Kathy Lette: 40 years on and sexism still rules Down Under

Kathy Lette grew up in the sexist Aussie surfie culture of the ‘70s and more than 40 years later, the expat is disappointed to see not much has changed.

7/8/14 Kathy Lette, writer, columnist and humourist pictured in Victoria Square, Adelaide.

FEMALES who grew up in the Aussie surfie culture of the ’70s were runners up in the human race. Then, beach boys disproved the theory of evolution — they were devolving into apes. We “surfie chicks” weren’t allowed to surf. Our job was to fetch the Chiko Roll, mind the towel and massage the egos.

Australian men at the time proved that dinosaurs still roamed the earth. “Why do women exist? So men have something to lie down on, while having sex,” ran a typical joke. It was unthinkable back then, to imagine Australia could ever have a female prime minister.

Some 35 years later, when not just a woman, but an unmarried, undomesticated, childless agnostic shacked up with a hairdresser, took office, it seemed one of the first countries in the world to grant women the vote, had finally reclaimed her feminist credentials.

But our optimism was short-lived. The sexism Gillard endured began with Senator Bill Heffernan deriding her as “deliberately barren”, (implying a woman is little more than a life support system to a womb), and culminated in MenuGate. The sexism du jour on the kitchen mock menu at the Liberal fundraiser dinner was named “Gillard Quail”, which featured “small breasts, big thighs” and came in “a big red box”. (Gillard should have immediately served up her own dish on the parliamentary menu — chauvinist pig on a spit. )

The international media started asking whether Australia was being overrun by Les Pattersons, tutored by Benny Hill on a bad day.

But Gillard didn’t just lie back and think of Canberra. When she used Abbott’s testicles as maracas in her “smack-down”, it made global headlines. In Britain, France and the US she was praised for the most outspoken attack on sexism in political history. Yet the Australian media wrote off her speech as a disaster, no doubt due to the male influence of the press gallery.

Game show Family Feud asked contestants to “name something people think is a woman’s job”.

Since the conservatives have come to power, attitudes to women have gone backwards so fast that when I turn on the television, I expect it to be in black and white. Recently the leader of the Government in the Senate Eric Abetz asserted a link between abortion and breast cancer, and Education Minister Christopher Pyne, when asked about the potential of his proposed uni fee deregulation to hurt women, explained women were “well represented” among teachers and nursing students and “they will not be able to earn the high incomes that say, dentists or lawyers will earn”. Apparently nobody has pointed out to him that 61 per cent of law graduates and 58 per cent of dentistry graduates are female.

Then earlier this month Family Feud, a Network Ten game show that pits two families against each other to name the most typical responses to questions posed to Australians, asked contestants to “name something people think is a woman’s job”. Correct answers included “doing the dishes, cooking, washing clothes, cleaning, and domestic duties”. Really?

During the civil rights movement, there were white faces as well as black fighting
for equality. Surely it’s time Australian men refused to accept this cringingly misogynistic behaviour from their colleagues and joined women in demanding an end to sexism.

Until then, I’d better dig out my crocheted bikini, hit the beach and fetch a Chiko Roll for the boys.

Kathy Lette’s latest novel Courting Trouble (Bantam Press, rrp $33) is out now