The Fionnuala Bourke Column: I'm getting that sinking feeling about equality

Jan 22 2012 by Fionuala Bourke, Sunday Mercury

MEN and women. We’re all equal these days, aren’t we?

The general perception is that it’s a state of affairs achieved because women desired it to be so.

It started with us wanting the vote.Then, to the horror of men, we began to demand the right to go out to work and earn our own cash.

Some of us even expected to be paid the same amount as men, if we did similar jobs to them.

Shocking, but it didn’t stop there.

There were women who wanted the right to decide whether or not they would have children. Some of them didn’t want to get married.

So gradually it came to be that there was no more need to treat us as the fairer sex.

No longer was it necessary for men to stand when a woman entered a room. There were women who thought it was plain silly for men to hold open doors for them.

No need to pay for us on a date either. Most women liked to pay for themselves; some even liked to pay for men as well.

The worm had turned.

And that’s the way it is these days, some men believe.

No need to let women off work to retire a few years earlier than men either. They were the ones who wanted equality – and now they’ve got it.

They can work as long as a man, see what a man’s life is like, good and bad, better or worse.

If you want to see women being treated as the fairer sex these days, your best chance is to watch Downton Abbey on the telly.

Now there’s a place where men honour and adore women; act like chivalric knights protecting feminine vulnerability.

But many of the quaintly polite customs of the period masked a more sinister attitude towards women – that of controlling them.