51³Ô¹Ï

I struggled with Sally Feldman¡¯s article, ¡°Post-dungaree decisions¡±, about academic dress (Opinion, 16 October). I know plenty of chic female academics. I wear dresses and am also a radical feminist, and an academic. Perhaps if I had grown up in the 1960s, I would have gone for dungarees in the 1970s too.

Feldman¡¯s claim, that women who were ¡°radicalised in the 1970s¡± have ¡°softened¡± their attitudes towards patriarchy and now wear fashionable clothing, is cheap. I do not think 1970s feminists imagined they¡¯d smash the patriarchy merely by wearing flat shoes and dungarees. To imply so is to reduce a very necessary, important movement that questioned the construction of femininity, to the level of silly women thinking they¡¯d change the world with their clothes ¨C that is, to the same old misogynistic ¡°isn¡¯t it funny how trivial women are?¡± trope.

Wouldn¡¯t it be nice if, instead of talking about how women get it wrong by focusing too much/too little/too superficially on clothes, we could talk about why there are so few of them in the room?

Lucy Allen
Cambridge