by Clare Callow

Created on: February 05, 2009

First, a note on 'gender discrimination'.

In my experience, the words 'gender discrimination' generally startle people into exclamations of how extreme feminists have ruined the world for everyone. This is usually voiced because of a gut-clenching fear that some secret society is working in the background to emasculate men and create some comic-book Amazonian paradise. For those particular readers, rest easy in the knowledge that the following to upset your stomach: all it talks about is sex (woohoo!), clothes, cooking and night-time. Nothing too confronting.

In fact, what I describe is the general experience of every human being. Gender discrimination sucks for everyone. (That should be put on a t-shirt somewhere.)

I am the same as everyone else, in that I face gender discrimination every day. The only possible difference is that, as a woman and a thinker, I notice it more.

I can't remember when I first got annoyed by something sexist that came my way. Childhood years are inevitably as full of every '-ism' your classmates can find, so they don't particularly count. I suppose I began to notice sexism when I began to notice everything else that annoyed me - when I was a teenager.

I noticed that I was the one who was supposed to be in charge of sex.

How much does that suck? Just when every hormone in your body is urging you to go crazy, and suddenly you realise that you are the one who is supposed to make The Decision. Teenage girls aren't allowed to be careless and go out to sow their wild oats; similarly, teenaged boys aren't allowed to hold on to their virginity (and their privacy) until they decide the time is right. To me, this didn't make sense, and when I come across a rule that doesn't make sense it annoys me terribly.

The next time I realised my gender was controlling my life was when I began working, more specifically when I filed my first tax return. While my male friends had spent diddly-squat on clothes and other items for work, the majority of my wardrobe had been taken up by expensive work clothes and even more expensive work shoes. Even though they were things I would wear only for work (my personal style doesn't stretch as far as wearing skirt-suits when I'm hanging around a cafe) I couldn't claim any of their expense for tax. Suck? Big time.

I began to look at some of these basic cost-of-living differences after that. My male friends, in order to keep up their appearance, spent very little on hair products and clothes, felt comfortable with only a

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