Been Slutwalking Lately?
Slutwalking is the latest movement in feminism sweeping Europe and the US. It sprang up pretty spontaneously after a Canadian police officer dredged up the old sore of females dressing like ‘sluts’, and thereby poor chaps couldn’t but help themselves but commit sexual attacks on women. So women have only themselves to blame….Demeaning to both sexes, I’m sure you’ll agree but symptomatic of a widely held view.
Masses has been written on the subject but here are two articles I found particularly helpful; I’d like to share them with you. One is from the US and the other from the very excellent Suzanne Moore writing in The Guardian newspaper.
Click here for the US article, and here to read Suzanne. Let me know what you think. Would you join a slutwalk? Have you been on one?
Right, anyone for a slutwalk? Apparently you can dress just as you wish. There’s a novel idea…
Picture Credit: McKenna71
Is Being a Feminist Bad for Business?
I ask this question because I have just started a new group for women on Linkedin. I had several names for it but eventually came up with Feminist and Feminine Professional Women as it summed up what it was and didn’t encroach on any other group names in LinkedIn. This is the purpose of the group:
This group is for professional women who want to get ahead in their careers, to network, share advice, share stories, etc, but who don’t want to have to behave like men to do so.
I invited lots of my connections to join me and most have but I have had one or two comments back saying the fact that the f word is in the title is putting them off. One woman said:
“I know it’s sad but I don’t want potential employers to see ‘so and so has joined a Feminist group’ on Linkedin.”
I suppose I shouldn’t be, but I am genuinely shocked. I quite understand women not wanting to join a group as they don’t feel it applies to them, but actually wanting to join but thinking having a ‘feminist’ label will disadvantage them! That’s a whole different matter.
Do you have experience of this? What do you think? Are you embarrassed to be called a feminist? Would it harm your career or business prospects? You may comment anonymously!
Photo Credit: Unknown, ad from 1970s
What’s the Chances of Women Quotas on Boards with a Largely Male Government?
There are 648 elected MPs in the British Parliament
Women sitting in the House of Commons.
At the General Election of May 2010 143 women, 22% of the total, were elected as Members of Parliament, the highest number ever with one in five MPs now a woman.
Of these MPs:
49 are Conservative;
7 Liberal Democrats;
81 Labour;
1 Green Party;
1Scottish National Party;
1 Social Democrat & Labour Party;
1 Sinn Fein;
1 Alliance and1 Independent
Of the three main parties:
Labour has the highest proportion of women MPs, 31%;
the Conservatives have 16%
and Liberal Democrats 12%.
(Source House of Commons Information fact-sheets)
Will a male dominated government ever truly challenge the status quo? Will we see quotas for women on company boards introduced in UK?
Why so few women in parliament? Well, if you’re a regular reader you’ll know my response to that. Men designed how our parliament works and it works well for men. It doesn’t work well for women; it was designed with only one half of the population in mind.
My personal view is that until we do introduce quotas, little will change. It’s a conclusion I come to reluctantly.
Read what one of my favourite feminist journalists, Suzanne Moore has to say on the topic here.
What do YOU think?
Photo Credit: Ben G
Women Lead The Way
Your Guide to Stepping Up to Leadership and Changing the World, by Linda Tarr-Whelan.
Here’s the opening words from the forward of Linda Tarr-Whelan’s book:
Picture this: A problem of vital importance emerges in your community, and you are asked to gather a team you deem essential to its solution. Then you are told that you can’t use half of the collected intelligence. That is basically the problem we face in politics and across America – we systemically neglect one of our nation’s most vital resources: women.
Tarr-Whelan argues that 30% is all that is needed for a tipping point to be reached. If boards etc comprise just 30% women then real change starts to happen. There is more consensus, collaboration and communication across the board! And even though her focus is on America it works for UK readers too.
She has a series of practical steps for women to follow. For example, in the chapter ‘Lifting as We Climb’ there is a tips section which begins
This Week I Will….
- Informally mentor another women at work to pass on what I had to learn in the school of “hard knocks”.
- Offer to help a younger women or girl realise her dreams by finding the time to write a recommendation letter.
- Find an opportunity to provide constructive advice or a compliment to a woman colleague with leadership potential.
- Invest in helping woman-to-woman to give me energy to “keep on keeping on”.
In common with some other feminist writers, Tarr-Whelan knows that it is also essential to bring men in to support the cause to achieve significant change. But her emphasis is on getting women in there and then leavening the path for others to follow. She deplores the idea that women must behave like men. And in what might be viewed as a typical women’s strategy she suggests stepping inside the shoes of those in power (empathy).
And she ends with her dreams for 2020 when there is a balanced leadership in play. Her five big dreams are:
#1 Women leaders are at every political table to assure the needed changes in systems and institutions.
#2 Womenomics is a widely supported mainstream strategy to grow a productive, competitive economy. Borads and top management have at least 30% women. Women are seen as expected (rather than unusual) leaders.
#3 A revitalised social compact places a premium on social and personal responsibility, caring and compassion, families, and community.
#4 A recognised accountability framework of standards and measurements exists to monitor progress, assure open opportunity, close the gaps, and tap the skills and leadership capacity of women as well as man.
#5 Young women grow up expecting to be leaders just like young men – but with a difference.
If this is your area (ie like me) , there is much familiar territory here but I do like her specific actions and aims and in particular her ‘This week I will’ or ‘Takeway’boxes in each chapter. I have included it in Book Reviews as I think it’s a useful resource and one that’s worth having on your shelf, with actions worth following.
Feminism is to blame for lack of social mobility?
The UK government minister for Universities, David Willetts, has a view that feminism has been a significant factor in the lack of social mobility and is implicated in working class men being left behind.
You can read the article here and spit your own feathers. I tried to read it impartially but as a feminist and a working class kid it made me steam on all counts. My very working class, trades unionist, Scottish father believed passionately in the universality of education, and was enormously proud that his daughter had gone onto University. He believed in equality for women although he may not have called it feminism (and, to be fair, he may not have thought it applied to my Mum…)
However, it is a perfect example of something I have talked about before – the male centric view of the world in which we women are expected to fit. The implicit norm in what he says, is a middle class male, with women and working class men aspiring to be like them. Pah! The middle class man is his yardstick. And it is so patronising of the working class.
I hardly want to comment further, except that this is a man who wields influence in our society. Heaven help us all.
The excellent Barbara Ellen, writing in The Observer came up with a brilliant riposte which I can do no better than quote:
Do working-class women have no place in this debate – have they spent the past four decades just keeping their feckless non-educated men company? Then, of course, there are middle-class men, or is it that, in Willetts’s mind, their social standing is not even up for discussion. It is a “given” that middle-class men remain dominant. Indeed, it is only after middle-class men get “first dibs” on what they want that middle-class women and working-class men can roll up their sleeves and fight each other for the leftovers.
Read her article in full here
What do you think? Does David Willetts have a point? Should we women ‘know our place’ and leave work for them men a la post second world war Britain?
Photo credit: Redfloor
Your Dream Dinner Party
I was recently a guest on a BBC radio programme where I had the joy of putting together my dream dinner party. I was asked to compile a list of 4 people I’d like to invite to a dinner party. This is my four. See if this is a dinner party you’d like an invite to!
Rosa May Parks
First I’d invite Rosa May Parks who refused to stand on a segregated bus when there were empty seats available reserved only for ‘white people’ and was hugely influential in the Civil Rights Movement in the US. She was just an ordinary woman, a seamstress, who had had enough and literally stood up for herself and came to be called the ‘First Lady of Civil Rights’. I’d love to meet her and ask her did she have any idea of what her action would set off? Did she ever regret becoming such a high profile woman, and where did she think that courage came from? And I’d like to see her chatting with my second guest
Emmeline Pankhurst. The Pankhurst women are well known as leaders of the Suffragette movement. Unlike the action sparked by Rosa, violent protest came to be a significant part of their striving for change (although not eagerly embraced by all the suffragettes). Emmeline had five children; her daughter Christabel worked closely with her, what a mother daughter combination.
Finally, in year of her death, women got the vote on the same terms as men, but that was only in 1928! (in 1914 only women over 30 could vote) I’d like to know what she was like, where she got that fervour from. She must have been a very powerful woman; when the suffragettes were imprisoned for their acts of civil disobedience they went on hunger strike. Some were force fed (until politically that became too contentious) The story goes that a group of guards advanced on Emmeline to force feed her but she gave them such a telling off they retreated! She might be quite a scary guest but very interesting! I wonder what she would think of the position now where lots of women shy away from calling themselves feminists.
I’d also invite Judi Dench. I think she’s a wonderful actress and I’d love to meet her (and introduce her to my actor son!) I’d like to ask her about what she said once about self belief. I think she was playing Cleopatra. I never saw it but she said she just believed she was beautiful. Everyone who saw and subsequently wrote about that production said she was! That is amazing self belief! And I’m also told by people who have met her that she is a thoroughly nice woman. I’m sure she’d like to meet Rosa and Emmeline.
I dithered on this last one between Beryl Cook, artist, and Mary Wesley, novelist. Both are women who came to prominence in later life, showing age really is irrelevant. I plumped for Mary in the end as Beryl was quite reclusive and would probably hate it. She’d prefer to be sitting in a Bristol pub watching everyone.
Mary Wesley had her first adult novel published at the age of 71 and it was pretty raunchy, dispelling yet another myth about older people and sex. I’d love to ask her about her war time experiences. I’ve heard she was in MI5, but don’t know if it’s true. Between ‘83 and ‘97 she wrote ten novels and has been described as ‘Jane Austen with sex’. I mention both women a lot on my courses to show it really is never too late. She died when she was 90, and stopped writing at around the age 87. I’d definitely be saying “And what did you do during the war, Mary?”
Your Dream Guests
So if you were to put together your dream list of guests, who would you include and why?
