It must be bad enough for young women dealing with how the media continues to devalue them, but when their mothers still cling to attitudes that were supposedly last seen before WW2, there remains a major uphill battle for equality. Last night, I was chatting with a couple of older women. They would have been teenagers in The Sixties. One was working as a doctor, the other as receptionist. Let's call them L and S. We got talking about holidays, and S mentioned she had recently been to Canada and had a number of trips in helicopters – one of which was piloted by a woman! Yes, by a woman! She went on to say that – "I know I'm a woman, Jon, but ..." – she finds it disquieting whenever she sees a woman driving a bus, a lorry, let alone an aircraft. L agreed with her.
Flabbergasted, I asked them if they knew this was the Twenty-First Century. Yes, apparently they did, but even so, L was cheered when her daughter was married by a male vicar, rather than the woman who was going to do it. I told them I usually got to hear this type of thing down the pub. They apologised, but said they couldn't help themselves – it was just the way they felt: women shouldn't do certain types of work.
To all you young women out there – keep climbing that hill.
It was muddy on the Suffolk roads this morning. Just to repeat: I was forced to cycle through mud, mud, mud. I was tempted to throw a bucket a water over myself and my bike when I got back home.
Don't do stupid – it's just not clever.
Total recorded cycled miles since 21st July 2012: 1497
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