What the EU has done for women…
Posted by jo in Uncategorized on 08/03/2010
Have you ever tried to find a list of what the EU has done for women?
It’s International Women’s Day today… while Sarah Brown (in this odd unelected First Lady-type position that appears to have been evolving for Prime Ministers’ wives which rankles a little when celebrating issues of women’s equality) is leading the UK events for IWD, CSW (the UN Commission on the Status of Women) is meeting in New York, and the EU is… well, let’s see.
Did you know that the European Commission had launched a Women’s Charter on Friday, in advance of IWD? Here it is.
The Charter was accompanied by a Eurobarometer survey on gender equality. Interesting for me was that, while the UK participants surveyed shared a common set of priorities with the other EU Member States for addressing gender equality, when asked which sort of organisation (NGO, EU institution, national government, or others) had done most for gender equality, only about 10% of Brits cited the EU institutions.
Not really surprising I suppose, given the UK ambivalence towards the EU and tendancy to simply bank any good thing that the EU does…
So I decided to try and help out and post a link to the Commission’s list of what the EU has done for women. I Googled the phrase (amazing how quickly that has become the first port of call for all information searches these days) but nothing came up from the Commission’s own website.
Actually, the best source of information has turned out to be the website of Arlene McCarthy MEP – from four years ago. So with apologies to Arlene (much of this is hers, but I’ve removed the party political commentary), here’s a quick list of what the EU has done for women:
1) Moving towards Equal Pay
- Equal pay for women workers: this was included in the original Treaty of Rome, the first EU Treaty in 1957
(NB this was 13 years before the UK legislation on equal pay. Given that the UK was looking at EEC membership at that point could it have been the prospect of joining the EEC that prompted the UK to adopt its legislation?) - Equal pay for work of equal value: despite the equal pay legislation, many companies classified jobs done by men and women differently, paying higher wages to men for doing jobs that actually required similar levels of skills. Many women since have won equal pay claims, some backdated years including school dinner ladies, hospital and factory workers.
(Some people still seem to think that heavy lifting and digging is “worth more” than hanging out in a warm classroom with a bunch of snotty 5 year olds… despite the fact that the latter is sometimes like an exercise in germ warfare) - Equal rights for part-time workers, better rights for agency workers: nearly half of British women workers work part-time, four in five of the part-time workforce, and about 5 million women. In the past, many women lost out but since July 2000 part-time workers have had equal rights to pro-rata paid leave, pensions, maternity rights, access to training and other company perks and benefits.
(Jolly good thing too. Ridiculous to assume that people are less capable and less clever if they have other responsibilities outside the workplace – unless the hidden job criteria is soul-selling and working all the hours God sends to the glory of the company?)
And via the Agency Workers legislation, temporary workers have more clearly defined rights too (UK rules set out here). - Minimum wage: love it or hate it, there’s no denying that when the UK opted into the European Social Chapter the biggest winners were those on the lowest pay, for whom the basic rights it guaranteed brought about the minimum wage. This is particularly important for women – 70% of low paid British workers are women (including a disproportionate number working part-time hours) and over a million British women have since benefited.
- Equal rights to a pension: Pensioner poverty is a real problem for women, many of whom were excluded from company pension schemes because they worked part-time or had career breaks to have children. EU laws prevent pension discrimination and guarantee equal rights for all to social security benefits.
2) Better rights for women as parents
- Maternity rights: About 70,000 women have babies in Britain each year, and that number is growing. The EU sets a baseline of a year working for an employer in order to get maternity rights (but UK law is actually better and the directgov website has a fantastic calculator setting out the minimum requirements in the UK).
- Parental leave: Since 2002, a new EU law means that any parent with children under 5 has the right to a minimum of 13 weeks parental leave to be taken whenever they choose over the 5 year period. That extends to 18 weeks for any parent of a disabled child under 18.
(This is ideal if you have an ill child – though I wonder what would happen if just before a child hits 5 all parents who have not used the 13 weeks unpaid leave actually took the time to go once-in-a-lifetime travelling or similar? Seems a great opportunity, but is it even possible?) - Right to return to work: I take this so much for granted that the idea that this is a new element of maternity rights law is shocking. Discrimination against pregnant women is outlawed (doesn’t mean it is not still happening though) and, importantly now, particularly in the recession, a woman’s job (but not her specific post) must be held open so she can return to a post without loss of pay or status. Many older women will remember the days when getting pregnant meant losing your job (heck, there are people that remember when as a woman you had to leave the Foreign Office when you got married! And if you read any of the Jilly Cooper short stories from the 1970s you’ll see that it was a cultural expectation among the middle classes even if it wasn’t a requirement). EU laws have put paid to that.
- Paid holidays and a shorter working week: Since 2000, workers have been given the automatic right to 4 weeks paid annual holiday, and a guaranteed at least one day off per week (which was not a given for part-time workers in sectors such as cleaning, who often only got one day off every fortnight). (How on earth do people function on less than 4 weeks holiday a year? I know it’s only 2 weeks in the USA, but when do working parents get to see their kids? And who looks after the children in the school holidays?)
And under the Working Time Directive, employees can no longer be obliged to work more than 48 hours per week, are guaranteed breaks and night shifts are restricted to 8 hours. Despite the right to work shorter British workers work the longest hours in Europe. One in eight mothers work more than 40 hours a week, 30% of fathers more than 48 hours, taking its toll on family life.
3) Protecting women
- Protection: the EU is working on legislation against Female Genital Mutilation, and Gender Based Violence as well as combating human trafficking (which is the fastest-growing criminal activity in comparison to other forms of organised crime).
- International protection: by working together on relations with third countries, in EU foreign policy and within international organisations, the EU Member States can help women in developing countries too.
4) Combating the Gender Pay Gap
If you are a fan of bus campaigns, then you might have noticed the Gender Pay Gap campaign on the buses in capital cities across the EU. But what’s it all about?
One measurement of whether equality has been achieved is the gender pay gap, that is the difference between the average pay of women and the average pay of men.
The gender pay gap can be contentious when discussed with some businesses, so it needs to be remembered that it is a crude tool and the contributing factors are (in the words of the Women and Work Commission in the UK) “complex and multi-faceted”.
But if anyone tries to tell you it only exists because women take time out of the labour market to have children or to work part-time (and that part-time jobs “ought” to be lower paid as part of a lifestyle choice being made), then its worth noting that the National Equality Panel report out this year said that new graduates in the same subject from the same university experience a statistically significant gender pay gap within three years of graduation.
So the EU has also launched a gender pay gap calculator so you can measure the inequality where you work (the UK Government Equality Office has had a methodology on their website for a year).
The new Women’s Charter promises a number of measures, legislative and non-legislative, to tackle the gender pay gap – no idea what these will actually be (but it’s worth keeping an eye on this to ensure that the measures are about valuing women and men equally, because if the drive to get the headline figure down starts to become the end in itself then we could end up with daft ideas like restricting access to part-time work which would be to the detriment of women who would lose the ability to organise their family life as they would wish…)
So the EU has actually done quite a lot to the benefit of women.
And, as the Women’s Charter indicates, there’s still more that can be done.
I come from a Member State that is at the forefront of women’s equality, even if we’re a bit embarrassed to talk about it in those terms. And even here, women are still not able to live the fulfilled lives that they should be able to if we were truly free to balance our working lives and families lives as we wished without constraints forced on us by others (e.g. availability of childcare).
So a very happy International Women’s Day to you.
And, as it is a women’s day and we’re free to do things our way, an air kiss on both cheeks and a gentle hug to each and every one of you.
Guest post day: Don’t put your daughter on a pole, Mrs Worthington
Posted by jo in Uncategorized on 06/03/2010
(image c/o www.meltormes.wordpress.com)
In line with the #guestpostday stream on Twitter, I’d like to introduce something a bit different today – a guest post by a friend @parishspinster prompted by my blogpost on women and violence.
Please give it a read, and encourage her to keep writing…
In this age of instant celebrity, it’s becoming less and less likely that Noel Coward would have urged against child stardom in such an old fashioned medium as the stage.
When you can post your angel’s every waking moment to Facebook and YouTube every child can be flashed around the world in less time than it takes to say ‘mind the paedophile’.
Most parents are convinced of their offspring’s innate talent, genius and beauty. With these springboards, there should be no limits to their achievements.
So why do so many aspire to nothing higher than being ‘famous’?
Fame these days is a very transient state. To reach the pinnacle, you need to have that something extra that will keep you in the public eye. It’s hard to predict the alchemy that produces this longevity. Still, not to worry. You can always sell your soul to the media. Others will follow your example.
There’s no need to be any good in your chosen area of fame. Mediocre is fine. Believe you can be a star and a star you will be. Start acting like one now. No time to waste.
Be orange. Never mind that all your friends are orange too. You know theirs came from sun beds or bottles but they will believe yours came from your jetset lifestyle.
Straighten your hair until it doubles as a plumb line. Handy for those little DIY jobs around the house, but your nail extensions are so long you can’t unzip yourself to go to the loo, let alone wield an electric drill. Anyway, that is what men are for. Whatever you do, be thin. If you can’t be thin, hate yourself. If you have daughters, make sure they learn to hate themselves too. A girl is never too young for pierced ears, or for false eyelashes and lipstick for that matter.
Because a daughter is more than a human being in her own right. She is the embodiment of your hotness. She exists solely because you were so damn sexy that you got yourself impregnated. So it’s only right to celebrate this fact, to dress her up in tiny tight tops with ‘kiss me, I’m gorgeous’ appliqued across the area her breasts will occupy in another decade or so, to see her totter across the room, her still-forming feet wedged into glittery stilettos. It doesn’t get much cuter than that. And it does no harm. Everyone else does it. Suri Cruise just looked so adorable.
And when she’s older she can go into HMV and buy a button badge that reads ‘Dirty Whore’.
And when she’s a bit older than that she can choose her wedding dress from the bridal shop next to the gentlemen’s club, the one advertising pole dancing lessons. A nice bit of symbiosis, that. Buy the dress and get the stag night special offer thrown in. The boys’ll be okay, they can warm up at the pub over the road. Erotic dancers every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. £3.50 entry. Over 18s only, of course. Doesn’t matter about the advertising hoardings (or should that be whoredings?), they’ll have already seen worse on the internet.
Sorry, what did you say? Treating women as sex objects? What do you think all this was in aid of? The tanning, the hair, the nails, the clothes, the absolute horror of not being like everybody else. This is image we have chosen. We’re all porn stars now.
Fame is just around the corner.
Is society structured against mothers?
Posted by jo in Uncategorized on 01/03/2010
(NB this lovely image is from www.allfreelance.com which currently has an interesting article on the issue of being a working parent… more soon)
Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel’s “contraversial” question about motherhood is now on Comment is Free in the Guardian Online. She commented in the Sunday Telegraph that:
“I was perfectly capable of setting up a home when I was 14, and if, say, it had been ordered differently, I might have thought, ‘Now is the time to have a couple of children, and when I am 30 I will go back and I’ll get my PhD.’”
CiF asks for comments on whether she is right.
Of course she is right. In part.
Not about setting up home at 14 - my idea of being grown up at 14 was so far from what I now know to be what being adult actually is actually about as to make my diaries from that time both embarrassing and naively charming.
And it’s time spent “growing up” – either in the world of work or learning to live away from home at university that makes it possible to deal with the complex and multiple demands that you have to handle both in raising a child and running a household.
Commentators have tried to turn her words into a row about teenage sex. Just to be clear, in my heart of hearts I don’t think that people should be having sex outside marriage (or civil partnership) and that a lot of heartache and pain could be avoided by people not doing so. But I also live in the real world and realise that they do, and will. As a former student of history, I also know that 200 years ago people were betrothed and married in their early teens. What they were not doing was using sex as a form of social communication. But I digress.
I think that Hilary Mantel’s point is not that people should be choosing to have babies on their own with no visible means of support aged 14, but that currently societal norms are structured against female biology.
Women are most likely to have problem-free births and pregnancies in their 20s. But if you have gone through school and university, in your early 20s you are only a couple of years into a career.
There is in any case a gender pay gap that appears between male and female graduates within three years of graduation, but we also know that significant time out of the labour market early on in your career and the need to work part-time seriously affect your ability to “get on” in your career.
The jobs market is still broadly structured around the (convenient for men) idea that you get educated, take up a career (whether via an apprenticeship or not), work at it, taking on more and more responsibility until either the Peter Principle kicks in (or indeed the Dilbert Principle) or you become the boss.
Needing to take time out in the middle of that to ensure that there is a next generation that can pay for your pension when you are old doesn’t really fit and leave millions of women these days in a daft situation: have kids and accept that either you’ll take a lot of time out and perhaps never attain a position matching your ability level, try to work part-time in an environment of fine words but ultimately scepticism about whether your are truly “committed” to your career and straddle the two worlds uncomfortably, take the male executive route i.e. have kids but never see them, or don’t have kids.
This is such rubbish.
At the moment many women are putting off having kids until their late 30s, or later. There are articles in the press about getting eggs frozen, about how it’s your “right” to have kids when you want, how many cycles of IVF you should be entitled to (or if you read the other sort of newspaper, how women should not be working but running the house and popping out babies and getting homecooked dinner on the table for their man).
But the truth is that having a baby is more difficult as you get older, that it is harder and more risky for both mother and child, and the risk of Down’s Syndrome and similar increase exponentially.
There was a story in the press a year or so ago about the rise in births of children with Down’s, saying that the “caring UK” was a more accepting place in which to raise disabled children than in the past. But the rise of the older mother is also a factor, and while you love the child you have you do wonder if all of the people that put off having a child until so late in their reproductive lives fully realised the potential impact of that decision.
Besides, getting woken up at all hours of the night is hard at any age, but even harder as you get older.
How much better to have your kids when you are physically at the optimal point to do so?
Of course there are arguments too. How would it be possible to afford to raise children without a decent salary behind you? How will you ever get women at the top of businesses if they don’t even get going on their careers until their 30s? What about more equal sharing of parenting responsibilities?
And doesn’t the structure of the modern relationship also argue against this alternative model?
If I’d been having kids in my very early 20s, I’d have been having them with one of my university boyfriends and we’ll never know if that relationship would have endured with children involved (it didn’t with none, obviously, and that’s something of a relief for both of us).
But while I’m a monogamist who believes in marriage for life, many people see it as until divorce does us part, a situation rendered even more painful and complex when children are involved.
Would that, too, be changed by following a different life pattern?
The rush to condemn Hilary Mantel as condoning teenage pregnancy (a curious target which the government surely cannot really be held responsible for bringing down directly unless there are taskforces standing by to invade teenage bedrooms, bathrooms, parks and wherever else couples-of-however-transient-a-nature are trying to get it together…) risks overlooking her fundamental point that society still does not operate to the benefit of men and women equally.
For me, this is so obviously true, I can’t believe that anyone would even try to deny it or defend it as self-evidently the way things need to be.
But it’s not just women alone that are being overlooked.
Until we value motherhood (and fatherhood too) as necessary for the rearing of well-rounded children best able to achieve their potential rather than as an inconvenience that takes people out of wholehearted pursuit of money, and children are not treated as an irritation, a “choice that other people have made that I should not have to pay for” or worse, as a threat, then we will keep having this ongoing issue of arguing whether women should be in the workplace or the home, or whether there is a gender pay gap and if so why and can and should anything be done about it. Can’t we just accept that raising the next generation is actually a very important job and value it as one?
Open letter to Ashford Future from some new residents
Posted by jo in Uncategorized on 01/03/2010
Fantastic image of Ashford from North Street, copyright Iain Crump but licensed for further reuse, available at http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1142576
Dear Ashford Future
We really appreciate the role that you are playing in developing our new home town to accommodate 29,000 new households in the next 20 years. This is a massive undertaking and we’ve now seen the overview plans that you have put forward to develop the town. It’s good to know that there is an overall vision as so any towns see not to have one.
We’ve not yet had a chance to read in detail the town centre plans that have apparently just been approved, but suspect that they are linked closely to the overall plan we’ve seen and on which these comments were drafted.
We don’t know whether you intend to keep consulting on individual aspects of those plans or whether you intend to give residents a chance to comment on the overall shape of the plans.
Either way, as recently arrived resident who intend Ashford to be our home for the foreseeable future, we’d like a chance to share our views with you on some of the key elements.
Transport Links
Highspeed train – this is a fundamental in us being able to live here – commuting for even longer every day would make it almost impossible for both of us to work in London and also handle the childcare arrangements.
Please do keep on at southeastern trains about train timings – every half hour is pretty good (a six coacher every 15 mins would be even better!), but the preview services were standing room only at some times of day and with new arrivals like us using the service daily, and at over £5000 a year, that’s a lot of money to stand at 140 mph… Timing of the trains getting back in the evenings is frustrating too – there’s just not quite enough time to get to the nursery without being at risk of a fine. Is there any consultation or consideration of these things when timing the trains?
We’ve read your car parking strategy. Yep, sometimes even the X Factor or Dancing on Ice doesn’t give a thrilling enough Saturday night. We noted that you pretty much intend to phase out town centre carparking and have Park and Rides. Having lived in towns like that before, we’ve bought a house within walking distance to the station. Just one light against you, or traffic jam, and you’ve lost the time advantage you might’ve hoped to gain.
We noted too the comment that the station car parking needs consideration. We’ve considered it – and again that’s why we’re moving to the town centre and not the prettier villages – the chances of parking near the station in 5 years time are looking remote. Commuters are likely to want to live not just at Cheeseman’s Green and the like but in existing villages too – so what do you have planned for them?
We’re in favour of SmartLink. Shiny blue buses do not of themselves a mass transit system make - and the website publicity focuses on the wrong things: the ability to buy tickets from a machine before boarding and nicely landscaped routes are not really the point when assessing whether the scheme is fit for purpose.
As far as I can see the main questions are actually whether the tickets will be affordable (no more than a pound anywhere and with timed tickets rather than just single or return journeys), available as a season pass, on a smartcard which should be interoperable with Oyster and the rail system, the frequency, how and where exactly the dedicated bus lanes will be established, plus why, if you are intending to phase out the town centre carparks, you’ve not considered a Kennington route for SmartLink. On this last point, when I asked I was told that was because there was high car ownership in Kennington but as SmartLink is designed as a mass transit system and as part of the greening of Ashford, that’s a bit illogical.
The new plans for M20 Junction 10A seem pretty good (do we really think though that it’ll allieviate traffic at Junction 10 by convincing traffic from Park Farm to join the motorway one junction further from their intended direction of travel? That’s not in line with human nature…). But the proposed lorry park, to be sited between Evegate and the substation at Sellindge really concerns us.
Which road are you intending they use to get there? The A20 between proposed juntion 10A and Evegate cannot cope with a lot of extra lorry traffic without disturbing the main route out of the surrounding villages, negating any time benefit that they might derive from the building of 10A. Plus the projected traffic flows for the area suggest that space for 3000 lorries would not actually allieviate Operation Stack in any case!
And why build it there at all? Surely the solution is to increase the size of the existing lorry parks at Ashford and at Folkestone which are surrounded by wasteland. And if it’s cost as well as lack of space that’s the reason so many lorries end up parked around the market at Ashford, then lower the cost of using the lorry park and clamp down on the illegals – I think I recall that fines can be pursued cross-border these days?
New Housing
If you are going to build 29,000 new homes, there’s a serious case for making these eco-friendly. Park Farm may be built to high eco standards and as we’ve a new build ourselves we know that the insultation etc. needs to be second to none. We were pleased too to hear about high quality builds in Victoria Way.
But what an opportunity this town expansion presents!
We feel you should only be granting builders permission to build these new homes if they are truly sustainable – are you going to be requiring greywater or rainwater harvesting systems for saving water (this must surely be a priority in this drought-prone area of the world)? What about solar panels on the houses, or possibly wind turbines?
If you’re concerned that this would be difficult to achieve for lots of new homes individually, what about a communal requirement for each new estate or block of flats?
Unless these things are required, we risk saddling ourselves with a huge housing stock requiring individuals to invest in a way that is difficult in a recession, but is much easier if the cost has been absorbed into the price that you can get a mortgage on.
We’re also a bit concerned at what seems to be a focus on building flats. Who is it that Ashford is intending to attract? What’s the future profile that is in mind here? If we’re looking at young people that work locally, then my own family provides a good example. My cousin and her boyfriend were school leavers with jobs locally – but they were not after a flat in the town centre when for only a little bit more they could get a house on one of the new estates, with a garden.
Ashford has not to date been the sort of place you aspire to live in the centre of. What is intended to attract people to live in town centre flats? There’s precious little outdoor space, nor nice places to go out to in terms of chic little restaurants and wine bars to support this city centre approach to living. And are the flats to have parking? If not, then there’s even or reason to require things to do in the town centre.
Update: my husband reminded me that I also meant to make a point about the need for commuter-friendly housing near the station. If Ashford is looking to attract incomers from London, again they are unlikely to be looking for 2-bed flats.
Charter House
Charter House is frankly an eyesore. We’ve seen that the plans are to fill it with a mixture of residential and retail and offices. The point is that Charter House looms in central Ashford and we’re not clear what could be done to make it look better. Tall buildings are not a problem per se, but Charter House is surely beyond redemption. Why not find someone to flatten it and build something inspiring, glass and steel?
Green Spaces
The thing is, we’ve lived in flats. It’s normal in towns in the rest of Europe and it’s normal in London. Our last flat had a roof terrace, and quite a big one, not just a balcony. And it isn’t enough – you still feel boxed in and end up hanging your socks on a rack over the bath to dry.
The thing that flat builders elsewhere in Europe get right is the common green spaces. If you’re building flats, you need to give people a decent amount of common outdoor space nearby. There’s a human need to get your shoes off and feel the grass under your feet, to sunbathe, to picnic, to have a kickaround with your toddler or go for a bike ride.
Funnily enough, that’s something that the Victorians in London actually got right – the parks and commons really are the lungs of the city. At the moment, other than the tiny memorial garden or Victoria Park which really isn’t up to much, Ashford does not have much in the way of common land in the town centre area. At the moment, it’s easy to say that the countryside is not far off and it’s easy to reach green spaces. But, if you are expanding the town, that green space gets further away. And sympathetic landscaping is just not the same thing as a bit of wild yet safe land.
Surely either Dover Place or Vicarage Lane car parks could – instead of both being handed over for retail – be given over to a beautiful green space?
And don’t get me started on the river. The nice leaflet identifying a kind of chain-like link of grassy areas along the river doesn’t really hold up in reality (I guess that’s the proposed Stour nature park?).
But where are the riverside restaurants around the Stour? There’s a stonking great Hitachi rail depot on one side, and the Stour Centre carpark on the other… come on. Natural assets like a river frontage should be positively exploited rather than act as if we have our backs to a rather damp inconvenience.
Retail, Food and Drink
Practically every new development says that there will be retail, offices and housing. That’s great.
But you’ll have all these new houses, and all these park and ride schemes and very little for these new people to be doing in Ashford.
The designer centre is a great place to start, but there’s a few stores that would really be welcome there which you can find at other outlet centres: Monsoon, Banana Republic (in Gap) and Charles Tyrwhitt. But now that Waitrosehas arrived (albeit in the wrong place if that survey in town the other day is anytihng to go by), and Debenhams has made such a difference to the town centre, can a John Lewis be that far behind, especially with plans for County Square expansion? And what’s going to be done to attract something other than poundshops to Park Mall?
Ashford’s food and drink is somewhat underwhelming. I know we’re starting from having come from the gastronome’s delight of Northcote Road but a choice of four MacDonalds is not my idea of diversity.
So please, in the new places being built at the station let’s have a Pain Quotidien, or a Paul (it is Ashford International, after all). And an M&S food – they seem to be compulsory at London stations these days, and putting one in at Ashford International would really help commuters who’ve dashed past all the fabulous shops at St Pancras or Stratford to bag one of the few empty seats on the high speed train home and forgotten the milk they promised to pick up.
What about a Giraffe child-friendly but nice cafe in the town centre? We’d love that – or Carluccio’s? How about a Jamie’s Italian? What about Strada? Or a Nando’s? I’m not asking for Michelin three stars, but I can’t help thinking that it’s all very well these companies eyeing up the likes of Canterbury, but it’s Ashford that’s got the population to support them. I know a lot of the decent shops and restaurants have gone to slightly-posher looking Tenterden, but that’s o reason for Ashford town centre to miss out.
Schools and childcare - what are the plans for new primary schools and secondary schools? With so many new households, the schools are going to come under serious pressure. It’s already hard to find the right sort of childcare to handle the commuting lifestyle.
That said, resist the pressures and keep the grammar schools. They’re a major selling point for us people moving into Ashford from elsewhere (because of course we all believe our child will pass the 11-plus with flying colours) but they’re also good for social mobility and they give a chance to people who might not have had one otherwise in a segregated-by-address schooling system.
Europe’s best placed?
We are also particularly interested in what plans you have for the European side of Ashford – attracting business to the town from Paris, Lille and Brussels, and beyond. We’ve already seen one attempt at sidelining Ashford for that build-it-and-they-will-come upstart Ebbsfleet (surely only there for the convenience of Bluewater?) by Eurostar, so how are you going to attract visitors and investment? The town and wider region would suffer greatly fro loss of that link, so creative ideas (like the Calais metro train proposed for 2012) need to be brainstormed as well as the more serious planning.
I’m not going to go on about recycling here, as you can read it in a separate post on this blog, but surfice to say this really needs sorting if Ashford is to be carbon neutral and all the other things we can surely aspire to if we have a regeneration/ development agency with the word “Future” in the title…
As you can tell, we’re genuinely interested in the future of our new hometown, and would love to work with you on making it happen. Do get in touch and let us know what you’ve got planned next…
Mea culpa, dimitte mihi
Image from freefoto.com
Another of my Lent thoughts.
I’ve been thinking about forgiveness.
I’m wondering what the impact is of living a life unforgiven – both from the point of view of forgiveness for something you have done, or from the perspective of just not being able to forgive something done to you.
I like to think I’m good at forgiveness.
The boyfriends who dumped me? You know what, you were probably right. It was awful at the time. But I’ve a lovely husband and an adorable son and wouldn’t have it any other way. That wouldn’t have been possible without you. See? Easy.
But forgiveness is not easy.
Simon Wiesenthal’s book “The Sunflower” detailing his experience during the holocaust shows how seriously the concept needs to be taken. Could you have offered forgiveness in his position?
People that impress me are not the Beckhams and the rich and famous. These people have done well for themselves, but ultimately they are not really heroic. This week we went to Warrington (not the town centre, just the IKEA) and we talked about what it mean to us. To my husband who grew up in that area, it’s the memories of his childhood. To me, from nearly 300 miles away, Warrington is a name with other connections – sad ones. I think of the IRA bomb that killed two children. Colin Parry, father of Tim, is a hero. His forgiveness of the people that murdered his son so indiscriminately, so futilely, and his continued pursuit of peace are what impresses. “Forgive and not forget” is at the heart of his message.
And there must be days when he has to deal with the people that did this when the anger, the hurt, these things ressurge and forgiveness seems impossible.
Forgiveness after all, seems to me to be dynamic – it has to be worked at and remembered or it slips away.
And always the question, if it was you, could you forgive?
The scale of forgiveness required can be awesome. Can you forgive, but not forget, and move on at more than an individual level? Well, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa had a go at it after apartheid and is generally thought to have succeeded.
In Matthew 18:21- 22, Peter asks Jesus “How many times shall I forgive my brother? Seven times?”
And Jesus says, “not seven times but seventy times seven (seventy seven times in other translations)”.
Obviously he didn’t say the bit in brackets… and the actual number is not important, the point of the story is that the Law (for which the rabbis at the time has said forgiving twice was sufficient) is now being fulfilled by Jesus who was saying that forgiveness mattered so much that it should not be a simple matter of enumeration.
And it may be even more important than that. In Matthew 6:14-15 Jesus says ”For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Jesus forgave on behalf of God, with an audacity that shocked (in claiming to forgive sins commited against others and against God, which is God’s prerogative, he was claiming to be God).
And we are called to forgive too. It’s there in the Lord’s prayer – forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. We say these words but do we think about what they actually mean? Is forgiveness for ourselves conditional? Is refusing to forgive a sin?
Who are we to stand in judgement over others? It’s not just about specks and planks in our eyes, it’s about how we stand in God’s eyes. And it’s by God’s grace that we can be forgiven, given how badly we measure up against his standards. To see what I mean try Philip Yancy’s “What’s so amazing about grace?” – still one of my favourite books 7 years after being given a copy by a friend from church.
Of course recognising the importance of forgiveness is not just a Christian thing. Google “why is it important to forgive?” and you get 10,700,000 results, and that’s only in English. From this life coach to this islamic questions website, there’s recognition that peace in your heart can only come from forgiveness.
Lily Tomlin summarises forgiveness like this: “To forgive is to give up all hope for a better past“.
It’s about letting go, stopping trying to “what if” the past away, stopping trying to rewrite it, stopping trying to find someone to blame, stopping the anger. And it is so, so hard. But not being able to forgive burns, eats away, and hurts you so much. And that’s whether you can’t forgive others, or whether you feel unforgiven and can’t forgive yourself. It’s no wonder that everyone encourages you to try.
So we have to make an active choice to forgive, and once we’ve done so, we need to remember that we have done so, and why we have done so, and to not bring it all up again with all the anger and hurt as fresh as the day it happened. And it’s easy to talk about it, easy to know that we should forgive as everyone tell us to, easy to believe that of course we’ve forgiven but that it’s somehow ok still to be angry and recount and mull and… Lilly Tomlin’s right. We have to give up all hope for a better past.
Can we live a full and healthy life without forgiving? The only references I’ve found to this are people talking about never forgiving an abusive parent, but not allowing it to interfere with them getting on with their lives. Every other reference to forgiveness on the internet (and I’ve been looking at this for an hour or so now) says that only by forgiving can life be lived to the full.
I’m not good at forgiving. I’ve just been extrordinarily lucky in my life to be able to. So far.
And it’s not easy at all.
But the freedom, the grace that comes with being forgiven and from letting go and forgiving, that’s worth the inner battle.
Lent – not just a past participle…
Posted by jo in Gastronomy, faith, life on 17/02/2010
image from freefoto.com
Embarrassing incident at work today.
As I walked through reception I saw a colleague I barely know with a dirty mark on her forehead. I thought about telling her, but decided as she was about to get into a mirrored lift that she’d see it herself in good time.
But when I got back upstairs, I saw another colleague with a mark and said “ok, I’ve missed something, what’s the mark about?”
“It’s Ash Wednesday”, said my colleague.
Of course it is. What a fool I felt.
I made pancakes last night for Shrove Tuesday (embarrassingly good since they were made from a Betty Crocker instant batter shaker, and it made me wonder why I’d bothered making them by hand so many years).
I won my only real school prize for Scripture, writing an essay on the origins and meaning of pancake day (see this post for more detail). As they said on the TV news yesterday, we’re all so used to thinking about pancakes and live in such a relatively prosperous and increasingly secular society that we’re forgetting that they symbolise something.
But the ash marks reminded me that not everyone’s forgetting.
My colleague mentioned the services that were taking place at Westminster Cathedral and asked me if I too was Roman Catholic, to which I replied no, C of E, and that I’ve not seen that for years (the universal tradition is to burn last year’s palm crosses from Palm Sunday to make the ash, which in itself is a symbolic act).
She suggested looking up the Westminster Abbey website to see if my denomination was doing it too, which was kind of her. One thing about working on equalities issues is that – far from the way that we see equalities described as being about the sweeping away and secularisation of society – it’s about celebrating and recognising our diversity and that that’s what makes life interesting.
But it reminds me of a conversation with a friend last week. We talked about giving things up for Lent and how hard it was this year (I’m trying to give up fruitless worrying about the future, she’s giving up alcohol). Both are small, commemorative acts of personal use rather than big dramatic acts clearly visible to all.
She mentioned that her parents were unlikely to consider what she’d given up “enough”, but she hoped that it would be understood and would not be held against her getting a pass to heaven.
I’ve pondered this last point, because its on this precise issue that we pass for the cultural to the spiritual and a small but significant difference of view.
It’s easy to forget what is cultural (rememberance of the 40 days in the wilderness) with what is spiritually necessary (that is acceptance of Jesus’s gift to us, God’s forgiveness, that the price of our sin has been paid and God’s law fulfilled). It’s not about trying to fulfil a standard – Jesus’s whole message was effectively that this is pointless as no one on their own merit will ever be good enough to meet God’s perfection.
We’ve seen this reflected in so much of religion, both within Christianity and in other faiths, the hope that by setting rules that must be obeyed you’ll be more what God is looking for, or trying to buy your way in to God’s good books through good behaviour. And of course we know that rules that set out to help can become a hindrance by being too hard to meet or becoming the aim themselves rather than the glory of God.
Christians know from Jesus that nothing they do will be good enough, that it’s faith in Jesus (known as justification by faith) but even then the issue is complicated, with James 2:24 in the New Testament the point being made is that what you believe modifies your actions. As wikipedia sets out unusually clearly, true faith in God results in a desire to follow his instruction to love one another, and thus would result in good deeds. But that’s difficult to get your head round – resulting in many heretical positions down the centuries.
Lent reminds us of a hardship endured, and ultimately a sacrifice made for us. It reminds us to lend part of our thoughts to this, for this short period (the classic 40 days to Easter).
But Lent is not just the past participle of “to lend”, it’s a real thing affecting the way in which millions of people in the UK live their lives (and with larger population for C&E Europe, possibly a growing number). We may not have the parading in sackcloth and ashes of the mediaeval world but the connotations of fasting and repentance (conveyed by lack of decoration in church) and regarding the world a little more contemplatively do echo on. Typically we’ve hung onto the fun of the pancaking feasting which the population forgets the follow-up fasting.
But the echoes are now rebounding more loudly. Combined with increasing willingness to show religious faith publicly, whether wearing headscarf , turban, skullcap or cross, even if there are consequences because to those doing it it’s a mark of what is important in their lives. The ash marks are both traditional and the latest manifestation of this. Yes they are symbols, the symbol of the thing rather than the thing itself, but symbols matter.
Let’s think about it, while we digest.
Why Mumsnet politics matters
Oh dear – Janet Street Porter seems to be upset about having been invited to a party to celebrate Mumsnet’s anniversary.
I’m a member- but not a regular user- of Mumsnet. Also of Netmums, and a couple of other parenting websites.
It’s a legitimate forum for parents to come together and share common experiences.
I have a bit of Boden in my wardrobe (not too much – Johnny seems to imagine that yummy mummies have breastfed so long that they have lost any semblance of cleavage so I can’t buy the majority of the tops). I thought the dresscode of “Boden” she mentioned was very funny, very knowing (as in that’s what they think of us shorthand irony). Yep, I wear it both to work and socially, but never to “hubbie’s office dinner” because – do you know what?- in our working lives to date, it’s been my jobs that have generated all the out of hours socialising-as-business events. And some of those have been black tie… ah, but those days are over now.
But then I’m problably the suburban middle class mother that JSP would despise.
The Mumsnet discussion of all this shows the diversity of the women involved. The common thread is motherhood but age, job other than parenting, marital status, location, interests, and frankly spelling ability and ability to articulate are hugely varied.
Yes, as with all online forums there’s an element of bullying. But I don’t find that there’s a received way of thinking – far from it (a debate with a politician felt like it got hijacked by the home-schoolers recently and while no one says why on earth would you do that, it was hardly a mainstream concern shared by all – but the questioners were about to make the points they wanted to and get a response on an issue that they could have spent years writing to DCSF about and not had anything as clear or direct).
And Mumsnet can’t be said to speak for all mums. My favourite stat is the if you had all the members together physically in one place, say a football stadium, rather than online no one could say that they should be overlooked- but of course the point is that you never could do all that and no one would expect them all to be friends or have a common view or purpose other than the specific one that’s brought them together. A bit like football fans actually.
But JSP is wrong to suggest that it’s the kiddie sick element of parenting that would form the main part of conversation at a party like that – if Mumsnet were inviting the sort of people that post it’d be so much more interesting than that. JSP herself says that it is likely to be “packed with high achieving women”.
And that’s the point. Mumsnet and other online forums can’t easily be dismissed as JSP points out because it is expected that women will be the swing voters in the coming election.
Talking about being parents is not enough though – if the high achieving women of Mumsnet are intelligent too, they are unlikely to be impressed simply with an “I’ve got a family too and I love them” approach by politicians (although I have to say that unless you’ve been a parent or raised a sibling etc. you really don’t know what it’s like to be one!) unless we’d got evidence that they too had had childcare logistical arrangement trauma, needed both parents to work to meet the bills, fought to get into the right schools and all the other little day to day dramas that parents deal with everyday but which I could not have possibly anticipated would be so complicated until actually faced with handling it.
(As an aside, I once asked a schoolfriend of mine who had three children and was pregnant with her fourth whether she’d gone back to work. Bless her, she didn’t actually cut of contact or shout at me but with just one I can now see how naive a question that was!)
I would have thought that – if women are to be the battleground – vocabulary like “swingeing” public sector cuts would be dropped given that that is more likely to affect women than men as they are more likely to be working in the public sector.
And far from calling it “smug”, why don’t we just acknowledge that women, whether SAHM (stay at home mums) or working like me, using their own little vocabs on the web like DH for darling husband (no worse than football fans, or car owner forums etc.), are a legitimate voting demographic?
Yes, so are the “women over 40, single and divorced” - interestingly JSP’s own demographic on and off- both are valid.
But that dones’t mean mums are irrelevant. And politicians
have found a direct way to talk with some of them, which both parties like (many politicians like to extrapolate from the specific to the general – Alan Johnson said on BBC4’s “The Great Offices of State” this week that he liked to get out and talk to policemen on the frontline rather than just read briefs compiled by civil servants, as if the specific expereinces of a few could be presumed to be similar to those of the whole – which is of course the basis behind sampling too).
But please, JSP, can you help celebrate that some women, and not just those working like men, or with lots of money, or for whom children didn’t happen and could focus wholeheartedly on careerbuilding at the crucial 20s-40s period and who have climbed the greasy poles are getting their voices heard too? It’s shouldn’t be either/or, it should be “yes! And now let’s make sure the next group can also be heard! ”
Mums, whether working or at home are voters too, and the politicians are recognising it. So the willingness of senior politicians to be participating in Mumsnet debates matters.
If it could be done in a non-patronising way that’d be great.
Women and violence – shouldn’t we pull together?
Posted by jo in Uncategorized, life, parenting, politics on 15/02/2010
(Image from http://jade-nadezhda.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default - please do read this site!)
Two very depressing statistics in the news this morning.
The first was that one in three women apparently now think that women who are raped need to bear some responsibility for what has happened to them. The figure came from a survey of 18-50 year old men and women in London. We’ll come back to this in a minute.
The other statistic was that one in five boys think its ok to be violent towards their girlfriend while one in three teenage girls think that its only to be expected. This was related to a campaign being released on youTube to combat and try to denormalise this idea.
This is really, really scary.
Radio 4 this morning interviewed Dr Linda Papadopoulos (who I remember as the Cosmo agony aunt and who is always very sensible). The frustration in her voice was palpable: she spoke about “learned helplessness” -that it’s going to happen, that the values of our culture are that we have taught girls primarily to desire to be desired, while – with boys playing video games that reward them for gunning people down, driving riskily and committing violence against women.
She stressed that it was almost ”as if the feminist movement never happened”.
What’s scary is the control issue. It’s not just about physical forcing of teenage girls to do or not do certain thing, it’s about the psychological control – the girls talk about being not “allowed” to do something, that he checks her phone messages, that he “cares enough” to behave like this, that sometimes you just “have to” to keep him happy.
This was girls as young as 13 talking.
I guess its one thing in a long term relationship (by which I’m talking years, not weeks or months) to occasionally think I’m not really up for this but conjugal rights and the continued bonding and closeness in a relationship means I should at least try. But that’s one thing when you’re in your 30s or 40s and the craziness of life is getting in the way of time and libido. It absolutely should not be the case on a regular basis, or if you’re a teenager with their whole life ahead of them!
Now I know Channel 4 “Skins” is a heightened reality drama, not a documentary, but sex is presented in this show as a normal and early occurance in teenage relationships and often just as part of social interaction. As if teenagers are actually bonobo monkeys.
As with drinking and other age-limited activities, it doesn’t really seem to matter that the age of consent is 16 in this country. Very few 15 year old boys are ever actually likely to face rape charges for sleeping with their 5 year old girlfriend. And if its consensual many people would say fair enough.
The problem comes though in defining consensual. The “no means no” message seems to have got lost somewhere over the last decade or so.
Women are presented in the media – and often in magazines aimed at women themselves – as really only being of value if primped and preened to perfection, dressed in high fashion or revealing clothes, make up, jewellery etc., as if there’s no intrinsic value to their company, no worth to their words or point in listening to them unless there’s an outcome at the end of the night. And when words aren’t important, what value does “no” have?
The huge number of stories in the press about sexual violence against women seem to be split between famous-people-accused and she-was-lying coverage – I generalise greatly of course. There’s also the gang-rape-of-teenage-girl-by-teenage-boy-gang-on-council-estate coverage. And we get so desensitised to the stories that we forget the ongoing trauma that the victims suffer, especially give how few successful prosecutions seem to be made which means that the perpetrators must quite often be getting away with it.
Getting rape taken seriously has always been a problem, and when I learn that its used as a tool in war, take Rwanda for example, to subjugate the local population (leading in that case to the rapid spread of HIV and the birth of thousands of HIV positive babies whose mothers die and the misery caused perpetuates through the wider family, village and down the generations – this story on Comic Relief left me and others in tears) I felt so angry that I could happily condone enforced castration for the perpetrators.
The upsetting thing in the statistics out this morning was the number of women who felt that “no means no” was offset by the behaviour of the women that had been raped. The idea that two people can share a bed and not have sex seems to be regarded as quaintly old fashioned, the suposition is that they will. And if it gets as murky as forced sex when consent had been given to share a bed but not to sex (seems it was quite specific), well, the survey this morning said that a third of women thought that the woman must bear some part of the responsibility.
So even a third of women don’t believe that men should be able to control themselves, that no means no, or that actually the most important thing that we as women can do is stand up for and support each other. Trying to get to have sex is a basic function of men – hardwired into not just their psyche but their physionomy. And sadly some need to be devious and worse to get that to be the case.
There’s a lot of political organisation that tries to address all this: UN level, EU level, national government (and indeed local although the message gets somewhat diluted when for example Sapphire centres get their funding cut).
But we had feminism demonised for decades, laughed at, and even dismissed by women themselves (from Thatcher’s “I owe nothing to women’s lib” and the page 3 models claiming that what they do is liberating, to the ongoing pressure from mothers to dress more femininely to attract a husband) and I’ve blogged before on how I think that it has lost its way.
Feminism shouldn’t as far as I’m concerned be just be about the right of women to dress as provocatively as they want and sleep with whoever they want whenever they want. It is about the hard economics of both childrearing and women’s place in the labour market, and it is also about recognising where we need to be supporting each other.
This morning’s stats are revealing of just how far we’ve still got to go. We need to fix the sisterhood so that it’s image is not just Germaine Greer and earnest American academics, but so that 13, 15, 17 year old girls have too much self respect to just accede to their boyfriends’ demands, so that women’s contribution and role in society is valued.
And it’s not even 9am yet!
Bearing gifts to the Greeks?
Posted by jo in Uncategorized on 14/02/2010
Or Oi! Desmond! No!
So the outcome of the emergency meeting on Greece’s financial situation was – unclear. A whole lot of commentary by the British press focusing mainly on whether:
1) Greece going bakrupt would mean the end for the Euro;
2) the British taxpayer would be bailing out Greece.
As it turns out, neither happened. Yet.
A very sensible commentary from the FT’s City editor pointed out that, in the USA, cities and states go bankrupt all the time (California did so recently) but no one talks about the US dollar collapsing as a result. It’s a big deal yes, but not a ginormous one.
But something had to be done. Whether explicitly or tacitly, Greece needed to be helped by the stronger Euro countries.
In part this is a Treaty requirement. The Treaty of Rome set out that it is desirable that the Member States regard their economic policies as a matter of common concern. As EUpedia points out, Article 103 stipulated that they should consult each other and the Commission on the measures to be taken in the light of the prevailing circumstances.
But in the end the risk of the “contagion” effect – making investing in the other Euro countries, which in turn would affect investment in economies such as ours in the UK which have such closely linked economies- meant that there was self-interest as well as altruism in acting.
So self-interest dictates that something had to be done, and it will be, probably. The agreement reached was not exactly a master piece of clarity. But it will do as a starting point and the seriousness with which it is being taken was illustrated by stern words from Angela Merckel and the brilliant commentary by an unnamed German diplomat to the effect that other Eurozone members did not want to see their economies suffer so that the Greeks could have nice lives.
image from the must-read www.mailwatch.co.uk
And will the UK have to bail out Greece?
Peter Mandelson has been in the press recently saying that “talking down” the UK economy (whether that’s -say- to international audiences, for which also read competitors at Davos, or making unflattering comparisons between the UK and Greece’s economies) and he has something of a point, not least because of the contagion effect explained above.
And it seems that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has been robust in saying that this is a eurozone rather than an EU problem. But remember what I said about the contagion – it is not in the UK’s interests for the Euro to fail, particularly since – because of the way in which Treaties are written- we are still technically supposed to be lining up to join the Euro and therefore have a convergence plan.
I have not had a chance to read the agreement that’s emerged after the meeting, but I imagine that the text will not shut the door on whole-EU action at some unspecificed future point if the alternative was total economic collapse… and so in that way I suppose the UK taxpayer could at some future point still step in to support the Euro.
But I just can’t see how that corresponds into that headline “Now We Have to Bail Out the Euro”.
Firstly, define “now”? As far as I can see that’s an inappropriate use of the word. France and Germany, primarily, seem to be bailing out the Euro. Not Britain.
But hold on… may be this is a new pro-European “we” that I would not previously have expected from the Daily Express where the impact of the bail out on the French and German taxpayers (amongst others) is being expressed as a kind of pan-European shared pain? Somehow I suspect not…
Was this all fair on Greece? Criticism of Greece which the Prime Minister has angrily refuted covered everything from alleged lying in accounting to the fact that the retirement age for public servants in Greece is 47.
47!!! It’s currently 60 here, going to 65, but I can’t help thinking for my generation we’re going to be minimum 70 and probably til-we-drop before we can think of retiring.
And Germany – due to a low birthrate and the complete lack of childcare that resulted in women having to make a choice between being out of the labour market and having children or remaining childless in order to work – is also facing a pension crisis.
No wonder that German diplomat was so scathing… not so much Greeks bearing gifts as what must be borne by others to prop their economy up…
The Greek Prime Minister blamed the previous administration for most of the problems – that’s par for the course from most public officials facing problems.
But he also blamed the European Commission for not having kept enough of an eye out and not having stepped in if it expected problems.
Interesting stuff. That’s what some people I know would call a “Belgian” approach to the EU – if it’s hard to keep your own house in order you call for the EU to provide a solution. But to blame the Commission for not doing something it’s not supposed to do? And somthing which, if it was proposed that it should do, we’d have an issue with?
Why can’t the British press do something useful like take the Greek prime minister to task for this sort of expansionist approach to the role of the EU rather than print what turned out to be a completely untrue story? But that’s too much to expect.
Although the Daily Express did manage to put out an apology for the ludicrous “EU spouts off about our milk jugs” nonsense they published the other day… well done @EULondonRep!
Why this image makes me unspeakably angry
What on earth is all this about???
Have you ever seen a pink zebra? Why is there any need for a pink version of a perfectly good black and white “bounce and spin”? Yes it’s a lovely, happy girl in a green t-shirt that’s riding it, but honestly, who came up with this – “y’know, we’re selling loads of the bouce and spin zebra, so I don’t know, let’s make it appeal more to girls. What about making a pink one?”
Let me calm down for a moment. And visit Pink Stinks as an antidote.
Natasha Walter’s book “Living Dolls” is getting a lot of coverage at the moment. The criticisms of this book seems to be that, in getting older, Walter has lost a sense of perspective, that feminism that has got us to where we are has given women “free choice” and that if they choose to strip off as “empowerment”, fetishize pink, be judged on their looks etc. etc. then that’s their choice. She’s even been accused of not having a sense of humour.
But she has a point. Several in fact.
She points out that Marks and Spencer markets toy irons as “Mummy and me” – and they do. My son loves the realistic toy iron at nursery and shows off to us how he can use it. But I am finding it hard to buy him one for playing at home that isn’t pink.
Toy kitchens seem to have pink plastic all over them – yet my son loves Cbeebies’ “I Can Cook” and carries around a measuring cup and wooden spoon shouting “yum! Taste!” when he’s watching it. Sure I can buy him the pink kitchen, but why on earth is it pink? Our kitchen is black, white and charcoal with flashes of lime green in the accessories – my son wouldn’t associate pink with kitchens.
I love buying him clothes, but it doesn’t matter where I go, I’m lucky if the section I get to choose from is even half the size of the girls clothes section. He has school shoes, wellies and a pair of crocs for the beach, but again the choice is much more limited for boys. Do baby girls have more feet(!)?
But we’re teaching our kids that girls have to have more choice (or more clothes). And when that includes croptops for tweenagers, push-up bras for nine year olds and sexually provocative slogan t-shirts, as opposed to combats, cheeky monkey-bad boy t-shirts for boys we have to wonder what we’re playing at.
This isn’t something new for me to worry about. When I was at university I had a column in the university newspaper “Bare Facts”.
It came about because I had been submitting sports reports on a regular basis (at the time I was dating the American Football team captain, which apparently made me the First Lady and gave me a responsibility to do things to promote the team), and because a friend and I had written in to the letters page about the clothes being worn in the Union.
As we were writing we had a bit of a problem. We were feminist not prudish, felt that women should have more self-respect than to dress as they were rather than because it was something from which men should be shielded for fear of their actions being uncontrollable, and while we were grateful that the women had the choice to dress that way if they wished we had to wonder what led them to choose to do so. This was the mid-nineties and we were observing a trend that Natasha Walter has now written about…
I’ve never been silph-like, but I was a happy 12-14 and I think made the best of my particular best assets. I didn’t object to the bratops being worn with microshorts that seemed to be increasingly popular because I couldn’t wear them, but because these were women studying for degrees, and as Dara O’Briain puts it in “Tickling the English” surely getting a degree means not having to expose your body to get anywhere in life.
My worry is that in accepting “glamour modelling”, lap dancing and pole dancing as empowerment, sacking of older women from anchor roles for wrinkles on TV but accepting older men as having “gravitas”, focusing on women as individuals rather than on society and family (hence the debate in the press on whether maternity leave has damaged women in the workplace rather than whether by concentrating just on women rather than parental leave it has damaged a family’s free choice to arrange childcare between the parents),by businesses not considering how culture in workplaces including presenteeism damage the chances of women who do not act like the men do getting to the top means the problem perpetuates despite starting off with loads of very bright women lower down in the workforce, that some how we’ve missed the point of feminism.
It wasn’t supposed to be about us getting the right to sleep around, dress provocatively and behave as badly as the men in the name of free choice was it? I really hope not. I hope that if anyone tries to write a book on the new feminism now, they realise its ok to say that it’s still a work in progress…
my original weblog- Was I lied to and bullied over breastfeeding?Have you seen this? The Times today has run an article that says that there's little discernable difference between breastfed and bottlefed babies. It looks like there's actually no real evidence of all the supposed benefits that I was told my baby would miss out on if I didn't breastfeed. I feel lied to. It seems that the benefits actually c […]
- The most moral way to give birth?The fuss seems to be dying down a bit now, but like most women that have had a baby I was completely fed up about one of the news stories this week. A male midwife - yep, that a man who may have been present at many births but has never and will never experience birth personally - has said that pain in labour is a good thing, that it is necessary and prepar […]
- Why hedging your bets is not good in the EU...Interesting blog from Charlemagne over at the Economist. I've been banging on on this blog for a long time about the importance of EU engagement, EU lobbying and that there's no such thing as a policy of safe disinterest. Looks like the hedge funds are a perfect example. I've heard today in the news that the hedge fund managers are up in arms […]
- Torchwood: the future and (re)birth...So I've now seen all 5 episodes of Torchwood: Children of Earth. Fantastic, gripping, emotional TV. I hate it when TV critics say "it's more than just sci fi" of a show like this, just as I hate it when Terry Pratchett's books are suddenly discovered by reviewers to - gosh - not actually be about trolls and dwarves but - shocking […]
- Questioning is not the same as scepticismNosemonkey has an excellent thought piece on the dishonesty in the EU debate. I've responded on his blog, but wanted a chance to write a bit more than is really acceptable when commenting on someone else's blog - I was pushing it as it was! The Nosemonkey piece was in response to the Economist's Charlemagne who complains that his column quest […]
- Testing our commitment to Voltaire...Just heard on the radio that a newly elected member of the European Parliament has been heckled, shouted down and pelted with eggs during a press conference being held outside the palace of Westminster. the MEP has said that this is a "very sad day for British democracy". This is the BBC coverage of the story. The question is, does it make any dif […]
- Dealing with 5 new EU realitiesSo the new European Parliament is taking shape, and the stories of results night in the UK were as follows: - Labour third nationally at 16%; - BNP get two MEPs elected; - Greens biggest winners in SW and SE (2 MEPs on relatively low % of vote); - UKIP share of vote increases by less than 1% since 2005; - Tories biggest winners of the night. (thanks to Liber […]
- 'Political Shock' and making it betterAre we in for a democratic or political shock as a result of the recession? Professor Niall Ferguson is speaking on this idea tonight and trailed his ideas on Radio 4's Today programme. His ideas didn't actually seem too far from what I've posted on here and what others are saying around the blogosphere - essentially: - the recession as a bac […]
- voting YES in a referendumShort post this... Has anyone else noticed that the basic assumption behind calling for a referendum seems to be that there would inevitably be a "no" vote? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8078637.stm […]
- When your child bites mineMy son is sitting happily in the rocking car thing at the playgroup, smiling and rocking. I'm glad - he's been a bit clingy this morning so it's nice to see him getting into playing. Your son decides he wants the car. He goes over and pushes my son, who ignores him. Your son attempts to hit him on the head. My son, quite reasonably, puts his […]
- Was I lied to and bullied over breastfeeding?
Translation
by