Jane Phare ponders sexism, and looks at what’s changed in New Zealand - and what hasn’t - in the course of her 45-year career as a journalist.
“Can I speak to a reporter?” the caller asked me.
“Yes sir, I’m a reporter, how can I help?” I told him.
A pause, and then he said, “No, I mean a reporter . . . a male reporter.”
Of all the hundreds of times I answered the Herald reporters’ room landline, as a cadet in the late 1970s, and reporter in the ‘80s and onwards, it is that conversation that has stuck in my mind.
I’d been raised in a girls-can-do-anything family, where my mother had her own car, chequebook and decisions to make, a mother who suggested when I was 12 that I would make a good journalist. Evidently, the man on the end of the phone thought otherwise.
But that was decades ago. At dinners with older women journalist friends, we laugh about those stories from the past. How one, who went on to become the editor of a Sunday newspaper, was asked during an interview for a reporting role: “And what would you do if you were on your way to covering a fire and you laddered your pantihose?” We hoot with laughter in our journalism dotage.
I tell them about the time I arrived for a weekend shift at the Herald wearing my new trouser suit. We’re talking Crimplene, a fitted top-stitched jacket and slightly flared pants.
“Miss Phare,” my chief reporter said, eyeing me sternly. “If it wasn’t a Sunday I would make you go home and change out of that outfit.”
Just look at those trousers!
It was the trousers that were the problem. Women reporters were expected to wear skirts or dresses. This apparent insolent encroachment into traditional male attire continued to draw comment as the years rolled by, leaving me bewildered.
When the Queen attended a state banquet in Wellington in 2002, the main talking point was that Helen Clark wore TROUSERS. There was the Queen, walking gracefully up the steps of Parliament, wearing the full works – a white, sparkly gown, white gloves, diamond necklace and tiara. And next to Her Majesty was...shock, horror!...our Prime Minister - wearing slacks! The Herald even ran a DigiPoll on the issue.
Similar scrutiny was given to Angela Merkel’s trousers when the former German chancellor wore slacks on more than one occasion when meeting the Queen. Now, in our newsroom, I wear trousers most days and no one thinks anything of it. We have a man in our newsroom who occasionally wears a skirt, and no one thinks anything of that either.
So, as we approach 130 years since Kiwi women led the way – much as I did with my pantsuit – and earned the right to vote, it is encouraging to know some things have changed.
Then again, some things evidently haven’t. I was curious to know about the experiences of the young women of today, that confident, take-no-prisoners generation whose grandmothers were from the burn-the-bra era of feminism.
They’ve grown up understanding they can be engineers and scientists, doctors, and farmers, entrepreneurs, road workers or CEOs of companies. They won’t stand for any nonsense, and they expect their menfolk to know how to cook and clean. And today, most men know how not to act like sexist plonkers.
However, raise the subject of sexist attitudes to women in their 20s and 30s and they, shockingly, all have a story to tell. The stories come thick and fast, some of them blatantly sexist, others with more of a subtle edge or, in the words of Harry and Meghan, “an unconscious bias”.
Here’s a sample:
- As the only woman in a group of salespeople, being asked to “run and photocopy this would you?· A woman manager discovering a male member of her team was being paid more than her.
- The only woman, a lawyer, in a meeting being singled out: “We need someone to take minutes, would you do that Shona?”
- A digital engineer being interrupted by male colleagues with, “What she’s trying to say is ... ” and then repeating what she’s just said.
- Another engineer being asked by a male colleague in a meeting, “Are you confused? Do you understand what we’re talking about?” when it’s her proposal they’re discussing.
- A young woman in the rental industry being told that she shouldn’t work while she’s pregnant because she can’t be trusted to make the right decisions in her condition.
- A swim instructor in her 20s being told by a new client that he wanted to speak to a male equivalent to find out more information.
- A young but senior pharmacist talks about “mansplaining”, explaining or lecturing in management meetings about something she’s already quite well aware of.
- Young women talking about having their ideas dismissed by men and then mysteriously re-emerging at a later date, pitched as their own idea.
- Women telling of misogynist road rage when they’re cycling, with men tailgating, coming up alongside and shouting sexist abuse.
One young woman in her early 30s, who leads a team involved in a large company takeover, says she sometimes turns her camera off during Zoom meetings, pretending it’s not working.
“It’s so some of these men can’t see the expression on my face. They question everything I say as though I’m incompetent. They’re older men who don’t accept a young woman is leading the team.”
‘My rape chocolate’
And, of course, there are stories of sleazy older men, often married, chatting up young women who, because of their jobs, are required to be pleasant to customers. A receptionist at a car dealer’s business says some men mistake her friendliness for sexual interest. One married man gave her a block of Toblerone after an overseas trip. It sat untouched on her desk until she called out to colleagues, “Does anyone want my rape chocolate?”
It’s what some of us do, make a joke about unwanted advances, not wanting to make waves in the workplace. It’s what I did years ago, ignoring a humiliating grope in the reporters’ room in the days when HR and the charge of “sexual assault” didn’t exist. I just got on with it and tried not to catch the eye of the man responsible.
It was an era that the young women of today would scoff at. In 1984 I was awarded the Harry Brittain Fellowship, a Commonwealth Press Union scholarship to the UK. The Herald ran a little story which said:” She is the first New Zealand woman to be so honoured.” It had only taken 24 years.
The documentation read: “Harry Brittain Fellows are reminded that their wives will be unable to accompany them to Britain for the duration of the fellowship.” This was the 80s, not the 60s.
It’s not as though women journalists were a rare breed or new to the industry.
Take New Zealand journalist Constance Barnicoat (1872-1922) who author Annabel Schuler describes as sassy, opinionated and brave in her new biography, Constance Barnicoat: A Cool Head and a Sharp Pen.
Barnicoat was a correspondent for a string of newspapers in New Zealand and Europe, writing in five languages, including before and during World War I. She was also a mountaineer and, bless her, was an early trouser wearer after realising pretty early on that petticoats and long dresses weren’t a practical option on treacherously steep mountains.
Back in the 80s, Metro editor Warwick Roger called us “wimmin” in the magazine’s Felicity Ferret column and there was deep suspicion of anyone who didn’t conform.
I was once interrogated by an editorial manager about one of my staff members who was tall and wore her hair short at a time when voluminous Farrah Fawcett hairstyles were in vogue.
Did I know if she was a lesbian, he wanted to know. I was so startled by the question I think I stammered “Well, I’ve never really thought about it but she’s been married (twice) to men and has three children.” He then asked me, “And is she a … feminist?”
By then I had collected myself. “Well, I certainly hope so!” I barked back.
Ladies bring a plate
It was an era in which men’s and women’s bowling clubs were still segregated. The Mission Bay Bowling Club didn’t allow women to join until 2009. Before then they were allowed to watch and attend only “bring-a-plate” social functions. For years in my lifetime, women couldn’t join certain Rotary or Toastmasters clubs. Newspapers like the Herald were similarly slow to catch up.
In the mid-80s I was the first woman to become features editor in the paper’s then 120-year history. Progress, yes, but I was told there was no carpark for me in the building below, despite the long hours I was working. Yet when I left that role, and a male colleague took over, I noticed some hurried painting happening in the garage and there, miraculously, was a spot for the new features editor.
The following decade I became the Herald’s first woman assistant editor and the first woman to edit one of its newspapers, the Weekend Herald. What strikes me today is how long those “firsts” are still taking.
This year Emma Poole won Waikato Bay of Plenty Young Farmer of the Year, the first woman to win the trophy in its 55-year history. And in Auckland, the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron announced triumphantly that sailing legend Penny Whiting was the first woman to become a life member – in the club’s 128-year history.
It’s taken Whiting 48 years to earn that honour. She joined the yacht squadron, one of the first two women, in 1975. When her name was put forward to the committee, one member inquired, “Will she use the urinal, or does she expect us to build her a toilet?”
Whiting started the Penny Whiting Sailing School 55 years ago when she was 19. For more than half a century she introduced more than 33,000 people, mostly women, to sailing, giving them the confidence to get out on the water to race, cruise or sail offshore on yachts. Her husband used to dash down to the wharf so she could breastfeed her children.
Recognising her outstanding contribution to sailing both in Auckland and overseas, Whiting was awarded an MBE in 1993. It took her another 30 years to become a life member of her sailing club.
New Zealand led the way in the world 130 years ago when women won the right to vote. But my word, we still have a way to go. One older woman who worked for the Auckland Racing Club in the early 90s says on race days women were banned from certain members’ areas and female staff were expected to wear “skirts above the knee and high heels”.
Now, 30 years later, she finds she’s still expected to organise the catering and clear the food afterwards for the male-dominated committees, boards and trusts with which she’s involved.
Lingering sexist attitudes, glass ceilings, brick walls are tough enough in a woman’s world but add in extra challenges – disability, ethnicity and being transgender - and life gets even tougher.
Fellow “wimmin”, if you want a laugh watch the 90-second clip of American comedian and actress Desi Lydic “trying to understand the male experience by acting like a man” on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
In 90 seconds Lydic, playing the part of the “weather girl”, covers mansplaining, interrupting, and interrupting again, “getting paid more for no reason”, tells an angry Noah to “calm down, don’t act crazy” in her best patronising voice, and finishes with a flourish: “Has anyone told you you should smile more?” The eruptions of loud laughter and applause from the audience indicate that the women at least know exactly what Lydic is on about.
It’s all there, in one brief, funny video. And boys, if you don’t want to be seen as sexist plonkers, you should watch it too.