Women in Society

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens]

First, I congratulate all those Members who have given such excellent maiden speeches today. There was a terrific cornucopia of speeches. One might say that it was a bit different from the House of Lords in the past. There is a good story about the Earl of Melrose—in case there is a current Earl of Melrose I shall have to say that this was an earlier one—who said, “I fell asleep and dreamt that I was giving a speech in the House of Lords. Then I woke up and, by God, I was”.

I congratulate, in particular, my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon on her outstanding maiden speech, delivered with great eloquence and good humour. From a part-time shop assistant in Sainsbury’s to your Lordships’ House is quite a journey. She brings a great wealth of experience to this House, and is very well known for her work on the third sector and local communities. One might say that she was a forceful advocate of the big society avant la lettre, and she is very well esteemed for her work in this area. She is quite right to place so much stress on education, which I say as an educator myself, and helping to bring about social equality. It is also important to mention her work in the area of animal rights. It is my great pleasure to welcome her to your Lordships’ House and I am sure that we all look forward to many incisive contributions from her in the future. I hope that noble Lords will join me in giving her a hearty welcome.

The oppression of women in contemporary society is as much psychosexual as it is economic. It focuses on the body, self-identity, sexuality and the swirl of emotions that surround these things, especially in young women. I think we can say that in our society many women suffer from a veritable tyranny of the body. To illustrate this theme I shall discuss the rise in eating disorders in our society, such as anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, and so on. I spoke on this topic about five years ago in a speech in commemoration of women’s day and I take this opportunity to bring what I said then up to date.

I shall say how I became interested in anorexia in particular. One day, for some reason, I bought two Sunday newspapers rather than one and each had a colour supplement. On the front of one of the colour supplements was a photograph of a young black woman who was emaciated and starving to death in Africa. On the front of the other one there was a photograph of a young white American woman who was starving to death in the United States. One of the women was starving because of lack of food—the classical origins of starvation. The other was starving to death in a society where for the first time there is far more food to go around than anybody could possibly consume. Both died but the dynamics of the cases are completely different. I therefore became interested in the history of anorexia and eating disorders.

When we look at the history of traditional cultures we find that what we call eating disorders are rare. There are examples of women who fasted to death but they normally did so for religious reasons—to get closer to God. The rise of eating disorders as a mass phenomenon—I can assure noble Lords that it is a mass phenomenon today—is relatively recent. It dates only from the late 1950s or early 1960s. What explains the massive expansion of eating disorders and the turmoil that they bring? Although about 10 per cent of anorectics are men, the large majority suffering from extreme eating disorders are women.

There are two factors to explain that. One is the rise of supermarket culture. I mentioned Sainsbury’s, but with the advent of supermarkets more generically, diet is severed from locality and becomes severed from tradition. You have to decide what to eat in relation to who to be and what kind of identity to assume. Secondly, it impacts with particular force, especially on young women, partly because of the rise of a new body image and the desirability of slimness in women, but also from something a bit more profound. There is a notion of perfectibility of the female form and a feeling that if you do not get close to that you are almost stigmatised. That is a tremendous secular change in the experience of women in contemporary societies and many other kinds of pathology stem from that.

What has happened since the first time I spoke on these issues? First, in this country the incidence of serious eating disorders has got much worse than it was even five years ago. Today, something like three times as many women suffer from serious eating disorders—not just moderate forms—as suffer from schizophrenia. It is a very significant and indeed growing issue in our society.

Secondly, you have the extension of eating disorders through the lifespan. Previously, most women who suffered from eating disorders were teenagers or early adults. However, now eating disorders extend down to a very early age, so you have young girls of six or seven obsessed with their body image and putting themselves on a rigorous diet. Anorexia and other eating disorders also extend much more through the lifespan.

Thirdly, there is an amazing expansion of eating disorders across the world. This has happened only in the past 10 or 15 years. These are diseases not of poverty but of affluence. They are to do with striving and with possibility. They are not to do directly with deprivation. If you look around the world, you find that China has had a tremendous expansion of eating disorders, almost wholly among young women. The same thing has happened in India in the urban centres and in Africa. In Africa you have the coexistence of the very two things that I found on the front of the colour supplements—classical starvation on the one hand and this very new form of deprivation, especially in the cities and the metropolitan areas, taking root.

What are the practical solutions? This is the tip of the iceberg for women. About 95 per cent of women say that at some point they have been on a diet in order to improve their body image, so we are talking about a tip of an iceberg which affects most women in some sense in our society. What can one do practically about it? First of all, one has to recognise that, although severe forms of eating problems are medical disorders requiring medical treatment, their origins are not medical or biological. They cannot be, primarily, because of the tremendous difference between the existence of this as a mass phenomenon now and its relative absence before. We are dealing with something that is social and structural; therefore the remedies have to be social and structural.

Secondly, traditional mechanisms of attacking sexism and patriarchy are relevant to eating disorders among women. For example, think of cases in the City where women quite rightly have brought legal cases pointing out that they have been discriminated against, have been assessed on the basis of appearance, and have had to face sexist remarks rather than be evaluated in terms of their capabilities. If you improve equal opportunities in those circumstances, it certainly does something. However, my third point is that it does not do a lot. This is not a traditional problem of patriarchy. This is a problem of how we live now. It therefore presumes, in my view, fairly radical intervention, which would have to be to a large degree in the advertising industry, especially in relation to advertising which is targeted at young women. In concluding, I ask the Minister whether she can imagine such radical measures being introduced and, if so, what form they might take.