Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK
THE DANISH WAY

DANISHWAY

Gender equality and a woman’s right to age

The Local's columnist Jessica Alexander argues that Denmark is ahead of Hollywood when it comes to realistic approaches to women's ageing.

Published: 29 June 2015 20:20 CEST
Gender equality and a woman’s right to age
Maggie Gyllenhaal may have been "too old", but Danish actresses are given more age-realistic roles. Photo: Colourbox
Recently there was an uproar in the news about actress Maggie Gyllenhaal (37) being turned down for a movie role to play the love interest of a man 18 years older than her.  They wanted someone younger.  “It was astonishing to me,” she is reported as saying. “At first it made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then I laughed.”
 
In an article in the Guardian, Helen Mirren, one of the older working actresses in Hollywood, spoke out about Gyllenhaal’s snub and how she found today’s casting choices “ridiculous”. The age discrepancy between men and women is nothing short of outrageous. We all watched as James Bond became more geriatric and yet his girlfriends continued to get younger and younger. It does make one ask: do men and women have equal rights to age?
 
 
I remember the first time I started watching Danish films and TV programmes and distinctly noticing how odd it seemed that there were “older” women cast in many roles, even sexy ones. When I think about my reaction now, it’s laughable. These were not older women, but rather “normally” aged women for the parts they were playing. I had gotten so used to watching females with scarcely a wrinkle of experience playing the parts of older women that I had never even thought to question it.  It seemed completely reasonable that someone with a high flying career, three kids and a much older husband could also pass for a college sorority sister. That was just what success looked like, right? 
 
And so I started doing some research into the question of equality of the sexes across countries. In the world Economic Forum’s gender inequality index from 2014, Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries take the top spots worldwide for having the least gender inequality. The US lands at number 20 and the UK at 26. Italy, a country that has notoriously been run by Silvio Berlusconi, an old man who slept with numerous under-aged women, lands not surprisingly, in position 69.
 
What I wonder is this: does gender equality also extend to a woman’s right to age? Is Denmark better at promoting equal ageing rights through media, film and societal messages than other countries? And if so, could this be another reason why they are consistently near the top of the charts in happiness? 
 
“I think in Denmark we use ‘older’ women in film because otherwise it wouldn’t be realistic. For us it’s important to identify with something as real rather than a ‘dream’. We can’t teach our children to value authenticity and find beauty in reality if we show them unreal things,” Iben Sandahl, a Danish psychotherapist and my co-author on ‘The Danish Way of Parenting: A Guide to Raising the Happiest Kids in the World,’ said.
 
“We all get old, men and women, and that’s ok!” she added. 
 
Worldwide plastic surgery statistics over the last years shows the top 25 countries for number of procedures annually. Denmark never even makes the list.  Plastic surgery may be making us look younger, but is it really making people happier? And are women more motivated to go under the knife than men because getting old is seen as unsuccessful?  How many images are we seeing of middle-aged women that would make us think otherwise? 
 
So the next time you see a film where the age of the woman and the age of the man are wildly different (and that isn’t the plot line) please make a note of it. Talk about it with your kids. Talk about it with your partner. This is gender inequality and it has insidious effects. Maybe if we start being more aware of it ourselves, we can better teach our kids to “keep it real” and see more beauty in reality. They might just grow up to be happier for it.
 
Jessica AlexanderJessica Alexander is an American author who co-wrote 'The Danish Way of Parenting: A Guide to Raising the Happiest Kids in the World'. She has been married to a Dane for over 13 years and has always been fascinated by cultural differences. She speaks four languages and currently lives in Rome with her husband and two children. Her book can be purchased via Amazon and Saxo. 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

DANISHWAY

Is the Danish concept of free play in danger?

Parenting expert Jessica Alexander worries that even in Denmark, where play is seen as a necessary part of a child’s life, free play could be pushed out by a focus on competitiveness.

Published: 14 June 2016 11:09 CEST
Is the Danish concept of free play in danger?
Can 'play' be packaged and sold? Photo: famveldman /Iris/Scanpix
I recently took a tour around the International School of Billund, Denmark which is backed by the Lego Foundation and situated in the Lego capital of the world, so to speak. 
 
For those who don’t know, Lego is a Danish brand and it is a combination of the words 'leg godt' or ‘play well’. It’s one of the building blocks of Denmark’s firm belief that children need a lot of unstructured playtime to be healthy.
 
Rows and rows of Lego-based learning could be seen throughout the school along with tinkering walls, creative corners and design centres where kids were making clothes in Project Runway style rooms as part of their after-school programming. The school is built on a philosophy of learning through play, and teachers strive to incorporate play and creativity into the curriculum at every stage, from kindergarten through students' early teens. This is special even for Denmark, where play is seen as a necessary part of a child’s life.
 
While I was there, I ran into a group of Harvard researchers who were working together with teachers to investigate what it means to put play at the heart of a school’s curriculum and how one measures this.  The idea is to create an educational framework and tools that can be used by other educators interested in making learning more playful. 
 
While I think this research is truly fascinating, I also feel a little bit nervous about it.
 
When my book ‘The Danish Way of Parenting’ was first released, I did several interviews with my co-author about play and what the future might look like in countries where free play had declined in favour of scheduled, adult-led activities. 
 
Some studies, for example, show that the amount of a child’s free play in America has dropped 50 percent since the 1950s just to put it in perspective.
 
One thing I kept repeating in these interviews was my fear that free play might one day become an oxymoron or commercialized. I was afraid that, as soon as it was proven to be serious learning, someone would surely want to measure it, package it and ultimately sell it. 
 
Let me say that the International School of Billund is not interested in selling its findings or quantifying the “learning results” for any toy or technique. School officials know that they are investigating something that is almost inherently unmeasurable, but they believe that it’s worth it if it empowers children to see learning as a pleasurable lifelong pursuit. I think what they are doing is very interesting and the school is brilliant.
 
My concern, however, is that at some point, somebody will try to quantify the concept of “play” and sell it. And the idea of charging for play feels a bit like selling an overpriced apple and labelling it as a diet product. It defeats what should just be a natural healthy part of life, not a specialized technique or super food. 
 
I can already foresee parents cutting back on the violin, Chinese and organic cupcake making lessons to enrol their kids in free play courses where children could get score cards on how much their social skills, negotiation and empathy capabilities increase. Where they can get graded for their collaboration, self-control and resiliency. All of these things, unfortunately, completely defeat the purpose of why play is so good in the first place. 
 
Free play is a child’s way of making sense of their worlds. It’s their way of coping with anxiety and expressing themselves and feeling in control of their own destiny. This is where some of their sense of self-esteem gets developed and this can’t be controlled, coaxed or measured by an adult. 
 
I often wonder if that competitive edge everyone wants to buy for their kids is cutting away at the very self-esteem we want to build up. What if kids really just need more freedom to feel in control of their own lives?
 
All of this pressure is coming from an ever increasingly competitive society. It’s not coming from kids. They are just mirroring what we want. If we could relax ourselves, sand down our competitive edges, let kids be kids and trust them more to trust in themselves, we might see a drop in anxiety and a true increase in happiness down the line. And wouldn’t those be measurable results we could be proud of?
 
Jessica AlexanderJessica Alexander is an American author who co-wrote 'The Danish Way of Parenting: A Guide to Raising the Happiest Kids in the World'. She has been married to a Dane for over 13 years and has always been fascinated by cultural differences. She speaks four languages and currently lives in Rome with her husband and two children. Her book can be purchased via Amazon and Saxo. 
SHOW COMMENTS