By Ann Widdecombe

Read original at: http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/ann-widdecombe/822153/gender-equality-women-do-not-need-special-treatment

Two types of gown are worn by students at that august institution: commoners’ gowns which are short and sleeveless and the longer, more distinctive, sleeved scholars’ gown worn by those who have excelled in academic performance.

Among the reasons given for wanting to remove the distinction is the wimpish statement that women and ethnic minority students feel so stressed by seeing others in “elitist” clothes that their exam results might suffer.

Really? A student sitting an exam is looking round her and noting the dress of her fellow scribblers rather than getting on with the questions? Her exam results will suffer because the chap at the next desk has sleeves on his gown? You have to be joking.

Sadly these supposed rigorous intellectuals who have won places at the foremost university in the land make these silly statements in all seriousness. Nor is the daftness confined to students.

It is not long since the academic authorities at that very same university announced they were considering letting students do some exam papers at home to make women feel more confident. What none of them appears to recognise is that every time a plea is made for special treatment for women it is an admission of failure, a clear statement that women are so feeble that they cannot cut their way through life without being given extra help, that they cannot compete with men on equal terms, that they are, in short, inferior.

I can remember arguing passionately at Oxford for equality in an age when employers could advertise a job with different pay for men and women, when financiers could turn a woman down for a mortgage just because she was single and when a husband’s signature was required on an application for hire purchase.

Give us equal opportunities, I cried, and we will show you we are every bit as good if not better than the men. Well, if the Oxford Students’ Union, the dons who want exams taken at home and the architects of all-women shortlists are to be believed, I was mistaken in my contention that we are as good as the guys.

Instead women are mere snowflakes. Men can sit in exam halls but women must do tests at home. Dear heaven, how I used to bang on about our right to work outside the home! Margaret Thatcher, Shirley Williams, I and countless other women thought getting to Parliament on our own merits proof enough that it was possible but now women are deemed so incapable of cutting the mustard that they must have the men excluded from the competition with all-women shortlists.

Women are more than capable of competing with the men on equal terms but the Oxford Students’ Union insists they are not. The new battle now is not for rights or equality but rather to be taken seriously and not patronised.

The new enemy is no longer supercilious, overbearing man but whining, helpless woman.

Read original at: http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/ann-widdecombe/822153/gender-equality-women-do-not-need-special-treatment