Back in the 70′s and early 1980′s, women faced an uphill battle at work. I remember working as a Research Officer for a union, having to present to the then Premier Sir Joh Bjelke Peterson & our relevant Minister about a particular legal case we were working on, and then, as I was the female staff member, having to wash up the lunch plates after the meeting. It was common place – women always did the washing up no matter how high they were in the organisation.
I also remember as a young keen person applying for a role in the Industrial Commission, being asked if I was going to resign when I got married, as the Commissioners didn’t want to hire me if I was going to leave within 5 years to get married and have kids. And this was after the anti-discrimination laws were in place.
I celebrated the “equal pay for equal work” cases as they went through the Commission, and did a dance of joy that my daughters would not know the challenges of blatant discrimination in the workforce. In other words, I lived through some pretty interesting times, and have my war wounds to prove it.
For a time I worked as an Equal Employment Opportunities Officer, working to remove direct and indirect discrimination from government services. Indirect discrimination occurred when the exclusion was not deliberate … it just somehow happened. And in the process, it excludes a whole group of the population from participating or seeking a service.
And one of the things that we learned in those years, were that people liked to see “people like them” in a workplace through photos or through employee representation. People are more comfortable with a business that looked like it represented them, and they were more open to accessing services that a business offers.
I still look at the photos businesses use in their marketing. It makes sense – if your main customers are retirees, you don’t use photos of teenagers. If you want to promote yourself as an upmarket exclusive boutique – then you use photos of paper-thin white models who don’t know how to smile (can anyone say Gasp Jeans). And if you are trying to attract women scientists to your business, you don’t only show pictures of male scientists in all of your marketing collateral.
It becomes an occupational hazard after a while – looking to see the sort of customers people are specifically targeting with their marketing. On the weekend I went to Supanova here in Brisbane. It is a celebration of all things pop culture, anime & science fiction. What is pop culture? A reflection of the popular thoughts of society.
And what really hit me when I browsed the many stalls packed to the rafters with books & collectables, was how one entire generation was missing from the representations. As far as the eye could see, you could spot images of teen, kids and young adults. You could also see images of men of all ages from young to senior citizens. But as for women – middle aged women did not exist.
If you really did some digging, you would find the odd middle aged woman buried in the meme – usually in the role of either a mum (think Marge Simpson or Mrs Weasley from Harry Potter) or Sue Silvestor from Glee. So, according to pop culture, it appears that middle aged women only fill a mother type role, or are bitter and twisted because they don’t have children.
According to pop culture, guys can be heroes no matter their age. Think of Hugh Jackman in Wolverine, all of the Doctor Who’s and even Rocky. But women, they are only permitted to furtively scurry out from the mantle of motherhood for the odd skirmish, and then race back to where they are supposed to be.
And, who actually turned up for Supanova? Teens and kids in their thousands. If there was an adult around, they were usually male. Us middle aged women who attended, quietly nodded to each other as we passed – we were in the definite minority. It was a very sobering experience, and brought back the feelings I had washing the dishes all those years ago.
So, I think we need to create a new Anime character, or at least a new superhero. Smart, together, funny, sexy, courageous middle aged women with lives outside their families. What do you think?
Ingrid Cliff
We put your business into words
Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter
January 11th, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Using Buffer to Share Information With Your Clients http://t.co/KpAeDj74