Tag Archives: women

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.

 

 

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.

See in the New Year by becoming a Godmother

31 Dec

 

(c) VSO

I’ve just signed up to become a Godmother (I was number 36!) in support of Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO)’s new campaign for women,  the Godmothers.

 

VSO tells us that:

“Worldwide more than 60 million girls have been forced into early marriage. Of the 780 million people who can’t read, 510 million are female. Women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours but earn just 10% of the income.

The new UN women’s agency could put a stop to all this. But to fulfil its promise it needs your help.

The Godmothers is a group of men and women who think women everywhere deserve a chance. Together we’ll watch over UN Women, help keep it on track and protect it from people who’d like to see it fail – everything a good godmother would do. By making sure UN Women gets the powers and funding it needs, we can make life better for millions of women worldwide.”

Click here to sign up and be a supporter – and help to make the New Year a Happier one for women everywhere.

If poverty has a colour, it’s blue –

13 Dec

- and if poverty is a fabric, it’s plastic.

I’ve had a lot of emails and texts over the last few weeks,  asking for more details of what I’ve been doing in Goa with the good folk from the charity Educators’ Trust India (ETI).  The short answer about their work can be found via this link to my freelance writing site at Collaborative Lines,  where I share some of the copy that I’ve written for the charity’s soon to be launched website.

And here’s the long answer … part one of my report on the wonderful work done by this tiny yet passionate charity.

If you’ve ever been to Goa,  or perhaps to any beach resort in Asia,  you will probably have been approached by beggars and/or beach sellers – usually women and children (I’ve blogged about it before).  They sell all manner of things (here’s a list which I made last year) and are extremely persistent in getting you to buy their jewellery, sarongs, peanuts and pedicures.  What had never ever occurred to me was where these people actually … lived. I knew that in many cases they travelled to Goa each autumn for the start of the tourist season in October and that they arrived there from other Indian states such as Karnataka. But where do they live when in Goa?

It was only when I met the ETI team and they invited me to join them on one of their regular visits to a slum settlement that I really started to give thought as to housing.  Take a look at my photo – it shows an idyllic rural scene, doesn’t it?  This field,  a currently dry rice paddy,  is located about 1.5 miles inland from the popular tourist resort of Calangute.  But,  as the camera pans back a bit,  you can see a woman doing laundry in a muddy stream.  Zoom back a bit more and you can see that the field is actually full of shacks made from blue plastic; basically, tents,  improvised with plastic and using tree trunks as supports. 

This field is home to around 100 adults and children ( a figure which will increase as the season progresses) from the eastern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh,  who travel by train (it takes three days) each October to work and beg in the Goan beach resorts.  I have visited urban slums before but have never seen anything like this; this field is where you live when you have nothing other than what you can carry or wear.   There’s no electricity.  No running water.  Certainly no sanitation.  No way of cooking other than in a pot over an open fire.

(Some of the Goans complain about this influx of economic migrants and say that,  well,  it serves them right that they live like this – perhaps they should stay put in their home states? To which my reply is – I think it’s safe to assume that they’re not leaving comfortable and luxurious home behind in order to travel across the sub-continent and then camp in this field;  this is an act of the impoverished and desperate …)

The first thing that hit me when we arrived at the field was the smell.  Without labouring the point, when the weather is 30-something Celsius and you’ve got humans, cows, dogs, chickens and pigs all using the great outdoors as their al-fresco bathroom … yeah.  The field does have a fresh water spring and the residents use that for drinking water and the muddy stream on the other side of the field for bathing, laundry and everything else.  However,  this obviously doesn’t work all the time and dirty water does get into the kids,  as we witnessed with the poor child who I visited in the hospital in Panjim a few weeks ago.  She is now suffering from severe kidney failure,  brought about by drinking unclean water.  ETI are paying for her treatment,  visiting her every day and giving her parents money for food so that they can stay with her in the hospital.

This next photo shows the rather clever use of sari fabric as improvised baby slings; each harness contains a six month old baby.  They are twins,  born to a 15 year old girl,  who leaves them in the care of the older women while she works on the beach,  undertaking manicures and pedicures (in reality,  a nail shape and paint,  for which she charges c. £2).  She told me all this in really excellent English,  which she has learned from tourists – and yet she can neither read nor write.

So,  what do the ETI team do to help these field dwellers?  Well,  firstly,  they set up an impromptu school a few times a week,  where the children sit down and have a very basic “lesson” with picture books,  crayons and paper.  They are taught to write their names in English and to count to 10,  to say please and thank you.   This is the most basic of educational approaches but,  for some children,  the simple discipline of learning to sit quietly,  to not fight or play but to listen,  is in itself a learning opportunity.  These are kids who would otherwise be working on a beach,  selling peanuts or doing a little dance to the beat of a drum and then asking for money,  so in some respects,  just having them available to sit down and mess about with paper and crayons feels like an achievement.  The ETI team also work hard to get the parents involved;  they arrived with a basic medical kit and will treat,  where possible,  small injuries – usually foot related,  like Jyoti from last month’s blog entry – but only with permission from the parents.  This photo shows Jacob,  one of ETI’s wonderful volunteers,  showing a few of the men how to write their names – the team really encourages participation and involvement from anyone,  not just the kids.

At the end of each hour long lesson, ETI hand out fresh fruit to the children;  I paid for this one week and for £7 we bought enough fruit for each child at the settlement to get an apple and a banana each.  Diego,  the charity’s Goan founder, insists that each child washes their hands prior to receiving the fruit and so we saw a line set up whereby the children queued up to wash their hands and then queued again to receive the fruit – all administered by the mums.

The gender divide is so marked at this settlement.  It’s really not overstating the case to suggest that the women work (on the beach,  at the camp – cooking,  washing, sweeping up,  taking care of the children) and the men drink and gamble.  The local Goan hooch is a spirit called feni, made from distilled cashew nuts,  and a 60 ml shot of it costs about 10p.  When we arrived at the camp at 9.30am,  there were men lying on the ground in a drunken stupor,  or lurching around, shouting and fighting with each other.  And they absolutely reeked of booze;  the smell oozed from every pore.  Diego told me that many of the men are addicted to feni and that any money earned by the women and children goes straight into the coffers of the local bars or is gambled away in complicated card games played between a group of the men in one corner of the field.

One of the charity’s key aims is to get the children out of the cycle of working,  not being educated, and thus marrying young (the average woman at the camp is aged 25 and usually has five children by this stage; I certainly observed that the amount of alcohol consumed by the men in no way seemed to either impede sexual performance or affect fertility …).  It seemed clear that the responsibility for bringing money into the family coffers lies very much with the women and children,  and that’s why getting the buy-in from the mums is so vital to the success of this project;  if we can persuade the women to allow their children to stop working and to instead attend one of the ETI’s two local schools,  then there is hope for the next generation,  who will be both educated and have ambitions for a life of more than selling peanuts and t-shirts on Baga beach.

Last week,  I had this conversation with Jyoti’s mum, Seevarna;  I asked her if she would allow Jyoti to go to one of the schools and she replied that she would love to,  but that because her husband was a brandy drinking alcoholic,  they needed income from both Seevarna and her two daughters in order to buy enough money to live – and so Jyoti could not be spared from her duties at the beach.

These women lead hard, hard lives; yes,  education is the answer in many cases,  but I do now see how tough it must be to decide that when your 11 year old daughter can perhaps earn £1 or so per day for the family coffers – and if that £1 makes the difference between being hungry (or getting a black eye from your husband when you return home with insufficient money for his brandy …) – that allowing her to stop work and go to school may not be an option.

In a future post,  I’ll write about the two schools run by Educators’ Trust India and how they benefit the children who have broken out of the child labour trap.

Invisible woman syndrome

16 Sep

Let’s talk about role models.  I think it’s universally agreed that role models are A Good Thing,  especially for women;  they provide a sense that change is possible,  a glimpse of the future,  an alternative perspective on what life might be like “there”,  perhaps some tips and hints on how to get there.  When I was researching and then writing The Leaking Pipeline,  which featured interviews from 79 senior business women, all great role models, around the world,  I took and learned so much from their stories and their determination.

Of course,  role models can come in all shapes, sizes and walks of life,  as the PinkStinks campaign team demonstrate so admirably on their website,  which is in turn a great example of how to harness multi-media technology in this ever changing world.  When I was growing up, pre the computerised age,  my role models were the women I saw around me:  my mum (a mature student, a successful career woman in later life and now, in her sixties, a “sandwich generation” carer to both her grandsons and her own mother AND one of the applicants to volunteer at the 2012 London Olympics), teachers, librarians,  perhaps TV presenters such as Valerie Singleton.  I don’t really remember many women, other than actresses, on TV in the 1970s,  across the three channels to which we had access – Anna Ford and Angela Rippon read the news and that was about it.

So why am I pondering on this now?  Well,  a few months ago,  I watched a fabulous three part BBC4 series called Electric Dreams,  in which a family of six (parents and four children, including two daughters) spent a month replicating the arrival of the last thirty years’ worth of technology.  Their home was taken back to how it would have been,  in technology terms,  in the 1970s and they were stripped of TVs, mobile phones, computers, gaming consoles and all the associated domestic electrical gadgets: no microwaves, automatic washing machines or any other time and labour saving devices.  As each new day of the experiment arrived,  the time machine moved forward a year and the family took delivery of a new piece of technology – so we saw them getting to grips with early VCRs, black and white computer monitors, mobile phones the size of a brick and so on.

(c) BBC

The family were supported by a team of three technical gurus,  including Dr Gia Milinovich, who is a technology writer and self-confessed geek.  I thought she was fabulous in the series – clever,  funny,  great sense of history,  with a real appreciation of how technology has been such a huge enabler over the last thirty years.  The other two team members were blokes – see photo – so I think Gia served as a very positive role model for women in technology (and, perhaps,  for the two girls in the house).  I subsequently watched another three part BBC series which she presented (for which I can’t find a link – perhaps I dreamed it?) about the development and emergence of technology which made it seem really interesting and accessible, even to the non-Apple-owning types amongst us.

And I’m focusing on Gia because …? OK. Last month,  Gia wrote this article for the Guardian,  in which she highlighted how she has basically become invisible since her husband of six years,  rock star/God like physicist Prof. Brian Cox,  hit the media spotlight and became the acceptable (and sexy) face of popular science.

“When we first met”,  she writes,  “I was the expensively groomed television professional, working on mostly science and technology shows, and he was the newly appointed physics academic with a student’s wardrobe and a single bed.”

But, then:  “… he presented Wonders Of The Solar System and everything changed.”

She goes on to detail how her husband’s level of fame and recognition (in supermarkets, on the street) then escalated to the point where other women are zoning in on him in public and on Twitter and behaving as if Gia simply … doesn’t exist.

As if all of that wasn’t bad enough,  Gia has also had to take a hit in career terms,  as she explains that:

“…A few years ago, I started to notice that the more Brian appeared on TV, the less interesting I became to other people. I started to morph from Gia Milinovich, independent woman with her own life and separate bank account, into “Mrs Brian Cox”, then into “wife”. Pre-fame, I was asked for my opinions; now, I’m asked what Brian thinks.”

And,  circling back to our role models angle,  Gia has now decided to take a step back from continuing to work in TV,  describing here how she has found herself treated in a way which is doubtless only too familiar to women in corporate life – as if what she says has no value,  unless and until the very same words are uttered by a male colleague in the same meeting,  at which point they are fallen upon as if they are true pearl encrusted nuggets of gold.

“The respect for my professional abilities has declined in inverse proportion to the number of Google searches for “Is Prof Brian Cox divorced yet?”

“The first signs were there five years ago when Brian and I went to pitch some ideas to a producer at a well-known production company. I’d had a science-technology series broadcast on Channel 4 several months earlier, and Brian’s appearances as the science expert on This Morning were going very well.

“From the start, the producer’s attention was on Brian. Every time I spoke, he’d look at me as though I was interrupting their conversation. At one point, I came out with what I thought was an excellent idea. The producer again turned towards me, said nothing and then turned slowly back to Brian. About a minute later, Brian repeated my idea almost word for word and the producer told him it was brilliant.”

So,  how sad is this?  This clever, funny, educated woman,  a fabulous role model for women in science, women in TV,  women everywhere really,  has decided that –

“Brian has made a well-loved science series and I, well, until I work out how I fit into all of this, I’ll just continue washing his pants.”

Don’t do it, Gia.  Hang on in there – we need more women like you on TV!

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 …

Is Julia Gillard heading for the Glass Cliff?

20 Aug

(c) BBC

Tomorrow sees a general election in Australia, and the two main parties are currently neck and neck at the polls.

Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female Prime Minister, is facing a fight to the finish with conservative coalition leader Tony Abbott.  Ms Gillard became Prime Minister in June after ousting her predecessor, Kevin Rudd.

But reports say that she faces a backlash at the ballot box over a range of issues,  including the way she replaced Mr Rudd as head of the Labor party and her policy directions on climate change and immigration.

If the Labor party,  currently just ahead in the polls at 52%,  does lose the election,  what will this mean for Gillard’s career? Will she be left to carry the can and blamed for the loss?  Or will there be an appreciation for the political status quo that she inherited so recently, at a time when the Labor Party’s popularity was sliding in the opinion polls?

Apparently, say the BBC, Kevin Rudd “surrendered without a fight” after realising that his support amongst government colleagues had collapsed.

That sounds like a poison chalice of a job to me – in fact,  it sounds like the roles described by researchers at the University of Exeter in their paper a few years ago as the “glass cliff”,  in which they suggest that senior women are:

“… more likely than men to find themselves in positions associated with a high risk of failure and are correspondingly precarious. … A female candidate is overwhelmingly favoured if the opening is described as difficult and involving a high risk of failure.”

The paper,  entitled “The Glass Cliff: Evidence That Women Are Over-Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions”, summarises the glass cliff position as follows:

  • While men are given safer and more secure jobs, women at all levels often feel that they have been “set up to fail”;
  • Such leadership roles can lead to increased stress for women leaders, and can contribute to larger numbers of women departing senior management positions;
  • Glass cliffs may also have repercussions for organisations, leading to poor communication and decision making

The research,  conducted in 2005 and updated in 2007, was conducted across a range of sectors which included business,  the law and, crucially here, politics. Significantly,  Julia Gillard was not handed the role of Labor Party leader/first female Prime Minister,  but actively sought it out – so in that regard,  the concept of being appointed to  a doomed, risky role does not apply to her.

However,  should her party lose at tomorrow’s election,  the blame will undoubtedly be laid at her door and you don’t have to be psychic to predict that there’ll be a media firestorm suggesting that the Aussie electorate didn’t vote for her due to her gender,  and/or because they didn’t want to have an elected (as opposed to an appointed) female Prime Minister.

Whilst,  as outlined here in this guest blog for Catalyst,  Australia does have a relatively high proportion of high profile, successful women in senior political roles,  the amount of media attention focussed on Gillard over the last two months has been intense and has been largely centred on her gender and personal life.

So, irrespective of whether she strode to the cliff edge herself or was parked there – I see that Australia’s first female Prime Minister is  poised on the edge of the glass cliff at the moment – and only the Australian electorate can keep her there or send her tumbling over the precipice.

However, on a lighter note,  just as we had Paul the Octopus making (ultimately) successful forecasts during the World Cup last month,  Australia now has psychic crocodile Dirty Harry making election predictions. Of course,  given that crocodiles are a bit more vicious and unpredictable in their behaviour than are our eight legged “friends”,  the selection protocol is a bit more feral:  this time,  Harry has to indicate the electoral winner by lunging for some raw chicken hanging below images of Gillard and Abbott.

Watch the video link here to see who he picks – and may the best crocodile win tomorrow.

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.

A survey for 21st century female entrepreneurs

17 Jun

Last week, I wrote about  this year’s Women in Banking and Finance (WIBF) awards.

And at last year’s awards, three fabulous things happened to me.

I arrived knowing nobody bar the Chair, Christine Lawrence,  and found myself at a mixed table of assorted women,  all of whom were there, in much the same way as at a wedding (“bride or groom?”)  because we weren’t affiliated with one of the big banks who’d bought a table of ten.

My three great things were as follows:

On my right, I was seated next to Pauline Crawford of Corporate Heart: a magical, energising, powerhouse of a woman, who has since become a great friend and a true inspiration to me.

On my left I met Christina Ioannidis of Aquitude and we immediately established that we knew some people in common; she admired my shoes,  I admired her necklace and,  as women do,  we bonded.

My third great thing was that,  at Pauline’s urging,  everyone at the table bought raffle tickets in support of WIBF’s chosen charity – and both Pauline and I won!   Pauline won a three course dinner (with wine) for six people at a five star hotel and I won a designer dress from No. 35 - a dress which I have since worn all over the world and which never ever fails to generate wonderful compliments whenever it has an outing.

Pauline and Christina were both at this year’s event,  and nobody at my table won a raffle prize, unfortunately. But Christina reminded us that she is running a brief survey via her website, aimed at understanding more about what compels 21st century women to set up their own businesses;  if you’d like to take part,  please follow the link here:

www.breakinggenderstereotypes.com

- and I’ll cover the findings later this year once available.

And,  if you’d like to follow Christina and Pauline on Twitter,  you can do so by clicking on their names.

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