Apologies to Elizabeth Handy

Thank you for the recent issue focusing on gender inequality which included some very interesting articles.

Michelle Ryan's article on gender inequality in the workplace was an excellent distillation of the issues surrounding both the perceptions of sexism and the interpretation of research data on this subject. It made me think about the importance of challenging how research on topics like risk-taking in the workplace and gender can be viewed (and this has provoked me to wonder about similar issues occurring in research into ageism in the workplace). It raised the age-old conundrum of causality and expressed the importance of delving deeper than just surface figures which can be misleading.

There was some (limited) optimism in Ryan's article about progress, especially in the developed world. However, I turned a few pages to read Ian Florance's interview with Bill Hester to find him saying how he had heard the wife of Charles Handy say, 'you need to reinvent yourself every ten years for a happy life'. 

Great quote, but doesn't the woman who said it deserve a proper name check? Have we not moved on from 'Mrs Handy'? Elizabeth Handy was a person in her own right and even a quick look at her obituary in The Guardian (by Simon Caulkin) reveals that she was an active and accomplished photographer.

I would have expected The Psychologist editing team to address this sort of issue when reviewing contributions. I can't imagine that if the quote had been from Charles Handy, that he would have been described as 'photographer Elizabeth Handy's husband'. 

This relates directly to the article by Emma Young on gender and language, which usefully discussed the impact of using the male as the reference point and how this continues to embed gender bias. Emma Young says: 'while language can reflect and reinforce existing stereotypes, it can also be a tool for change'. I would hope that The Psychologist might position itself as more a tool for change than as a reflection of old tropes.

Jenny Hayes