The Mamas & The Papa: Where are all the men?

Last week I attended a Baby Sensory class with the baby.  It was in fact my second visit but what was different this time is that I was the only man present together with 16 mothers and the female teacher.  Granted some of the babies were boys but I take the view that children are gender neutral until they buy their first razor or have their first lamentable experience of everyday sexism.

Baby Sensory is a literally all singing and dancing affair where babies are exposed to different sensations to help fling them further and faster down the runway to being the next Mozart or Shakespeare.  The dearth of dads came as little surprise but it did get me thinking.

While it may be comparatively unusual for women to find themselves in environments where they are literally the only woman present, an experience with which the Queen is very familiar, it is all too common for women to find themselves vastly outnumbered.  Perhaps as a token panellist on TV or radio, the sole woman director on a board, or the lone female in court many are the environments in which the ways of men and men en masse are all too well known to women.

How often is the opposite true?  Having been to a single sex school it has only been in adult life that I became constantly exposed to mixed company let alone predominantly female company.  The notable moments when I have been truly outnumbered include attending a book club evening at the wonderful  Persephone Books on Lamb's Conduit Street and easily London's best bookshop. It publishes largely 20th century novels by women, we ate bread and cheese, drank madeira and chewed over 'They Knew Mr Knight' by the gloriously named Dorothy Whipple.  More recently I was on stage at the Royal Festival Hall in 2016 celebrating the Women's Equality Party's 1st birthday at the Women of the World Festival.

However I have had to seek out these experiences which were not presented to me as an unavoidable part of everyday life.  I believe I have profited from these experiences, as we all do when we choose to be immersed in the points of view of others.  All I hope for my son as he grows up is that he too will have and take such opportunities and that he will be aware of how heavily felt is the male presence and discourse in society.