Stop Whistling, Start Listening

Role of Men

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:24:35 +0000

Last year Jude Kelly mentioned that she felt the WOW Festival could do more to encourage men to attend, and to involve men in the discussions taking place there. She felt that it was important that we, as women and feminists, engage with men more to see how they could help us. This year, that definitely seems to have become a focus on the programme as several of the sessions sought to bring men into the conversation.

The need to involve men actually arose early on Friday in the panel on International Activism. Valerie Amos (UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief coordinator on the Millennium Development Goals) was speaking about violence against women and girls and how this was a major barrier to the Millennium Goals being achieved. She clearly stated that men needed to raise their voices on this issue, not just to show support for women, but to lead other men in change. Jude Kelly agreed, admitting she finds herself ‘baffled’ when hearing about some violence against women, having a moment where she wonders if men do hate women (just a moment – it’s clear that she doesn’t). Although most men would never commit such acts, it’s important that they speak out against those that do. When women speak out on these issues it’s assumed to be important to them because they’re women. It needs to be important to all of us.

This point that men need to speak out came up time and again throughout other sessions on Friday and Saturday. The Guy’s Guide to Feminism session saw Michael Kaufman (co-author of the book of the same name and co-founder of the White Ribbon Campaign) pick this up. He clearly stated that violence against women is an issue for men. It happens to women they love – mothers, sisters, daughters, friends – and this should be something that they care about. He worries that violence against women makes some women suspicious of all men and his anecdote of women crossing the street late at night to avoid him sounded familiar to me. Crucially however, he said that men look to other guys to define what being a man is. All men must speak out as silence could give the impression that they’re okay with what’s happening. In fact one of the stated aims of the White Ribbon Campaign is that silence allows violence to continue. This must end.

Kaufman did admit that since most men broadly support equality (even if they wouldn’t call themselves feminists) they don’t speak out or engage in it. Another of the WRC’s aims raises the point that collective responsibility is required, but that it’s not about guilt; it’s not about men feeling guilt as men because of the violence that exists against women. It is, however, about men taking the opportunities presented to them to speak out and create change; men need to accept that responsibility.

Kaufman had a number of other interesting points to make in the Guy’s Guide to Feminism session. While funny and light (reading extracts from the book that set the tone) it’s clear that he feels very strongly about campaigning for change. He also spoke about the use of language and how it can be used to make women ‘disappear’. Describing women as ‘my lovely assistant’ (rather than capable for example) or using terms such as cavemen, mankind, chairman or postman – even when referring to women – just erases women completely. Women are diminished by being referred to as girls or chicks, especially in workplaces. Being aware of this may stop men from using these terms.

He also, interestingly, discussed the opportunities that feminism brings for men to transform themselves. He feels that the ‘macho’ culture is damaging to men and is something that feminism directly challenges. From birth, boys are bombarded with messages about what it means to be male and are openly humiliated if they don’t live up to this – boys don’t cry, don’t throw like a girl, play through the pain. However, these ideals are impossible to live up to. All people need love, nurture and connection but men cannot admit this. Men are left with massive internal conflict in trying to live up to these images.

When women challenge these ideals, as feminists do, it can leave men confused and angry. If this behaviour isn’t what it means to be a man, then what is it that still makes them men? Some men however can and do embrace this as an opportunity and a positive move towards transforming men’s lives.

Kaufman brought some of these points with him into the Conversation Between the Sexes panel, which was at times entertaining and at times somewhat uncomfortable to watch (Jon Snow and Shami Chakrabarti seemed to particularly butt heads, even when agreeing with each other). Jude Kelly did ask why more men don’t speak out about other men’s behaviour. Kaufman replied that he felt it was out of fear of appearing as if they are not a ‘real man’. He was optimistic that this was changing though. Jon Snow also commented that men could learn a lot from a festival like WOW as he couldn’t imagine men gathering to address issues in this way. It’s interesting to note that Jude did announce that Southbank Centre will be holding a Festival of Masculinity in January 2014 (that should be interesting!).

Kaufman’s last point, about what men need from women in order to change, did feed back into something I also heard in a few sessions over the weekend (so far). He noted that the nature versus nurture debate is shifting and that gender is something we learn. Our brains are shaped by our families, and we become gendered. He felt that men needed encouragement to reshape what it means to be men by transforming fatherhood. Increased parental leave would help but we also need to recast ideas of motherhood. Women need to accept that men can also nurture and allow them to fulfill this role.

Models of fatherhood cannot be underestimated (where fathers are present). In the International Activism panel Ziauddin Yousafzai, father of Malala Yousafzai, spoke about what he did as father that allowed Malala to be the girl she has become. In Pakistan, having sons is important – the birth of daughters is barely celebrated. Men are known by the achievements of their sons but he described himself as ‘lucky and fortunate’ to be a man who is known by his daughter. So what did he do differently to other fathers? He says he did nothing but honour her as a person and treat her with respect. He said for too long women have been happy to be the strength behind men (behind every great man is a great women) but we should be side-by-side. Crucially he said there are three things men should do for their daughters – honour them, trust them and educate them. Wise words that certainly seem to have worked with Malala.

In The Keys To The Castle talk, Angelique Kidjo picked this up in relation to her own childhood. Every year her extended family would come to her parents (well, her father – her mother was considered to have no say in the matter) and tell him that it was time for Angelique to marry. Every year her father would tell them that no-one would tell him what to do in his own home and would insist that Angelique continue in her education. Even as she began to perform and singing became her passion her father told her that she could only continue singing if she continued attending school. The difference that education can make in a girl’s life in Africa is well documented but not all fathers feel able to take such a strong line, or believe it’s right.

So is there a role for men in helping to bring change in women’s lives? It’s clear that there is. They don’t necessarily need to call themselves feminists or be on the streets with us protesting. They don’t even need to attend WOW with us! They just need to take steps in their own lives – how they speak about women, how they relate to other men, their example of what it means to be a man and how they raise their daughters (and sons).

Working girls

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:20:32 +0000

One of the themes that seems to have emerged in the schedule for this year’s WOW Festival is the importance of our working lives and the issues we face in the workplace as women. As last year there are several speed mentoring opportunities (I was mentored last year and highly recommend it) but in addition are panel discussions on Shyness in Networking, Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office, Getting a Broad On The Board, What Is a Social Enterprise, and How to Start one and some practical clinics on Juggling Act: Work/Life Balance.

This pattern has come at an interesting time for me. I’m lucky to have a job I love and that challenges me, in an organisation whose values I share. I’ve been in the management role I do now for several years and am at a stage where the next set of challenges is on my mind. However, I am also six months pregnant, so am about to take a big step back for what I expect will be a full year’s maternity leave. As a result both the Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office panel and the Work/Life Balance seemed to reflect the somewhat conflicting stages I’m now at.

I’m reasonably happy with my Work/Life balance in general but decided this might be a good opportunity to think about how it’s going to change, and how I would like it to look in the future. The session was supportive and practical and was a great opportunity for some of us to ask questions of the other women there in terms of how they manage their lives (with or without children), but one question raised did resonate with several of us, and carried through to the following discussion on ‘nice girls’. One attendee found that they struggled to get recognition for their work, without being seen to brag. It may be a sweeping generalisation but women are perceived to find this difficult. We don’t like to be seen to go on about our achievements in the way that many men in the workplace tend to do. Is that a bad thing? Without recognition of the work we’re doing it’s possible we’ll get passed over for promotion, or worse be seen to be ineffective in our current roles. As a manager of others I frequently hold appraisals with staff who sometimes have very little to say in the ‘what are your strengths?’ part of the discussion - in spite of the fact that they definitely have many of skills. They often just feel uncomfortable raising them, and that’s within the confines of a one-to-one conversation specifically designed to invite them to.

The Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office panel carried this point through it in various guises. I’ve not read the book by Lois P Frankel but the subtitle of 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers probably tells you most of what you need to know - the book identifies ways of behaving that women have in the workplace that are barriers to progression and gives hints and tips to overcome them. Much of the discussion wondered if the book was necessary, or the right way to go. It could definitely be argued that if women want to succeed (get the corner office) in the corporate sector then this book could definitely identify behaviours that could help. But is that what we, as women, want? Is part of the reason there are so few women on boards partially because we don’t want to succeed in those kinds of male-dominated environments, where these games are played?

Part of the behaviour flagged up is the alleged tendency on the part of women to be the ‘nice girl’ - obedient, head-down, hard-working and doing what you’re told and thinking that this will be enough to get them promoted. In reality, you have to have the confidence to put yourself forward and take risks, ensuring that your work is recognised. We don’t like to brag. However, as the panel mentioned, does anyone really like the people who do show-boat and brag? And should we be worried about being liked anyway? There’s probably a balance to be struck here. Mildred Talabi, one of the panellists, mentioned that the behaviour she identified from the book’s self-assessment quiz was her ability to market herself. This surprised her as someone well experienced in marketing, but when it came to her own ‘brand’ in her workplace she agreed she wasn’t getting it right. She could do amazing things (making miracles) but when this was mentioned to her, she’d downplay and minimise her achievements as if these things had just magically happened. We need to learn to accept praise and admit we worked hard on something.

I can’t help but wonder if buying into these tips will just reinforce a corporate, male way of working that we shouldn’t have to conform to to succeed. Is this game-playing our way of doing things? At last year’s session on Women, Power and Change Baroness Helena Kennedy QC spoke out in favour of quotas on boards, with the reasoning that the current criteria board members are hired against are set by men who have those skills. More women on the boards may mean the criteria change to be equally effective but more recognisable to women who will become more likely to go for those positions in future. Similarly by buying into these 101 mistakes we’re just maintaining the status quo, but if we don’t then we won’t get the corner office and begin to effect change from the inside (a point made by panellist Hannah Philp, who had fascinating things to say about her experience of working in corporate culture in general).

I’d be interested in hearing if similar themes came up at today’s Getting A Broad on the Board session. The questions and comments from the floor at the panel I went to were incredibly animated and impassioned and went from one end of the spectrum to the other in terms of agreeing with this book. There’s plenty more to be said and I hope the discussion continues at WOW2013 and for a long time after.

Where to start at WOW 2013

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:32:53 +0000

Friday is International Women’s Day which for me for the last three years means one thing - it’s time for the WOW Festival at The Southbank Centre.

If you’ve never been, or worse have never heard of it, it’s a three day festival of talks exploring and celebrating what it means to be a woman in the world today. Women, and some men, get together for panel discussions, speed mentoring, talks and networking and I can honestly say it’s one of the highlights of my year. Last year I blogged about quite a few of the sessions, including some I missed and caught online afterwards and this year I plan to do the same.

To give a flavour of what’s to come, these are some of the sessions I’m thinking about checking out:

The juggling act: work/life balance clinic - I’m always interested in what a work/life balance looks like to different people but now that I’ve a baby on the way I suspect my definition is about to change. This clinic sounds like a great opportunity to think about what it means to me and how I think I can achieve it in the future.

Nice girls don’t get the corner office and Getting a broad on the board- I may be interested in work/life balance but part of that is because I value my working life and am lucky to have a job I love. It would be foolish however to ignore the fact that there are still barriers for women to succeed. Also, is the latter session title a move to reclaim the word ‘broad’ because I like it!

The guy’s guide to feminism, Conversation between the sexes and Misogyny and Misandry - Jude Kelly mentioned last year that she wanted to see more men engaged in conversations with women and feminism and there are quite a few sessions this year which do just that. I’ll be interested to see how some of these conversations go.

Pornography - I missed the session on this last year (so many sessions, so little time) but did watch it online afterwards and blogged about it. I’m definitely looking forward to hearing this year’s panel discuss our modern relationship with porn and whether ‘feminist porn is an oxymoron’.

I’m sure I’ll get side-tracked into other sessions, which is part of the joy of the festival, but I look forward to gathering my thoughts on here over the course of the weekend.

The Olympics story for women, so far

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 23:14:47 +0100

I wrote recently about some of the issues surround women and the Olympics so it’s nice to have a bit of an update after the first few days of the competition.

The great news is that British women are doing really well. The first Team GB medal went to cyclist Lizzie Armitstead, who won silver in the women’s road race. Rebecca Adlington has since grabbed a bronze medal and yesterday Helen Glover and Heather Stanning got the first Team GB Gold medal in the rowing and Gemma Gibbons bagged a fantastic silver medal in Judo.

The rowers were particularly dominant and stormed to victory, which makes it a little disappointing that todays Guardian front page had a photo of Bradley Wiggins on it with the headline ‘Phew!’. The women got the gold before he did!

Still, generally the press have been making a huge fuss of the women and celebrating their achievements every bit as much as they should.

Similarly the women’s football team have had loads of press coverage and the match against Brazil at Wembley on Tuesday was attended by a massive 70,000 people. Their profile has been pushed along in part by Stylist magazines Fair Game campaign.

Thankfully Frankie Boyle’s usual obnoxious attempt at humour (which differs from most people’s attempts at humour by not being funny) were also met with general annoyance on Twitter and in the press, as he took another swipe at Rebecca Adlington’s looks. Most people don’t care what she looks like, they just care about her performance, and with one bronze medal in the bag and a fantastic qualifier for her 800m final tonight, I think everyone’s pretty pleased with her.

Unfortunately, the Telegraph seems to think it’s a good idea to publish reactionary, sexist rubbish about how wrong it see to see animalistic aggression from women, and how worrying it is to see them bruise their ‘soft limbs’.

Outside Team GB’s success women have been having different experiences. I was one of many who were really happy that Saudi Arabia eventually relented and sent women to the Olympics. This is the first year in history in fact that every country has sent men and women to compete. However, these women, who had little notice that they would be going to the Olympics have been up against quite a backlash, as detailed in The Guardian and The New Statesman, not least the facts that they were targetted under an Arabic hashtag on Twitter that roughly translates as Olympic Whores, and have struggled to compete in the hijab.

Meanwhile the women’s doubles teams in Badminton haven’t done their profile much good. I was actually in Wembley Arena on Tuesday night to see two doubles matches where both teams were trying to lose. It was such a poor display and in both cases the teams were booed off the court. They’ve now been disqualified from the competition, which seems only right. I have some sympathy for the players who were obviously under orders from their team managers or coaches but it was a really distasteful display.

In slight tangents however, I love The Guardian’s gallery of the nail art on display at The Olympics. I had noticed that Rebecca Adlington had Union flag nails, and that Lizzie Armistead had immaculate red nails winning her silver medal as well as various other competitors, but the gallery shows some great examples. It just seems like a really fun way to bring a bit of girlieness in (for those who want to).

Finally, I’ve slowly been becoming a Clare Balding fan the more I’ve seen of her on TV in recent times. During the Olympics she’s been hosting a great deal of the BBC’s coverage and has just been brilliant. She really knows what she’s talking about, she’s funny and egnaging and she seems to have a way of connecting with everyone she interviews and hosts with. The last two days I’ve noticed an awful lot of love for her on Twitter and today The Guardian labelled her coverage ‘Olympic Gold’ It’s great to see a woman on TV, and especially in Sports coverage, being loved for her charm and skill as a presenter.

Women and the Olympics

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:05:58 +0100

It’s only a few weeks now to the start of the Olympics and how women perform and are represented should be interesting.

Team GB have some incredible women competing and medal hopes are high for women like Jessica Ennis and Rebecca Adlington. Unfortunately, for Adlington at least, her performance is sometimes overshadowed by abusive tweets about her appearance. It’s amazing that some choose to judge her on how attractive they think she is, rather than how amazing she is as an athlete but I really respect her for speaking up about it, and in one case retweeting an example to her 50,000 plus followers. Jessica Ennis has had to laugh off comments about her being ‘fat’, made by a ‘high-ranking’ official. The only appropriate response to that is laughter, as it’s so far from reality.

Femininity and sport is something that comes up time and again however. The ruling dictating that women badminton players must wear skirts was rescinded after an outcry last year but attempts were made earlier this year to do the same in boxing. 2012 will be the first year that women have been allowed to compete in boxing at the Olympics, but apparently there was concern that female boxers were indistinguishable from the men - as if people would be confused about what event they were at or, god forbid, actually enjoyed the match irrespective of who was in the ring. Again, this ruling has not gone ahead but it just goes to show how concerned the moneymakers in sport are that women don’t look ‘feminine’ enough (ie attractive to men).

Femininity has taken on another dimension for women in South Africa, especially in the aftermath of the publicity surround Caster Semenya. When Semenya won the World Champtionship in 2008 allegations were rife that she was a man. Much public speculation followed and she was subjected to testing, while suspended from competing. Although the results of the tests were never made public she has been cleared to compete and all previous results stand. It’s an issue which continues to come up in South Africa in particular as ‘an estimated 1 per cent of the 50 million people [there] are born “intersex,” meaning they don’t fit typical definitions of male or female’. For more on this issue, I recommend this fascinating article on The Toronto Star’s website.

Of course, all of the above is about women who will be competing at the Olympics. For some, that remains a pipe dream. The IOC have been under pressure to sanction Saudi Arabia who have now ruled out sending any women to the Olympics at all. This is in direct violation of the Olympic Charter, but no action has been taken against them. Women’s rights there may have come a long way but there is still clearly reluctance to treat them as equals, especially in a public arena such as the Olympics. It’s a real shame the IOC haven’t followed this through and prevented the men from competing as a result, as it would have sent a very clear message that they take this kind of issue seriously. The Saudi Olympic committee did leave it open for women to compete on their own, not endorsed by them, but they have also been refused permission to compete under the Olympic flag as officials claim there is still some hope in resolving the issue. Time is running out however.

For those of us attending as spectators instead of competitors, we can only hope that the directors of the television footage think us attractive enough for those lingering shots of women that we’ve seen during the Euro 2012 competition. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Huffington Post has assembled a gallery of the 82 most attractive women captured by the cameramen (I’m assuming men here).

in spite of my cynicism, I am really looking forward to the Olympics in London. I have tickets for events at both the Olympics and Paralympics and hope it will be an amazing few weeks in London. I will also however have a keen eye on the issues surround the women taking part, hopefully celebrating quite a few of them in the process.

Can feminists wear engagement rings?

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:55:45 +0100

I recently came across a blogpost (dating from 2010) written by a woman who had recently got engaged but was not going to wear an engagement ring. The post had been linked to on a Facebook group, where quite a lively discussion had developed about the tradition of wearing them. I found it pretty interesting, so linked to it in the Sharing Thoughts & Taking Action forum where a similar debate broke out, which I’ll admit surprised me.

The original blogpost was fairly reasonable. Rather than having strong feminist objections to wearing an engagment ring, the writer seemed to feel a) that it was too much money to spend on a ring, and as a couple they could do more interesting things with it, b) she didn’t like to wear expensive jewellery in general and c) she had ethical objections to diamonds - all of which are fair enough. However more feminist arguments against rings were made on the forum.

In the interests of disclosure, I’ll first state I wear an engagement ring. When it was given to me, I didn’t debate whether to wear it or wrestle any feminist demons. My excitement about it, and love of the ring, may have been coloured by the fact that my (now) husband had spent six months designing it to be something to give me as a token of how much he loved me. I love it, and it’s a daily reminder of how happy I am to be with him.

Not long afterwards a work colleague, who was fairly new to the company and barely knew me personally, asked me if I felt uncomfortable wearing it and did I not see it as a symbol of my fiance’s ‘ownership’ of me. I dismissed the comments at the time and told her that because my fiance could never view me that way, it wasn’t an issue in my relationship. But it niggled. Inside, I was pretty pissed off that someone viewed my decision that way and I felt like she was calling into question my feminist credentials -who did she think she was? She didn’t even know me well enough to know that I would identify as a feminist. I thought it was rude.

However, as a teenager I’m sure I viewed things differently. I used to say that I wouldn’t get married at all. The phrase ‘legalised slavery’ may have been uttered (embarrassing) and I would probably have been horrified by the idea of wearing an engagement ring. But that was at a stage when I’d never had any relationships, let alone serious ones, and didn’t understand that your relationship with your partner is what you both make it. The roles you adopt, whether traditional or not, are up to you. If you feel like someone’s property, or feel like a domestic slave, then that’s because the role you have in that specific relationship has left you feeling that way - not because you wear a ring.

Engagement rings were traditionally given as a symbol of a promise of commitment. It marked the woman out as being off the market and the money spent by the groom-to-be meant that they were not given lightly. It’s in this light, that some of the objections to engagement rings are made now. Only the women wear them and the men are expected to spend a lot of money on them. The woman wears it as a symbol of being ‘taken’ (which could be perceived as belonging to someone else) and the man shows his provider credentials by flashing cash. It’s old school, no doubt. But is it really anti-feminist to wear one? Is it, as one of the forum members claimed, an attempt to ‘cherry pick’ the things we liked about traditional female roles and while fighting against the rest?

Many women I know bought their fiances a gift in return, like a really nice watch for example. The symbol may not be as obvious to everyone else, but it redressed the balance in their relationship in a way that made them happy. I suppose for me, this is what’s key. How you view an engagement ring is coloured by the context of your relationship. Because I feel like an equal partner in mine, I didn’t strongly feel that wearing a ring threatened that. Also, it was only for 10 months that I wore a ring and he didn’t - by last July we were married and both wearing wedding rings. In any case, I think my evolving sense of myself and my views on feminism have left me just not feeling that strongly about this issue. What I do in my relationship is up to me, and how I choose to express my position in that relationship is my own business. I am a feminist. And a wife. With two rings.

The Ched Evans case and rape myths

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:21:00 +0100

The recent jailing of Ched Evans has brought the worst out in many people, and Twitter has given them the perfect platform to air their views. The #justiceforched hashtag has, in particular, seen some very familiar rape myths put forward.

Most of the people dismissing the case against Evans are doing so on the basis that the victim was a ‘moneygrabber’. I’m not sure where they think this money is coming from however. She has not waived her right to anonymity, and has not sold her story to anyone. There’s no indication that she ever intended to. There’s no payout coming her way anytime soon as a result of being raped.

Confusingly for many the other defendant in the case, Clayton MacDonald, was acquitted. Some cannot seem to grasp the idea that she could have consented to sex with one man without consenting to him calling his friends to come over and have sex with her too. Similarly I’ve seen tweets along the lines of ‘obviously what ched evans did was wrong, but I don’t think the girl is entirely innocent, so many girls beg it off footballers its unreal’ (grammar is the tweeter’s own). So, since loads of women want to sleep with footballers this woman should, what? Have wanted it? Have expected it? Count herself lucky that not one, but two footballers slept with her whether she wanted it or not?

Some writers have picked up on these tweets and referred to ‘rape culture’ but even on sites like The Guardian’s Comment is Free, the mere phrase ‘rape culture’ has been dismissed in the comments. There’s a refusal to accept that just because some ‘idiots’ on Twitter are making these comments that there is a ‘culture’ at play - but I honestly don’t see how you can argue it’s any other way. The sheer volume of tweets in support of Evans speaks of nothing else. The hatred towards the woman who accused him is tangible, not least because she was tracked down and named online, and subsequently accidentally named on Sky News. Her legal right to anonymity has been trampled on by the very people who accuse her of being fame-hungry and publicity seeking. The hypocrisy is staggering and there’s a clear trend towards people refusing to believe that having sex with a woman too drunk to consent is rape.

Similarly many of the tweeters saying she should have been responsible for her own actions in getting drunk are the self-professed ‘lads’ - the same types who frequent sites like Unilad that actively encourage preying on drunk and vulnerable young students. If you perpetuate a lad culture where the aim of an evening is to get a girl drunk so you can have sex with her, then don’t be surprised if she passes the level where she can consent to sex with you and you’re later accused of rape. It’s not because she’s a slag/whore/bitch. It’s because that’s what you’ve done.

A large number of tweets have also accused the woman of merely regretting having sex with these men and therefore accused them of rape. She would have been subjected to lengthy questioning by police, a physical exam, the stress of testifying in court, cross-examination by the defence and at all stages had her version of the night queried while everyone wonders how drunk she was, how had she behaved and could she be trusted. All that just because she regretted having sex? Really? Surely just trying to put it out of mind would’ve been a lot easier. And people wonder why so few women do report rape. They’re not believed when they do and they’re vilified if there is a successful conviction.

Nita Dowell, senior crown prosecutor in Wales, said “It is a myth that being vulnerable through alcohol consumption means that a victim is somehow responsible for being raped. The law is clear: being vulnerable through drink or drugs does not imply consent”. It’s about time this message go through to young men.

Image above is from Rape Crisis Scotland’s campaign working to end sexual violence and can be found on their website.

The case for and against pornography

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:16:23 +0100

I’ve been blogging about feminist issues for just under a year now but there’s one topic I’ve studiously avoided in that time - pornography. In some ways it’s because I can convince myself that it doesn’t affect my life. I don’t watch it. I don’t purchase it. I’ve never been with a partner that, to my knowledge, consumes it. However, I know it’s an area of contention and debate in feminism and have always thought I should at least put it out there for discussion.

My big problem is that I don’t know where to start. I’m confused about it and the issues surrounding it. I don’t believe that just because I don’t enjoy it, everyone who does is wrong. I believe in people having healthy sexual appetites and if watching other people engaged in sex is something that works for you, go for it. However I’m not blind to the fact that what was previous soft porn is now just the front covers of mainstream ‘lads mags’ like Nuts and more worringly what was previously considered hardcore, niche-interest is now mainstream. And what is mainstream is more easily available than ever before - online and on mobile phones - which means that instead of passing around copies of Playboy in school, young men are seeing quite skewed versions of sexuality and believing it to be what ‘normal’ sex is supposed to be like.

On a gut level my feelings about porn have always been that it tends to subordinate women. Porn is largely created for and by men and so has little regard for how women are portrayed. As an industry it makes billions from the objectification of women - so much so that when the US government was bailing out the car industry, the porn industry argued that they should receive help as well as they were one of ‘our nation’s most important businesses’. On the flipside, I don’t believe in banning things that I’m uncomfortable with. I’d rather people were educated about an issue to the extent that they choose, by and large, not to participate in things which adversely affect others so badly.

With all this in mind, I was really disappointed to miss the WOW Festival session on Mary Whitehouse - Prude or Prophet (there was so much I wanted to see that weekend that some sessions just clashed). Fortunately for me, the session was one of the ones filmed and uploaded to the site afterwards. I was interested to hear that the prime reason for holding that particular debate was that Jude Kelly was as confused as I am. She had grown up in an era of censorship. As the world became more liberal the mood of society became one where people should feel entitled to learn about things on their own, and that nothing should be hidden from them. Mary Whitehouse became a lone voice, and a figure of fun, in the way she argued that women would be debased and disgraced by the way they were beginning to be portrayed and would rue the day that they allowed this to happen. Jude Kelly hated everything she stood for. But now? She was beginning to wonder if Whitehouse had had a point all along. The portrayal of women in mainstream porn, and in fact in much modern media has in fact left us feeling objectified and judged. So now, Kelly said she didn’t know what she felt and wanted to learn more.

The panel was made up of Kelly, Rachel Morris (Cosmopolitan’s resident sex therapist), Amina Doherty (co-ordinator of the Young Feminist Fund) and Julia Long (feminist activist involved with the London Feminist Network and Object) and was chaired by Helena Kennedy QC. It was a lively and really interesting discussion with plenty of input from the floor.

Amina Doherty really impressed me with her confidence and her assertion that what young women need is space to talk about and develop a healthy, sexual identity. Being aware of the good and bad that’s out there is okay as long as they have space to talk openly and freely about it and be educated about what it all means to them. Encouraging critical engagement was key.

Julia Long probably took what I would interpret to be a more expected, feminist line. She quoted examples of what is considered mainstream in porn these days and the mere descriptions brought tears to my eyes and prompted me to cross my legs. She also made the good point that discussions of porn have, as Jude Kelly pointed out, been often painted as good versus bad morality. The common ground on both sides of the fence be they pro-sex, freedom of expression, liberal views or anti-porn, repressive, moralistic views is that women are oppressed - they are an economic commodity to be bought and sold. Food for thought.

Rachel Morris approached the discussion from the perspective of someone who’s not an academic or expert on this, but who does deal with the effects that porn and the objectification of women has on our culture. The letters she gets from women are laden with expectations of what their sexual experiences should be like, which are directly taken from porn culture. Women think their vaginas are hideous, their labia too big or malformed. Men don’t ‘do’ pubes anymore and so women feel pressure to be hairless. She strongly felt that if she was a young woman, what she would need is for someone like her to be teaching sex education in schools.

Needless to say one of the big points discussed was censorship. We’re all nervous of it and for those of us who are liberal, it feels wrong to censor what consenting adults want to see or engage in. However, Julia Long felt that women were being censored anyway, as their voices are not being heard (she quoted women’s disappearance from mainstream media as a related issue). Amina agreed that women are silenced and that porn is produced from the male gaze. However, she really wants young women to engage in the discussion and embrace positive sexuality. Claire Short’s campaign to end Page 3 was raised, along with her subsequent vilification in the media. All the panellists agreed that this had contributed to women feeling fearful to speak out.

A question from the floor supported Julia’s stance on possible censorship - we already have rules that limit what we can see as well as rules against racial hatred. Why did rules like this not apply to gender hatred? Why could the more hardcore content, which could be construed as torture, not be restricted or banned completely? The simple answer, from Helena Kennedy, is that it’s an industry that makes an awful lot of money and needs to be tackled on that basis.

Another question from the floor raised a real crux of the debate - consent. If women do want to be in these films, or engage in these acts, who are we to stop them? Of course, ‘choice’ is informed by our culture and life experience but some women really do choose these actions. Julia Long felt that consent and freedom of expression dialogue is usually brought out as a ‘get out of jail free’ card to silence criticism. I thought his was an interesting point. Choice is not always about personal rights but personal responsibilities - we need to view our choices in the context of how our actions affect society at large. The power relationships and submission of women in our society is normalised and played out in pornography. Choosing to be in, or even create, these films may have a detrimental effect on many other women - and our society restricts individual freedoms all the time to protect potentially vulnerable people in our society. Incitement to racial hatred is an example of this as we restrict people’s ‘right’ to say what they like, for the sake of protecting ethnic minorities in our culture.

There was so much more in this discussion and more themes to come back to. The possibility of feminist pornography - created for and by women - was not raised, as an hour was just not long enough to cover everything. Did I leave this session clearer about what I thought? I’m not sure I did really. I take on board everything Julia Long said about power relationships and the silencing of women. I’m also personally horrified by the idea of young men viewing some of what’s now mainstream and pressurising young women to engage in these acts during their early sexual experiences, as they convince them that it’s ‘normal’ sex. However, I really respected Amina Doherty’s view of the need for education. We need to give young people the space and the language to openly discuss healthy, sexual appetites and to create a positive idea of what sexuality means to them. I’d like to think that this is what will ultimately change people’s appetites for pornography. I’m still uncomfortable with banning certain pornography as it’s difficult to draw a line between what’s acceptable and what’s not and I worry, as Jude Kelly does, about it opening the door to repression. I would love to find ways to limit young people’s access to it however and I think parents need to be much more involved and in control of their teenagers access to the internet. There’s so much more to say and I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on the issue. Let’s keep talking about how this affects us as adults.

Why men need to drink less

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:06:24 +0100

Don’t drink too much, you can’t guarantee your safety.

Watch out for your friends.

Don’t let friends get too drunk and make sure they get home safely, alone.

As a woman, these are messages I’ve been hearing since I was young. At Christmas we’re reminded that it’s our responsibility not to be raped and to keep ourselves safe by not drinking too much. The media constantly reinforces the idea that a woman who was drunk was in some way responsible for being raped (if in fact it was rape at all). Earlier this year Alison Saunders, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service commented that

If a girl goes out and gets drunk and falls over … they are almost demonised in the media, and if they then become a victim, you can see how juries would bring their preconceptions to bear.

It’s no wonder then more than a quarter of people (30%) say that a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk.

Men however are expected to drink. It’s only a bit of fun. They’re legends if they can drink vast amounts of alcohol and stay standing. Any ill behaviour is just ‘boys being boys’. Rowdiness is part of the package. A rape case in the courts this week however showed exactly why the ‘don’t drink too much’ messages are being aimed at the wrong people.

Yesterday Zack Thompson was jailed for six year for raping a 17 year old woman. For two and a half years he stuck to the defence that he had been sleepwalking - he didn’t deny having done it, but he said he couldn’t remember it. He had however, drunk 7 or 8 pints of lager that evening. When investigating his sleepwalking defence an expert in the field found that

Thompson’s memory loss began around half an hour before he went to bed, and concluded his memory loss was highly likely to have been the result of drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, and not sleepwalking.

When the sleepwalking defence was disproved he then claimed insanity, which was also disproved. Eventually he admitted to rape.

In a recent case in Ireland another man admitted raping a woman under after having

drank 13 cans of beer, three pints, six shots, three double vodkas and smoked a cannabis joint before the incident.

In this case the Judge, Justice Paul Carney said

it was the “experience of the court” that a young man taking the amount of drink that he had, along with a cannabis joint, could wake up the next morning unaware that he had committed homicide or rape.

Interestingly, in the Irish Times report on the case, they still made sure to point out that the victim “had drunk a large amount and went to sleep in one of the bedrooms at about 3.30am.”

So why is it that women are still the ones being told not to drink too much? The consistent message sent is that if they do, they won’t be able to consent to sex and are at risk of being raped. Surely the message should be to men. Don’t drink so much that you cannot control your behaviour or gain consent. Don’t drink so much that you can’t remember what you’ve done.

When the Reclaim the Night marches were relaunched in the UK it was largely a response to women being told not to go out at night as they were at risk of being attacked by the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’. But if a man was the perpetrator and women the victims, why weren’t men being told to stay at home? Reclaim the Night followed.

Whenever I’ve seen these kinds of issues raised before the response from many men is that all men are not rapists so why do they need to be told not to behave like one. And yet, it’s perfectly fine to tell all women to modify their behaviour because some men are rapists. In the Irish case the man convicted was genuinely remorseful and told the court “I’m sorry, I’m not a bastard. I have feelings”. He wouldn’t see himself as ‘a rapist’ and probably would’ve raised objections at being targeted by anti-rape messages before this happened.

Drinking to excess isn’t good for any of us. Drinking to the extent that you don’t know what you’re doing or can’t remember it the next morning is just not healthy and a lot more needs to be done to tackle drinking culture generally in our society. But targeting women in these campaigns is misguided. Women are constantly told to protect themselves but we now need to tell men to control themselves instead. If you are at risk of behaving violently when drunk then you’re the one who needs to drink less - not us.

No Makeup Day?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:20:33 +0000

Today is apparently No Makeup Day. I’m struggling to find out who declared this and to what end but Twitter seems to confirm that press releases have been issued and it’s been accepted that today’s the day. The aim isn’t clear but it seems to exist to pull women out of their usual routine and make them think critically about why they wear it and whether they can live without it.

Women have complicated relationships to beauty, fashion and their bodies. The influence of fashion mags and a celeb-obsessed culture are clear as we’re bombarded with messages about who is attractive (skinny white women), and what it takes to look like them (vast amounts of airbrushing and Photoshop) as well as ‘circles of shame’ showing us just how unspeakably horrific cellulite is on an otherwise perfect-looking celebrity. Let’s not even contemplate how awful it must look on the rest of us.

So what about makeup. Are we really trying to live up to an impossible ideal? I find it hard to swallow this argument. I like to think that women are clever enough to know that some expensive, big-brand foundation isn’t going to give them the flawless skin that the magazine ads and cover photos show you.

So what is it for? For most of us, it’s for fun. Sure, I wear foundation to cover up my spots and even out my skin tone. But when it comes to mascara, eye liner, blusher, lipstick it’s because I like the way I can slightly change my face to look different and suit my mood - the same way I do with clothes. I think I look better with a bit of colour on my face but I’m a well-educated, 35 year old woman so I don’t think it’s going to make me suddenly look like someone else. I don’t want it to. I just want to look like a slightly different version of me sometimes. I’m also not afraid to walk out the door with no makeup on.

A the recent Women of the World Festival I attended the Body Politics - Skin and Hair session and The Guardian Weekend Magazine’s beauty columnist Sali Hughes was on the panel. She’s a vibrant and successful woman and as a writer her column on beauty is just one aspect of her work. She spoke brilliantly about what makeup and beauty meant to her and how the pursuit and ritual of beauty can be beneficial and genuinely life-enhancing for some women. She countered the idea that women are somehow stupid if they enjoy something shallow and that an interest in the shallow does not mean that you are intrinsically without depth (I loved her phrasing). This is completely true. As she went on to note, we don’t think people are stupid just because their interests include football, food, wine or any other hobbies. Why do we dismiss women who take an interest in how they look?

We, as women, do need to critically look at the images we’re bombarded with every day. We need to recognise that it’s okay to be who we are, lumps and bumps and all. But we also need to give ourselves enough credit to know that we can combine being smart, successful, opinionated and driven with getting sheer joy from playing with how we look.

Image above is by Stuart Miles downloaded from FreeDigitalPhotos.net It is reproduced here with permission.

Twitter abuse

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:23:33 +0000

I was interested to read this week that police had arrested Liam Stacey, a 21 year old man who had posted horribly racist tweets after the collapse of footballer Fabrice Muemba. His comments were openly racist and he continued in that vein when challenged by others on Twitter. As his comments spread the high profile anti-racist campaigner (and footballer) Stan Collymore saw them and was one of several people to report them to the police. They acted quickly and Stacey was arrested the day after posting the offending tweets. He was charged on Monday and admitted incitement to racial hatred.

The police, in my view, were absolutely right to charge him and take the complaints seriously. However I couldn’t help but notice the different response that women I know (online at least) have had when making complaints. In two cases I know of women attracted rape threats on Facebook or Twitter and reported them to the police. In one case the man said they’d find her contact details and put them on 4Chan so she could be made ‘to pay’ for what she’d said and in the other case a man said if he met her ‘I wouldn’t hesitate in raping you, I would have to kill you first tough.. so you didnt struggle’ (sic).

In both cases the police did take it seriously but it took several days for them to have a meeting with the women and several more days before they could make their ‘formal statement’. That was in early February and to date I haven’t heard that arrests were made or the culprits found. In a more general sense the Unilad website and Facebook page actively promoted violence against women.

Incitement to racial hatred is a specific offense but there is no gender equivalent. Liam Stacey was arrested and charged, and could concievably face jail time, for spouting racist comments online. There was no threat to murder or assault anyone. The Unilads and others can however make specific threatening comments against women online and at best the women can expect weeks of sitting around, having appointments and the police slowly looking into things. In fact, I was discussing this on Twitter this week and someone told me that they had report comments aimed at her which ‘were gender specific. Some about us splattered in blood and other sexual explicit. It’s all bad.’ Having investigated her complaint the police came back with a report of ‘no crime’. Others on Twitter had successfully gained a restraining order against people who had threatened them online but many had just chosen to ignore it and hope it went away.

Racism in football is an issue, as is racism in our society in general and I don’t begrudge Stan Collymore putting his weight behind any campaign or action to stamp it out. I can’t help but feel cheated that when women complain about this kind of abuse though, they’re told that they’ve no sense of humour and it’s all ‘banter’. It’s hard for even high-profile women to speak out and tackle this as they’re dismissed in a way that people woudn’t dare challenge Collymore for tackling racism. They wouldn’t expect him to laugh it off and excuse it as banter.

Harassment is a legal offense in the UK and covers the following

In this legal guidance, the term harassment is used to cover the ‘causing alarm or distress’ offences under section 2 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 as amended (PHA), and ‘putting people in fear of violence’ offences under section 4 of the PHA. The term can also include harassment by two or more defendants against an individual or harassment against more than one victim.

Although harassment is not specifically defined it can include repeated attempts to impose unwanted communications and contacts upon a victim in a manner that could be expected to cause distress or fear in any reasonable person.

Closely connected groups may also be subjected to ‘collective’ harassment. The primary intention of this type of harassment is not generally directed at an individual but rather at members of a group. This could include: members of the same family; residents of a particular neighbourhood; groups of a specific identity including ethnicity or sexuality, for example, the racial harassment of the users of a specific ethnic community centre; harassment of a group of disabled people; harassment of gay clubs; or of those engaged in a specific trade or profession.

So while the women I mentioned above should have been able to have their cases addressed under this law, they still wait or have been told that there was no crime committed. However the general hate speech perpetrated by sites like Unilad is not covered.

I’m all in favour of the swift response that Stacey received to his tweets but I’d love to see women afforded the same protection and members of the public getting the same treatment as celebrities. Gender hatred is not banter. Rape and murder threats are harassment. Social networking sites need to make it easier to complain - Facebook rarely react or take weeks to do so and Twitter’s complaints page is buried on their site. Crucially police need to take complaints regarding gender hatred as seriously as they do racial hatred, and not just when someone famous gets involved

Mother's Day

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:01:00 +0000

This Sunday is Mother’s Day, which brings me neatly to a year since I started my blogging journey. This time last year I had just finished reading Half The Sky and couldn’t let Mother’s Day go without acknowledging the suffering of women in childbirth in parts of the world. I emailed all my female friends and family a plea to give to organisations like Amref or the White Ribbon Alliance and my friend and fellow blogger put it up on her site as a guest post. My first blogpost! Shortly afterwards I started my own.

A year on and I’ve had so many discussions with my friends about how to raise boys and girls in a culture of respect. So much of it is down to parenting. One friend, who recently had her second little boy - and therefore has little in terms of spare time on her hands - said she was going to change the world two little boys at a time. Raising her boys to be respectful of people and especially women, is important to her.

The influence of our parents is hugely important to who we become. At the recent WOW Festival I attended the Rallying The Troops session where women who had launched campaigns of one kind or another discussed what drove them. June Sarpong credited a lot of her drive to her mother (forget Tiger Moms - try Ghanaian mothers for pushing you to succeed!). Similarly Shami Chakrabarti mentioned that her parents’ expectations of her were part of what drove her to do well.

I think that’s also true of me. My parents placed enormous value on a good education. I didn’t appreciate at the time what a privilege it was to receive it but looking back I see how much of my confidence and success comes from it. However my parents always taught me to be me and respect who I was. They supported any career choice I mentioned as long as I was willing to work hard at it and would help me in any way they could. As a teenager as I embraced feminism and I remember never being sure if my parents understood what it meant to me or why I was so passionate about it, but I remember how proud they were to see my letter about Riot Grrrls and young feminists published in The Irish Times.

They also taught me, above all else, to respect people. To show respect in how I spoke to others and how I dealt with people around me. If I did this, I would be shown respect in return. This is a message that we desperately need to teach young people. The winning entry in the ‘what would you do to change the world’ WOW Den (presented by Manju Nair) had a simple message that we should teach young boys and girls how to deal with each other in school. Done well this would be of enormous benefit going forwards. It’s a real shame that the recent ad campaign addressing teen rape was screened on television but not promoted in schools for instance. Teaching young boys how to accept ‘no’ and what consent means is crucial. Treating young girls to respect themselves and each other (no slut-shaming for instance) is also invaluable.

We are all open to a range of influences in our lives but as girls our first role model in how to be a woman is our mother, supported by aunts, grandmothers, our mothers’ friends and teachers. Gandhi famously said that we need to ‘be the change we want to see in the world’ so this Mother’s Day let’s all remind ourselves to be the role model we would want to see. Be the example you would like your daughters, nieces or other little girls in your life to grow up seeing. Let’s stop talking about our weight and dieting. Let’s stop using words like ‘slut’ altogether. Let’s talk about the successful women we’ve seen (and there are many). Let’s celebrate our own successes and those of our friends. Let’s also thank our mothers and the other role models in our lives who made us who we are. Happy Mother’s Day.

Things I learned this weekend

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:29:00 +0000

I came home with my head spinning after the final day of WOW 2012 so thought I’d share some of my reflections from the weekend.

There is no shortage of wonderful role models for women and girls – I developed massive girl crushes on Jude Kelly, Baroness Helena Kennedy, Shami Chakrabarti and Bidisha but also heard Ruby Wax and Rosie Boycott talk about the awful lows in their lives, Rosie Boycott (again) and others discuss global economics, all of the panel at the Arab Spring session, Sali Hughes and India Gary-Martin on body politics, Dr Kiran Bedi on the criminal justice system and many, many more. There are inspirational women all around us.

Strike a woman, strike a rock – The recent protests and strikes were largely lead and run by women. When we get together we can be magnificent (with thanks to TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady)

Women need to get into power to change things – quotas came up in several discussions I attended and I’ve written another post about it. India Gary-Martin was also asked at the Body Politics session how things will change with regards to ‘acceptable hairstyles’ if people like her are still afraid to come to work with dreadlocks. Her answer was that her recruitment practices were changing the culture of the organisation and in time, what’s acceptable will also change. Great answer.

Find your people - The best way to recover from the hardest times in your life is by finding support from those who truly understand what you’re going through. I think the same is true of feminism. Finding support from other women and feminists is crucial. The WOW festival certainly helped addressed that and I met some amazing women.

There is so much more to be done for women in the world – from Shami Chakrabarti’s breakdown of what is still going on worldwide at the Women, Power and Change session, to the emotional discussion at the Arab Spring session and the panel about the Criminal Justice System it’s clear that we still have a lot to do to bring about equality for women worldwide.

Education of girls is key - The winning idea at the WOW Den was about creating an empowered girls’ network, educating girls and boys about how to relate to each other in a respectful way, and addressing the curriculum of all subjects in school to ensure the role of women is properly taught. It’s an exciting project. In addition, one of the WOWsers stood up and presented her idea about the need for black women to be better represented in careers such as the police force so that they could be role models for young black girls like herself. It was really tough for her to stand up in front of this room of women and speak but with the support of the panel and fellow students she did it. She’ll learn a lot about herself from having done so.

We’re not ladies – After a long and hilarious discussion on the meaning of the word lady, we ditched it. It’s gone. Forget it.

Feel the fear and do it anyway - I did one of the speed mentoring sessions and met some fantastic mentors. A key message from all of them? Go for it. Whatever it is, whatever I want to do, embrace my skills let them bring me confidence and go for it.

I learned an awful lot more than this but these were some of the key themes which emerged for me. I look forward to talking about them more on blogs, forums and twitter. Let’s keep the #WOW2012 hashtag going and keep chatting about what we know and what we can do.

This post was cross-posted on the Women of the World blog

I'm a Lady!

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 16:05:00 +0000

It’s been a brilliant and sometimes intense weekend of talks and debates at the WOW festival on all aspects of being a woman. I’ve been to sessions on global economics, speed mentoring, the criminal justice system, body politics, the Arab Spring and many more. My head has been swimming with all the new perspectives I’ve heard and ideas I’ve been challenged with. And so, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I headed to Tea With The Lady - a discussion on the very notion of being a ‘lady’ (hear David Walliams voice in your head when you say it) and whether it’s a regression or is actually subversive. Interesting debate? I had no idea what I was in for.

Aside from the chair Bidisha I was unfamiliar with the four women on the panel and was therefore completely unprepared for the biting wit and sharp tongues about to be unleashed as well as the ridiculously funny conversation that unfolded. The context of the talk is that with the current prevalence of Domestic Goddesses (Nigella Lawson), home crafts (Kirstie Allsop) and floral prints (Cath Kidston) is being a lady something that is being reclaimed?

In that light, I’m going to attempt to create a (very tongue-in-cheek) 9 step guide to being a lady, formed by the discussion I heard.

Like Karen McLeod who worked as an air steward for British Airways before becoming a writer, my experience of being called a lady was when I worked in a shop and mothers attempting to control their children would tell them ‘give that back to the lady’ or ‘the lady’s watching and she’ll get angry’. As if I cared. I worked in Primark.

So to Lady attribute number one: Be a bit scary and stern. Scare children.

Writer Catherine Hakim claims it is part of our ‘erotic capital’. A lady is well groomed, stylish and with confidence and manners, like Michelle Obama or Carla Bruni. Anna Blundy (author and journalist - who had me in hysterics laughing throughout) argued that these types of ladies were accessories to men - known as being well-groomed arm-candy. Iconic templates as Rachel Johnson (former editor of The Lady magazine) put it.

Number two: Be stylish and well groomed at all times while being arm-candy for a man.

Actually, Johnson argued that as editor she had put women over 40 on the cover who had done something, regardless of their colour or beauty. But also, crucially were not trashy or trampy.

Number three: Don’t be a tramp!

Money and class inevitably entered the discussion. Women like Cath Kidson and Nigella Lawson make millions from their home-styled products and are extremely shrewd. For most women Blundy maintained, doing unpaid work is denigrated as society doesn’t value it.

Number four: Bit confused now. Either make millions by selling ladyness to others, or be arm-candy mentioned above and be rich enough not to work. I think being rich and posh enough not to worry about it is probably key.

Johnson mentioned that when her husband heard she was going to be on this panel, he told her a lady was ‘not pushy and was dignified’ and that she was neither of those things. Blundy went on to talk about her experience of speaking out about her experience of how the Daily Mail wants ladies to be (and I highly encourage you to read her blog post about it) She was styled, put in a suitably coloured frock and, when she didn’t stick to their preferred narrative, the piece was spiked.

Number five: Remain dignified and stick to the script - say what you’re supposed to say.

One of the most hilarious parts of the discussion emerged when McLeod showed us something her (female) partner had bought when they moved in together. A floral Cath Kidston peg holder, shaped like a baby’s dress and with a bow. She noted that many of her lesbian friends were now getting married (to women, I hasten to add as it caused some confusion amongst the panel) and wearing aprons. So is being a lady really just another name for being conservative? The panel felt it was.

Number six: Be conservative and buy aprons and floral peg-holders.

Even Rachel Johnson conceded that if forced to define a lady, it would be a woman in cashmere and pearls and with a pussycat bow. She would like that not to be the case however, but for it to be irrespective of class or income.

Number seven: Wear cashmere and pearls.

In fact, she felt, like Hakim, that being a lady was about behaviour. Blundy felt it’s repressed behaviour - or as McLeod put it, ‘smelling of flowers, not sex’!

Number eight: Smell nice. Shower after sex.

The debate was then opened to the floor and many fantastic questions asked. One was whether baking bread and making your own clothes wasn’t buying into ladyness but was actually about self-sufficiency and not buying from large organisations. Another asked about the programmed Ladette To Lady and what the panel thought of it. McLeod felt sorry for the girls in it, as their own wildness was lost. Blundy also noted that many of them had very problematic relationships with alcohol and sex and this was really just televised, posh rehab, although it seemed to work to an extent. Johnson love it as it taught the girls a sense of self respect and skills valued by society.

Finally, one woman asked if, for women to achieve equality, we really had to ditch the word lady altogether. Every panelist actually felt we did and several didn’t use it anyway. As Bidisha said, it’s currently got a fairly ktisch inflection anyway and the women who market their ladyness are shrewd multi-millionnaires. So with that the women in the room ditched it.

Number nine: Forget it - ditch the list and call yourself something else!

This post was cross-posted on the Women of the World blog

Quotas

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 14:16:00 +0000

Two of the talks I’ve been to this weekend at the WOW Festival (so far) have mentioned something that I’ve struggled to accept in recent years. Quotas. I’ve never been convinced about them either way. Do they help women? Are they tokenism? Does it help the cause of female advancement? I’ve always felt that there are a lot of good arguments on both sides but it’s been interesting to hear a number of speakers come out and say that they think they are necessary.

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC spoke this morning at the Women, Power and Change session. She’s an incredibly smart woman, and a fantastic speaker and she came out quite clearly and said that quotas were the way forward. When she entered the Bar, before the 1976 Sex Discrimination Act, only 8% were women. So how far have we come? The current Supreme Court of 12 judges has one woman on it. Not very far at all. Women are still under-represented on boards, in parliament, in Cabinet and in all powerful institutions. Baroness Kennedy argues that this will not change without quotas. Women get stuck where they are, partially because they buy into the dominant ideas in our culture which tell them that quotas are unfair. But men in power talk up younger men coming up through the ranks, who remind them of themselves. Invisible forces like this won’t be broken through unless they are compelled to break them down. Intriguingly, Baroness Kennedy went on to argue that for senior directors and managers bonuses should have a measurable performance indicator related to promoting diversity.

People absorb the story that quota are bad for women as no-one wants to promote a mediocre woman above a man who is better. But why do we assume that all that’s out there are mediocre women? Or that the men that are promoted currently are not mediocre? Plenty of them are and there is no shortage of brilliant, qualified women in most fields who could live up to any role.

Baroness Kennedy went on to talk about merit. We currently have systems where people are promoted on ‘merit’ but who decides what the criteria are? Men who currently hold the power decide on the list of criteria when recruiting. If women were appointed to senior roles, that list could change and might open the playing field for future applicants without the need for quotas. Merit is not a neutral term as it’s currently assumed to be. It has context and the current context is one in which men are in power and make decisions.

This was an incredibly powerful argument and really opened my eyes to the extent to which I had bought the line that quotas were bad for women in the long run. I wasn’t taking the context of merit into account.

Her thoughts echoed some that were made yesterday in the Selling Us Short? session on advertising - who decides how products are advertised and how are women represented in ad agencies? The consensus of the panellists was that there were very few women at a senior creative level, although they were well represented elsewhere in the industry. Towards the end of the discussion chair Rita Clifton asked what would change this. Andrew Cracknell (a former agency Creative Director and author of The Real Mad Men) reluctantly argued that quotas are probably ‘the right thing to do’. He worried that the first women who were promoted or brought in to fulfill a quota would suffer a backlash but that it was proven to work in countries like Norway. Looking back now, I think his comments about the backlash may have come from thinking that men would think the women didn’t merit being there, but I would not agree with him having heard Baroness Kennedy’s comments.

Gail Parminter (founder of her own agency Madwomen) thought that quotas were difficult in a creative role as you need talent, drive and passion to succeed. But again, why did she assume that women out there didn’t have that? She did argue for a need for role models though and that the few women in these positions currently need to reach out to the next generation. Maybe this is where quotas would help - in creating more role models to reach out.

Kate Stanners also mentioned that she hated the idea of quotas as she felt that women wouldn’t be there on merit. I think Baroness Kennedy disproves this point.

Harriet Harman (Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and Shadow Deputy Prime Minister) commented that we all hate quotas and find them problematic as it feels like meritocracy is being constrained by them. However, she did feel that sometimes there is no change without them and they are a means to an end. They have worked with MPs to an extent and that focusing initially on targets may be a way to start.

The Selling Us Short? panel had mixed feelings on quotas all round, and probably echoed my own mixed emotions but I’ve really had my thoughts clarified by Baroness Kennedy’s discussion of why they work and why they are necessary. I now see more clearly that the advertising panelists thought about merit in a way that was lacking in context. It’s been fascinating to see two quite different sessions at the festival have the same issue come up but in different ways. The real benefit of a festival like this is to tease out these issues and think about them in new ways benefitting from the experience of women who have fought their way to the top of their careers. We absolutely need to have these tough conversations if anything is going to change.

This post was cross-posted on the Women of the World blog

Find Your People

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 20:27:00 +0000

I went to two quite different sessions this afternoon but in a way Find Your People feels like it pulls them together.

Crash and Burn was a searingly honest discussion of what happens when women hit real lows. Rosie Boycott who chaired the panel is an alcoholic, Angie Le Mar had both a physical crisis and a crisis of confidence in her life and Ruby Wax suffered ‘the tsunami of all depressions’ about 4 1/2 years ago. The questions and comments from the audience were stunningly open too and I was so impressed and humbled by the way the women who spoke there talked about such difficult periods in their lives. Stigma had been a theme discussed by the panel and for these women to confront it in front of utter strangers was so brave.

During the conversation with an audience member the phrase Find Your People kept coming up again and again. Rosie Boycott had felt that support from AA, Ruby Wax has launched Black Dog Tribe, a social networking site for people with mental illness and the panel advised an audience member to seek support for the situation she was in. Find your people. One contributor noted that she had found her people and it simply stopped her feeling mad. She wasn’t alone and she wasn’t crazy for feeling what she was feeling. While inner acceptance was also noted as being key to moving on (from striving to thriving as Boycott put it) having support was vital.

Find your people.

In some ways I saw this echoed in the Rally The Troops event. Helping people to connect to other people seems to be what’s driven these women to do what they do. June Sarpong’s WIE venture is about women having a chance to network with powerful women in their fields. Shami Chakrabarti spoke about the need to help people understand their legal and human rights in language that was inclusive and empowered them. Baroness Grey-Thompson spoke of her time as a Paralympian and how she still goes into schools to let girls know how important sport is to their health and how they can achieve anyything in spite of obstacles they may face. Justine Roberts founded Mumsnet on the premise that mothers needed a space to talk to others mothers about anything and everything (an impulse I can relate to as I started my own feminist forum, Sharing Thoughts & Taking Action).

Find your people.

By finding your voice and what you’re passionate about - and Shami Chakrabarti is one of the most passionate speakers I’ve ever seen - you will be connected to others who feel the same way. It’s part of what I love about feminism in the internet age. The community of bloggers and tweeters helps me to discuss issues and challenge my thoughts, as well as find support when I think I’m the only one who feels that way. It’s also the single biggest strength of the WOW Festival itself, bringing women together in particular sessions to talk about a fantastically diverse range of issues.

Find your people.

This post was cross-posted on the Women of the World blog

It's The Economy, Stupid

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 13:43:00 +0000

A slightly unexpected highlight this morning at the WOW Festival was this session on global finance and our economy. Rosie Boycott chaired a panel that included Emma Duncan (Deputy Editor of The Economist), Polly Toynbee (political journalist at The Guardian) and TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady.

It was an unusual relief to hear four women speak knowledgeably about detailed economic history and theory, as well as propose suggestions for the future.

Many interesting points were made about the current goverment’s policies and whether they were likely to help our economy recover, in comparison to the tactics taken in a country like the United States. Inevitably there was also much discussion on the government’s cuts and how they are affecting women in particular.

One section of the session really interested me however. Emma Duncan noted that there are very worrying statistics on women’s financial literacy, or lack thereof. She wondered if this was partially because in households men traditionally were the holders of the money and the power to control what was done with it. They also, let’s not forget, carried the weighty responsibility for ensuring the financial health of the family and making sure everyone was provided for.

In this day and age though, is that really true? Many people my age and certainly younger grew up with women who worked and often also ensured bills were paid and groceries and clothes bought, at the best price. Is it as simple as a lack of role models?

Frances O’Grady commented that very often poor people and poor women are actually brilliant at managing to get by on the money they have. They simply don’t have enough of it. It’s certainly true that, as Polly Toynbee said, if you are low paid you are less likely to educate yourself on pensions, savings rates and which is the best ISA right now. As Emma Duncan went on to comment, it is vitally important that young people - not just young women - are educated on financial matters.

I did Business Studies at school for the Irish Junior Certificate (the first year that the Junior Cert was taken). It incorporated incredibly useful sections on household budgeting, balancing chequebooks (times have obviously moved on) and understanding banking and different types of accounts. However, it wasn’t enough and as I discontinued Business Studies after the Junior Cert. that was the end of my education on the subject.

Education in financial matters, as in so many other aspects of young girls’ lives, is the biggest factor that will contribute to a healthy relationship with money later on. Control over money will give you power over your own destiny - as anyone who has given up work to look after children and then wants to leave a marriage will tell you. Knowing how to use what you have to get the best out of a little cash, or plan for the future on a larger salary comes from being confident in making decisions and this comes from education.

This post was cross-posted on the Women of the World blog

Hope for the future

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:28:00 +0000

So, today is International Women’s Day and the official launch of the WOW Festival. I was fortunate enough to be on the Join Me On The Bridge march organised by Women For Women International and to see the speeches afterwards in the Royal Festival Hall.

There were inspiring words uttered by a range of speakers including the Southbank’s Jude Kelly, comedian and writer Kate Smurthwaite, Bianca Jagger, Cherie Blair and writer and activist Natasha Walters with Zrinka Brala a journalist from Bosnia who fled the war in Sarajevo.

I want to take a minute here though to recognise the speakers who gave me more hope for the future than any of the others. Shabana Khanam and Hajera Khanom are pupils from the nearby Mulberry School and spoke eloquently and confidently about why ‘everything matters’. It’s not enough to worry about a single issue like equal pay for women because every single thing is important and will affect this next generation of girls growing up. For instance, women are still defined by their marital status - no Mr for us, it has to be Miss or Mrs. This next generation want to be freed from these limits and to eradicate traditional perceptions of women which they felt we all accept so easily. They want collective thought and action, and call themselves feminists as an ‘act of gratitude’ towards the women who’ve gone before them.

I was really struck by the clear, defiant way these young women spoke and in front of a large crowd of much older women and men, many of whom are professional campaigners. They simply won’t accept that things can’t change in the world.

This year Gender Across Borders are running an International Women’s Day blog with the theme of Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures. They need look no further than Shabana and Hajera. These girls talk about collective action and the need for a lack of selfishness and this will be increasingly important in the future. This generation of girls in the UK has an unprecedented opportunity to be heard. They don’t need to wait to be given permission to speak or for someone to give them a platform. They have Facebook and Twitter, they write their own blogs. They find their own platforms. It sounds like they intend to use them to make quite a noise and are feeling the responsibility of that voice.

This perspective gives me so much hope for the future and I’m really looking forward to reading what the WOWsers have to say over the next 3 days.

This post was cross-posted on the Women of the World blog

International Woman's Day - Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 09:07:01 +0000

This year’s Gender Across Borders blog for International Women’s Day theme is Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures. For me educating girls internationally is the key to this theme and there are two ways I think we can look at this as members of the global community.

Firstly, in the last year (since reading Half The Sky) I’ve become much more aware of the organisations around the world doing amazing work to educate girls. I’m not talking about an extensive, privileged education (the type of which I was extremely lucky to receive). I’m talking about basic skills. It shocked me to learn that girls in parts of Africa simply don’t go to school for a week a month when they have their periods due to the fact that they have no access to sanitary products, a supply of clean underwear or decent toilets in school in which to use them. I felt so stupid for not having considered this before but it’s just not something I have had to question in our society.

Care International are one charity who, amongst other things, work to educate children and especially girls in Africa. They’re also running a new Walk In Her Shoes campaign which I would encourage you to check out.

Camfed are a charity I’ve supported lately, with donations in lieu of gifts and with the Sky High event my good friend organised in January. Their work in identifying the specific needs in of girls in different communities and attempting to address it is fantastic. I love the detail they give on their site of their projects which really help you to feel as if you are targetting something really worthwhile.

Secondly I think we need to do more to teach girls in the UK and Ireland about the reality of life elsewhere. Girls in sub-Saharan Africa are desperate to get an education but children here will do anything to get out of going to school most days and we need them to understand how privileged they are. Campaigns like the Girl Effect are a brilliant way to do this. The simple facts, presented in a really accessible way are very effective and the wealth of downloadable images, factsheets, pictures and logos on their site mean they can easily be shared on blogs and social networking sites.

We have a responsibility to educate girls in the West to be compassionate, independent women in a global community. This generation have unprecedented access to platforms which give them a voice. They need to know that they have a responsibility to use it wisely. It’s something I’ve been keenly aware of lately as friends and siblings are having children and I think about the future of these boys and especially girls. While I wish for them to be confident and happy young people, I know that the world is getting smaller and their assertiveness can contribute to a better future for others.

However, the best way to inspire and educate girls is to lead by example. I’ve been so, so lucky in my life to know some inspiring women. Many of them aren’t doing anything flashy but they live their lives with passion and with a drive that pushes me to live well, just to keep up! I hope to be that kind of role model for others and to be the example to inspire them.

International Women's Day - the week ahead

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:31:25 +0000

This Thursday, 8th March is 101st International Women’s Day. As a result there are loads of exciting things happening this week that I’ll be blogging updates from.

Firstly, there’s the Join Me On The Bridge event. Women for Women International were inspired to create this campaign by the women of Rwanda and the Congo, two warring countries, who met on a bridge in a show of peace. This year we’ll stand on bridges around the world to show our support for this message.

Next from Friday 9th March to Sunday 11th March is the Women of the World Festival at the Southbank. I went to one day of this last year and left feeling so inspired and energised. I was so sorry I wasn’t there for all three days so this year, I made sure I would be.

The full programme is available to download from the site and tickets are still available (3 day passes or passes for individual days).

Having gone through the list of sessions for each day I’ve no doubt that I will be equally inspired this year and look forward to sharing my thoughts on some of what I’ve seen over the course of the festival.