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Why are women so much harder on each other

Tory Maguire

by Tory Maguire

09 Aug 11:20am

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Filed under: Azaria Chamberlain, Juries, Lindy Chamberlain, Women

58 comments

For anyone born before about 1978 the Azaria Chamberlain case will never lose its fascination - I could read about it all day.

So many people convicted this woman. Lindy Chamberlain with her husband Michael outside court in 1982.

But the thing that so clearly stands out in today’s News Ltd report about the “Chamberlain files” is that the women jurors in the 1982 murder trial of Lindy Chamberlain were so much harder on her than the men.

According to The Daily Telegraph: “The three women - a teacher and two housewives - all voted for conviction while at least four of the nine men had to be persuaded that she was guilty.”

One woman even said that while she would vote for conviction it was “hard to accept Mrs C did it”.

Movies, TV mini-series an countless millions of words have been written about why so many people thought Lindy Chamberlain had killed her own baby.

But the jury notes that have come to light 30 years after Azaria confirm the collective wisdom that women really couldn’t cope with Lindy’s outwardly composed response to the disappearance of her daughter.

If anyone deserves sympathy it is someone who’s baby has just been nabbed by a dingo. But Australian women were very quick to judge.

We still do it all the time, we’re our own and each others worst critics. But seeing laid bare in 30-year-old jury notes proves it.

Why do we do it to ourselves.

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58 comments

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    • dg says:

      11:31am | 09/08/10

      how amazing that this 30 year old story can capture our imagination still.I reckon they were both a little odd- far too composed and aloof

      Reply

    • BK says:

      04:35pm | 09/08/10

      So it’s a case of us being too hard on stoics, not women. Our society tends to encourage people to express their emotions and condemn those who appear more restrained. Each to their own…

    • OldGirl says:

      11:47am | 09/08/10

      At the time this occurred with Lindy Chamberlain I doubt there was a woman in Australia who did not believe she did it. You have to remember manipulation by the press is not a new event and we were daily bombarded with vision of a seemingly cool Lindy dressed up to the 9’s, looking more like a super model then a grieving mum. The whole story sounded fishy. The child was dressed in black so we were told, a rather strange choice of outfit for those times for such a new baby. Women were talking about it everywhere you went. I feel sorry for the jurors I hope there names are not released. They voted   for what they believed to be true. And they were not alone in thinking Lindy was guilty. They have since proved everyone wrong

      Reply

    • Mayday says:

      12:38pm | 09/08/10

      Sorry to burst your bubble Old Girl but this woman believed she was innocent and I am an atheist.

      If you looked at the facts presented and did some critically analysis it was highly probable the dingo did it and eventually most fair minded people agreed.

      My memory at the time was how quickly people judged because of their religious conviction, strange dress and lack of public bereavement.

      I was ashamed to be a woman and an atheist at the time but the truth came out eventually and Mrs Chamberlain was compensated.

      Your point Tory is well stated and Old Girl is a typical example of a woman lacking in empathy and compassion for a fellow human being in shocking circumstances.
      Women are their worst own enemies and I for one don’t know why?

    • John A Neve says:

      01:17pm | 09/08/10

      Mayday,

      Says “it was highly probable the dingo did it”!! Have you thought this through Mayday?
      The height of a dingo, the ground clearance between it’s jaw and the ground. To be able to run with 8-10 Kilos in it’s mouth and the instinctive reaction to flee when chased?
      Who or whatever did the deed, a dingo certainly did not.

    • Cinamin says:

      03:52pm | 09/08/10

      Mayday, I to was alive at the time, the women of Australia had empathy as I sure Old Girl did but they had it for the child. I still to this day do not believe Lindy Chamberlain was innocent nor will I ever.

    • John A Neve says:

      06:53pm | 09/08/10

      Mayday,
      Most, if not all the “attacks” on Fraser were nip and runs. There have been worse bites in our streets by local pets.
      If you lived up here you’d know the tourists in 4x4’s are more dangerous than the Dingos.
      However, I note you failed to address my questions!! So I’ll ask again, what is the distance between a Dingos mouth and the ground?
      What do you think is the average weight of a full grown Dingo?

    • TheRealDave says:

      07:23pm | 09/08/10

      @John…umm 9 year old Clinton Gages parents would beg to differ. After the poor little bugger was killed by dingo’s on Fraser Island in 2001

    • Mayday says:

      08:25pm | 09/08/10

      John A Neve

      What is the distance between the two links below regarding the Coroner’s report and the nine year old boy killed by dingo’s on Fraser Island?
      Had you gone the distance and actually read these facts you may be more inclined to have something worthwhile to add to the discussion?

    • acotrel says:

      06:59am | 10/08/10

      John A Neve,

      That’s what I like - an expert witness!

    • Harriet says:

      12:01pm | 09/08/10

      The Liberal launch was so boring the Telegraph headlines a 30 year old story.

      Reply

    • Lola says:

      01:47pm | 09/08/10

      LOL excellent insight grin

    • ibast says:

      12:15pm | 09/08/10

      It’s been know for a long time that women are much harder on other women when it comes to rape cases.  they are much likely to believe the “she was asking for it” implication.

      Reply

    • Sweet Choc says:

      12:49am | 10/08/10

      That “women are harder on other women” is a cliché that gets tossed around and some, like ibast, come to believe in it. Believers then view all female behaviour through those tainted glasses. Please open your eyes and look around at all the male bickering and fist fights and wars. I rest my case. Viva women!

    • PaulB says:

      05:56am | 10/08/10

      I work as a nurse among a mostly female population.  Women are absolutely feral to each other.  Everyone wants to look like the best and cleverest, and will rip their colleagues to shreds to prove it.  The males in the profession generally don’t behave like this.

    • acotrel says:

      07:15am | 10/08/10

      PaulB, I know of an instance where a senior nurse used aspects of a juniors personal life against her,  when disciplining her.  Absolutely bloody unforgivable!

    • stephen says:

      12:33pm | 09/08/10

      I’d like to know how the whole prosecution team, including a very famous QC who was apparently running the whole show, concluded that the goo under the dashboard was human blood, when if fact it was an automotive sealant.
      In 1978, i presume lawyers knew the difference ? Isn’t any physical evidence in a trial of the first importance ?

      Reply

    • Criminologist says:

      03:15pm | 09/08/10

      The presumptive test gives off the same indication for blood as it does rust proofing (as I understood the substance to be) and until this time, this was not known.

    • KH says:

      12:38pm | 09/08/10

      It reminds me of the McCann case - the composure of the mother seems to be a real problem for some people.  Well, some people just don’t go into public displays of emotion.  There isn’t anything wrong with that, it just isn’t what most people would be like, and thus they project guilt onto someone who doesn’t act like them.  I imagine it would be difficult to have a hundred cameras aimed in your direction when you haven’t courted it - everyone’s response to that will be different, and each response is equally valid and shouldn’t be confused with ‘evidence’.

      Reply

    • ibast says:

      12:55pm | 09/08/10

      Your right.  The general public expect people to behave a particular after an incident like this and when they don’t they are suspicious.  I remember people were a little suspicious of Joanne Lees at the time Peter Falconio went missing.  It turn out she was heavily sedated when she fronted the media. 

    • ej says:

      01:54pm | 09/08/10

      I agree. I am not big on public displays of emotion and I can’t imagine myself weeping and wailing in front of the cameras, it is just not the sort of thing I would do. People react in all different ways, you can’t judge a person’s guilt or innocence based on a 10 second sound bite on the TV. But people do judge I know. I’d better start practising my crocodile tears in case I am ever the suspect in the killing of a family member.

    • Muttley says:

      03:59pm | 09/08/10

      The reasons the McCanns attracted so much negativity came from the fact they left their children unattended to go to dinner. Not the smartest thing to do, and now they will bear the guilt of it for the rest of their lives.

    • Gazza says:

      01:12pm | 09/08/10

      I can tell you the real issue is why is it that jurors choices are made public. That the point over the judical system we use.

      Just imagine Lindy Chamberlain now want to gets even? ( not that anything suggests she would) but you get my point.

      Reply

    • Kelly says:

      01:41pm | 09/08/10

      Huh? Just as many men were as hard on Lindy Chamberlin as women were. Maybe not in the jury room, but through soceity at large. Am I the only one that’s seen pictures of men standing outside the courthouse with signs calling for capital punishment?
      The case was a travesty of justice anyway you look at it but why this focus on ‘the sisterhood’? 

      Furthermore, can’t a woman voice her opinion, even if it differs to another woman’s? Women make up at least half of the population (give or take) and therefore, will never get 100 per cent agreement on anything.

      How many blokes out there can not stand Tony Abbott yet when they talk about how much they disagree with him, there’s no shouts about ditching ‘the blokes club’?

      Reply

    • Colleen A says:

      01:44pm | 09/08/10

      John A Neve

      Have you seen the dingos at Healesville Sanctuary? They are very large dogs, not unlike the size of an alsatian. I’d always thought that dingos were small too until I saw them

      Reply

    • John A Neve says:

      01:56pm | 09/08/10

      Colleen A,
      In answer to your question; Yes, I’ve spent a lot of time in Healesville and been to the sanctuary many times. Both before and after tasting the Yarra Valley wines.
      But back to Dingos, on average they are nowhere near as large as a GS, even those that are some what taller than the norm aren’t big boned. Weight I’d suggest, 20-30 Kilos.
      I stand by my earlier post.

    • ej says:

      01:58pm | 09/08/10

      I was about 4 years old when this all happened but I remember it well because it was probably the first ‘news’ item that caught my attention. I remember asking my mum: “Why is that lady in trouble for killing her baby? It was her baby, can’t she kill it if she wants to?”. My mum was absoutely horrified and told me that you can’t go around killing babies, even if they are yours. It didn’t make sense to me at all, I couldn’t see the big deal! I was a somewhat macarbe child.

      Reply

    • Paul Neri says:

      02:05pm | 09/08/10

      I remember saying to me mum that writing in the Visitors Book at Ayres Rock “The dingo took my baby” didn’t seem to be the thing a genuinely grieving mother would do - it seemed gauche. Me mum agreed and we agreed she probably did it. We were wrong.

      Reply

    • mailman says:

      02:08pm | 09/08/10

      there is no better way to distance yourself from something than to attack it. At the time most females would have felt that they, themselves, would be judged if they felt any empathy with Lindy. If females saw themselves as nurturers and carers then the only way out was to judge and condemn. Unfortunately Lindy found little nurturing and care at the time.

      Reply

    • ej says:

      02:41pm | 09/08/10

      Agree entirely. Also it is not just women who do this to other women. Men also do it to men by judging and condeming men who do conform to certain stereotypes of masculinity.

    • preciouspress says:

      02:38pm | 09/08/10

      So much for feminine intuition! Perhaps fortunate for the likes of LIndy that it’s still, although only just, a man’s world.

      Reply

    • Ray Graham says:

      02:40pm | 09/08/10

      Why jump to the conclusion that women are harder on each other. The more rational and scarier conclusion would be that womens opinion is more likely to be decided by emotion rather than facts. Whereas men are able to discern the facts from the emotion.

      Your ‘harder on each other’ is on-going pandering to how women do it tough and is a cop out. With subject relevence your rationale succinctly represents the emotion rather than the fact.

      Unfortunately this extends across the board to employment and management. My work experience is that women even in the work environment cannot separate the emotion from the fact, nor the prioritising of critical issues ie that is in a critical path to achieve outcomes, through sorting the hay from the chaf. In fact this is the more pertinent reason why there is a deficiency in female CEOs rather the the ‘discrimination’ that’s bandied about.

      This is probably a too confronting analysis to sit comfortable in our society, which has bought the misrepresentative conformative spin presently injected on our mentality in support of women.

      Above all, I think the Lindy Chamberlin saga needs to be laid to rest in respect to the demise of the infant child. I certainly would not tolerate on-going public ingestion if it were my child.

      Reply

    • Shane says:

      03:15pm | 09/08/10

      Haha, thanks for the laugh Ray! As if men don’t make decision based on emotion or that women lack the ability to base a decision on facts. What a load of tripe.
      Whatkind of world do you live in, Ray? I guess it doesn’t really matter though. The main thing is never letting you out into the real one.

    • Ray Graham says:

      04:20pm | 09/08/10

      Shane, shame about the truth. It usually strikes a chord.
      My kind of world? Contemporary Australia. Women are living in a world of self delusion as per the spin aforementioned.

      Gillard is probably the easiest example of a poor decision maker, but the jury is out on her emotion which is as well disguised as her grasp of big picture issues. A master of spin, who cannot sort the critical issues from the irrelevent, smoke screened with more handouts (like $8,000 to teachers for ‘performance’). Nothing like focussing on the infrastructure for the future.

      Wonder whether this bonus means getting the same education outcome for boys as we do for girls. Nah that would be too sensible. Rather blame the boys for an engineered outcome not of their doing, than acknowledge the culpable social intentions through the 70s,80s and 90s to advance girls and stuff the boys. 

      Meanwhile back on the topic, the same loyalty women exhibit to other women, comes to the forefront in divorce, where loyalty and integrity is taken over by female retribution and self coveting financial and sibling gain. Goes with the nature of the beast.

    • Shaun Newman says:

      03:16pm | 09/08/10

      I seem to remember that the parents were part of some religious cult which bought them under suspicion because Azaria was supposed to mean something like human sacrifice, I may be wrong but that is the way I remember it.

      Reply

    • Simonious says:

      04:00pm | 09/08/10

      Shaun the human sacrifice meaning was just one of the myths bandied about at the time. Azaria in hebrew means “god helps” and i would bet they may have got it from the hebrew meaning as the “cult “you mentioned they belonged to was the “seventh day adventist”, a mainstream church with many followers. That was another load of crap made up about this family.

      On another note it is good to see John A Neve is such an expert on Dingos, Well John I have seen a Dingo drag a sheep 3 kms so taking a 2 year old would be no problem. Why cant pig headed people like you just accept you could of been wrong and she was telling the truth all along. If Lindy Chamberlain was your daughter you would be blaming the bloody dingo.

    • Eric says:

      03:29pm | 09/08/10

      Maybe women know more about women than men do.

      Reply

    • Chris says:

      03:29pm | 09/08/10

      At the time that this occurred I had a long discussion with a professional ranger at Uluru and then further discussions with local people who knew the habits of dingoes. Not one of them was of the opinion that a dingo had taken the baby - and they still hold that belief today.
      The problem was that there was no law allowing a mother to claim “post-partum depression” which would have given Mrs Chamberlain a defence.
      Finding a baby jacket six years later proved nothing but allowed a challenge on the grounds that there was no some ‘doubt’.  If this case had been brought under Scottish law rather than our received English the verdict would almost certainly have been ‘not proven’ and would still stand today.

      Reply

    • Razor says:

      04:35pm | 09/08/10

      Takes one to know one, i suppose.

      I thought she had done it from day one and still do.

      Reply

    • Stuart B says:

      04:54pm | 09/08/10

      One thing still sticks in my mind today. That is the Ray Martin interview on 60 minutes in about 1990 with Lindy Chamberlain’s son. He was probably in his early teens at that stage and was very very coy about the whole affair. No one was in sight during the interview, it was just Ray and Lindy’s son. It confirmed for me that Lindy was not responsible for Azaria’s death (nor was a dingo responsible), but she was covering up for a very unfortunate accident orchestrated by the son. For crying out loud people, there was Azaria’s blood found in the family car.

      Reply

    • martinX says:

      10:52pm | 09/08/10

      “For crying out loud people, there was Azaria’s blood found in the family car.” Nope - they found “blood” in the car (no DNA testing back then), which later turned out not to be blood at all.

      Forensic science is full of traps and pitfalls. It’s not all CSI.

    • Nicky G says:

      01:45am | 10/08/10

      The forensic evidence has been thoroughly discredited.

    • Dermott says:

      05:09pm | 09/08/10

      It’s interesting here to read the half-baked theories of people who think they know what happened. This was a case I studied last year in a course unit related to miscarriages of justice. If you actually read the court transcripts, the testimony of the witnesses etc, it is easy to determine the only credible scenario is the one initially claimed by the parents.
      Media-truths, half-truths and urban myths pervade this story though that it’s most likely people will continue to believe what they will believe, and for the most absurd of reasons - like the blood in the car story, the black dress story, the meaning of the name, the accusations against the brothers etc.

      Reply

    • Joolz says:

      06:52pm | 09/08/10

      In this case I think it’s jealousy that Chamberlain had lost her infant on a holiday, the jurors probably hadn’t been on one for a while, and Michael was hot.

      Reply

    • nosthow says:

      07:11pm | 09/08/10

      What a travesty of justice this was. Many top legal people should hang their heads in shame given their total incompetance as should many of the so called forensic “experts”. Shame on them all !

      Reply

    • KJG says:

      07:27pm | 09/08/10

      Lindy apparently donated all the letters that she received from the general public, whilst in jail, to the National Library.  I remember a journalist friend, who was researching the Chamberlain case many years on, stating how fascinating it was to read these letters as they gave a real insight into the story.  The insight was not necessarily about Lindy but about the psyche of the Australian public.

      The ‘outback’ has continually been the landscape for mythology.  It represents an ‘other’ and therefore attracts fear.  The media, at the time of the Chamberlain case, took full advantage of this backdrop.  The story generated international interest and took on a life of its own.  Rumours became truths, discriminations were let loose and shoddy policing was exposed.

      In the end it is the belief by much of the public that the truth was never told that still breathes life into this case.  There was only one witness and she told her story - and after much trauma a court finally found her not guilty.  If we cannot believe the victim (a mother who has lost her child is the epitome of a victim) nor the judicial system, we are lost.

      Reply

    • loz says:

      08:51pm | 09/08/10

      I remember camping at the Ayers Rock camp site years ago and zipping the tent to hide from the dingoes. They were running around the tents and knocking over the rubbish bins. Boy, was I relieved when my fellow campers arrived back later that night. Of course they had no idea what they had missed.

      Reply

    • convinced says:

      07:05am | 12/08/10

      @loz - I stayed in the same camping ground in 1975 on a school trip and we never saw or heard a dingo or any other canine in the vicinity.

      The only 4 legged creatures we encountered were a plague of hopping mice…..that invaded our tents and coach,, and were an annoying distraction at meal times and when we were trying to sleep!

      One image of the trial summed up my thoughts on the trial - a cartoon by Tandberg which depicted Ayers Rock with a Dingo atop.. and two words “Not Guilty!”  Still rings true to me today…take all the emotive and mythological crap away and there were/are to many contradictions in the evidence to convict a Dingo.

    • Dave B says:

      10:28pm | 09/08/10

      One of the worst media beat-ups of all time.

      The woman was judged by the media and would probably have been executed by it;  if it had the power and if the people running it thought they might sell a bit more advertising space on the back of it.

      Personally, I’d back our judicial system over any neighbour gossiping over the back fence, which, come to think of it, was about on a par with the standard of reporting at the time.

      Reply

    • Soos says:

      01:30am | 10/08/10

      I, for one, never believed Lindy guilty, for the simple reason that there was no way I would kill my child, therefore why would, or could, any other woman? The reason that women are hard on each other is, I believe, because they think they need to be in competition with each other for the attention of men. Men love this about the women who do believe it; divide and conquer is the name of the game, same as in politics where it is the rich against the poor, or in Eric’s case, men against women.

      Reply

    • JL says:

      03:20pm | 10/08/10

      “I, for one, never believed Lindy guilty, for the simple reason that there was no way I would kill my child, therefore why would, or could, any other woman?” - seriously???
      There are many, many, many cases all over the world where women have killed their own children.
      There are plenty of things I wouldn’t do, but that does not mean that others won’t.

    • Nicky G says:

      01:36am | 10/08/10

      Your argument is based on some pretty bad statistics and some equally questionable interpretation of them.  3 women on the jury.  9 men.  That’s a very small number altogether, remember, and you thus can’t validly say that 3/3 women means women were harder on Lindy C than men, when 5 of the 9 men voted for conviction initiallly, too.  You cite the one woman being incompletely convinced and yet voting for conviction as further evidence of women’s hardness: how so?  Isn’t it more likely to mean that in 1978 she didn’t want to rock the boat? That she didn’t want to go against 5 men (as opposed to the other men who opposed conviction).  That whilst she wasn’t convinced of the argument, she would go along with the majority (5 men + 2 women)?

      If you’re going to run that argument, you really need to back it up with better evidence than that.

      Reply

    • acotrel says:

      07:09am | 10/08/10

      The responses to the $37M law suit against David Jones, says something about women!

      Reply

    • Kelly says:

      08:32am | 10/08/10

      Acotrel: It wouldn’t matter if this had happened to a woman or a man, $37m for a being grabbed around the waist… that is just rediculous, no matter what the sex

    • Renee says:

      07:46am | 10/08/10

      The tendency of women is the reverse.  We stick up for each other.  Let a woman get divorced and always her women friends will stand for her - thus my observations.  There was one point maybe the author missed.  It was this.  Those of us who have lived in the country, with dingoes around, thought maybe it were impossible that a dingo take a baby under the circumstances involved.  Many women now are plugging for Julia Gillard just because she is a woman!

      Reply

    • Bruce says:

      11:09am | 10/08/10

      And it will be the women who turn big time on Julia if she is elected as pm and women will be far more aggressive about tossing her out than what men will be!

 
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