Women marching for women

This weekend thousands of women in cities across the world marched in support of women’s rights, the day after the inauguration of a US president who has shown he really doesn’t think very much of women or their rights.

The largest march was in Washington DC, with half a million women, men and children. But in London there were estimated to be more than 100,000.

Photo by Jane Dunton

Marching again Trump

They were marching because the most powerful country in the world, that considers itself the most progressive (although no one else does) has elected a President who believes it’s OK to sexually assault women. He openly said he thought they were fair game. If you want some of the detail on what President Trump thinks about women, there’s a nice roundup Trump-on-women piece in the Independent.

While so many of us around the world are rightly devastated by Friday’s inauguration, it is heartening to see people fighting back. Too often, feminism can seem like a niche concern – something that doesn’t affect half the world’s population (men) and that many women feel might make them seem more shouty and less feminine. On Saturday, thousands of women around the world made it a bit more mainstream. And that’s not to mention many men who marched with them, because  equality affects everyone.

Let’s hope that our worst fears of Trump presidency don’t come true, and that if they do men and women in the US and the rest of the world will unite against them, as they did this weekend. 

Photo by Jane Dunton

Marching and me

I didn’t march. I’m sad that I couldn’t be there. But my main reason is one that has affected women forever, and will probably continue to do so: I had to look after my child. Because like all women, with the exception of a few, like Mrs Banks in Mary Poppins, my daughter comes first, feminism second. I hope that I manage to combine parenting and feminism in her upbringing (and no, I couldn’t have taken her with me).

I have reflected that my reason for not marching is one of the main reasons we got into this pickle in the first place – why we always come second to men. Because we have to put children first. It’s at the heart of so much of what it means to be a woman. Even if we don’t ever want to have children, society expects that we probably will end up doing this, do we are inevitably tarred with the brush of biological determinism.

I wish I'd been there...

Photo by Jane Dunton

The grocer's daughter

You know who I'm writing about, don't you?

I half hope you don't. But there's only one woman, a towering force from politics in the past 40 years who gets that appellation. So now you know who I'm talking about. Margaret Thatcher. The Grocer's Daughter.

And now we have 'The Vicar's Daughter' - Teresa May.

I don't defend either of these women. They don't need that and I'm no fan of Tory politicians,

But I think it's sad, maybe even shameful, that we have to cut these women down to size by reducing them to the sum of their father's occupations. I can't think of a single man we do that to. We don't call Jeremy Hunt 'the Naval Commander's Son' or Philip Hammond 'the Civil Engineer's Son'. You didn't even know that was who they were, did you? But you knew that May's father was a vicar and Thatcher's a grocer. We almost always refer to men by what they are now, and what they have achieved. Not so with women.

Thatcher: By Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation via Wikimedia Commons
May: Home Office via Wikimedia Commons

I am deeply concerned about some of thing things that the Tory government, led by May is doing. I think it's bad news for our society in a lot of ways. And we should feel free to criticise her and her cronies. But let's criticise them for who they are and what they have done. Don't bring their father's jobs into it.

You could argue that it shows how far they have come: 'she was only the grocer's daughter, but...'. And yet the implication here is that being the daughter of a grocer or vicar is somehow limiting. Surely by 2017 we've figured out that we don't have to be restricted by our origins - those of us with access to free education at least.

Whether or not you like Teresa May, she is the UK's second female Prime Minister, and this is an impressive feat, both for she and us. The United States hasn't yet had a single female President. And were apparently so horrified by the thought that they elected Donald Trump. Hardly an icon of feminism.

If we're going to break down the patriarchy, we need to stop invoking it at every turn.

When the drugs work

There’s an epidemic of women taking drugs. They're not illegal and it's not addiction. It's the routine medicalisation of women, as we are prescribed courses of pills that last for decades.

There are two types of drugs that are routinely prescribed to women - the contraceptive pill and antidepressants. And it wouldn’t surprise me if, in a generation or two, research shows that the second is often a direct result of the first.

By Diana Mehrez via Flickr Creative Commons

Taking antidepressants

Huge numbers of women suffer from mental health problems - depression is about twice as common in women than men. 

Doctors are quick to prescribe antidepressants to patients. It’s far easier to get pills than therapy, unless you have plenty of money to pay for it yourself. And I’m not against antidepressants, I’m sure they can have a hugely positive impact, for people that want and need them,.

Counselling and other therapies are available on the NHS, but the wait until you even get a call to find out what you need can be long, and the process of referral can be confusing. Patients with mental health problems literally can’t cope with this kind of thing, which is one of the reasons the pills go down so well. And drugs are a lot cheaper than counseling and talking therapies.

I’ve heard stories about women who go to their doctor to try and get some counselling to deal with a problem in their lives coming out with pills. And women who want to reduce and eventually stop taking antidepressants being steered away from doing so.

Pills are overwhelmingly seen as the cure for mental health problems. And whilst they may be the answer in many cases, they aren't right for every situation. We are medicalising the mentally ill, and as far more women come forward with mental health problems than men, it is we that are popping most of the Prozac (other drugs available).

The contraceptive pill

And so onto the other drug that so many women are taking: the pill. Contraception is a brilliant invention. The pill revolutionised women’s lives, meaning we do not have to be victims of our biological destiny. We can choose if and when we have children. Many of the freedoms we enjoy today can be traced back to the contraceptive pill.

The pill was first introduced in the UK in 1961 (for married women). It’s now 2016 and 3.5 million UK women are on some form of hormonal contraception. They’ve tweaked the combinations of chemicals a bit. And you can have an implant in your arm so that you don’t have to worry about forgetting to take it. But the principal is the same: give the woman hormones to stop her ovulating so she can’t get pregnant. Every couple of years there's a story about a male contraceptive pill that's on its way, but so far this hasn't materialised.

My story

I was on the pill from age 19 to 34. Non stop. Same pill. No break. Fifteen years. Every six months I had a check up and picked up my new prescription. At no point did anyone suggest that there might be a problem with taking something that suspended my natural biology for 15 years.

When I did finally stop taking it (to have a baby), my reproductive functions had switched themselves off. My body had no idea what it was supposed to do - it had got so used to not doing it.

It took a year. Then, just days before I was about to start popping yet more pills - fertility enhancing drugs in this case - my body figured out what it was supposed to be doing, and nine months later, out my baby daughter bounced. The irony of this stuff is that we spend years trying not to get pregnant, as we build a career, earn some money and find a nice bloke; and then years trying equally hard to get up the duff.

From where I’m sitting now, it seems little crazy that the medical professionals at no point thought, or mentioned, that taking a pill continuously for all that time when you’re not sick, maybe isn’t a great idea.

From pill to pill

So huge numbers of women are taking hormonal contraceptives. And huge numbers of us are taking antidepressants. The impact of hormonal contraceptives on mental health has been hugely under-reported, and I suspect under-researched. But there may well be a link - with the pill making women depressed, so one long-term drug leads to another.

But even if they are not, it worries me that by far the majority of women of child-bearing age are taking drugs that have a major impact on their body chemistry, and they’re not even ill.

I'm not taking a pop at the pill or at antidepressants. Really. Sometimes taking the pills is the right thing to do. But it worries me that there seems to be a reluctance to explore other options. Perhaps both doctors and patients should think twice before prescribing pills for decades. And if there is a link between the pill and antidepressants, we really need to know about it. And to do something about it.