Neanderthals

My first wife and I lived for a time, in a country town called Toowoomba. And yes, foreigners, it is as odd as it sounds. She was walking home from college one afternoon when she passed a building site. Now, for a woman, passing a building site in the new millennium is nothing at all. Worksites are surrounded with plywood walls that obscures sightlines from both directions. But back in the seventies, any woman walking past a place where men worked were likely to be subjected to a series of cat calls and wolf whistles. Her response was to indicate just how hard and exactly where she was going to put her umbrella, should they continue. They shut up immediately, probably because most women in those days would just hurry past and try to ignore the raucous Neanderthals.

Today, I suspect, any woman who was subjected to this outrage would march right up to the site office and tear strips off the site supervisor. But these were the days when advertising for an employee of a particular gender was only just made illegal. Building sites around the country resorted to creative methods of ensuring only men applied, the most popular being that applicants must be prepared to work shirtless. It occurred to me that many of the 'younger generation' would not only, not employ the 'wolf whistle', but not recognise it if someone did. I present this as evidence that society is improving, we are getting better at being decent people and recognising where others slip back into Neanderthalism.

I know we have a long way to go. Progress is always slow on a social level, but we are moving in the right direction and that is a good thing to be doing.