Learning slowly

Ordinary people have few problems accepting gender equality as normal. With women comprising at least half of ordinary people why should it be otherwise?

But, as Chloe Oakshett’s 
letter (21 May) indicates, the slow learners in gender equality are institutions and formal bodies of people – in this case the Speculative Society, whatever it is, though its name suggests it
is a Victorian institutional 
leftover, as in its apparent 
attitude here.

We’ve had the opposition to women taking office in the Kirk, the Church of England only recently deigning to dignify women as bishops.

Golf clubs have generally only “come in from the cold” in 
recent years.

Politics has recently opened its portals, and if this was an article I was being paid for rather than a letter I am sure I could catalogue several other instances of the same.

A notable point is, though, that perhaps ordinary people are regularly under-rated when it comes to enlightened ideas and attitudes and it isn’t the group mentality of organisations and institutions that are the cultural leaders at all.

Something like the Letters columns in the newspapers, I could hint …

Ian Johnstone

Forman Drive

Peterhead