Feminism’s failure to lend a hand

I received an item forwarded by a friend last week entitled, ''Why men shouldn't write advice columns''. A woman, ''Sheila'', had written to an advice columnist, ''John'':

''Dear John, the other day I set off for work, leaving my husband at home watching TV. My car stalled, and then broke down about a mile down the road. I had to walk back. When I got home, I found my husband in bed with the neighbour's daughter!

''I am 32, my husband is 34, and the neighbour's daughter is 19. We have been married for 10 years. When I confronted him he admitted they had been having an affair for six months. I'm a wreck and need advice. Can you please help?''

John replied: ''Dear Sheila, a car stalling after being driven a short distance can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Start by checking for debris in the fuel line. If it is clear check the hoses on the intake manifold and all grounding wires. If these checks do not solve the problem, it could be the fuel pump itself is faulty. I hope this helps, John.''

Don't we love gender stereotypes. The subject can fill an entire library and is the subject of the latest splash book about feminism, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, by the British journalist Natasha Walter. Her point can be summed up in this passage: ''I think it is time to challenge the exaggerated femininity that is being encouraged among women in this generation … questioning the claustrophobic culture that teaches many young women that it is only through exploiting their sexual allure that they can become powerful.''

Good point. It occupies the first half of the book. The second half is a critique of gender stereotypes. Walter argues that the world is much more complicated than the accepted stereotypes. We get that. In my house, I do most of the housework. Stereotypes are merely indicative.

You could drive a truck through what's missing from Living Dolls as Walter fixates on men's raunch magazines, like Nuts, or Zoo or FHM, and reality TV shows, ascribing to them a great deal of blame for the obsession among so many young women with glamour, modelling and highly sexualised self-packaging.

Walter largely skates over the damage done to the self-image of women by other women, the ones who dominate the vastly bigger fashion industry, via the air-brushing of bodies in fashion magazines, the selection of absurdly unreal body types as the ideal, the use of extremely young women as models, and the obsession with air-brushed female celebrities. All this is driven by women, to exploit women.

You could also drive a truck through the gaps and silences at a symposium I attended last week at the University of Sydney, ''Feminism Matters''. It featured a panel of five feminist scholars from Australia and overseas. I attended because feminism matters. More than ever.

By the end I wondered what I'd got for my $20. There are 3.5 billion women in the world and half of them are living in societies where their rights and freedoms are being rolled back or are at risk of going backwards. As a global force, feminism is not triumphant. We live in a time of giant questions concerning women.

Why is much of the most corrosive pressure on women coming from other women? Why is the rise of militant Islam so intent on curbing the freedoms of women? What has happened to nearly 100 million ''missing'' girls in Asia?

A report by the United Nations Development Program, published this month, found: ''The problem of 'missing girls', in which more boys are born than girls, as girl foetuses are presumably aborted … is actually growing. Birth gender disparity is greatest in East Asia, where 119 boys are born for every 100 girls.''

This is an epic time for feminism; attending the ''Feminism Matters'' session was like watching public servants discuss how to increase their budget allocation. For me the low point was provided by Dr Sue Goodwin, a senior lecturer in the faculty of education and social work at the University of Sydney, who said: ''We've just come through a very conservative, repressive 15 years in Australia.''

The energy only picked up after young women from the audience began asking questions. For the first time, the word ''Muslim'' was mentioned. One of the American participants, Professor Karen Beckwith, rushed in with praise for the way Muslim countries had elected women prime ministers in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Turkey. No mention that one of these women was assassinated, or that the freedoms of women are under attack in many parts of the Muslim world. Not a word.

Another young woman complained that while 75 per cent of veterinary science graduates were women, male graduates average $10,000 a year more than women. ''We are pissed off,'' she said. She then answered her own question: in large animal practices strength is required and men are stronger than women; country people respond better to male vets; women are perceived as future maternity leave candidates.

Or, as one of the panelists offered, ''Children are the glass ceiling.'' Yes they are. It is one of the conundrums between the theory of equality and the complexity of daily reality. I found the gaps in Living Dolls, like those of ''Feminism Matters'', a metaphor for contemporary ''feminism'', which is proving largely irrelevant to the great struggle being waged by women beyond the bubble of Western progressive secularism.