People can say what they like about how male/female inequality doesn’t exist any more. It won’t change what this video reminds me of: reading a newspaper article when I was 15 about how female screen journalists have a far shorter use by date on their careers than their male counterparts. A man can present the news until his jowls are sagging on to the desk, but a woman must be young (45 or under) and attractive. The article had been written because Naomi Robson had just left her position at Today Tonight aged 44, to be replaced by Anna Coren, 12 years her junior.

Naomi might not be the most respected journalist, and I’ve certainly never had much respect for the sort of work she’s done, but how much of that has been her fault? Isn’t it easier to crucify an aging but beautiful woman for her gaffes, than a man? Is anyone going to deny that Tracy Grimshaw is considered more laughable than Ray Martin or Mike Munro? If it’s because she and Naomi aren’t as respectable as Ray and Mike, why on earth were they hired? Were less attractive women with more substance passed over? Naomi had a long career in journalism behind her, 10 years in the news and 10 years at Today Tonight, and she said that she’d go on to work elsewhere in television. Instead, she now has an internet chat show offering dating and relationship advice.

Obviously, that article has never really left the back of my mind. I read study after study that showed that if I wanted a powerful career (and I did) then being attractive would be half the battle, and that means looking young.

At the same time I began to see things happening around me that were so clearly wrong, and that people would look back historically and know were wrong, so I aspired to make some positive contribution towards justice and society by becoming a politician, a lawyer, a barrister, a judge. I’ve known this is what I want without a shadow of a doubt for the past 6 years but I feel so uncomfortable saying it.

Nobody told me I couldn’t do anything because I was female (though they have said that I can’t because I’m “too nice” - might there be a correlation?), but I couldn’t and can’t be blind to what I see around me.

There is one reason for this that is easy to understand. I have been terrified that I won’t get to be everything I want to be or do everything I want to do because I’ll have kids and there will be an expectation that it will be me, not my partner, who puts their career aside to raise them. Some women want to prioritise their children and that’s fantastic, but for me it’s always felt like a time bomb on my ambitions. The idea that I’ll end up with a guy who’s secure enough with his masculinity to take the same amount of time off as I’ll have to - or, God forbid, more - feels about as likely as finding a unicorn. (Though the recent changes to paternity leave make me more hopeful.)

I have found it really hard to write this. I feel like men will think I’ve imagined it or that I’ve put this doubt on myself or that men feel that pressure to be attractive too, and sure, we all do, but as I’ve posted before, men’s looks are secondary to their careers, whereas women’s careers are secondary to their looks. So many people seem to be of the belief that since legally I can be all these things I want to be, and that there is at least one woman who has done so before, all that’s left is for me to go and be the next one.

All I can say is that I hope those people are right.

Or that all my future employers think I’m really hot.

(Source: dave-bowman, via marxisforbros-deactivated201211)