My mother never got to go to university. A quirk of being born in a certain era, in suburban Brisbane, to loving parents who sat squarely in the demographic of middle Australia.
It was an era in which for the most part, a prerequisite to going on to tertiary study involved being born with male genitalia. Most women of my mum’s generation quit school at year 10, got secretarial or retail jobs and when they got married (as they were expected to swiftly do), quit those jobs to go keep house for their new husbands. It seems grossly archaic when viewed through the filter of life in 2021, but the truth is, it’s not that long ago that women fought for basic freedoms that we rightly enjoy.
I wonder if some of these freedoms are being eroded? Eaten away like a slow, silent, concrete cancer. You don’t really notice until it’s so deeply embedded it’s almost impossible to get out.
Let me give you an example. Last week, 30 young women, all athletes, lost their jobs with the Paramatta Eels when the club decided to bin their esteemed cheerleading squad. You will note I called them athletes, not cheerleaders. They are athletes. They are dancers. Gymnasts. Some are skilled in acrobatics.
Bottom line is they are fitter and stronger than 98 per cent of the population, but I’ll wager that because they wear Lycra and not a lot of it, the gig’s on the nose. The club publicly stated it was revisiting its game day entertainment priorities. Or something.
The Eels are the latest NRL team to ditch cheerleaders, the first was South Sydney in 2009 and at the time, the club’s famous owner was quoted as saying they “made a lot of people uncomfortable”.
Aside from the stratospheric hilarity of clubs in a code such as NRL dictating anything by way of a moral standard about women, the focus isn’t on cheerleading specifically. This is simply a current example.
Formula One axed Grid Girls in 2018. Another great victory for progress that saw a cohort of young women out of work. Understandable, really. How dare they be young, fit and attractive and earn money to support themselves. I am outraged.
Nothing says empowerment like making moral judgments that remove employment options for women. Ah, but it’s only some women, right. So, tell me this, who gets to decide?
Let me break it down for you, 2021 style. Young women in mining? Good. More of it. Women must like science at all costs.
Young women who dance at the footy (but not ballet, we don’t mind ballet). Bad. That makes people uncomfortable.
Women on boards. Good. Women who model bikinis (unless of course they’re plus-sized), bad. Slender women are simply being objectified.
My tongue is only very slightly in my cheek because this is the reality. Australian women might not be being denied higher education anymore, might not be pulled out of high school in their mid-teens to prepare for a life of baking and reproduction, but they are being conditioned about what kind of career is and isn’t acceptable.
All in the name of the sisterhood. All in the name of progress.
If feminism isn’t about empowering a woman to choose what is best for her life, without being judged for that choice, then pray tell what is it? Generations of women my mothers’ age and older were denied the right to live the life of their choosing, pursue their preferred career because of ridiculous, suffocating social norms. They fought for basic rights such as to keep their own surname. To not have to quit their jobs just because they got married. To chase their dreams.
They didn’t fight for these choices for them to be eroded by the perennially joyless, to have stifling social constructs reimposed by stealth as we allow the clock to be turned back for the sake of political correctness.
Now? Different era, different master, same morally driven social constraint. If this is feminism in 2021, I want none of it.
Perhaps these memories have become dim for some, perhaps as with many things, the passing of time and generations has caused people to forget that these basic freedoms didn’t come without cost. They never do. Freedom, any freedom is never free.
In less than a month, it will be International Women’s Day and everyone will be talking about raising strong women. They will say that the future is female.
Young girls will be reminded they can be anything they like, if they put their minds to it.
Make sure you tell them they can’t be cheerleaders. They can be anything but that.
Gemma Tognini is executive director of GT Communications.
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