Better Late (Onset Feminist) Than Never!
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“I’m sure I gave a moment of concern for the well armoured Feds as I did some awkward air-punch accompanied by a very audible ‘YAAASS!”
Sorry, I’m late! I’ve been busy getting about my life feeling I was somehow immune to gender-bias.
My fascination with my feminist awakening borders on obsession as I try to prove myself worthy of the title ‘Feminist’ when I have no personal axe to grind. I’ll deal with that neurosis later, but for now I will share my latest validation found recently in Episode 26 of the podcast Women with Clout.
Hosted by social commentator Jane Caro and journalist Catherine Fox interviewing high profile women, there are no surprises here. Women with clout interviewing women with clout are always going to pack a punch.
In Episode 26, guest Dr Kirstin Ferguson delivered a moment of pure joy—by joy I mean therapy—as I took my daily walk around Parliament House whilst a big storm cloud threatened above. Poetic, really.
She described herself as a ‘late-onset feminist’. I’m sure I gave a moment of concern for the well armoured Feds as I did some awkward air-punch accompanied by a very audible ‘YAAASS’!
Here we have a woman who in the early 90s became the Dux of her 4th year as a Royal Australian Airforce Cadet. When vying for the most senior position available to a cadet, she was told she would be offered 2nd IC because they weren’t ready for a woman in the top role. And how did she feel at the time? Grateful!
Fast-forward and that same woman started the #CelebratingWomen campaign in early 2017, profiling two women every day for one year. Today Kirstin sits on Boards and witnesses first-hand, gender pay gaps about which she does not mince her words—they piss her off.
It is but a small thread with which I can align my life with Kirstin’s, but significant given this topic. I’m on the record for blaming Sandy from the movie Grease for my lack of feminist awareness. As an adolescent brought up by a barmaid and an oilman, my hopes and dreams were pegged on getting into the workforce ASAP in any job where I didn’t have to stand all day.
I did manage in a short space of time to prove my mettle and secure a reasonable corporate position with a company car no less, but any chance I had to be kicking the feminist can along the ensuing decades ended when I met my husband, and we started our own business.
We both worked hard and respected each other’s abilities choosing a division of labour that played to our strengths. His money-making capacity outweighed mine, and running a business was not conducive with sharing home and parenting responsibilities equally.
Our respect for each other’s roles though, belies what one might think of our rather traditional arrangement. We worked on the notion that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and with that we became a formidable team and have done some amazing things.
In the podcast episode, Kirstin talks of avoiding all-women events not wanting to be seen as ‘that difficult woman’. When she started in the military she downplayed her gender, hoping no one noticed or cared.
I completely relate to the notion of going about your life trying to ignore gender bias in the vain hope it won’t exist. Like somehow to acknowledge it is what makes it real.
I also relate to being a late-onset feminist and can look back at how blinkered I was just getting on with whatever it was I was trying to achieve and keep up with my peers, irrespective of sex.
Along with Catherine Fox, Dr Kirstin Ferguson co-wrote the book Women Kind: Unlocking the Power of Women Supporting Women in which they mention Holly Kramer’s four stages of gender awareness; oblivious, denial, awakening and advocacy. For me, those four words required no further explanation. It is crystal clear that most recently I’ve been teetering between awakening and advocacy.
All my life I’ve been a late bloomer. My first kiss, my first period, my athletic pursuits, becoming a writer—all late. I’ve gone from being oblivious to the notion of feminism in my youth, to denial when it didn’t affect me.
It is very tempting to back away from my awakening feeling in some way unworthy to now have a voice, but podcasts like Women with Clout remind me that fear is just playing into the hands of misogyny and the patriarchy. Point being it doesn’t matter that I’m a late-onset feminist, what matters is I’m a feminist.
