How do you feel about articles saying “including women and children”?

5 comments

1. Depends on the context. Usually it’s used in reporting on tragedies. I’m not *too* bothered by it, though at this point I think children are the primary point. The innocent, essentially. Women have proven that they too are capable of bravery and equal to men. We fight in the military and work side-by-side with men every day. We make decisions that affect people. It just implies that we have no say or fight, and that’s not true (fortunately) where we live. But I give people the benefit of the doubt on it.

   It may make more sense to throw the women in in countries where they are given no agency and are treated as if they are children or property. Whatever they were involved in, they truly had no choice before or during. Like a wife of a terrorist who gets caught in the crossfire somewhere etc. She had no choice to leave beforehand.

2. In a lot of situations, the phrase implies that something (usually bad) happened to people who had no role in the decisions that led to that result, or had no physical or cultural power to protect themselves. So it makes sense to say it in those contexts.

3. It’s weird.

   Like am I supposed to feel more empathetic if it’s a woman who dies rather than men? Just say how many people die no need to specify how many women or children

4. I find it slightly annoying. Like women and being grouped with kids, like women need protecting like children in wars and bad situations, so in a way it’s infantalising?

   Also I don’t see why they can’t just say adults and kids? Or just people? Assuming there’s been a tragedy or something who really cares about the victims gender?

5. Depends on the context. In research, historically, women, childrens and elders are often not included in studies. They usually use healthy white males between 18 to 35. So if the research said it included women and children, it means they are doing testing on a wider and more representative population.