Feminism
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Dress Rules for Women over 40
Another summer, another list of rules for women on what they should and shouldn’t wear. From the ‘how to get a bikini body’ articles (top tip – buy a bikini, put it on your body, done!) to this incredibly stupid list of rules for women over 40 years. Here are my dress rules for women over 40. 1. Problem Zones I try to hide my problem zones. This is generally done by throwing a dish towel over the un-washed dinner dishes or shoving the ironing basket into a cupboard when visitors are due. If you have bits of your body that you don’t particularly like (and let’s be honest, most…
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Inspiring Women – Dum Spiro Spero
“While I breathe, I hope” This morning Rebecca from Artemis Mindset asked a question on her Facebook Group. Which women inspire you? Inspirational … it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot when it comes to women. To inspire someone is to ‘ exert an animating, enlivening, or exalting influence on‘ them. Millie Slavidou breaks down the word inspire: in = Latin prefix meaning ‘in’. spire = from Latin spirare meaning ‘breathe’. And suggests that we ‘think of it as a breathing in of ideas, or atmosphere, a filling with the air of imagination’. This was a hard list to write because I was conscious of the women who would not be…
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Feminism and Motherhood – On Choice, Criticism and Self-Confidence
The organisers of Mumsnet Blogfest set the question, ‘Can Feminists be Mummybloggers’ at a rather volatile panel discussion yesterday. I won’t say much about the events of yesterday, as I didn’t attend, but did want to look at the feminism and motherhood issue. If you want to read a bit of the background, you can find a list of blogs on Louise’s post on this matter. This post is going to be a game of two halves, and if you like football, do follow the shameless plug to find out about Jump! Mag‘s search for an aspiring journalist to cover the UEFA U17 Women’s Championship Finals. An event such…
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Volkswagen Small But Tough Girl vs Barclay Precious Pink Girl
No, Barclays. This is NOT how I see my daughter’s relationship with her father. I have been known to throw things at the TV when that advert comes on. As this blogger notes, ‘Unconditional Love’ does not mean raising selfish kids. We may give up sleeping through the night and drinking tea while it is hot, at least for the first few years, but we draw the line at giving up our entire lives for our kids It is no sacrifice, the changes that we have made since becoming parents. It is being part of a family, and making compromises to ensure that everyone in the family…
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Mary Robinson Everybody Matters
When Mary Robinson speaks, people listen. Not because she is the former President of Ireland, and the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, but because she is an inspiring and compelling woman. My ten year old daughter and I went to hear her give the Christmas Lecture at Dundee University this weekend, and were not in the least disappointed. I had heard Mary talk at the London Summit of Family Planning earlier this year, when her speech was sadly cut short as she had a plane to catch. The scent of mulled wine and a sense of anticipation filled the air of the foyer when we arrived. As the…
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Avoid The Knife – FGM in Kenya
I met Vivian in Nairobi. We were told that we were to meet a young woman who had narrowly escaped Female Genital Circumcision (FGM), a practice that is barbaric and abusive. She had escaped being cut, not because of the intervention of Western aid workers or other incomers to her rural Kenyan community, but because her parents forbade it. The Luo community, to which Vivian and her parents belong do not practice FGM, but she grew up in a Kuria community where girls are cut. It is seen as a rite of passage, which most girls eagerly anticipate . When Vivian’s parents refused permission for her to be cut,…
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Four Born Every Second – Saving Lives of Women and Children
Numbers are funny things, aren’t they? 287,000 If I said a house I bought a house in London that cost £287,000, then you would know that it was not a particularly posh area of the city. If I said I earned a bonus of £287,000 last year, you would think I was a high powered executive (sadly, these two examples are not true) If I said that Mumsnet clocked up 287,000 page views in around 5 hours, you would imagine that it was quite a popular and influential website How about this statistic: Around 287,000 women die every year from pregnancy related causes. Most of these deaths are preventable,…
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Feminism Is Over … Say Women
‘Feminism is over … say women’ Wow. That is a snappy headline. The alternative headline, “Feminism is over according a small sample of mothers on a parenting website that doesn’t really ‘do’ feminism” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but would be more accurate. FEMINISM IS OVER… SAY WOMEN – Daily Express FEMINISM in the modern world is viewed as outdated and aggressive and is being shunned by women, research has found. One in seven would describe themselves as a feminist with many believing they have achieved equality with men on issues like fair pay and skills.They believe single mother turned multi-millionaire author…
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The Cult of Motherhood
What does the phrase ‘the cult of motherhood’ mean to you? Nora Heyson It came to me this morning during an interesting discussion on Twitter about being a mother. I have storified it, so you can see the whole exchange, rather than just the quote later in the blog. The discussion started when we were talking about the excellent article by Rowan Davies in the Guardian about ‘Yummymummy Hate’. Now, anyone who has been following my blog for a while will know that ‘yummymummy’ is a term that makes me narrow my eyes and grit my teeth. I hate it for its twee-ness, for the assumption that mummies must…
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The Signs of Controlling Behaviour – Red Flags and How to Spot Them
If we were able to teach young people to recognise the signs of controlling behaviour, the ‘red flags’, would we be able to protect them from abusive relationships? If we were to teach children in schools how to spot a controlling person, would be help save them from misery and self-doubt? If we talk openly with friends about the ‘red flags’ would they recognise their own relationships and find the strength to walk away? I hope so. For this reason, I am writing two blog posts today. One for adults, here on this blog, and one for tweens and teens on Jump! Mag When writing for kids, I am very concious of…
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The Family Planning Summit London 2012 – More Than Statistics and Soundbites
The Family Planning Summit of 2012 took place in London today. A stones throw from the UK Houses of Parliament, world leaders, activists and health care workers and providers gather together to put Family Planning back on table in developing countries around the globe. Melinda Gates began by calling it ‘an important milestone in the history of Family Planning’. In Ban Ki-Moon’s pre-recorded video address he expressed the wish that ‘no child should be born unwanted, and no woman should die needlessly in childbirth’. There followed a lot of speeches by ministers of various countries, expressing their commitment to the cause. Speeches filled with statistics and soundbites. ‘One in three…
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Family Planning in Kenya – A Tale of Two Women
This week I will be blogging from the London Summit on Family Planning, organised by the UK government and the Gates Foundation. The ambitious aim is to provide family planning methods to an additional 120 million women worldwide by 2020. I have already blogged at length about this, so will simply give you all an impression of what this means for two of the women I met on my recent trip to Kenya. Miriam is 32 years old and was at the Marura Village Dispensary in Laikipia District with her 3 month old son, Peter. She already has five girls at home and is struggling to keep them in school.…
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Oi! P&G. THIS is how to advertise to women
Ok, before I start, I have to say that I know this is advertising. I am aware that Nike are trying to sell me their brand and they are cynically tugging at my heartstrings to do so. BUT at least the message is better than the P&G Sponsors of Moms advertising that I ranted about earlier this year. Advertisers should take note that women are not all mums and those of us who are mums don’t all define ourselves by our “status” as a mother. I am a mother by an accident of reproductive luck. It is not something that requires particular skill. I just got lucky. It does not…
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Living (HIV) Positively
Jasinta lives with the knowledge that she has HIV. She was diagnosed in 2009 but kept it a secret, even from her husband. ‘I lived in stigma and denial’, she told me. The stigma of HIV is a big problem here in Kenya. Newly diagnosed patients find that their neighbours and friends turn away from them and their customers shun their businesses. It is a lonely life for many Kenyans with HIV. When she discovered she was pregnant, a year after her her diagnosis, she went to the local health clinic. She was lucky that the clinic she visited was one that offered a support group for mothers with HIV. She…
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Introducing JUMP! Mag For Girls
It is done. The online magazine for pre-teen girls Jump! has launched. It has been a great experience, I have met fantastically talented writers and learnt lots about setting up and designing a (very basic) website, logo design and other technical stuff that I admit to being Not Very Good At. If Jump! takes off, I will certainly need help with that. For now, it is being read and shared, and that it immensely satisfying. For me and for the wide range of contributors who are giving up their time and talent to bring something new and exciting for girls. Do have a look, let me…
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Quotas For Women – For or Against?
Quotas for women – a vital step towards equality or demeaning and patronising? It is something that I was thinking about last week. Are we doing ourselves a favour when we insist on quotas for women, whether in the workplace, in politics, or in education. In this article from the Independent, Helena Morrissey argues that the impetuous from companies themselves, and the investors are more important than quotas set by governments or the EU. The attitudes of employers need to change, and this will not happen overnight. Recently a friend told me that her boss had remarked that it was good that she was a woman, because they wanted…
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Sponsors Of Mums
It is not often that a multinational company so misjudges their advertising audience as Proctor and Gamble has with their “Sponsors of Mums” campaign. Maybe it is just me, but their ad makes me want to throw things at the TV. The dog goes into hiding when she hears the advert start as she knows that I will be shouting before long. If you haven’t seen it, it is part of P&G’s Olympic advertising campaign. Info here We are informed: “For 80 years in the UK and more than 170 years around the world, Mums have been our boss at P&G. They’ve driven our product innovation and they’ve led…
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Becoming a Feminist
As part of the theme #feministfriday, the blogger Translantic Blonde asked this week, “What moment triggered you to say, ‘I am a feminist'”. To be honest, I am not really sure. I guess I have always been a feminist, but had never considered myself one. A feminist – one of those hairy-legged, dungaree-wearing, elderflower-wine-drinking, hemp-clothed women? That wasn’t me. Sure, I went through a gentle rebellious protest stage in my teens, but I didn’t go on protest marches, I had no strong opinion on feminist topics or politics (although I was always interested in politics in general). When I moved to Germany, “Feminism” was not something that I was interested…
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Life as a Feminist Trailing Spouse
The term “Trailing Spouse” may not be one that you are familiar with, unless you are a fellow expat wife. It is used to refer to the partners of those who move abroad for work. In most cases, we are women, although there are some men out there. I first heard of the term when we were planning our move to Geneva. An email from a colleague of my husband referred to his Trailing Spouse; you can imagine my reaction. When I told a friend about this, she asked if I were planning to wear Laura Ashley dresses and waft about, chiffon scarves floating in my wake. Or perhaps become…
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Being a Stay At Home Mum – My Choice
I discovered this blog today through Twitter. Retro Woman Revolution, which I hope she will not mind me linking to as it is seems a good starting point. To be honest, I am a bit confused by the post – being a working mum means I would be a cold, emotionless shark but being a Stay at Home Mum turns me into a vacuous, easy manipulated zombie. Is there a third option? For our family, several factors contributed to the decision that we made. I am at present a Stay at Home Mum (SAHM) but that may well change in the future. Having time to spend with my children is…
