Credit: Barbara Kruger; Source: http://templeofhera.blogspot.com/2009/02/your-body-is-battleground.html

Many women are feminists. Most people have several feminist friends. For readers of this site, perhaps the vast majority of your friends are feminist. I probably know at least a dozen women who would self-identify as feminist. Yet, I don’t know a single one who doesn’t, at least sometimes, wear make-up. I suspect all of them shave their legs. Many, on occasion, wear high heels. They believe, sometimes stridently, in the social construction of gender—that there is no biologically determined reason for women to care more about their appearance than men. They probably, like I, loathe women’s (and men’s) magazines, support a ban on beauty product advertising and plastic surgery and believe that men and women should be subject to the same social standards. They recognize and deplore the message it sends to society that women have to physically alter their appearance in order to impress men (and other women), believe that it strips them of social agency, implies their worth is limited to the physical, and suggests that they should wait placidly for male attention. Collectively, they believe make-up is bad for women and society. Individually, they wear make-up.

This is not irrational. The imperative to wear make-up is what is known in economics as a collective action problem. Society is structured in such a way that social rewards accrue to those that conform to the roles expected of them. Most men are more attracted to women wearing make-up and high heels. Even many of those males who are avowedly feminist. Most men would find it peculiar and discomforting to realize that their girlfriend didn’t shave her legs, even though they themselves would never dream of such a practice. Employers might be less likely to offer jobs to women who “ignored their appearance” or dressed in a very atypical way. Judgemental people might casually start referring to such women as “weird”. Some might be less inclined to be friends with them. Who would bear these costs? Who would even risk them? I know I wouldn’t. Of course, some women do; they’re, to my mind, exceptionally brave and strong—they bear social costs, and sometimes are even so wilful and cool that they change the minds of those around them. But they are very much in the minority. Most women, quite rationally and reasonably, socially conform. Yet every time a woman conforms she re-enforces the social norm. She makes it stronger and harder for other women to resist. Individual rationality necessitates collective harm. If everyone could act collectively they could break these social norms. But any particular individual acting alone will have no effect. Just because a few “outsiders” ignore social rules doesn’t destroy or even weaken those rules. Ironically, it may even strengthen them by providing a public example of the costs of non-conformity. In economics, collective action failures require government intervention to solve. This comes with its own set of problems. How much do we trust governments to restrict the right things? What message does it send for the state to correct “women’s collective irrationality”? Is freedom too important a value to curb, especially when the harms are so difficult to measure?

What happens to collective action problems that are not solved by the government? In these situations, the only solution is for individual to make individually irrational choices, in the hope that every other individual also makes this choice. Sometimes this is successful. For example, it is individually irrational to vote in an election (since almost never is an election swung by your vote) but most people still do and the collective harm is avoided. But, in that example, unlike in the case of make-up, the costs of unilateral action are relatively low—a few hours at the voting booth. When the costs are higher, most people fail to act. Climate change and vegetarianism are perhaps the two best analogies to the make-up problem. With climate change, each individual would be harmed by restricting their carbon output but their sacrifice would have a negligible effect on society. Similarly, people who don’t eat meat have almost no effect on the meat industry, yet collectively the meat industry wouldn’t exist if each of those individuals didn’t eat meat.

Yet, although neither climate change reduction nor vegetarianism are social movements that have been entirely successful, far more people adhere to self-enforced rules in those situations than they do with make-up. Why? I suspect it is because people have convinced themselves that each individual instance of riding a plane or eating a steak is, in itself, immoral. This implicates a separate question: the morality of wearing make-up as disconnected from its rationality. This question turns on the distinction between causal responsibility and causal contribution. To take an example: an innocent individual is in front of a firing squad of forty people; each bullet will hit the individual simultaneously and one bullet is enough to kill the person. No one in the firing squad is causally responsible, since if that person did not shoot, the victim would still die. But each person causally contributes, by being 1/40^th the cause of the person’s death. Most people, I think, would say that each individual in the firing squad was doing something immoral. Much like, if animals have rights, those of us who eat meat are doing something immoral, and, if the planet is in danger, those of us who ride planes are doing something immoral. On this view, each individual act of wearing make-up is immoral, even if it doesn’t lead to negative consequences.

However, I suspect vegetarians and environmentalists get an easier ride than those who reject make-up. A culture which cultivates a female appearance obsession is pervasive across economic and social life, and the costs of rejecting it are considerably higher than having to eat lentils or not driving as much.

So, how do we solve the collective action problem of social conformity? Either we trust governments to intervene in our personal lives or we use the moral autonomy granted to us by those governments to make hard personal choices. There is, of course, no easy answer. But, it might be time to start asking the question.

Samir Deger-Sen is a D. Phil. student in International Relations at Balliol College. He has been part of the competitive debating circuit for 8 years and, in 2008, won the World Universities Debating Championship. Naomi Wolf’s ‘The Beauty Myth’ was the first book that he read about feminism.

I love feminism because she’s the rebel of the class, the one that makes a farce of all those sexists seeking stars.

     Whilst teacher Liberalism stands preaching untoward, scratching black and white messages on his 2D board, feminism swings on her chair and raises her hand, a girl full of questions she can’t understand.

     “What do you mean she chose to shave her legs, to sleep with him for dregs, to pursue beauty by eating only the white bits of eggs?” The X-chromosomed rebel relentlessly asks, popping sticky pink bubbles rather than completing her tasks.

     “There is a personal sphere and a private sphere, and no third party can cross the line dear” the Liberal teacher drones, bored and boxed and sick to death of her moans.

     She laughs at his pains as she throws paper planes, “But my values are made in public, by the slogans on my screens, they’re built by barbies in my bedroom and mini skirts marketed pre-teens!”  

     I love this lady’s disregard for silence; the way her eyes flash with triumph at her questions of defiance.

     No school can expel her, no Liberal can remove her (not even the school cleaner with a hoover). This rebellious lady fighter won’t grow old or tired or lighter - she’ll just burn brighter. She’ll pass her questions to her daughters, and each girl will add her tone, until a hundred thousand daughters have all the answers of their own. 

Fine state of affairs, huh? For eight years family planning services laboured under Bush’s woman-hating ‘global gag rule’ that forbade them offering information about abortions (much less actual abortions). Now, the other side of the coin:

Documented cases in Namibia where HIV-positive women minutes from giving birth were encouraged to sign consent forms to prevent them from having more children. Jennifer Gatsi-Mallet, [ICW's] co-ordinator in the country, said: “They were in pain, they were told to sign, they didn’t know what it was.

It adds up to the same thing. Women’s bodies don’t really belong to them. That goes double for the poor, women of colour and any other group that society can single out as less than “normal”. The plight of HIV positive African women may seem a remote concern, but it is only a few steps further along the spectrum of disrespect.

Check out the ICW website for more information.

It might seem like a harmless effort to ‘humanise’ these beauties, but it smacks of something meaner and more insidious. First, it says that no matter how beautiful and desireable a woman is there is still something wrong with her. Second, it reinforces the notion that women are ultimately defined by their phsyical traits rather than their talents. You don’t read interviews with male celebrities whinging about their toes or ears, so why should this nonsense be a staple of writing about women?

St Anne’s College has just voted in a “white hetrosexual male rep” to serve on their formal student body. Andrew Lowe stood on a platform that would replace the college creche with a finishing school, ban women from the library and save money by getting female students to serve in halls instead of kitchen staff. The other gems in his manifesto include extra funding for “middle class activities” and preventing college authorities from banning “any act succeeded by the word lad or banter”.

As a feminist, I know I’ll be criticized with the classic “can’t you take a joke” line. Don’t get me wrong - I’m all for taking the piss out of the PC agenda - but let me explain why there are three reasons why this action is simply not funny.

Most obviously (and I can’t believe I even have to write this), sexist and discriminatory “jokes” like this run the risk of isolating the unrepresentatively low numbers of women, ethnic minorities and working class Oxbridge students. Actions like this show that some members of the white male middle class student population have precisely zero sense of empathy – born on the top to inherit the top, they can’t understand what it might feel like to be intimidated at the bottom.

Second, stories like these put off unconventional applicants. Since I’ve left Oxford I’ve regularly gone back to my state school to encourage students to apply. Next week I’m meeting a  young woman to try and convince her that Oxbridge is worth going for, despite her fears of snobbery. What am I supposed to tell these 6^th formers now?

Finally, actions like these make a mockery of the college student committee. JCRs aren’t jokey forums to mess with. In the past they have done great political campaigning for the rights of female, homosexual and ethnic minority students. To reduce them to the play-thing of middle class lads is insulting, and undermines their credibility to do more good work.

At a time when the far right are getting into power and a lot of women are leaving politics, actions like this are unforgivable. The St Anne’s “lads” need to wake up and distinguish the difference between a light-hearted piss-take, and dangerous immaturity.

I’m past caring what the last week has done to Gordon Brown and the Labour Party. But I’m terrified about what it’s done to women in politics. The last seven days have seen four female ministers resign from the cabinet, leaving Westminster’s most powerful inner-circle grossly unrepresentative. Worries deepened when Caroline Flint broke her resignation with a tirade of allegations of sexism at the heart of government. In today’s Observer, she said that Brown “used” women as little more than a “smokescreen”; a “way of making it look like you’ve got a lot of women round the table”. The reality for women in cabinet, she said, is one of “constant pressure” and “negative bullying.”

But it’s not just what’s been happening inside Westminster that’s so terrible; it’s how it’s been covered outside it too. Across the media, Flint has been portrayed in starkly sexist terms. She’s “flounced out” of the cabinet in a “hissy fit”, throwing “a stiletto in the heart of government”. Even the broadsheets’ coverage was irresponsible – the Guardian’s decision to use Flint’s red dress photo shoot to accompany such a grave set of allegations wasn’t just objectifying; it was belittling the serious points she was making.

Think what you will of Flint’s resignation – but don’t put your criticisms (or your photos) in gender-loaded terms. Personally I think Flint’s resignation was opportunistic, badly orchestrated and ultimately self-defeating; but I don’t think it was a “silly woman” losing her head because of oestrogen and an X chromosome. When James Purnell resigned he was criticised, but he was never accused of living up to “macho” stereotypes in the same way. When a woman makes a serious feminist argument, she shouldn’t be dismissed in a sea of sexist stereotypes, she should be listened to and challenged with the respect shown to her male colleagues.

After the expenses scandal, the public wants to see a politics that is more representative of the people, not less. I worry that the events of the past week will make this less likely. The political female role models we had weren’t exactly inspirational; now they’re also disillusioned, demonised and out of office. If we’re going to fix our broken politics, we’ll need to utilise the best talents of our women as well as our men. Neither our government nor our media can afford to reduce them to “window dressing”.   

Congratulations to Alice Munro for having the courage to write what she wants to write!

After just nine days in post, the only woman to hold the Oxford Professorship of Poetry in its three hundred year history has stood down. Ruth Padel’s resignation is a sad and confusing event for feminists inside and outside the Oxbridge bubble.

On the one hand, we know that sexual abuse gets let off far too often and far too easily in our society. We know that men often abuse their many positions of power, and that these actions frequently go unpunished as women fear to speak out. In this sense, I empathise with Padel and her desire to prevent the injustice of allowing her competitor, Derek Walcott, to gain such a highly prestigious position when his private life was surrounded by such dark questions.

But on the other hand, the way in which Padel exposed these abuses is dubious at best, malicious at worst. If Padel ever had any serious concerns about the welfare of her students, she should have taken them straight to the appropriate authorities for investigation, not handed them surreptitiously to the newspapers with perfect timing to further her own career. Padel has admitted that her moves were naïve, but it is not enough - her resignation seems sadly necessary.

We can only hope that another woman replaces her in this centuries-long male dominated post. However, Padel’s behaviour forces us to question just how easy this will be. Her actions might have been indefensible, but perhaps she felt that, as a woman, her natural ability was not enough to get her to the top. If discrimination holds women back, they may continue to feel compelled to act in these ways. This is not justifiable, but it is perhaps understandable. Until we have a fully open competitive procedure to select academic appointments, we’ll never know if they are subject to scandalous manipulation on the part of certain individuals or something far worse - systemic gender bias.    

The armed forces are breeding grounds for sexual violence. Just last month the BBC reported on The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, by Helen Benedict, which recounts the constant threat of rape and abuse women face from their fellow soldiers. I don’t know if violence is as endemic, or as widely reported, in the UK armed forces, but common sense suggests that since all armies are based on hierarchies of brute force women are always going to be the at-risk bottom of the pecking order.

The Army, of course, is merely interested in filling its ranks. It won’t tell the truth about the risks women face. Magazines like Closer, though, are ostensibly by and for women. Don’t they have a responsibility to consider whether their editorial content is endorsing something that is dangerous to women?

This advice is patronising and generalising. I found it even more annoying personally, because my writing style did in fact subscribe to the gender stereotype that my tutor assumed it would. But it was well meant, and ultimately useful. The Oxford system rewards a certain writing style, and my tutor was right to inform me of this from the off.

Moreover, his view that this would be of potential disadvantage to me was based less on my sex than on my gendered school education. If he presumed I would ‘write like a girl’ this was based upon the fact that I went to an all-girls school, rather than upon the fact that I was a girl. And, frankly, if my privileged single-sex education put me, generally speaking, at a disadvantage in comparison to the privileged single-sex education of the other sex, it put me at a hell of an advantage in comparison to those who hadn’t experienced a privileged education at all.

Right. So, whoever you are, if you write in a masculine way you will do better than if you write in a feminine way. This theoretically has nothing to do with your biology, though practically it may be affected by it. And as this advice is more pertinent to exam-based assessment than to that based upon coursework, with the English course being increasingly coursework-assessed (though the majority of your degree still rides on final exams), the imbalance experienced because of gender is (slowly) sort of being evened out.

Which is all well and good.

But, what if it doesn’t matter if you write like a boy. What if you were told that that’s only part of the story, and that another part of it is that, actually, it would be better if you were biologically a boy too. Obviously exam papers are anonymously marked, so the actual sex of a candidate can never be known. But what if you were all but told that there were certain indications by which an examiner can guess which sex you are - and judge you accordingly.

A friend of mine, in an almost all-female English set, at a college whose English tutor is big on exam technique, was told she should definitely, unequivocally, write in black ink during exams. Big deal - so was I - it makes your writing easier to read, right? Well, partially. But the reason she was given was that it ‘makes you look more like a boy’.

Which got me to thinking. Though I always assumed (or hoped) that being more like a boy in this place has everything to do with how and what you write, and not who you actually are. I guess I was wrong. I should probably try harder at being not only masculine, but male too.