Quilting and Gender: the lesson I am taking away

Gosh where to start!  Did you see the gender debate that has been happening in quilt blog land these last few weeks?  If not head over to Hunters Design Studiowhere Sam gives her thoughts and links to the other bloggers who have written about it. 

By writing about it here on my blog I don't want to open up the divisions I've seen explored on the other blogs but to write something about how following this debate has affected my view on gender and quilting.  I first saw gender raised in a debate on the cost of making a quilt and selling it for what it is really worth on Molli Sparkles blog (blog posts under We are $ew Worth it).  Questions were raised in the comments on why women tend towards not asking for their true worth but sell goods at prices less than they should.  It surprised me at the time as I thought what has being a woman got to do with pricing a quilt - isn't it market prices for your target audience and cost+some profit???  Naive, I know!

Some were claiming quilting as a woman's realm where men were dishonouring quilters of the past struggling to make a living by wading in with cost sheets asking why sell your handmade goods for less than they are worth - it got a bit heated and I left the debate shaking my head at it all.  That was 2013 but it has stuck with me and feels like not so long ago.  Cue 2016 and the debate has moved on to Male quilters only exhibitions (No Girls Allowed), Male Privilege and not a whole lot of sympathy for a man complaining of his gender always being a topic of conversation because he is a male quilter.  One commenter made a statement about how the lack of comments from other women was telling.  Telling what I don't know but at that point I had read all the comments (which are quite hard to read at times, anger and frustration from both sides of the debate practically jumping off the page!) and not commented yet myself.  I had to ask myself why?

I've seen some comments on social media wondering why as quilters with a common interest we can't all just get along, after all there should be room for everyone who wants to make a quilt in our community.  And I've seen some disappointment that our normally happy, supportive space was somehow threatened by the discussion.  I felt this too but still didn't explain why I was both interested and uncomfortable with the debate and pondering further the discussion about privilege, I think it may be that as a white woman living in Ireland I have enjoyed some privilege too. 

I've never understood how colour is always an issue in the US but I am starting to.  Coming from a country predominantly white I have never faced colour as an issue, never felt out of place because I am white, never at a disadvantage - it doesn't figure in my daily life. Privileged, yes.  As a female mechanical engineer I was 1 of 4 girls who graduated from a class of about 80.  I had a good bunch of classmates and while in the minority I didn't feel out of place.  My first engineering job as a student intern in the US I did have a boss for 3 1/2 months who told me women didn't belong in engineering - he was the minority in that opinion and I happily ignored him!  When I left college my first job along with 4 others of my classmates started on equal pay.  It never occurred to me that I would be paid differently.  A friend of mine had a different experience.  She saw her male colleagues earn more for the same work, be appreciated more for their forwardness and get promoted quicker.  I hadn't the same experience, I thought she was over reacting - Shame on me!  The gender pay gap in Ireland is 14.4%.  Quite a difference isn't it?

Last year our guild branch had a raffle and donated the group quilt we had made to raise money for Adapt House, a refuge centre and outreach service for those who have suffered domestic abuse.  The lady who received the cheque thanked us and gave a very moving speech.  She told us the statistics were 1 in 5 women will at some point suffer abuse.  It is higher that the same statistic for breast cancer (1 in 10) and how many people do I know that that's affected ? 1 in 5, scary isn’t it?  

This debate coming on the back of a tumultuous year all around the world has made me stop and think.  Men are not alone in feeling unwelcome in quilt shops at times.  I know quite a few people have had their ability as a quilter questioned, the assumption because they are young they don't know what they are doing.  Men are not alone when telling people they quilt and get that look, the assumption being it's an old person's hobby.  In this month's quilters newsletter there is an article about ageism/sexism and the term Grandmother's quilts.  Quite a few women have expressed  how they don't fit in some traditional guilds, preferring to connect with quilters online.  Seems we have some work to do to get past assumptions and make our community truly inclusive. 

If we want our quilting community to be the welcoming happy place most of us experience, we need to be open to the discussion in a respectful way.  Our community can only grow closer and be more inclusive if we recognise gender inequality does matter, we do need to talk about it,  and recognise that every body's experience is important in the debate, male and female.  It has to start with the recognition that privilege can make you blind to the subtleties of an issue or even that there is an issue to be addressed at all.  That's the lesson I am taking away from this round of the gender discussion. How about you?  Has it affected your thoughts on gender in our quilting community in any way?