Gender-flipping challenges what we all consider 'normal'

There’s a curious term used in the world of gender equity and that is gender-flipping. Disruptive designers take images of semi-naked women in advertisements and replace them with semi-naked men in the same pose. The result is either hilarious or grotesque. Or both.

As a social scientist and corporate advisor, my personal crusade is to 'flip' gender language.

For example, it's an astonishing fact that 2.3 million Australian women aged over 15 have been victims of rape. Gender-flipping that we should say, men have committed 2.3 million rapes in Australia. In that example, women are not identified as victims, men are identified as perpetrators.

Gender-flipping highlights unconscious bias and stimulates a crucial shift in gender attitudes. Let's start talking about masculine advantage. Mostly we hear about the disadvantage to women in society and particularly in the workplace. Let’s flip that and talk about the advantage men enjoy.

In Australia, more than 50 women are killed by their partners every year. Put like that it identifies women as the victims. Let’s gender-flip it and say, this year more than 50 men have killed their partners, murdered the very people they were supposed to love the most.

Business and political leaders are very careful not to be seen as anti-woman, but we need to gender-flip that too and point out that they are currently pro-man. Male leaders sometimes refer to women as under-represented in the workforce or in the parliament. Gender-flipping it, we would say that men are over-represented, that there are too many men in parliament.

When we put it that way, the men themselves can start to comprehend the advantage they enjoy: ‘chaps you’re over-represented in our political party, so why don’t you get together and work out who’s going to resign to get the balance right?’ It will, of course, appear unthinkable. But why should it be any less unthinkable to disadvantage women?

Gender-flipping is a simple device in a very serious battle against gender inequity. But it produces light bulb moments. And we could use a bit more illumination in the dark recesses of gender inequity.

So in conclusion, men and women are different. They see the same world through very different yet equally valid eyes. There is no, and should never be, gender equality. There is, and should always be, true, separate, gender difference. And within a celebration of that difference, we must work towards gender equity. The merit argument used by businessmen and male politicians only has purchase in a world of equal opportunity, in a world of gender equity.

Gender equity has to be fought for in a masculine world – fought for by men and fought for by women. And the fight can only be won if the attitudes – those 'normal' everyday attitudes – are made to change.

So let's start by gender-flipping our language and our statistics.

 Dr Ross is author of The Man Problem published by Palgrave Macmillan (New York).