Is culture ready?

Is culture ready?

It would be a positive outlook on the early twenty-first century if society had absorbed, due to acceptance, the overwhelming screams for parity and non-binary sexuality. It would then be reasonable to witness the last days of conservative obsolescence as a teenager refusing to grow up. However, it seems we are not there yet.

Progress has been made and culture does produce same-sex thematic and stories about empowering women and although it is pleasing to a postmodern audience, it still doesn't quite permeate the old order of meaning production. It is a complex issue still, tied to many forms of resistance, most if not all, have no tangibility and are nonsensical.

Patriarchy is, for obvious reasons, at the top of this belief system that has persecuted many individuals across time. But what patriarchy really is, is male insecurity and the greed of dominance that to this day is still seen and spread inside culture as institutionalised values.

As late as 2020, meritocracy still fails to account for women´s equality in the workplace, whether through less access to positions of power or less money paid for the same level as men. According to payscale.com, In the US, just last year women earned around 0, 79 cents for every dollar a man takes home. The career ladder also favours men by a factor of 16% in the late-career (45-year range).

In the UK, the managerial gap is 15% where men make around 22.07£ per hour. In the teaching workforce, women make fall short by 10%, according to the ONS. Overall the average pay gap is 8, 9% for the same hours of work. In a report published in 2019 by the Minister for Women and Equality, women usually have higher qualifications but earn less per hour. According to that same report, the top companies actually have an increase in profit if gender diversity is upheld.

It is important to make a distinction between equal pay and the pay gap. The first one is illegal and the second one is really about access to career development and top positions. According to strikingwomen.org one of the reasons for this is Education in early school where the traditional values are still taught, which makes it obvious that it is a social construct that tells men and women who they are in society.

Sarah Montague is both a case of success as it is of retrograde thinking. She has won her plea over pay inequality after proving she deserved the same pay as her co-host. Samir Ahmed is another woman who has won her right to be paid the same money for the same job. They were both employees for the BBC. They are successful stories that may encourage others and possibly create enough momentum so that companies think twice about maintaining this expensive status quo. However, it is an avoidable one. That is why it is retrograde. It is a culture that needs to go to court in order to see itself in a losing battle of, meaning, diversity and even profitability.

Tradition is another reason for this resistance, one that has caused much exaggeration from all sides of the struggle. The case of Meghan Markel speaks to the amount of noise that is added when tradition is put into question. She is a woman in a world that keeps telling her how to be. She has been accused of potentially prompt the end of the royal family, creating headlines to that effect. There is even a term called “Megxit” to enforce this idea that she is to blame for “going against” the royal family. Perhaps the question should be asked about what makes the royals a place to escape from.

If the #me too movement is a force to be reckoned with, it is also true that is had led to attempts of lexical changes that speak to this same exaggeration. Such is the case of History/Herstory. It is a claim that History is a male-driven word that promotes men and leaves women out of the story. It has been claimed as a sexist word. However, if one is replaced by the other, which may or may not be seen as ridiculous, the end result is the same partiality of the complainers, one that would promote women and leave men out. It would only serve to perpetuate the cycle.

Inside the meaning machinery of traditional norms, there are some fields that are trying to change the way deviance can be normalised. Two of these front runners are the movie and television universe that produces content that may be seen as postmodern but it is, in fact, a reflection of what is going on.  The series “Sex Education”, by the online platform Netflix, is an accurate example of this approach at pleasing different audiences. It is a coming of age story about teenagers and their sexual anxieties. However, in this case, it explores the realm of non-binary gender across male and female teens. It does so without making it weird or queer or uncanny. The choices and discoveries of characters are met with futile and obsolete resistance by a headmaster who represents the old way of thinking and therefore is ridiculed at every turn. It is a critique of the old and suggestion of acceptance the not so new.

Many more arguments can be in order to answer the question of culture readiness and its resistance to change. It is a collective but also individual endeavour, one that is not going anywhere any time soon. Society needs to allow people to make choices free from prejudice and it needs to be seen doing it. Speeches alone aren’t going to work.