Box of delight

I’m starting to realise that women are oppressed because they are more powerful than men.

I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but consider that all oppression has a reason or a motivation. It all starts somewhere. Oppressors would not seek to control, denigrate and silence people who had no power in the first place, would they?

Men don’t oppress women because they think they are stupid, incompetent, weak or incapable – they oppress women because they know that we aren’t any of those things. They know that given the chance, we will change the world in several ways which will permanently dismantle male supremacy. And they don’t want that.

How does gender impact on working life? In The Paula Principle, education scholar Tom Schuller focuses on women and what holds them back. It’s ironic that this book’s author is a man; it can’t help but jar that this subject is being viewed from a position of privilege – women’s first-hand stories have historically been silenced, especially those of the working class and the marginalised. That said, Schuller’s own working life has shown a strong commitment to expanding learning opportunities for everyone, at any age, and his passion for social justice is stamped on every page of a study whose clarity and well researched insights are captivating.

For many decades, Indigenous communities in both Canada and the United States have been reporting extraordinarily high rates of missing and murdered women and girls, reports which were generally greeted with indifference by police, the media or politicians. In late 2016, the federal government of Canada announced the creation of the National Inquiry into Missing Women and Girls, which went on to hold 24 hearings across the country to listen to the stories of women and their families. The scale and severity of the crimes being committed was horrifically illustrated by the fact that, by the time the Inquiry’s report was completed nearly three years later, an additional 130 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls were reported.

We tend to be myopic when it comes to analysing women's potential, seeing what's happening at the top, but not at the very root of the problem.