OPINION: What’s with the gender agenda?

There was a time, not so very long ago, when everyone knew what was meant by the phrases ‘men’s watches’ and ‘women’s watches.’ But the decision by GPHG to abandon its two gender-specific categories for this year’s awards has thrown a spanner in the works. A sign of progress or a step backwards? Luxury podcast host and watch writer Robin Swithinbank dissects the argument and takes the GPHG to task. 

As a rule, it’s not smart for a man in watches to talk publicly about women’s watches. It’s the proverbial banana skin on a balance beam. One false step and you’ll end up flat on your face on the floor, either nose broken by attempts at manifesting feminist sympathies, or ankle twisted by unwittingly hoisting patriarchy’s tattered flag.

But I found myself moved to air a view on such things last month after the GPHG’s announcement that it had killed off the “men’s” and “ladies’” categories ahead of November’s awards. In their place, a “complication” category and something called “essential,” which, given the “time only” award remains, seems a bit tautologous, assuming we can agree the only essential thing a watch need do is show the time. The same category also accommodates nominations of watches with a moonphase, one of the least essential complications in all of watchmaking. 

Anyway, as it was, this recategorisation sent me into a bit of a spin, in the main because I suspect it will be very damaging to women’s watches, even while I suspect it’s designed to help them. 

So I took to social media. “As an Academy member and former juror, I’ll say I think this is a mistake,” I said. “The sensitivities required to make a great women’s watch are worthy of review in their own right. Lumped in with everything else, they’re devalued, and in all probability overlooked. Pity. Thoughts?”

A number of hearts and such followed, but one reply from a female colleague really stood out. “Thank you for saying that,” said said colleague. “I’m so disheartened by it. It revokes any accountability for brands to actually try and understand the recipe for what makes a woman’s watch.”

Now, again danger, this time that I might be adopting the “a woman agreed with me on something I said about women, so it must be true” defence, which I can see could be an issue. But really, I think she nailed it.

How? Let’s first look at the GPHG’s decision, which it described as being “to reflect changing purchasing behaviours” and to “meet industry expectations.” At its most fluid and alert, the GPHG should be alive to market shifts. It has a self-imposed duty to be relevant and to make people pay attention to watches. It’s easier to do that if you have your finger on the pulse. So a tick there for trying to keep up.

And we could argue those changing behaviours show the traditional bracketing of watches as men’s or women’s is not as relevant as it once was. Some men, for reasons I haven’t quite understood, are very keen to wear teeny-weeny jewellery watches on their big hairy wrists. (As an aside, they don’t seem at all perturbed by the labelling of these watches as women’s watches: it’s hard to subvert something that’s already permitted.)

There’s also been a move to identify a watch as a watch, led I think — somewhat ironically, although with perfectly justifiable intent — by women. Big, small, round, square, blah, blah, blah — they’re all watches. There’s logic in the theory. Panerai’s 47mm Luminors and Chanel’s 15mm Premières are indeed all watches.

Getting rid of ladies’ watch categories in either retail or at awards becomes wilfully reductive, no better than the much derided “pink and shrink it” approach to women’s watch design.”

But, if we’re going down that route, who’s to say where we stop? When it comes to awards, one category? “And the award for this year’s best watch goes to…” At least it would make the ceremony shorter. Not sure it would improve the jokes, though.

At some point, we have to draw a line under the similarities and appreciate the differences. Difference is what drives this industry. Right? We know it’s not necessity. This is a sector in which the relentlessly mad ideas of Jacob Arabo can find a place next to the eternally plain designs of Blancpain. Where Swiss, Japanese, French, Scandinavian, British, German, Chinese, Dutch, Spanish, American, Italian, and, heck, even Belgian (hello Ressence, you crazy cats!) watch designs can go toe-to-toe in a bid for our attention and approval without ever being the same. There are thousands and thousands of different watches out there. Some of them are rubbish, but then that’s just my opinion. 

And if that’s the case, getting rid of ladies’ — or women’s, as you prefer — watch categories in either retail or at awards becomes wilfully reductive, no better than the much derided “pink and shrink it” approach to women’s watch design. 

It suddenly also feels out of date. Five years ago, in that weird Covid bubble where opinions flowed freely in the absence of anything else to do or make, the “a watch is a watch” school of thought flourished. But it’s withered in recent years, driven in part by a new generation of critics and consumers smart enough to celebrate — perhaps even demand — difference, making the GPHG’s decision look dépassé.

If I may, behind all this lies one of the great category errors of contemporary Western thinking, namely the muddling of equality and sameness. Watches, like much anything else, can be equal without needing to be the same. Equality is not and never has been limited to sameness. On the contrary, the whole point of equality is that it brings parity to difference. Otherwise, it all gets a bit 1984, no?

Now, I can well believe the GPHG was acting with good intentions and that it was looking to give this parity to women’s watches in an industry that just can’t shake off its ‘old boys’ club’ tag. That is a right and courageous thing to do. Only it’s been done the wrong way, making women’s watches invisible.

Far better would be to elevate women’s watches by celebrating equally everything that makes them different, recognising the specific skills and sensitivities designers need to create them, as my female colleague put it so succinctly.

And we haven’t even got to the commercial bit, yet. Countless brands have identified female buyers as an industry growth engine and continue to categorise their watches as men’s and women’s on their websites. At Watches and Wonders this year, lots showed watches for women, even if some were reticent to label them as such, manacled (you heard) by their fear of falling off the balance beam. Is focusing on women’s watches good for business? Well, Cartier.

Women buy a tonne of jewellery, but lag behind men as consumers of watches. Bringing them over and upping industry revenues shouldn’t be that hard. But by smooshing men’s and women’s watches together, we’re making it that much harder.