As a child, I used to think that only men could be doctors, and that, all women were nurses. It wasn’t until I was at the hospital one day as a teenager, on one of the many occasions when I suspected I’d broken a bone (as always, I hadn’t), that I realised that this was not the case. After going through 13 years (i.e., my whole life at that point) thinking that only men could be doctors, well, I’m sure you can imagine the shock I felt when a woman came to me declaring herself to be ‘doctor so and so.’ A WOMAN being an actual DOCTOR!!?? Mind blown…
I now realise that I wasn’t alone in thinking this, either. A study commissioned by Health Careers amongst primary school children showed that, when asked to identify the nurse from a line up of both men and women, seven out of ten of the children pointed to a woman as being the nurse.
It’s only been quite recently that I’ve found myself thinking about this more and questioning, why did I have this narrative in my head? Why did I think that women couldn’t be doctors, that they were nurses while the more ‘senior’, higher paid role of ‘doctor’ was reserved for men? It’s not as though I grew up in a family whereby women were seen as subordinates. It’s not as though I was told by anyone that women were ‘lesser than’ men. Or, was I? Were we all?
You see, just because you’re not explicitly told something by someone, it doesn’t mean that you’re not being fed a narrative from elsewhere, being ‘drip fed’ an ideology which serves to uphold the patriarchy through the media, for example. The nature of this, the nature of you, slowly but consistently, and over long periods of time, being ‘drip fed’ beliefs that, perhaps subconsciously, undermine women’s rights, well, this is arguably far more damaging than if you were told directly, by a family member, for example, that; ‘you can’t do this because you’re a woman.’ Why? Because, the former is constant, it’s something which you can’t get away from. Unlike a relative, for example, who you can, ultimately, just tell to ‘f**k off’, you cannot do this when the messages you’re being fed are coming at you from everywhere, even from the places in which you would least expect them to be coming from, such as in schools, supposedly ‘nurturing’ environments, for example…
When I was in school, there was a very clear divide between girls and boys, in terms of the way we were treated in lessons, based on our gender. If a girl put little effort into P.E, for example, they wouldn’t be reprimanded for this. In fact, thinking back to my school days, I’d say that there were only a handful of girls who did put effort into P.E lessons (and, by effort I’m talking doing anything), the rest of us, myself included, tried to get away with doing as little as possible. Boys, however, boys had an expectation placed on them that they would try as hard as they possibly could in P.E. lessons because; ‘P.E. is a boys sport’ (we were never told this explicitly but, it definitely felt like that was the general assumption held by both students and teachers alike). In contrast, in our English lessons, a traditionally ‘girly’ subject, the opposite expectations were had. Girls were expected to be really engaged and contribute lots to lessons, whereas boys, not so much. It definitely felt like boys could get away with more, and that teachers were more lenient in terms of their expectations, much in the same way that girls could seemingly ‘get away with more’ in P.E. lessons, simply because P.E. is a more stereotypically ‘boyish’ subject. It is differences such as these, however seemingly insignificant, that contribute to people growing up with what can only be described as ‘sexist’ attitudes, referring back to my belief, as a 13 year old that, ‘only men can be doctors…’
I’ve spoken (well, written) about representation a lot in my writing, see this post as one example, focusing on the idea that, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’ One of my favourite quotes ever, not least because it’s by Marian Wright Edelman (an icon), it couldn’t be truer, summing up everything there is to say on the topic of representation, in just seven words… If you’re only shown/told/taught one thing, then how can you possibly be open to an alternative way? How can you possibly realise that an alternative way exists, even? Spoiler: You can’t. That’s the whole point. It’s why representation is so important. If I saw female doctors as a child in the TV programmes I watched, the books I read, the careers advice I was given in school, then I wouldn’t have grown up thinking that women couldn’t be doctors. But because I never saw women represented in such a way in the media, I, inevitably, didn’t think that it was a ‘thing’, that women could be doctors.
This is just my experience, and a pretty ‘tame’ one compared to other stories I have heard. Take girls in less economically developed countries (LEDC’s), for example, where girls cannot go to school, for they have no rights to an education. What representation do these girls have to see that there is another way of life? They have nothing, and so, they grow up thinking that it is a woman’s lifework to be the ‘homemaker’ and so, this is what they do. They become the homemaker, not going to school, not going to work, staying at home to cook, clean, and look after the children, performing the ‘triple shift’, not because this is what they really want to do, but because they have no choice in the matter, they have no alternative, no opportunity to do anything else. If they were exposed to media that showed women revolting against this narrative, then maybe they would be inspired to seek out an alternative way of life but, unfortunately, in such countries, such media is as non-existent as women’s rights are… And, this is intentional. It’s why certain countries limit media coverage…
Take Russia, for example. Vladmir Putin has complete authority over what is broadcast in Russia. Media is tracked, censored and controlled extremely tightly. Why? Because, Putin doesn’t want people to realise that there is a different way of life. He doesn’t want people to be exposed to this and revolt against him. He wants everyone on his side, fighting his corner, doing his dirty work. If people in Russia could see footage of Ukranian schools and playgrounds being targeted by Putin’s missiles, they might think twice about being a part of the war. But, in continuing to call what is undoubtedly a war a ‘special miliary operation’ and limiting what can be shown of what is really going on, people are oblivious to the facts, and so don’t revolt because, in their minds, ‘what is there to revolt against?!’ Now, of course, there is much to revolt against. And that’s why media representation is so so important, to open our eyes to the progress that still needs to be made in the world. To open our eyes to the possibility for change. To open…
our…
eyes.
This is why representation matters.
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