Bouquet of barbed wire

Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have all kinds of shit thrust upon them. A lot of the latter are women.
In today's Guardian there is a depressing report that in the UK, private sector pay for women is at its worst, 45% lower than for men, even in the public sector, full time women's pay is more than ten percent lower than men's. This, the article points out, is thirty years after the equal pay Act. Why are women caught in this particular tangle of barbed wire? I have no doubt there are a range of reasons, but underlying them all is that very old and withered chestnut, women still undervalue themselves and the work women do is itself still undervalued. I can remember a study about ten years ago, tho not enough detail to give a link or title, but it drew the conclusion that 80% of the world's work was done by women, well guess what, they are getting nowhere near 80% of the world's pay.

In the same edition, Susie Orbach writes about how women continue to define themselves and I suppose by extension each other, by body size and image. Are the two connected, does the barbed wire just reach out and snag us this way? Maybe. Only a couple of months ago a study in industry showed that most people in a position to do so would employ a thinner person over a fat one, and women have naturally a higher percentage of body fat. Sorry to be wimpy about details and stats of these studies. In today's CBC e-mail, they refer to a UK study that shows that girls habitually 'torture' and mutilate their barbie dolls. 'The doll provoked rejection,hatred and violence', says the article. Well just maybe that's the way they see the gap between their own bodies and the 'ideal' woman portrayed by the media and barbie. It would be interesting to see whether women's pay rises as they get nearer to the ideal. And of course, as we get older, we get further from that ideal. There is no doubt in my mind that middle age brings with it an invisibility, is this reflected in the pay packet?

The barbed wire leads next to something that concerns not only women but in this case it was at first sight men who were the antagonists. On both the TV5 and the BBC news we were able to see the first gay civil unions in the UK - in Belfast. One of the brides was American and said that they could walk the streets of New York arm in arm without being harrassed but they couldn't marry there. In Belfast they were able to marry, but were constantly harrassed on the streets, and lo - the streets appeared to be lined with what looked like mostly blokes - many priests, lamenting this move towards Soddam and Gommorah. Bless them, they have too much free time on their hands.
To the men of the church I say,
'See, here's a tip lads, you know yer man Jesus? Well, what would he do if he were here? Would he be lined up outside the register office with all o' you biggots hissing and spitting vitriol? Ya see, I'm thinking not.'

The last rose in my bouquet goes to women to women interraction. I scratch my head and wonder why we do this. This is the light touch, the gesture that is totally appropriate among close friends and family but equally inappropriate between strangers or casual aquaintances.
Last week, when we went out with people from Kevin's work, it was a large group composed mostly of men but with a number of women too. The server was a woman. I noticed that when she wanted the attention of one of the men, she would put a hand on their shoulder or back, but never once touched a woman. Why is that? It is a power play, and we can all do it. You touch someone subservient to you to show your power over them, a woman can do this to a superior man. This is insidious because it can never go woman to woman upwards or man to woman upwards, it is a 'worming in'. I noticed a woman co-worker do this same thing towards a married male cw. She was leaning in towards him, hand lightly brushing his forearm, creating an imappropriate intimacy.
My feeling about the server is that she was gambling. In a group mainly composed of men, most likely men would be doing the paying so she would get a bigger tip. She must have lost in one case and won in another, among the couples, I saw one where the woman paid, another the man. But she took power away from women, present or not, by doing that, 'this moment, this intimacy is mine'. Similarly the cw was saying 'look, I have power over your man.'

The wire is to tangled and so barbed in this area that it is difficult to extricate ourselves. Moment by moment we shoot ourselves in the foot, we stab each other in the back. We don't make the effort to move forward because we have little tricks we can use - like the light touch - to balance up the power play for a brief moment.