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Women and the 1911 census

28 Mar

If you’re in the UK,  did you fill in your census form this weekend?  I did,  and it made me think … about how much my life has changed in the last 10 years (I got married,  moved to my current house, have done all sorts of things in work terms) and also about what stories my house could tell if it could talk.

It was built in 1909 (here’s a rather wonky photo of the street from an old book of the era)  and so the house would have been quite “new” at the time of the 1911 census.  I wonder who lived here then and what they did for a living? How many people lived in this house and how did they keep warm? What did they wear, what did they eat?

Of course,  assuming that there were female residents,  one thing they couldn’t then do (or, indeed do for between the next seven and seventeen years) was to vote,  given that women were then denied that right and the UK was in the grip of the suffrage movement. My friend Rachel shared a link to this fascinating article from The Times,  published back in the glory days of 2009 when access was free,  which details how some 1911 women used the census forms to make a protest, as part of a coordinated boycott over their continuing lack of the right to vote.

“The documents show how women refused to fill in their names and left comments in the margins. One suffragette taking part in the boycott arranged by the Women’s Freedom League wrote: “If I am intelligent enough to fill in this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper.”

“Another glued a poster over the form stating: “No votes for women, no census.” A piece of paper stuck to the form suggests that the women stayed away from households where the census was taken to attend a protest in Trafalgar Square.”

As I often do when considering history, progress and change, this has made me reflect upon the privileged era in which we live. How lucky we are today that we can use the 2011 census form as just that – a tool to capture socio-economic data about the world in which we live.

“Feminism is the unfinished revolution …”

13 Mar

- declared Natasha Walter in The Guardian earlier this week,  in her column about the centenary of International Women’s Day. Meanwhile,  back in my spiritual home of India, Dr Elizabeth Menon‘s piece in The Hindu reminded us that equality for some is still very elusive.

For me,  IWD was all about spending the day at a university,  at which I spoke and chaired an event called “Breaking Glass”.  I heard about the glass ceiling as it exists within academia and learned,  not altogether surprisingly,  that the issues faced by female staff at universities (reasonably high numbers at entry level, falling away at a career mid point,  subsequent difficulties in progressing to the top tier) mirror almost exactly those faced by their sisters in the corporate world.

I used the centenary of IWD to structure my talk around the way in which the world has changed for women since 1911 and the key events and people who have made those changes come about.  My brief had been to “make it light”,  so I peppered my slides with a few key quotations – some of which I share now.

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women …”

– Madeleine Albright, the first female US Secretary of State, 1997 – 2001

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what a feminist is.  I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.”

– Rebecca West, writer, 1913

“Well behaved women seldom make history …”

– Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, professor at Harvard University

“I wanted to work there because I wanted to become a writer. I was quickly assured that women didn’t become writers at Newsweek. It would never have crossed my mind to object … It was a given in those days that if you were a woman and you wanted to do certain things, you were going to have to be the exception to the rule.”

– Nora Ephron – writer, novelist, film director [on starting her career in 1962]

My favourite quotation,  which I didn’t use because I hadn’t then read the originating article,  comes from Mariella Frostrup in The Observer,  who,  in a blistering and truly excellent piece of journalism, reminded us that the struggle is far from over and that,  within the closed world of UK politics:

“… there are more blokes called Dave and Nick in government than there are women MPs. Women continue to hover at a steady 19% in the chamber, put off perhaps by a testosterone-fuelled climate where the last two prime ministers’ wives have given up high- flying careers to support their husbands or simply to satisfy the perceived demands of middle England.”


Check it out – one of the best and most impassioned articles on feminism you may read.

Men? In decline? Really?

7 Feb

Avivah Wittenberg-Cox’s latest blog piece is entitled “Be My Valentine” (I like what she did, there) and in it she urges the media – “enough, already” – to stop with the raft of stories equating the so called “rise” of women with the equally untrue “decline” in male fortunes.

I’m currently undertaking some research ahead of next month’s centenary of International Women’s Day and am compiling lists of amazing, game changing,  glass ceiling smashing women from around the world – please feel free to share your nominations with me, below. From Marie Curie, Margaret Thatcher, Daphne Jackson, Benazir Bhutto, through to Barbara Castle and Julia Gillard – the world is very definitely a different place now to when IWD was first conceived a century ago.  But has the success that women have undoubtedly achieved really come at the expense of men?  I don’t think so and nor does Avivah:

“It is imperative that this constant pairing of ‘rising women’ and ‘falling men’ stop. Women have absolutely nothing to gain from fearful men. Neither at home, nor at work. And the reality, in my experience, is quite different.

It is true that the tectonic shift in the roles and status of women have profoundly affected couples, companies and countries. We are, I often think, at the end of a century where women have lobbied, questioned and redrawn themselves in a million myriad ways. We are at the very beginning of a century where men have begun to think and write about the impact and implications of those changes on themselves.”

Here’s the last word from Tanya Gold; as she pointed out in Grazia last week, in response to a (male) assertion that feminists are bigots who discriminate against men and who “choose” to earn less, allowing careers, finances and ambitions to fall by the wayside:

“… We want to be paid less! We want rubbish jobs! We want to be denied a voice! Watch us oppress men with our lower wages!”

I hear you, sister.

 

 

Searching for the pot of gold at the foot of the Goan rainbow

21 Jan

I haven’t written for theglasshammer for a while,  so was really delighted to be asked to contribute a piece about my time in India with charity Educators’ Trust India to their “Intrepid Woman”  series – albeit I do feel as if I’m there under false pretences on the “intrepid” stakes.

The article starts:

Goa: the smallest and the richest state in India; a former Portuguese colony, a place of beautiful golden beaches, swaying palm trees and over a million domestic and foreign tourists per year. The wealth brought by the tourists also brings an influx of economic migrants. In search of work and money, they travel to this tiny state in western India from other areas – hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles away.

I first visited Goa in 1999, have been back many times since then and have seen the volume of both tourists and of workers from other parts of India soar in the intervening years. Unsurprisingly, the Goan infrastructure is now creaking under this flood of people; from a tourist’s point of view, power cuts and water shortages are increasingly common but can be dismissed as being “part of the Indian experience.” However, what many tourists never see are the living environments of many of the migrant workers – and, more particularly, how this impacts the health and education of their children.

- and can be read in its entirety by clicking here.

This week,  I’ve been writing copy for some of the other pages on the ETI website and I had a Skype call with the team in Goa in order to get some ideas for content and to check some details and facts.  Here’s what they told me when I asked what they’d buy with certain specific cash sums:

£5                                Buys 5 pairs of flip flops to protect children’s feet from injuries and blood poisoning

£10                              Provides rice, milk and eggs for a dozen pregnant and breast feeding women

£15                              50p per day pays for a month’s medical supplies such as antibiotics, plasters, dressings, headlice treatment, cough medicine, anti-malarial tablets etc

£20                              Funds materials such as a week’s worth of petrol to drive between their projects and visit the mobile schools, take sick children to hospital and so on

£25                              Pays for one week’s rent at one of the two permanent schools

£50                              Buys a DVD player and educational DVDs

£100                            Pays for one teacher’s salary for a month.

As I say in the article,  these figures certainly put my daily latte habit (c. £50 a month!) into perspective …

Desperate housewives?

14 Jan

I love (actually, maybe “love” is too strong – OK, I’m “interested in”) the way that Mad Men’s Betty Draper is now being used by picture editors as visual shorthand to illustrate articles referring to, variously, housewives, stay at home mums and ladies who lunch.

(Similarly, photos of Joan now inevitably accompany an article about “curvy figures”.)

Dr. Catherine Hakim’s recently published report – Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine: The Flawed Thinking Behind Calls for Further Equality – which concludes that mainstream feminist thinking is defective and that the UK government should stop trying to promote it (there’s an accurate, if somewhat right wing summary of her arguments here in this Daily Telegraph article) and that women tend to marry for money rather than love – has caused a rash of newspaper reports, published from London to Sydney and (probably) all points between – and the two highlighted here both feature lovely photos of the former Mrs Draper, as does a recent article along similar lines in Grazia.

Tanya Gold’s piece in the Guardian:  

“Inequality between the sexes is not a big deal any more, a new study tells us. That is only true if you are happy for women to have less than men …”

- does at least make some fleeting Mad Men reference to the assumptions in the report, commenting that perhaps Dr Hakim’s work is:

“ … based on a weird, Mad Men themed dream she had on Boxing Day …”

Female writers across the world have decided that actually, it’s OK to want to marry for money, to not have your own career or income and to stay at home, surrounded by items from Cath Kidston and Emma Bridgwater (ironically, two women who manage to be married and have their own eponymous businesses). And of course, yes, it is fine, I suppose. But this lifestyle framework is surely only OK if there’s someone to fund it – and what happens if that someone isn’t there anymore – either through death, divorce, a change in their own or their employer’s financial circumstances?

(This rather gloomy article from 2008 suggests a potential increase in divorce due to the credit crunch, with:

“… about 80 percent of those surveyed believe that the turmoil — and lower bonus payments — will prompt more women to seek a divorce before their husbands’ wealth evaporates further.” )

Obviously, nobody goes into marriage or life as a stay at home mum thinking “one day we’ll split up or he’ll lose all his money in some huge, unprecedented global melt down and then what will happen to me?”.

But as this cautionary tale, Regrets of a stay-at- home Mom, recently published on salon.com shows, it can happen:

“Fourteen years ago, I “opted out” to focus on my family. Now I’m broke.”

(For more on the wildly radical idea that “a man is not a financial plan”, check out The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up too Much?  by Leslie Bennets on the Recommended reading tab above).

* * * * *

In other news … the flyer I designed for Educators’ Trust India has now been printed up and is ready for use – if you’d like to see what they’re giving out to tourists in Goa in order to raise awareness of the issues of child poverty and of the need for literacy programmes, you can take a look and download a copy from my freelance writing site, Collaborative Lines.

Q is for Quota

21 Sep

There’s been a degree of press coverage of late around the suggestion, as put forward by Viviane Reading, who heads up equality and equal rights in her role as the European Union’s Fundamental Rights’ Commissioner, that European companies may soon be forced to implement a system of gender quotas at board level.

Predictably,  the Confederation of British Industry have responded to this with horror, thus:

“… the best and most sustainable way to promote diversity in the boardroom is by selecting candidates from as wide a talent pool as possible, and by making appointments based on merit.”

Well,  yes.  This is true.  But,  given that this “best and most sustainable way” doesn’t seem to be happening of its own free will, how about a bit of a push?

Read more about the back story, and what’s happening in other countries around the Q word, in my latest article for The Glass Hammer – by clicking here.

Mostly men: engaging men in culture change

11 Sep

(c) emberin

Earlier this summer,  I wrote and edited a white paper for emberin,  around the significance of teaming with men for success and how getting the opposite sex on board with gender diversity and change programmes was the  only real way to make progress.

To support their work, emberin undertook a survey of male Australian business leaders and asked them some tough questions about their attitudes, behaviours and views on gender diversity.

Here’s an extract from the paper’s Executive Summary:

Earlier this year, the New York Times published an article entitled The Feminism of the Future Relies on Men. The author argued that twenty-first century programs focused on increasing gender diversity will only succeed if the men in the company are on-board with the idea in ideological terms and also support it in practical ways, suggesting that:

“The feminism of the future is shaping up to be about pulling men into women’s universe — as involved dads, equal partners at home and ambassadors for gender equality from the cabinet office to the boardroom.”

Gender diversity is now no longer about women smashing the glass ceiling and forcing their way into the men’s world; instead, it’s time to reverse twentieth century thinking and ask: what do the men want, think and feel about gender diversity?  And if men listen to other men – how can we help to change the way in which they think and speak when it comes to levelling the playing field?

emberin, as Australia’s leading gender diversity consultancy, is already very aware of this school of thought and has undertaken pioneering, award-winning work to support the concept that we call Mostly Men.  We know, via our qualitative research and our feedback from emberin programs such as my mentor – mastering gender leadership, that getting the guys on board and creating great male role models for other men (men who leave the office on time, men who promote and support women, men who convert their male colleagues to these behaviours) can make a real difference in Australian corporate life.

In 2008 emberin conducted the first Australian piece of qualitative research on the view of senior men who were champions of gender diversity. In conjunction with Telstra we then created a program for men. In the last two years almost 2000 men have completed that program and we have received significant feedback from them as individuals.

This report shares our findings with you and forms a pioneering piece of research on the current state of men in business in Australia today.

(c) emberin 2010

* * * * * * * * *

For more on this line of thought, click here to read an excellent article on theGlasshammer.com in which they pose the question:

“Would you want your daughter to work here?”

- and then go on to suggest that,  for men in the corporate world,  answering “no” to that question has to mean that they need to be part of the solution.   A senior partner from Deloitte US continues with her belief that considering the question helps senior men see the work environment and culture from a very different and personal perspective.

An alternative approach to 21st century networking

1 Sep

(c) Aquitude

From my new article on networking 2.0,  published today in TheGlassHammer:

“I haven’t got time for networking”, one senior woman from a major City of London investment bank told me recently.

“All that standing around in rooms full of complete strangers,  drinking either bad wine at the end of a long day,  or bad coffee and stale croissants at the start of another day – no thanks. It’s so unstructured and unfocused,  and such a bad use of my time.  I’m sure there probably ARE useful and interesting people at some of these events – but how on earth do you find them in a packed room,  and what use might we be to each other?”

Other women told a similar tale,  with one commenting that she had now stopped going along to organised “group meet ups”,  as she found that she either knew no-one,  or would see a familiar face in the crowd and then “cling to that person for the whole evening,  thus negating the idea of meeting new people!”

In response to this changing mindset – and independently of each other – two London based women have begun to evolve a more nuanced, “networking 2.0” framework,  which delivers the benefits of what we might perhaps call “old school” networking – expanding your contacts, sharing connections and skills – but which also uses technology and social media interfaces.

Read on here …

Carol Paterson Smith @theglasshammer.com

9 Aug

Carol Paterson Smith

My profile of Carol Paterson Smith of Rothschild Blackpoint, who also runs her own business, Alpha Female, is now available on TheGlassHammer.

Here’s  the link – happy reading.

It was a great piece to write,  as Carol was such a fabulously inspiring interviewee – the words just flew from her onto the page and I hope you agree that that comes through in the article.

Sample quote:

“As a way of supporting women in the City, I take my two female interns out and about with me so that they too can network and learn. I lacked role models when I started and I want to try and stop that.”

Around the table

20 Jul

On the Being Busy vs Finding Time to Blog continuum, the latter is rather losing out to the former at the moment.

However,  proof of my networking and writing activities came all neatly rolled up into one busy day last week,  when my article about IDDAS‘s report into board effectiveness (as viewed by the chairmen of a number of FTSE 350 companies) and where diversity fits within that model was published on the Glasshammer (here’s the link)  and a piece on travel tips also went live on Alpha Female.

Do check out Alpha Female if you can; it was founded earlier this year by Carol Paterson Smith (whom I’ll be interviewing later this week for a Glasshammer profile, so look out for that too) and is a fabulous treasure trove of useful connections, smart ideas and stylish hints to make life easier for busy women everywhere.

Carol and I met last month when we were seated next to each other at the WIBF awards, and that in itself was an interesting example of what can happen when you’re naughty and move the seating plan around so that you don’t have to sit with your back to the stage … if I’d stayed where I was meant to sit,  I wouldn’t have met Carol,  checked out her fabulous site (you have to create a user name and register to view the content,  but it’s free to do so and well worth it)  and written her a guest article.

* * *

If you follow me on Twitter,  you’ll have seen that I was Tweeting on Sunday about the community party we held on my street in west London in support of the nationwide Big Lunch initiative.  More on that event later this week; as well as being tremendous fun,  it was a fabulous example of collaboration, planning and new friendships amongst neighbours of long standing.

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