By Emily Latimer
“You fight like a girl” or “you’re a pussy” are phrases often flung around to insinuate that women are weaker or lesser. But with the majority of the healthcare, activism, and charity sectors run by women, to ‘fight like a girl in the 20th century is a great thing.
Two-thirds of those working in charities and voluntary organisations are women according to NVCO. Not to mention the fact around 80% of the COVID-19 frontline health and social workforce were women, according to TheKing’sFund. Additionally, women are typically at the forefront of social justice campaigns. Take Extinction Rebellion which was co-founded by Gail Bradbrook, the originators of the hashtag and call to action for BLM set up by three women (Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi) or the #metoo movement set up by Tarana Burke which was used more than 200,000 times.
It’s clear that when it comes to fighting and putting the world to right women aren’t just sitting still. The first International Women’s Day in 1911 saw more than one million women across Europe mobilizing for women’s suffrage and labour rights. As UN Women put it, “Women have always risen. Women are rising today. Women will always rise”.
Chenoweth’s research from the NVCO highlights the historical tendency of women to lead nonviolent movements and credits the success of women-led movements to that tendency. An Oxford study by Probert also found that women leaders tend to lead successfully through empathy, the ability to understand and re-experience the feelings of others.
Female political leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic are a great example of this. Such as, Jacinda Ardern who announced a six-month 20% pay cut for senior government leaders due to the impact of the pandemic, or Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg who held a press conference to address the children’s fears in her country. Both leaders whose responses to COVID-19 are considered successful internationally.
However, despite these successes, the world is still dominated by men in top positions. According to UN figures, women make up only 21 per cent of government ministers and 25 per cent of all national parliamentarians. As well as 119 countries never having had a woman leader and gender equality at its current rate expected to not be reached for 130 years in the highest positions of power.
Shami Chakrabarti describes gender injustice as “the greatest human rights abuse on the planet,” and the fact women are more commonly activists or charity workers but are not allowed to be a part of the structural system speaks to a wider issue. ‘To fight like a girl’ is to fight with compassion and humanity, values that are seen as lesser in a world dominated by masculinity characterised by aggression and dominance.
Conversely, this is not to say that all female leaders are ‘passive’, a lot of people may use Margaret Thatcher who waged the war in the Falklands as an example of this. But it is to say the socially constructed trait of ‘femininity’ could do a lot of good in the world if it were uplifted more. As Alex Holmes states, “emotional pain is something men have been taught not to acknowledge,” so in a male-dominated world it is a trait often disregarded.
Many Western cultures see compassion as a weakness, that it somehow means you are not striving hard enough for success or that you haven't "got what it takes". If you have grown up in a family that does not value compassion, the chances are that you will have a very harsh internal judge that tells you that you are weak and stupid for feeling emotional. Yet the reality is it's compassion that makes us emotionally strong when we see others suffering and is compassion that allows us to connect with those around us.
If we are to ever achieve true equality it is, therefore, time for us to let go of these unhealthy gender norms and to change our cultural perspective that to ‘fight like a girl’ is a bad thing. In order for us to positively change the world.
“oh but the pussy is brave
lest we forget
how much pain
the pussy can take
how much pleasure it delivers
unto itself and others
remember
how it spit you out
without a flinch
now here you are
using the word pussy
like an insult
when you’re not even
strong enough to be one”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body