is by Becca Shepherd, Alice Higgins and Alina Ecot with editing by Liz Keen from Headline Productions. If you have feedback or ideas, please email us at giwlnu. Edu Au. To stay up to date with the Institute's work, go to giwl. Anu Edu Au and sign up to our updates or follow us on social media Oolanu. You can also find A Podcast of One's Own on Instagram. The team at A Podcast of One's Own acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today. Thanks for listening and we hope you'll join us next time.
- [53:23]
D
Acast powers the World's Best Podcasts here's
- [53:27]
A
the show that we recommend.
- [53:31]
B
Hi, I'm Pace Case.
- [53:32]
A
And I'm Bachelor Clues. We host Game of Roses, the world's
- [53:36]
B
best reality TV podcast. We're covering every show in reality TV TV at the highest level possible.
- [53:42]
A
We analyze the Bachelor, Love Is Blind, Perfect Match, Vanderpump, and anything else you find yourself watching with wine and popcorn. We break down errors, highlight plays, MVPs and all the competitive elements that make reality TV a sport. And we interview superstar players like Bachelorette
- [53:57]
D
Kaitlyn Bristow and Big Brother champion Taylor Hale.
- [54:00]
A
If you want to know so much
- [54:01]
B
about reality TV, you can turn any casual conversation into a PhD level dissertation.
- [54:06]
A
You definitely want to check out Game of Roses. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast. Com.