The forgotten homosexuals

Homosexual women – lesbians – often face more discrimination than their male counterparts. This is because of their gender, as much as because of their sexual orientation. Women earn less on average than their male colleagues. They still face obstacles in building successful careers. There are almost no women in many positions of management. Often, they have to manage their career and family simultaneously, as single mothers, without receiving the necessary financial or moral support from society.

For centuries, women were excluded from social and political life – for example, they only received full suffrage in Austria in 1918. They had to stay pretty at home, serving their husbands, or were only in charge of the household and of the children. This is still the case in many countries, where women have no right to determine their own destiny – their fathers, brothers, husbands and sons decide for them.

In a society dominated by men, lesbians are even less visible than heterosexual women. They are defamed as “tomboys”, their femininity denied. A common prejudice is that, in reality, they wish to be men, just as gay people are often claimed to, in reality, desire to be women.