Women Today
Tomorrow's Women?
Review of: Tomorrows Women
By Helen Wilkinson and Melanie Howard, Demos, 1997
What kind of woman will predominate in the year 2010?
Networking Naomi with her high powered job in a newly feminised
work environment? Or New Age Angela, who has status and wealth but
rejects materialist values in favour of a personal voyage of
discovery? Perhaps it will be Mannish Mel, the quintessential girl
behaving badly, giving as good as she gets and more? Then of
course there's Back to Basics Barbara, over 55 and clinging
tightly to traditional family values. And finally Frustrated Fran,
juggling work and family, with raised expectations which
constantly conflict with economic reality.
It's hard to take seriously a report that divides women into
such stereotypical categories. Even its authors (from the think
tank Demos) admit that these are "inevitably to some extent
caricatures." This does make for enjoyable reading, (a bit
like reading star signs and trying to work out who's a Sagittarius
and a Pisces,) but not serious analysis.
I felt as if I was reading the results of some marker research
survey. And lo and behold the report is based on data from
'Synergy Brand Values Ltd' a consultancy 'which analyses the
impact of dynamic social and cultural change on market
structures'. The majority of their work is done with commercial
firms to help them to identify consumer values which affect their
markets. Demos aims to influence public policy rather than
consumer markets, but in today's pic 'n' mix designer politics
there is very little to choose between the two.
Marketing appears to be Demos's strong point. Tomorrow's
Women has been hyped in the press as an authoritative
projection of women's future in the next century. In reality it's
a cross between pop sociology and science fiction.
To give Demos their due the appendix does state "Demos
'Serious Future's' methodology does not aim categorically to
predict the future, but to create a picture of what likely
scenarios might be through an examination of key variables and how
they are likely to interact". So we're presumably not
expected to take too seriously the idea that artificial
insemination by donor will replace normal procreation, that long
distance romances over the Internet will become preferable to face
to face relationships, that we'll be popping nutrition food
tablets during the week and eating cooked food as a weekend
luxury, or that fleets of mouse-sized robots will clean our
carpets!
The authors begin with identifying some of the changes that
have taken place in women's lives and attitudes. They then go on
to describe the five different categories of women and how they
might be in the year 2010. Finally, they attempt to draw some
conclusions from their 'predictions'.
The main prediction is that tomorrow's women will be more
different from each other than they are today. While Networking
Naomi will be enjoying success in the world of business, employing
her inter-personal skills to maximum advantage, Frustrated Fran
will be cooking, cleaning and changing nappies in between working
part-time, and pessimistically contemplating a future which offers
no way out.
This is another variation on the 'genderquake', where a layer
of more educated and predominantly middle-class women have
benefited from recent economic and social changes while
working-class women are being left behind. Not that Demos would
dream of using the word 'class'. The 'Frustrated Fran' caricature
comes nearest to a working-class woman, but class differences are
blurred and sub-merged into identity with a particular type',
which means the authors then underestimate the potential for
collective struggle for change. They quite rightly state, 'If
women's expectations are not met, if new opportunities are not
matched by policies to enable women to balance careers and family,
if the barriers for less skilled women are not overcome, then we
should expect to see rising anger and resentment".
But how will the current economic and social system meet
women's increased expectations? The authors have no answers. They
are pessimistic as to whether or how that anger can be positively
channelled. Apart from a vague reference to trade unions,
collective action between working-class women and men gets no
mention. The authors are equally pessimistic about alliances
between women themselves. They consider it "unlikely that
women will combine together in shared movements. There will be no
women's movement, only women's movements, no feminism, only
business feminism, trade union feminism, new age feminism".
While women clearly have different economic and social
interests, it doesn't necessarily follow that they won't come
together to fight for change. Past women's movements have never
been completely homogeneous. In the struggle for the vote for
example, division existed between the middle and upper
middle-class 'suffragettes', who viewed the struggle as one for
equal rights with men of their class, and working-class
suffragists. Working-class suffragists saw winning the vote not as
a matter of abstract equality, but as a means or fighting to
improve the drudgery of their daily lives in the factory and in
the home.
Alliances between women could still be mobilised today around
specific issues of concern to them. The authors completely ignore
domestic violence for example, which affects a quarter of all
women. In the course of such struggles many 'New Age Angelas',
Networking Naomis' and 'Mannish Mels' could discover that the
'Frustrated Frans' are not the only ones with an interest in
changing the present system; that many of their own concerns, such
as the environment or violence against women, will only be
addressed through fundamental changes in economic and social
relations.
These are important issues for discussion. But the trivial and
superficial way the subject matter is treated in Tomorrow's
Women undermines most of what the authors have to say. If
you're a woman reading this review, based on Demos' stereo-typing
you probably fall somewhere between 'Frustrated Fran' and 'Mannish
Mel'. If so, I wouldn't recommend you give £9.95 to Demos to
predict the future for you. Far better to get out there and shape
it yourself.
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