Julia Gillard |
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard became a global online sensation when she launched her now-famous attack on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, accusing him of sexism and misogyny. The YouTube video has been viewed over 2 million times, and the speech reproduced on countless numbers of news portals and blogposts. Ms Gillard’s indignation was well justified, and her passionate anger was an inspiration to women all around the world who continue to suffer from being diminished and put down by men.
But why does this still happen, in a world where more than half of university graduates are women (in the West at least), and where most major countries have or have had women political leaders? How often do we find ourselves talking about ‘misandry’ - the equivalent fear or hatred of men on the part of women? (The word isn’t even in my spell-check.) Yet women “hold up half the sky” in the words of the Chinese proverb, and male and female, men and women complement and are indispensible to one another. Doesn’t it seem strange that such a fundamental distortion in the way we perceive and value one another should have arisen – and what does it mean?
On one level the answer lies in the continuing influence of patriarchy and the unequal power relations between men and women – still prevalent even in countries like Australia, the UK and the USA – and most commentators on the incident and its repercussions have focused on men’s unwillingness to accept women as equals in the domains of politics and business. But I want to dig a bit deeper: what are the roots of this condition, and what effect does it have on our consciousness and the way we relate to each other?
The Willendorf Venus |
Despite this, a veneration for the female principle in some form seems to have been a feature of almost all cultures, until very recently.
And this has typically involved several facets at least of the feminine:
Guan Yin |
Mary |
- the Mother, as represented by the Hindu deity Parvati or by Mary in Christianity
- the Sexual, as represented by Aphrodite in the Greek pantheon, or Mary Magdalene in Christianity. (Though it could well be argued that Magdalene stands for male repression of female sexuality.)
In the polytheistic cultures of Asian religions this tradition has continued to this day – though it has to be said that it doesn’t necessarily go with a better deal for women. (The spiritual tradition doesn’t serve to challenge patriarchal power structures, in other words.) However, the great religions of the West are all monotheistic, and, as I pointed out in last week’s post about Brazil, the three facets of the Christian God are all male – like the Prophet Muhammad, all the prophets and indeed the God of the Old Testament. In Catholic Christianity some space is made for the veneration of the female principle (in whatever ‘edited’ form this may be), but Protestantism swept this away as idolatry and superstition, a belief which has persisted into the post-religious and post-spiritual culture which dominates today in the English-speaking world. And this culture, unsurprisingly, remains male-dominated – with a dominance that’s no longer even tempered by any veneration of the female principle, or recognition of complementarity.
Hillary Clinton |
Margaret Thatcher |
Norse Goddess Freya |