Life is made immeasurably tougher for intelligent women when powerful men won't engage.
OPINION:
“Daddy, who is Helen MacNamara?“
“Oh God. I think you better ask your mother. This isn’t really my… mumble… mumble… a rum do and no mistake.“
”Mummy –”
“Yes darling, I knew we would have to explain at some point, I just didn’t think it would be so early. Now, what have your teachers been saying?“
“That I’m bright and talented and will excel in any career I choose as long as I don’t end up being Helen MacNamara’d. Could it really happen? To me?”
“You mean is it possible that you could get into Cambridge then join the Civil Service and move swiftly and seamlessly up the ranks, garnering respect and plaudits for your abilities – and yet still end up in an office full of puerile, preening public school boys who dismiss, disregard and denigrate your experience and expertise?
“Who will engage in hilarious bants among themselves and refer to you in the most disgusting, demeaning language on their private WhatsApp group? And try to have you moved on because you’re not one of them and all your moaning about humanity, fairness and decency is a real buzz-kill?“
“That sounds like a dystopian nightmare, Mummy.”
“Coincidentally, that’s what Helen MacNamara said too. And the truth is, it could well happen to you too, my precious girl. But only if you want to work for the government. Or the Red Arrows. Or want to join the police. Or become a surgeon. Or fancy a high-flying position in the City.”
If you are the parent of sons you probably think I’m exaggerating. If you are the parent of girls you will know – or very much dread – that I’m not.
As I watched former deputy cabinet secretary MacNamara give her damning, depressing evidence at the Covid Inquiry, reports came in that the head of the Royal Air Force had admitted “an unacceptable culture of sexism, harassment and bullying” was allowed to flourish at the RAF’s Red Arrows display team, where sexual misconduct was normalised and women were “viewed as property”.
Meanwhile, in July of this year, a parliamentary committee launched an inquiry into sexism and misogyny in the City after a spate of sexual harassment allegations rocked the business world.
In March Baroness Casey concluded a report into the Metropolitan police which revealed sexism was so rife that officers didn’t even attempt to hide it when her team visited them, with women being spoken over and put down in meetings.
She also concluded that women were subjected to unwanted sexual attention from the beginning of their careers and highlighted the “deeply troubling, toxic culture” in the Met’s specialist firearms command, known as MO19.
This unit displayed a photoshopped poster in its common area which showed female firearms officers carrying mops, irons and kettles instead of weapons. One training desk ran a competition to see how often they could make their female students cry.
Nor is this confined to London: so many complaints have been made against South Wales Police officers and staff for its treatment of women and girls that they account for 63 per cent of allegations against all Welsh forces. And in May 2023 the Chief Constable of Police Scotland publicly acknowledged the force is racist, sexist, misogynistic and discriminatory.
The roll call of shame continues; in September a major analysis of NHS staff reported female surgeons are being sexually harassed, assaulted and, in some cases, raped by colleagues. An open letter from four women who head up medical royal colleges in Wales made it clear that these issues were not confined to surgery or anaesthetics but were commonplace.
I could go on; the parliamentary committee running the Misogyny in Music Inquiry currently accepting submissions, the fact sexism remains rife in science, and the rest.
What I find genuinely baffling is the response of men. Nice men. Men who would never ostracise or bully a female colleague. Men who like and respect women, who have wives and daughters.
Men who can see what is happening in their own office and yet say nothing and do nothing. Men who may not be actively excluding female co-workers but who keep their heads down, passively accepting it by deliberately choosing to reframe it as boys-will-be-boys high jinks.
I have brought it up more than once with male friends and acquaintances. When I push my point and refuse to be fobbed off with platitudes, the conversational arc goes like this: yes it’s terrible, shouldn’t be happening, weed them out, actually not all men, well women have to stand up for themselves too, followed by the often peevish “nowadays it’s hard to know how to act around females in the workplace”.
Call it peer group programming but at some stage men get so uncomfortable they switch into defensive mode – even after originally lambasting a behaviour as indefensible – and insist it’s a woman’s problem.
The insidious and inaccurate perception persists that women get picked on because they are weak. They don’t assert themselves. Aren’t up to the knockabout reality of a stressful, male-dominated industry.
But even the most capable person – regardless of sex – will struggle when they are systematically isolated, not invited to team meetings, belittled. When bullying becomes a numbers game, the target can’t fight back.
Note, I didn’t say “victim”. Helen MacNamara was no shrinking violet. She recounted how, 10 days before the UK went into lockdown for the first time, she walked into No 10 and let rip.
”There is no plan. We are in huge trouble,” she announced. “I have come through here to the Prime Minister’s Office to tell you all I think we’re absolutely f***ed. I think this country is heading for a disaster. I think we’re going to kill thousands of people.”
She was right. Speaking truth to power is tough. It’s made immeasurably tougher for intelligent women when the stupid men who run things will not engage with them.
Finally given a platform, this week the former ethics chief calmly and fatally skewered the overgrown schoolboys who treated the Cabinet Office as if it were their very own sixth form common room.
I like to think her no-holds-barred exposé of the foul-mouthed chauvinism and shabby ineptitude will go down in history as Doing a MacNamara.
And make mansplainers everywhere think twice before they exclude, harass or speak over a female colleague – lest she does a MacNamara on them.
Having a child with a rare genetic deletion is intense, but there is happiness, too.