Psst! Did you hear the story about the B.C. woman who was misdiagnosed with breast cancer and underwent an unnecessary mastectomy? She was awarded $400,000, but in May this year the B.C. Court of Appeals reduced the amount to $250,000.
In writing the decision to reduce the amount, Justice Ronald Skolrood said that the initial amount was "inordinately high", and the other two judges — both of whom are male — agreed. The reasons for the reduction were that an award that high would need to be justified by “debilitating injuries that have catastrophic effects on the plaintiff’s ability to function.” The three judges agreed that while the woman's injuries were "significant", they did not meet that threshold.
What about the case out of Ireland recently, where a woman who was assaulted by an off-duty soldier saw her attacker walk free from court? The army private, who had been drinking, was shouting homophobic slurs in the street, and the woman asked him to stop, whereupon he grabbed her by the hair, knocked her to the ground, and punched her several times, inflicting a broken nose, bruising, and a concussion. Afterwards he boasted to friends online "Two to put her down and two to put her out."
The soldier initially claimed the woman had instigated the incident, but admitted he was guilty when CCTV footage showed the attack was unprovoked. The judge called the assault "appalling, cowardly, and vicious" and fined the soldier €3,000, but did not sentence him to jail time, citing the man's guilty plea, lack of previous convictions, and the end of his army career if given a custodial sentence.
Closer to home, there was the woman who posted on a Kamloops Facebook page recently about being ripped off at an oil change place in that city when she went there by herself to get her vehicle seen to. She referred to what she called a "female tax"; that is, the propensity of some employees of businesses that deal with cars to charge women more, or charge them for services they don't need, on the assumption that women don't know much about cars and will believe any old rubbish you care to tell them.
The poster probably didn't expect the reaction, which was dozens upon dozens of comments from other women talking about the many times they've been ripped off in similar fashion when they take their vehicles to various places to be serviced. In fairness, there were also comments from some women who praised mechanics in Kamloops for treating them with scrupulous honesty, but the "female tax" is absolutely a thing. Other comments came from women who related instances where they had gone with their husband or boyfriend to buy a car, and the salesperson had talked to the man as if he was the purchaser, or asked the man if he wanted to take the car for a test drive, ignoring the woman who was buying the car, with her own money, for her own use.
These are just a handful of random stories I've seen recently, but they indicate that for all the strides women have made in my lifetime, it's still a world where male judges conclude that a woman losing both breasts, completely unnecessarily, is not a "debilitating injury with catastrophic effects", where a woman who is knocked unconscious and left with a broken nose and concussion is told that a man's career is more important than her pain and suffering, and where there are still a greater than zero number of men who feel that women are fair game to be ripped off (or ignored) when it comes to their cars because — well, because.
A recent Internet exercise asked women which they would rather meet in the woods if they were alone: a bear, or a man they didn't know. Women overwhelmingly chose the bear, because (they said) the bear is a known, predictable danger; the man is an unknown and unpredictable one. And it's a safe bet that the bear won't try to rip them off on an oil change.
