When they cater for women,even the menu is misogynist

It was midnight at Canberra’s Kingston Hotel. Our table was littered with half-masticated packets of beef jerky and three empty bottles of middling champagne. The Labor backbencher at the neighbouring table and his pilgrimage of selfie-hunting baby staffers had finally tired of one another. An attempt to annex The Good Guardian Josh (The Guardian employs numerous men called Josh,of varying amusement value) had failed.

So it was just us ladies,refugees from a federal budget week women’s dinner gone horribly wrong.

There are entire weeks of my life where the food trudges past in an uninspiring blur. At one charity (networking) gala or dinner lecture after another,the sweet,geeky kids waitering their way through university deposit a white meat or a red meat option alternately around the table. The most exciting part of the culinary experience is the moment when everyone at the table realises from the sequence which option they are about to receive.

A quiet desperation descends. Friends and couples exert emotional blackmail to obtain their preferred meals. Disappointed strangers tentatively ask others whether they might like to swap. A couple of courses and some kind of dessert later,everyone’s managed to assemble a bellyful. It’s rarely a superlative meal but it is,generally at least,satiating.

But not on this night. In planning a dinner for a couple of hundred people,aimed in particular at women,to celebrate female leadership and discuss the awesome prospect of a feminine future,someone had decided that women don’t eat. Not canapés. Not entrees. And for main,not options. A palm-sized serving of fish and broad beans was placed in front of everyone alike.

Now,the ladies at my table are generally not ones to see discrimination in every chance and happenstance. But we’d all come straight from long days at busy jobs and,after a couple of glasses of Prosecco with nothing to line the stomach,our table was hungry and already pretty hilarious when the lean cuisine arrived. Nobody,we fumed,would’ve dared to cater a male-dominated banking dinner on ballerina rations;this was clearly chicken feed for a room full of chicks. Menu misogyny.

So while Katy Gallagher,the Minister for Women and Assistant Minister for Finance,was on stage telling us that gender was baked into the federal budget,we were raiding bread rolls to meet our baked calorie budget. Gender was the topic of the night and some of its assumptions were plated up in front of us.

The dinner reminded me of anarticle in The Economist on the economics of thinness. In the rich world,the author finds,there is a correlation between being thin and earning more,which applies mostly to women but not men;“rich women are much thinner than poor women but rich men are about as fat as poor men”. The wage premium is so pronounced that a woman “might find it almost as valuable to lose weight as she would to gain additional education”. It is assumed that successful women will look a certain way. And the assumption comes from women as much as from men.

While the women’s magazine dieting tips of the past are now considered inappropriate,with modern discussions focusing on health,the reality has not changed. In fact,you could say it’s become worse:we’re no longer allowed to admit that we’re hungering to fit a social ideal.

But beauty has become the modern woman’s second or third job,an addition to career and children. While using her brain to climb the corporate ladder,she starves it to fit the corporate template. Long hours at the office add to hours of grooming in the mornings and on weekends. Fitness might be health and me-time,but it is also an economic necessity.

Meanwhile,fun is put on hold because fun things are often fattening. Just like Ginger Rogers,who executed complex cinematic dance routines with Fred Astaire – but backwards and in heels – career women are doing everything men do plus extra hours,on a diet. To add insult to injury,like the housewives of old who were advised to make themselves fresh to greet their husbands after a day of hard work around the house,the modern career woman pretends to her female peers that her figure comes naturally,lest she be judged as a bad feminist for her vanity.

Highly successful men sometimes cultivate a scruffy look as a kind of flex – they are so powerful,they can look like hobos and be considered rakish. But if a woman were to neglect all that “vain” maintenance,she would also be judged unkempt and uncorporate. And women notice that more than men. Of course,it’s also frowned upon to be too well turned out – what a show pony! If she doesn’t get Botox,she’s judged for looking old;if she does,and it shows,she’s judged for that.

All this from a piece of fish? Damn right. The moment the organisers chose that measly menu they were unwittingly part of this chain of women making decisions and judgments that restrict each other’s choices.

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It judges those who work “too much” while raising children,or those who choose to take time out to raise children because,in the words of this year’sWomen’s Budget Statement,this limits their “scope for greater participation in the paid labour force and in leadership roles”. It condemns women for the jobs they choose (caring roles are,it seems,too gender-conforming) but also for leading with the same toughness that a man in the same position uses to cut his path.

That fish was feminism stuck in an unhelpful paradigm. My table decided it was time to go look for red meat. If that’s the patriarchy,we’ll make a meal of it,rather than grow feeble on matriarchal menu misogyny.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.