… of Ealing is my friend, neighbour, political campaigner/candidate and fellow blogger, Rupa Huq.
Congratulations, Rupa!
Can we book you to come and open our street party celebrations for The Big Lunch next month, please?!
Rocking the vote in Florida, 2004
Whatever you do, wherever you are today, please go and vote; a hundred years ago, you wouldn’t have had the option.
A hundred years ago, women died, were imprisoned, starved themselves in prison, so that we, their future daughters, would have the right to go to a polling station and exercise our vote alongside our husbands, fathers and brothers.
Voting, particularly for women, is not only a right, it is a hard-won privilege.
If you think that “politics doesn’t apply to me”, as I have been told so many times by so many women – then think about all the things in your world, in your life, which do apply to you: the environment, education, hospitals, employment, medical care, crime. By voting today, you are using your voice to make a conscious choice about how your country is run and by whom.
Please – make time to vote today, whether it’s because you want to have a say in how UK plc is governed for the next five years or in memory of the brave suffragette fighters who suffered so terribly so that we would have the rights which they were denied.
Here’s an extract from the 1909 diary of suffragette Laura Ainsworth, in which she describes being force-fed:
“They hold your arms and legs … You have a towel wrapped around you. One doctor kneels at the back of your right shoulder and forces your head back. He forces your mouth and the other doctor pushes the tube down your mouth about 18 inches. You have a great tickling sensation, then a choking feeling and then you feel quite stunned.”
(For more on these brave women and the debt owed to them by 21st century women, check out “The Ascent of Woman: a History of the Suffragette Movement” by Melanie Phillips).
…. and the Gender Blog is back up and functioning, after a brief April hiatus, which saw me spending ten days in France, having a multitude of interviews for all manner of global diversity jobs (at last! Finally! Is this proof that the economy is on the move, if companies are once again prepared to invest in senior level diversity roles? I think so) and agreeing to undertake some gender balance writing work for leading Australian company Emberin.
(Emberin founder and CEO Maureen Frank, the woman I have previously described as “so charismatic she could found her own cult”, has just published an updated version of her bestselling book “You Go Girlfriend” and has sent me some review copies – so I’ll be reading and reviewing it later this month and offering up a couple of copies to anyone who … OK, I need to think about that. But anyway. Free books, imminently).
Whilst in France, I spent a week at this magical place, the Circle of Misse, on a fiction writing “boot camp” course. Although I’ve been blogging and writing non-fiction for years, the last time I wrote a “story” was at school and so the disciplines and techniques of writing fiction were a complete mystery to me. But I came back from Goa a few months ago with a story and a host of characters who just wouldn’t go away – what was I to do with them, how could I bring them alive on the page? Just as I was wrestling with this, I received an email flyer offering a 10% discount on the Circle of Misse “Get Writing!” course and, before I knew it, I’d signed up and committed myself to sending through a sample of 3000 words of fiction to the tutor ahead of the course start date.
(c) Circle of Misse, with grateful thanks
In the context of A Room of One’s Own – I discovered that maybe I can write, a bit. The course, hosts and setting were fabulous; Aaron and Wayne run writing, painting and cookery courses at their beautiful house in the Loire valley and I whole heartedly recommend the Circle of Misse experience for anyone interested in those disciplines who wants to perhaps do what I did – take a kernel of an idea and run with it – and see where you end up. In my case, I arrived with a concept, a few characters and my 3000 words, and left with closer to 20,000 words, a fully formed plot and a far greater understanding of the techniques of novel writing.
(I think I’m still rubbish at writing dialogue, but at least I now know that and can focus on improving those skills.)
Of course, whilst I was away, we had VolcanoGate and yes, I got caught up in it – although it did mean that I still haven’t flown Ryanair, which perhaps isn’t so bad after all. In common with thousands of other people, I was stranded in France when my flight back from Tours was cancelled and so we (me and N, the guy from my course) had a highly improvised journey home consisting of a five hour car journey to Le Havre, courtesy of the C of M team, a NINE hour ferry crossing and a two hour drive back to London. And, although the ferry crossing was e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y slow and it was frustrating to have that “so close but yet so far” feeling, from a writer’s point of view, it was a fascinating experience.
Subsequently, I described the boat as a ship of stories, because I heard so many tales of life on the road from people squashed onto the upper deck with me. The ferry was absolutely heaving with a vast cross-section of travellers, who had quite literally ended up there from all over the world. I chatted to one family of four (this was on a Sunday evening) who had left Florida the previous Wednesday, expecting to fly Orlando to Gatwick, change there and fly home to Edinburgh. Five days later, they had flown Orlando to Detroit (?), Detroit to Amsterdam, caught a train from Amsterdam to Brussels, another train to Paris and then hired a taxi to get them to Le Havre. After we disembarked the ferry, they were collecting a hire car in Portsmouth and then driving through the night to get back to Scotland. They hadn’t seen their cases since Florida, they had only what they were wearing or carrying as hand luggage and Mum reckoned that this “adventure” had cost them in the region of £2000 – more if you add on the fact that their dog had had to stay in kennels for a further 6 days!
I also met a very dishevelled Irish man in a suit, who’d flown to Frankfurt the previous Tuesday for a 48 hour trip (he sold sandpaper … but I expect that that was the least of his worries) and who had hitchhiked, trained and bussed his way across Europe to Le Havre; from Portsmouth, he was catching a cross-country train to the Welsh coast from where he would catch another ferry back to Ireland. So I guess that N and I got off very lightly, all things considered, although I am still c. £200 out of pocket and will doubtless remain so unless and until Ryanair cough up a refund for my cancelled flight.
Apart from getting news updates from TLS on volcano and travel related issues, I was in a complete news avoidance bubble whilst I was in France and I’m still catching up. It’s a mere four days to the UK’s keenly anticipated General Election and, in some ways, nothing much has changed: the debate is still between three main parties, led by three white guys, who all still use the sound bite of “hard working families” (yes, Lib Dems, even you) at every opportunity.
The Labour Party’s campaign has been challenged by one woman, namely Mrs Duffy from Rochdale – and the current shape of the media is indicated by two things: Mrs Duffy has her own PR rep and the Tories are streaming their anti-Brown Twitter feed onto a moving billboard on London’s A40 (westbound, just before Hanger Lane, if you should happen to be stuck in traffic there this week).
And mentioning Twitter …. check out the hilarious #nickcleggsfault hashtag on there … he’s responsible for everything, apparently, according to the right wing press, including having been spotted poking an Icelandic volcano with a stick in early April.
Busy guy.
Meanwhile, the Fawcett Society’s What About Women? campaign has been doing a sterling job of keeping women’s issues and concerns front and centre, even if the all-too-frequent references (not by Fawcett) to this election as the “Mumsnet Election” serves to enrage those of us who aren’t mothers and, as pointed out in this extremely tart and on-point Guardian column … “reinforce gender stereotypes” by making women’s concerns focussed on childcare …or Sarah Brown’s footwear.
The Gender Blog is now streaming to a newly established website, Missive, which has been set up to bring together women who write about politics. The two founders, Caroline and Sarah, aim to make it a way for women who write about politics to reach a wider audience. If you can think of any female bloggers who ought to be on there – please let me know via the Comments function below.
As the UK prepares to approach May’s General Election, I was pleased to see an update on the Downing Street Project, now in its second year, on the Huffington Post.
Here’s an extract from founder Indra Adnan’s article:
This is a call for the whole field of gender politics to be expanded, not just shifted in a new direction. We want more involvement of people – men as well as women who have never thought of themselves as feminist – as a complement to the vital work being done already by women’s organisations everywhere. Our plan is to host facilitated spaces for men and women to work together, gender-consciously, on creating a new understanding of how gender impacts the whole of society. More dialogue than debate, more play than delivering clear objectives. We’ll be starting a model Downing Street Cabinet – 51% women, 49% men – giving participants the powers to add or subtract government departments..”
Given that, according to the Centre for Women & Democracy’s research, the UK is now in position #73 (out of 187) in the international league table of women’s representation in parliaments, it seems clear that interventions of this type are critical if we are ever to change the make up of our government and have it more closely mirror our electorate.
When I checked out the prospective Parliamentary candidates for my own constituency, I was dismayed (but not surprised) to learn that the three main parties each have a man of the same ethnicity running … so we’re lacking racial as well as gender diversity in this bit of west London, unlike in Brighton where one constituency has an all female candidate list.
This is one of only ten constituencies where the candidates are all women as compared to 205 where the slate is entirely men only. Check out the Fawcett Society’s What About Women? pages for more on their campaign to make sure that women’s voices will be heard in this election.
By way of a contrast to (and a break from) all the Goa stuff – my article on the Downing Street Project - of which I’m very proud to say I am a “founding sister” – has just been published on The Glass Hammer website … take a look.
My latest book from “The Big Pile” is Alex von Tunzelmann’s “Indian Summer” - subtitled The Secret History of the End of an Empire.
I picked this up as a way of (belatedly) obtaining some much-needed background and understanding of the history behind the end of the British Raj and the creation of Pakistan, and the book delivers both with both barrels. Threaded throughout the story is Edwina Mountbatten, socialite wife of the “Last Viceroy”, whose personal (in evey sense of the word, allegedly) friendships with both Ghandi and Jawaharlal Nehru contributed so much to this era of Anglo-Indian history.
Here’s an interesting passage on women in India in c. 1947:
Women were prominent in India politics, which Edwina Mountbatten, along with many Indian women, attributed to Ghandism. Non-violence, passive resistance and boycotts were all tactics which could be practised by women without breaking social conventions; and Nehru had insisted as early as 1937 that the Congress manifesto pledge to remove all social, economic and political discrimination against women. As a result, there were more powerful women in India’s Congress than there were in Britain’s Labour Party or in America’s Democratic Party at the time.
As Edwina would later tell an audience in London, “We shall have to wake up in this country when we see how the women of India have achieved emancipation to such a remarkable degree in spite of the backwardness of the country, the illiteracy of the people, the low standard of life, and all kinds of disadvantages … “
Highly recommended reading, anyway – definitely one of the best books on India I’ve read to date.
I’m still catching up on emails and news stories from earlier this month, but I was pleased to see Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas (and, upon checking out her website, I note that I’m almost in her consituency, I think) calling for equal representation between men and women at the top level of European politics.
Brave woman – she’s calling for quotas.
Writing to PM Gordon Brown, Ms Lucas insisted that equality in politics could result in more women in business jobs and other top ranking positions in society.
She said: “European policies at the highest level need to unequivocally reflect the needs and aspirations of all Europeans. The new face of the European Union must reflect the fundamental European values of justice and equality.”
The European Summit is set to be held on October 29th and 30th, with the highest positions within the European Parliament being decided at the event.
I am making a diary note …
Last night I also caught up on BBC2‘s dramatisation of “The Last Days of Lehman Brothers”, which was an excellent clip through the events of September 2008 which led to the collapse of that once mighty investment bank. As I always do, I took a quick headcount, looking for the women, and counted three: two secretaries, one (dormant) wife. Pale, male and stale? Or, put another way, a reminder of the accuracy of Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times op-ed column earlier this year:
“Wall Street is one of the most male-dominated bastions in the business world; senior staff meetings resemble a urologist’s waiting room.”
Well, quite.
So, I’m back from California – what a great time. Now, let the blogging re-commence.
Why does September always feel like the start of the new school year? New courses, new teachers, new pencils and pens … old habits and memories die hard. And why, I wonder, don’t we make “September Resolutions” instead of (or perhaps as well as) ones in January? Of course, there are lots of changes for me personally this September; I finished my job of eight years on 1st September, then went on holiday and am now back to face all manner of new things.
Whilst away, I had a permanent hair straightening treatment in Santa Monica – check out Jordana Lorraine’s site for details of the really quite amazing “Brazilian Blowout” (™) treatment which has, no exaggeration, changed my life 100% for the better. This may sound like a trivial thing to mention but honestly, unless you’ve suffered with unruly, frizzy hair for your whole life as I have, it’s hard to imagine how amazing now waking up Every. Single. Day. with straight hair can be. I love it and am hugely grateful to Jordana for fitting in her desperate English client on my first day in California. Here I am, looking happy with my New Hair:
Anyway, moving on, as indeed I am … I struggled big time to get over the jet lag after this trip. Although I’ve travelled all over the place over the last three years, it’s been a while since I’ve had an eight hour time difference with which to contend and it’s taken me almost a week to get back on track.
One thing which was hugely helpful was absolutely HAVING to get up and get suited and booted in order to travel into central London in order to attend an event one morning earlier this week; I’m still trying to find a new pattern to my days and knowing that I had paid for my ticket was a useful motivator and gave a shape to my day. The event in question was British Telecom’s Executive Women’s Network meeting, which they had opened up to external, ticket buying guests. The meeting took the form of a “Question Time” panel event, with four panellists and a moderator doing the David Dimbleby bit.
For some reason, the not-David-Dimbleby bloke didn’t either introduce the panel or even mention their bios prior to launching in to the Q & A bit, so I’m not entirely sure of full names etc, but they were, I believe, two women from the consultancy “Everywoman”, Chris Ainslie, BT’s male, flexibly working “gender champion” and Patricia Hewitt, Labour MP, former cabinet minister and a BT non-executive director. I’d been invited to the event by my friend Pauline Crawford from Corporate Heart, so I kept her company in the front row of BT’s auditorium (and I must commend them on the seats; extremely comfortable, even for me, who usually starts to wriggle around and feel back pain in most such seating).
Most of the questions had been submitted in advance (I was too busy swishing my straight hair around in the Californian sunshine to do this) and had a common theme of examining female involvement in either the past (avoiding the credit crunch – could Lehman Sisters have had a different path?) or the future (re-building it to incorporate female strengths and talents). Patricia brought up the “sexism in the City” tagline when she argued the need for what she dubbed “cognitive diversity”, by which she meant having a variety of thoughts, strengths and skills brought to bear on a business issue, therefore leading to “less risk of things going haywire.”
She specifically cited as an example of, I assume, a lack of such cognitive diversity when referencing the “Edinburgh mafia” which, until recently, ran the Royal Bank of Scotland and brought it down so very low. I was interested to hear her mention that the major UK banks have 61 board positions between them, of which a mere FIVE are filled by women; and depressed to also learn that this is unlikely to improve anytime soon (in spite of such research as the McKinsey report on “centered leadership” which suggests that women are more likely to look at minimised loss rather than maximised gain) – due to the economic crisis causing a reduction in the range of people joining the banks’ leadership teams from non-banking backgrounds.
Pauline asked the panel for their views on the key attributes which women need to get into the boardroom, and their replies were as follows:
• You have to “really want to be there” (although I’m afraid this made me think, somewhat irreverently, of that infamous Saturday Night Live sketch from last year wherein Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin told “Hillary Clinton” that she’d nabbed the VP slot on the 2008 campaign because she “really, REALLY wanted it” – cue much grimacing from HRC).
• Ahem. Back to BT, and the panel also thought that authenticity and being yourself was vital to success –
• - as was bringing your own skills and passions to the boardroom.
• Be confident that you have the right to be there; ignore the “little voice” in the back of your head which says that perhaps you don’t (Imposter Syndrome, yes?)
• And Patricia urged us to make sure that we really “understood the finances; don’t just sit back when the numbers are being discussed”.
Other questions asked and answered were around issues of how to find (and be) a mentor, on how flexible working isn’t just a woman’s issue and how when a senior man like Chris works flexibly (he works a “compressed hours” week and hence doesn’t work on Fridays) it sends out very strong messages to both men and women as to what is both possible and acceptable within the corporate culture.
I didn’t get an opportunity to ask Patricia my own question but, with my Downing Street Project hat on, it would have been this:
“Do you foresee that the forthcoming election will see an increase in the number of female MPs from the current very low level of 19% and what will need to change for such an increase to occur?”
And I also missed out on a chance to share with Chris my own definition of a Generation Y person and how they differ from their older colleagues – but here it is.
A Generation Y person is someone who doesn’t have a landline. Think about it, and ask yourself how many 25 year olds you know who live independently (ie, not with the Bank of Mum & Dad) and have a landline. With the advent of the dongle bringing a portable and alternative way to access the Net, it’s not even needed for that anymore; plus most of the friends that I have in that bracket use their mobile/smart phones for most of their on-line access these days.
Perhaps, though, upon reflection, that wouldn’t have been a welcome nugget for a senior executive from one of the world leading telecom companies.
It’s good to be home!
A busy week beckons, specifically, a very busy Tuesday 1st September. Tomorrow will be my last day at work, after 8 1/2 years with my current employer and I’ll be working in the office all day, doing a handover with my successor, prior to being “relieved” of my laptop and security pass at 5.30pm.
I’ll then be heading across London over to the second of what the Downing Street Project team call “teach backs”. Everyone associated with this exciting, embryonic project to date has been formed into one of four teams (covering such issues as fund raising, training, communications etc) and tasked with coming up with approaches for the future.
I was amazed at how much had been achieved, in terms of ideas, creativity and infrastructure, between the launch at the House of Commons on June 30th and the first teach back session four short weeks later – and I’m sure tomorrow night’s event will show similar progress. We are scheduled to cover and be reminded of the following:
- Why do we need this initiative?
- What problem in society does it intend to address?
- How does the DSP think it will make a difference?
- What is balanced leadership and why is it relevant? What can it deliver?
- What is the time line for the DSP over the next three months, the first year and next three years?
I’m really looking forward to both hearing the updates and also keeping my mind occupied on things other than the end of my job and all the implications of that …
This, from today’s Observer newspaper:
“I’m voting for Hillary. I think bitches get things done.”
(2008)
That may well be true, Jerry, but I do tire of seeing somebody who I’d describe as a “strong woman” also being described as a “bitch”.
Since when did the words become interchangeable?
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