I think you're right on the money there, Clive - possibly on the appalling lack of it, if we're really working class.
Actually, 'working class' is to some extent an outmoded term, with its roots in Marxist and post-Marxist social analyses. Nevertheless a sort of ethos remains in which those who have less access to society's honey pots rally round with pride in having dirty hands and not being la-di-da. Mea culpa.
There have been genuine efforts to level the playing field of education, with sad results. Oxbridge oozes with toffs. Very nice toffs they are, too, but the point that might almost bring this post in line with the origin of the thread is that social groups, castes and classes are resistant to the idea of social mobility, perhaps particularly when introduced from without.
So now I irresponsibly speculate that a huge part of the under-achieving sectors of society are under-achievers in terms of universal standards, but perhaps not so in terms of where they set their sights and the level to which they themselves expect to aspire. I think the entire distaff community can be included there.
I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I've submitted poetry to a print magazine - possibly even Homer Simpson's hand. (It's the counting that's the problem). The success rate is effectively zero, which I suppose isn't encouraging.
Poor lambs we are.
Getting back to the wimmin thing - from Scandinavia it really does look as though Anglo-Saxon feminism is a bit stone-age. You could blame the -ism, if it weren't too slippery to catch. I'm neither female nor feminist, so all my reference is second-hand, but it really does look as though one major task for anyone who's interested in steering the ship towards some much-needed (where do all these hyphens come from?) parity, is to stop assuming the rôle, i.e. the gender rôle of downtreader and downtrodden or mum and dad and on and on. It isn't easy. I can't do it.
Anway, I think what I've concluded here is that women try less because they don't expect to be anything. It's nothing like as simple as snapping out of it, either.
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