Feminism is getting a big push from Meghan and Carrie — a push right back to the 1950s

Our world is filled with talented female politicians, scientists and sportswomen, yet two of the most talked about women don’t have proper jobs.

Meghan Markle pictured in her 40th birthday comedy skit. Picture: Supplied

Imagine you are an 80-year-old woman. You have, in your lifetime, seen seismic change. Women are no longer routinely groped, harassed, sidelined: they are leaders, experts, bosses, even prime ministers.

But imagine if this picture started changing, if the world suddenly wasn’t as filled with happy, respected female role models as you had hoped. Imagine if, as you are led towards the light, the female role model you in fact see emerging is the person we saw last Wednesday: a pruned, spoilt duchess sitting at her Gnomeo and Juliet desk in a mansion in California telling us she was a new global icon for women.

Looking at the Duchess of Sussex’s 40x40 video, in which she announced her desire to “mobilise women back to the workplace” after Covid, I wondered: how did we even end up with a workplace mentor who famously doesn’t work? It seems amazing to me that in 2021, when our world is filled with so many talented female politicians, scientists, academics, sportswomen and engineers, three of the most talked about and influential female figures are Meghan, the Duchess of Cambridge and Carrie Johnson, women who have slept their way to their positions, and none of them have proper jobs. What is that about?

If you want to know what men think of this, well, of course they are laughing. Last week we learnt that Boris Johnson’s approach to dealing with Carrie was to ask Dominic Cummings if they could send her on one long, photogenic holiday. Could the cabinet secretary get her “a job with lots of foreign travel” on Cop26, Cummings claimed the prime minister asked him last year, in an interview on Thursday. Can we be in any doubt that men like Boris think women are shallow accessories when the most ambitious he is for his wife is to let her “travel around the world with Kate Middleton"?

I don’t even think this came from a place of specific misogyny. It’s misogyny by what, omission? You can see Dom and Boris laughing: “Crackers” would love to drone on about pangolins with the duchess. Even worse, Meghan, Kate and Carrie collude in such low opinions.

Remember the mad fertility photoshoots at the ludicrous G7 summit? Jill Biden forced to hobble, barefoot across the sand, to admire the fruit of Boris’s loins - all sorted by Carrie. So much space is devoted to their “love story": you’d be surprised how many people invest in this antiquated fantasy, especially voters. Lynn Barber, who wrote the interview with Cummings in The Spectator, claims she was “surprised” to see a sentence about Carrie being “Boris’s wife and mother of his son, with another on the way” added into her copy.

Carrie Johnson and US First Lady Dr Jill Biden reacts as Wilfred Johnson sits on the beach during the G7 leaders Summit in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. Picture: Getty

Where did that come from? Is “mother of Boris’s children” now the way everyone sees her? What happened to her being a “true feminist”, like Boris, a working woman, proud of her career? Wheel out the children - that will please voters. Pose in a wedding dress that makes you look like a sacrificial victim - that will secure the trust of women. Change your name to his, ditch the job, only half pretend you want to work, buy gold wallpaper - this is the Duchess of Cambridge school of doing things. Remember Kate’s two kitchens?

Even serious women are being sucked down to their level: if you look at the Barbie doll issued in honour of the 59-year-old vaccinologist Sarah Gilbert, launched last week, you will see from the glossy hair, unlined face and sexy pair of specs, that even it looks like a character from Suits.

Sarah Gilbert, a professor at Oxford University and co-developer of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has a Barbie doll modeled after her https://t.co/fMICB59BlRpic.twitter.com/D3QRnYSeK9

— Reuters (@Reuters) August 5, 2021

As for the average woman: what on earth does she think of a workplace initiative launched by Meghan sitting at a desk in a house with 16 bogs? And the video, well - it didn’t take us back three decades, it took us back five centuries, to a time when aristocratic ladies would shower gifts on peasant women, or in Meghan’s case, 40 minutes with each of her 40 celeb friends, including Adele. Since when is 40 minutes with Adele going to solve anything? Why not 40 hours, or 40 years, which is how long you really need to make what Meghan would call “systemic change"? What’s amazing is how many people will still believe what they’re doing is real good, and not just hollow marquee initiatives.

It’s funny that Meghan should alight on getting women back into work after Covid, because she is right: Covid has been genuinely awful. It has driven us out of our jobs and back into the home, where we are drowning with cleaning and childcare as if it is 1853. We’re essentially back in the place where men want us, shut away, invisible, quiet or, as Boris puts, it “travelling the world with Kate Middleton”. But, you know, here’s a video of Prince Harry juggling at a window. How helpful is that?

@CamillaLong

The Times