International Women's Day: 8 everyday things you don't realise actually reinforce gender stereotypes

Happy International Women’s Day!

The theme of this year’s day is “be bold for change” which has the rousing message to “call on the masses or call on yourself to help forge a better working world – a more gender inclusive world”.

And what better way to do this than by having a look at some of the seemingly small, everyday things most of us are guilty of doing that reinforce gender stereotypes? The crazy thing is, we don’t even realise we’re doing these things.

We’re not saying you do these every day but here’s a list of pretty standard things to watch out for to really help smash the patriarchy.

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1. Sexist turns of phrases

Phrases like “throw like a girl” and describing someone as a “pussy” are throwaway and part of everyday conversation. Most of us tend to use such phrases, without stopping to think how derogatory to women they actually are.

2. Opening doors for women

Opinions are divided on this one: some people think it’s chivalrous and gallant when men open doors for women, but many feminists disagree. Women aren’t inferior in any way and can manage doors quite alright, thanks very much.

3. Men giving women their seat on the Tube

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We can totally get on board with this if the person in question is old/disabled/pregnant, but if she’s a healthy young woman? C’mon, there’s just not really any need!

4. Thinking women can’t hear anything rude

This harks back to the Victorian era: ladies were seen as having gentler sensibilities and their dainty ears shouldn’t be offended by lewd talk or rude words.

Even nowadays so many men will apologise to women when something slightly racy comes up… and we’re just not quite sure why.

5. Telling women to smile

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When was the last time a man was told to smile? Nope, we thought not.

6. Assuming women are physically weaker or more emotional than men

This isn’t necessarily something you do every day, but there’s no doubt that social conditioning has done its best to create ideas of strong, manly men and weak, emotional women.

But, we hate to break it to you, these just don’t follow – so try not to fall into the trap of thinking these things.

7. Assigning colours to a gender

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When you go to a baby shower, you’re likely to take a pink present for a girl and a blue present for a boy. So many things like this are needlessly gendered and it really does make you think – why on earth should one colour be for one gender?

And don’t even get us started on gendered products … why do men and women seriously need differently branded soap?

8. Aiming intellectual points at men

If you’ve been in any classroom or uni tutorial you’ll be familiar with this point. For some reason, so many people direct their intellectual points at men instead of women.

People might not mean to, but it’s a kneejerk reaction, and really belittles the intelligence of women.