The Gender Blog

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.

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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.

Over the last ten years or so,  “fertility” to many of my female friends, colleagues and wider circle of acquaintances has often been about encouraging the arrival of babies,  rather than preventing them.

Inadvertently, I’ve become familiar with words and phrases like IVF, surrogacy, Clomid, cervical mucus and the like.  Although two-thirds of British women in the 20-24 age group take the Pill, when you’re in your 40s (or even in your late 30s),  you tend not to do so, either by virtue of your age (and weight, or smoking status) or because you actively want to have children and so popping a daily pill from its little multi-coloured blister pack is an act from the past.

In series one of iconic TV show “Mad Men”,  there’s a scene where ambitious Peggy,  newly working in Manhattan and determined to be independent,  goes to see a doctor (who smokes throughout her examination – another example of how this visually stunning TV show uses props to invoke a sense of time, place and era) in order to obtain the Pill.

It’s the early 1960s and,  for the first time, there are doctors who will provide (unmarried) girls like Peggy with the tool to free them from their fertility.

I’m nearly as old as the Pill,  a fact of which I was reminded by this article in the weekend’s Observer,  which celebrates the Pill’s 50^th birthday and reminds us of how far we’ve come since Peggy’s day. How about this quote?

“Well into the 1970s, women in Britain and America were still pretending to be married in order to get a prescription; some used to pass around the same battered wedding ring in the doctor’s waiting room.”

And as novelist Margaret Drabble comments:

“I think I would have had a child a year if I hadn’t started taking it.”

So, happy golden birthday to the Pill, an iconic symbol of late 20^th century autonomy for women.

The Easter break means that I’m a little late to this story,  but I’m sharing it as a late April fool anyhow – nice work on Thursday 1st April,  Catalyst.

Ah well – it’s always good to aspire, right?

As my friend CJ would say, it’s “very pleasing”  to see that PinkStinks’s campaign against supermarket giant Sainsbury’s has been successful; thousands of children’s dressing-up outfits have now been cleared from shelves after complaints (via a PinkStinks co-ordinated campaign) that they promote sexist stereotypes.

As reported here in the Daily Telegraph, Sainsbury’s (“Try something new today!” – indeed …) were merrily selling nurses’ outfits “for girls” and doctors’ kits labelled “for boys”, along with pilot and “superhero” costumes – but these have now been removed and will be replaced with a new range of gender neutral dressing up outfits.

Nice work, PinkStinks – and a great testimony to the strength of their pester power social media campaign (which I joined even though I don’t have children myself, let alone daughters or even nieces).

Whenever I hear stories like this, or read about manufacturers and retailers unwittingly promoting gender and/or inappropriate messaging and stereotypes (wasn’t it Woolworths – RIP – who hit the headlines a few years ago for launching a range of pink painted bedroom furniture aimed at little girls named the “Lolita”?), I remind myself of a small boy called John and how invidious and impactful gender images can be. 

John is the son of a female friend who works as a GP; she is evidently from a very smart family, because her sister is also a doctor. One day, returning home from a visit to his aunt’s house, where my friend and her sister had been talking medical shop, John, then aged five, asked his mother:

“Mummy – when I grow up, can I become a doctor too, or is it only ladies who are allowed to do that?”

Spring is on the way and I’m marking it by refreshing the look of the blog.  I’m also celebrating having a guest blog piece published on one of my favourite websites, The Thin Pink Line. I’ve been a fan of this site (and its founders – check two of them out on the Recommended Reading link) for some years now,  so I’m tickled, em, pink, to be published on there.

My article in question is another take on last month’s launch of the ILGA website,  which is continuing its promise to be a go-to source of news and updates on matters which impact the LGBTI community. Good to see refreshed news items on the front page every time I visit.

My very wonderful network of friends continue to keep up the good work and ensure that I’m invited to relevant and interesting events in the diversity space.  In a few days’ time,  I’ll be at city law firm Herbert Smith listening to Britain’s most successful Paralympic athlete, Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson (she’s won 11 gold medals and broken 30 world records) speaking on motivation, success, diversity and reaching your potential.  More on what she has to say towards the end of the week.

I’m very grateful to TLS, who is keeping my in-box full with relevant news stories, particularly about India. From the BBC website, he shared this sad story about the perceived “curse” of giving birth to a baby girl; the reference to hospitals not offering gender identification at scans reminded me that this also happens in UK hospitals which are located in areas (such as my own bit of London) which have a high Asian population. When I visited the gynae department a few years ago, the walls were plastered with posters in Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu stating in no uncertain terms that no gender scans were available, under any circumstances.

And a few days ago on the beach,  a woman, trailing three little girls and holding a baby in her arms,  approached me,  held the baby out and asked if I wanted to buy her. I laughed (nervously) and declined,  but she sat down and said,  in very good English, that she was serious and that,  for 5000 rupees (about £65) I could have the baby and her birth certificate; she would use this money to make sure that her next baby “was a boy” as she’d already had four girls and her family was cross with her.

I think this is the saddest conversation (of many) that I’ve had since I’ve been here.

Can women be the key to moving the world forward and out of recession? Goldman Sachs’ economists seem to think so, judging by their recently published report entitled “The Power of the Purse: Gender Equality and Middle-Class Spending”.

The report reveals the enormous potential for companies in specific sectors due to the expected growth in female consumer spending in emerging markets – countries such as China, India, Russia, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil.

Goldman Sachs, by identifying what they dub the “sweet spot”, is especially interested in the countries where the middle class is projected to rise the fastest, along with significant improvements in the status of women.

It detects significant improvements in women’s status due to changes in health care, fertility rates, education, legal protection, and political involvement, as well as a slight increase in the proportion of women working (with fewert women working in low-pay sectors in some countries).

And the report says female spending patterns in emerging markets will be similar to those in developed nations, where women are responsible for three-quarters of consumer spending on child care, food, and education.

You can download it from this link and it was referenced in the Observer a while ago, when Ruth Sunderland commented that:

“Goldman Sachs … reckons that improvements in female status and earnings potential are likely to support the development of human capital and bolster economic growth.

The interesting point in a business context is what it means for companies and investors. Improvements in gender equality in the developing world coincide with the emergence of an expanding global middle class, with annual incomes of $6,000 to $30,000, whose numbers will swell over the next two decades from 1.7 billion to 3.6 billion. Industry sectors likely to gain are food, healthcare, education, clothing and consumer durables. Financial services should also do well, since women are more likely to save than men, partly to offset their economic vulnerability.

This is a vast new market, and the companies that benefit most will be those recognising the value of these potential female customers and employees. Another argument, if one were needed, for more women on male-dominated company boards.”

Along similar lines, I’ve also just downloaded Harvard Business Review’s paper on “The Female Economy”, which, in urging companies to re-position themselves out of recession by changing their female attraction strategy, comments that:

“As a market, women represent a bigger opportunity than China and India combined. So why are companies doing such a poor job of serving them?”

Why, indeed – take note and heed, those who manufacture pink laptops and cars with special lipstick holders and the like.

While I’ve been in California, I’ve picked up a copy of a few magazines which I don’t normally see at home, such as “More”, “Pink” and Oprah Winfrey’s “O” magazine.

I gather that Oprah in particular is lined up to be a huge supporter of Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn’s forthcoming book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide and that they’ll be appearing on her eponymous ABC show later this month to discuss their argument that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential.

September’s “O” magazine carries these three suggestions from the book as to how we can all help to empower women:

Make girls smarter. Many pregnant women living in poverty don’t get enough iodine, so their fetuses’ brains do not develop properly. Their children routinely lose 10-15 IQ points – particularly the girls, for reasons not fully understood. The solotion: iodize salt, at the cost of a few pennies per year. Contribute via Helen Keller International.

Support a women’s business. With a microloan of US$50, a woman can start a business, producing income she can use to feed her children and send them to school. To make a loan, go to Mercy Corps or BRAC – two groups helping women around the world.

Keep a girl in school. A girl who gets an education will have fewer children, earn more money and be able to help her younger siblings. One excellent support program operates in Cambodia, where uneducated girls are at great risk of being traffiked into brothels. For US$10 a month, you can keep a girl in school through American Assistance for Cambodia, or for US$13,000, you can build an entire school that will revolutionise life in a village forever.

On the flight over, I read in a British magazine (“Woman & Home”, I think) about an awareness and fundraising initiative called “Girls’ Night In” and I think I’ll organise one for when I get back to London – watch this space.

I hope that I’ll manage to keep picking up on so many fascinating news stories about women once I’m no longer on the various corporate mailing lists to which I currently belong … here, for example, is a link to last Sunday’s New York Times magazine, courtesy of some friends at the World Bank’s gender program. It seems that the NYT devoted an issue to gender articles; I’m not sure I’d have picked up on this (as well as everything else!) without Amanda sending through the link.

Particularly like the piece entitled “A women’s world”, for which readers submitted photos which “illustrate the importance of educating girls and empowering women.”

See also the article from Nicholas Kristof (he of “Lehman Sisters” fame, earlier this year) on the growing awareness that:

” … focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.”