Peter Goers: I should’ve marched for every woman who’s been sexually harassed

Men didn’t want women to vote, work or have equal pay. Now they still blame women for being raped, abused and harassed, writes Peter Goers.

If you ever doubt the repression of women, remember former prime minister Tony Abbott made himself the minister for women and there was only one woman in his 19-person cabinet. That’s recent history.

In my memory, women were not allowed in the front bars of hotels, they had to use a side entrance into the Adelaide Club and police didn’t intervene in domestic violence.

Men didn’t want women to have the vote or equal pay. Men didn’t want married women to work. Men are still blaming women for being raped and sexually abused and harassed.

Men spend their lives trying to understand women and we never do. That’s a cop-out. However, the need for justice and absolute equality for women is completely understandable, way overdue and essential. Until this is achieved, men are failing not only women but ourselves.

I’ve been sexist. I’m part of the problem. I don’t do enough. As 100,000 women, girls, men and boys marched in the streets for justice for women, I was at Marion Shopping Centre buying a dress for one of the women marching. Excellent women served me at Dangerfield.

They couldn’t march because they were working. I should’ve marched for them. I should’ve marched for every single mother I’ve ever known. I should’ve marched for every woman who’s been sexually harassed.

March 4 Justice protesters in Adelaide joined the nationwide women’s movement in Tarntanyangga/Victoria Square. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Emma Brasier

I should’ve marched for my own mother who, like many women of her generation, was denied a university education because she was a girl from a working class family. I should’ve marched for all the women who have made me everything I am. Hopefully there is momentum in this women’s movement and hopefully more and more of us will join them on the streets.

Men can’t and won’t comprehend that women live with fear and apprehension. I’ve failed to understand that. Equal pay for women is a myth. I’ve benefited from that. Women have appalling rates of superannuation compared with men. I’ve benefited from that. Men can’t and won’t share power and I’ve benefited from that, too. Politics and political survival are more important than the pain of a raped woman. Then she’s a “lying cow”.

Women are tougher than men. They have to be. Women have a higher resilience to pain than men. They have to. They give birth. We are nothing, literally, without women. Yet we repress them. Men cling to the meritocracy which really means more opportunity for stupid men. Joan Child, the first female Speaker of the federal House of Representatives, was right when she said: “We won’t have full equality until parliaments are full of mediocre women.”

Women can’t do worse than men. Men have completely stuffed up the entire planet. Margaret Thatcher was a disastrous leader but Jacinda Ardern is excellent. Men have failed us forever so let women fail us. They may fail us better. They may also succeed. That’s equality and there is no equality without opportunity.

Men have been excused for failure forever while women who might’ve done better were rocking cradles, keeping house and being oppressed.

If men are threatened by women, that’s good. We might then understand how women feel. Women must keep marching and men must march with them until there is true equality and a truly even division of power, responsibility and opportunity. Until then we don’t live in a democracy.

Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide