Alex Casey and Leah Damm recap the hellish events for women in New Zealand last week, including the Kuggeleijn case, The Chiefs’ behaviour and the curious case of Kevin Roberts.

Last week sent an incredibly scary sexist snowball through the country, trampling all of the women in New Zealand in its mighty wake. In less than five days, we were reminded that many people in this country still see our ambition as non-existent, our word as ignorable and our bodies as not our own. We’re hardly the first women to see the common ground between these events, so if you see us on the street and we aren’t smiling, it’s because we are one more news story away from going full Furiosa in Mad Max. Don’t test us.

We kicked the week off with Kevin Roberts rubbing his chin and musing about how much women love their comfy hidey holes squashed together beneath the glass ceiling. It’s good for warmth, and makes it a lot easier for all our girly chit chat about how much we hate achieving.

An older white male ad executive at Saatchi and Saatchi, Roberts reckoned that women don’t actually have ambition – we prefer it on the lower rungs of the career ladder. Closer to the kitchen that way innit. Robert has since stood down, but whether or not he has actually ever spoken to a woman in his life remains to be seen.

And then there was the Kuggeleijn rape case, a story consistently framed as the poor professional cricketer whose ‘life hung in the balance’ as he awaited the verdict on whether or not he was guilty of raping a woman the morning after a night of drinking. Consent has become a point of contention in the case, the papers said, including what seem like some innovative re-interpretations of the word “no”.

Defence lawyer Philip Morgan QC asked the alleged victim if, when she told him ‘no’, if she may have meant a “light-hearted” no, or like a “not now” no. You know that kind, like a giggly, hilarious, flirty ‘ha ha please don’t rape me’ kind of no. The lesson seems to be this: it’s not a question of whether or not a woman says no, so much as whether the woman really meant it, which we can only assume means if she was able to deliver it with the right amount of Meryl Streep Oscar bait gravitas despite being in a traumatic situation over which she had no control.

The woman was also grilled about the moment she told Kuggeleijn that she was on the pill, and if she recognised that doing so in those circumstances communicated that she wanted to have sex with him. There’s no word on whether any such contraception-as-consent theorem applies to any man who has ever told his mates that he has a condom in his wallet. Meanwhile, how embarrassing for the rest of us who, in talking about the pill to our friends, doctors or anyone offering us a glass of grapefruit juice, were incidentally telling them that we wanted to do the sex with them. Blush factor 10.

What it basically boils down to, at the end of the day, went the message from the defence, is that Kuggeleijn simply acted as any red-blooded male would do. “I suggest if I said to you that 100 men who have been in that situation and tried again, you would have a forest of hands.” Even if he is just trying to defend his client, it sounds like Morgan has an even lower expectation of the typical Kiwi bloke than we do.

The questioning from this lawyer must have made the experience even more horrific for the woman on the stand, as well as countless other women seeing the trial unfold in disbelief. And here’s the kicker: it might have just worked. The result was a hung jury and an apology from the judge to Kuggeleijn for the inconvenience. Think about that for a second. A jury of twelve people, it seems, couldn’t agree on whether the alleged victim’s ‘no’ actually meant ‘yes’.

Could this possibly hint at why it is estimated that of every 100 sexual abuse crimes, only 10 are reported? And of those 10 reported assaults, only three make it to court? And of those three cases that make it to court, only one will get a conviction?

Speaking of red-blooded males just being loveable sporting larrikins, it’s probably time to talk about The Chiefs. This is a group of professional rugby players, frequently placed on a pedestal as representatives of our national sport – even adopting indigenous imagery, branding, and ‘mana’ – who are alleged to have groped, licked, thrown gravel at and short-changed a woman they hired as a stripper for their end of season celebrations.

After the woman Scarlette bravely spoke out publicly about her experience, a lavish amount of victim-blaming, slut-shaming, boys-will-be-boys hellfire has spewed forth, first and foremost from Chiefs CEO Andrew Flexman, and soon backed up by mobs of online commenters. Even Phil Goff grapevined in at one point and said that she shouldn’t have been in such a ‘dangerous’ situation without a bodyguard. Cheers for that Phil.

Perhaps the deepest burn of all came from Margaret Comer, not only a certified woman but also a standing member of the Waikato Women’s Refuge board, who asked “if a woman takes her clothes off and walks around in a group of men, what are we supposed to do if one of them tries to touch her?” It’s a grim state of affairs when rape culture in New Zealand has seeped all the way to a figurehead for the Women’s Refuge. The call is coming from inside the house and there’s simply no escaping.

For the millionth head-banging goddamn time: it should not be up to women, stripper or not, to do their best to make sure you don’t touch, lick and throw stuff at them. That’s your problem, not theirs. If you can’t comply, maybe go sit in a corner and stare at the wall like a Magic Eye until you are ready to see women as equal humans who demand the same respect afforded to the average All Black. Better yet, maybe just avoid people altogether if you really can’t help but touch, lick and throw gravel at them.

So that was a solid five days of pure shit for the state of women in this country. Perhaps it’s sign of progress that we’re even able to have these conversations and induce PR-engineered apologies (or even resignations) from the likes of Comer, the Chiefs, and Roberts. But a cooler thing would be if they never said the things in the first place, that their ideas were never even entertained by a culture still drenched in bad sexist ideas.

Because it’s 2016 and yet here we are, still talking about antiquated ideas on the ‘natural’ brutishness of men, and the ‘happy’ woman content with the proverbial glass ceiling. These are the ideas that are snugly nestled in the minds of politicians, Women’s Refuge board members, senior executives and national ambassadors.

Is it really such a big ask to expect these people at the top of their respective fields with all manner of power and influence, maybe try listening to women before speaking about us, touching us, or having sex with us? No?

Is that like a ‘yes’ no or a ‘not now’ no?

Further commentary from The Spinoff on these stories:

Michele A’Court: Stop saying dumb shit, and other top tips for all the Kevins of the world

Alex Casey: It’s 2016 and a rugby exec just found out that strippers are people too

Duncan Greive: Rugby has a giant problem. So why are its most powerful voices silent?

Jane Cherrington: We need to talk about Kevin

And please listen to Alex Casey’s very essential On the Rag podcast

With a bit of luck, the response to Saatchi guru Kevin Roberts’ brain-fart suggests off-the-cuff bullshit about women in business won’t be tolerated so easily any more, writes Michele A’Court

On Saturday, Business Insider (Australia) published an interview with Kevin Roberts, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Executive Chairman and Head Coach at the advertising agency’s parent company, Publicis Groupe, about women in leadership.

In a nutshell, Roberts asserted that “the gender diversity in advertising” debate was over, and that women who argue that gender discrimination is a problem are “making stuff up” in order to “create a profile, and to take applause”. His explanation for the fact that women make up 46.4 per cent of the advertising industry but only 11.5% of its creative directors is that women “lack vertical ambition” and he doesn’t spend “any time” on supposed gender issues at his agencies at all.

Shortly afterwards, Publicis Groupe Chairman & CEO, Maurice Lévy, released an internal statement to employees saying Roberts had been asked to take a leave of absence. A couple of days later, Roberts announced he was bringing forward his retirement from May 2017 to early next month.

I doubt very much this is the way he wanted to go out. A part of me always feels sad when someone who is used to success ends a career on a bum note. Sure, not everything he did was golden (some of the shockers are mentioned here) but there’s a special ignominy in farting just as you take your final bow – that’s all the audience is going to remember, no matter how fabulous the performance was before it.

Plus, I have reservations about people losing their jobs over one particular – albeit spectacular – brain-fart. Serial offenders, sure (I’m looking at a couple of radio and television presenters here) but sometimes I wonder if we’d be better to keep someone like Kevin around and just carry on with a robust discussion. I like a chat.

But if I was the kind of person who kept a record of these things, I might mark this week as a moment when something shifted. A sign that at least some of the off-the-cuff bullshit about women in business wasn’t going to be tolerated quite so easily any more.

I’d like to be right about that. What I’d also like is to talk to Kevin – and all the other Kevins in positions of influence – about some of the things that keep me awake at night. So I’ve written Kevin a letter.

Dear Kevin

This Monday, somewhere in among dropping my granddaughter at daycare and my daughter at the bus stop before hunkering down to write a newspaper column followed by a meeting with a client and ordering flowers for a friend’s 50th and scripting an event for this coming weekend before scooting out to the AGM of the Guild I used to be president of, then heading home via the supermarket to cook a late dinner, I heard you – Kevin Roberts, Worldwide CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi – talking about what women want.

“Go on, Kev,” I thought (forgive me – this is before I read you prefer to be known as KR), “You tell me, because I think us ladies have an inkling that things aren’t quite as they should be but I’ve got fuck-all time to articulate that today, what with this brief break in the rain which suggests I should squeeze in a moment to put a load of washing out before I email that spreadsheet to my accountant for the June/July GST return.”

I am providing you with this context, KR, not because I’m whiny and want you to pull out the world’s smallest violin, but because I want you to know what my day looks like. It looks like a lot of other women’s days – some professional and creative satisfaction, some tedious bullshit, a bit of frustration and the odd glorious moment. Oh, and flashes of guilt for the work that doesn’t get done because of the family responsibilities, and the family stuff I don’t do well enough because of the work. You know how it goes, right? “Can I have a career, and a family?” We all struggle with that one, hey?

Anyway, the reason I’m writing is because – forgive me – I spent a fair bit of Monday wanting to punch you in the face. It was that phrase you used in the Business Insider interview about how women “lack vertical ambition”. It wasn’t just because “vertical ambition” sounded like a pet-name a dude might have for his dude. Though, OK, a little bit. “This is my Vertical Ambition … Touch it.”

Not just that phrase. The whole quote about how you have all these “talented, creative females” but they reach a certain point in their careers – about 10 years in, you said – when you’re ready to put them into leadership positions but they turn around and say they don’t want it. They’d rather stay where they are. And you can’t figure out why.

Later in the interview, you say you think it’s because they don’t want to lead, their ambition is “to be happy”. Leadership just isn’t their thang; ergo, no big deal about close to 90 per cent of your creative directors being men.

I reckon I might be able to throw a bit of light on this. I actually think you do get it – you come close to it when you have an imaginary woman say to you: ‘We are not judging ourselves by those standards that you idiotic dinosaur-like men judge yourself by.” Yes, maybe they don’t want to be a leader like you. But – ponder this, Kevin – they might still want to be leaders. You might need to let go of the idea that women have to be like you to succeed. Maybe we should find out what that looks like.

Because crikey, if women in the advertising industry – any industry – genuinely don’t give two hoots about getting to the top, why are they holding conferences and spending so much energy on addressing these issues and lobbying for change? That should be a clue, right? They could be at home rediscovering nana-handcrafts and being lady-happy. But no, I think they’re making it pretty clear.

Let’s talk about that 10 year thing. That’s not some weird lady use-by-date. They’re fucking tired, Kevin. Of juggling the obvious and dealing with the usual. I’ll make you a list.

We need to stop pretending half the workforce doesn’t step out now and then to create a new worker – or “a baby” as it is commonly known – and ensure that we have accessible, affordable childcare that matches actual working hours. Let’s also get creative about our working hours and make them flexible, so the work gets done but it fits around family needs. Most women have babies at some point; most people have families. We’d be doing something great for all of us.

Let’s also get better at planning. None of that “suddenly needing you to work late” or “finish this over the weekend” and giving someone side-eye because, unlike Brian, she doesn’t have a wife to pick up the slack at home. And speaking of home, let’s all make a serious effort to share the domestic stuff. You know what I’m saying.

Try being consciously aware of listening to women. Like, actually. Stop only thinking it’s a good idea when a man says it. Get over your perception that women talk all the time when in fact they talk far less than men do. There have been studies. And stop criticising their voices – the “vocal fry” complaints when they lower their tone, for example, or the words they use. And don’t tell her she’s being “emotional” like it’s a bad thing. We’re evolving as a species. Let’s try emotional and see where that gets us. At the very least, when you’re in a meeting, try making eye contact with someone who is not a man. And don’t interrupt her.

Bear in mind that women don’t get to move around the world with the same freedom that you do. Late nights, empty carparks, travelling solo – they present different challenges from the ones you deal with. And let’s all stop talking about how she dresses. You guys have nailed it with the shirt/trouser/jacket thing. Well done, you. Just shut up while we do something more interesting. It honestly isn’t about you.

And when women get together to support each other’s ambition for success and achievement, don’t say dumb shit like, “Ooh! Where’s the men’s meeting?” You know where it is. You’re standing in it.

And why should you want to do all this? Because, just like you said, there are all these “talented, creative females” who spend a decade absorbing all that institutional knowledge, getting all that experience, who could go further and do more. And, let’s be honest, you’re tired of shouldering it all. And you drink too much and work too hard and miss out on the kids growing up and get depressed and have heart attacks and die earlier. Or you end up saying stupid things in interviews near the end of your career, and all anyone will say when they hear your name is, “Kevin?  Wasn’t he that guy who said women can’t be leaders?” and it won’t be an entirely accurate encapsulation of what you said but still, it’ll be what they say.

And that’s a tragedy, too.

Yours sincerely,

Michele