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100 actions to fix inequality »

Invisible Women

“The most important thing that everyone can do is to really start noticing when men are occupying the gender-neutral spot, because that is what is driving all of this. The solution of just no longer marking the female and just having everything gender neutral sounds like such a nice fix, but it doesn’t really work. Carry on saying women’s football because the reality is that if we don’t specify women, we forget women exist, but just start specifying men when you need men. Say men’s football, say men’s rugby. It draws people’s attention to the way men are occupying the gender-neutral space. It draws people’s attention to quite how often we’re talking about men when we think we’re speaking gender-neutrally. That is a really consciousness-raising tool, because until we realise how common this is and how much it’s happening, we can’t start to address it. The first step has to be getting people to see what’s right in front of their noses.”