it doesn't have to be nasty to get the ratings

i have to admit to being a master chef fan. even though i don't like cooking and don't watch cooking shows. and even though i don't like too much else that comes under the banner of reality tv. i really enjoyed UK masterchef. i didn't really like the aussie or nz version when they started, but they definitely grew on me as the competition went on.

it's hard to say what i like most about this programme. it's partly because of the skill involved, partly because the food presentation looks so lovely. it's amazing to watch ordinary people extend themselves and take on some really tough challenges, and achieve some spectacular results.

what i loved most about the nz show (well, after the rather harsh dressing down given to karyn towards the beginning) was the lack of nastiness. the competitors generally behaved really well towards each other and were quite supportive. it was such a nice change from, say, gordon ramsay (never managed to sit through one of his shows) or simon cowell. it was just really nice to see people competing cleanly and with integrity; taking responsibility for their mistakes and generally being very good role models.

the winner, brett mcgregor, is such a genuinely nice guy. i have to say that i don't think he was the best of the top 12, but he certainly deserved to win. maybe i'm not watching the right stuff, but i believe we get to see a lot of this type of person on tv: someone who's committed to his family and a really good sport.

and the best thing is that even with all these well-behaved and lovely people, and with the lack of nastiness and open conflict, it was riveting television. i'll happily admit to having tears in my eyes at the end of the show.

on a similar theme, i've never watched any of the "idol" series from any country, but i have followed this year's american idol a bit in the last weeks. not for the contestants, but mostly because i'm enjoying watching ellen on the show. again, i just find i enjoy watching someone who usually (though not always) has something nice to say, even to the contestants who haven't done so well. she seems to be popular enough as a judge - although i haven't watched any other series to make any kind of decent comparison.

so i guess what i'm saying is: more please! i want to see more of nice people behaving well on tv.

2 interesting interviews

i'm sure you all know that i'm a big fan of kathryn ryan, particularly in terms of the interviews she is doing on areas of interest to women. this week there were two interviews on nine to noon which, if you haven't caught up with, i'd strongly recommend listening to.

the first is an interview this morning (10.10am) with catherine healy, head of the prostitutes collective, on the effects of decriminilisation. i didn't manage to catch the whole thing myself due to being busy at work, but did get the tail end of it where she was talking about it not being a good idea to open a brothel opposite a school, because of the community unease (paraphrasing here) it would cause. but there was a whole heap of interesting issues raised.

the second is this interview on tuesday (9.20am) with dr linda papadopoulos about her recommendations to the british government to deal with what she calls the "pornification" of society and it's effect on children. since i'm short of time, i've only managed to do a quick google search which doesn't give a link to the original report - but shows that people are really interested in the subject and have a lot to say about it! but if anyone does have a bit of time and can find a link to the report, i'd appreciate if you put it into the comments.

ETA: i've found the link here.

meeting for ethnic women on workplace rights

i'm part of the group organising this meeting next saturday. if you are (or happen to know) an ethnic woman in the waikato region, please do come along and encourage others to do so as well.


FREE Workshop on Workplace Rights for Ethnic Women
Organised by the Hamilton Ethnic Women’s Group

Are you an Ethnic woman and part of the New Zealand workforce or looking for an opportunity to be part of it? Are you familiar with the laws that affect you in the workplace? Do you feel you need more information on your rights as an employee?

This is a unique opportunity for Ethnic Women to know more about their workplace rights and share their stories in an open and supportive environment.

GUEST SPEAKER: Sonya Church (Young Worker’s Resource Centre)
WHEN: Saturday 8 May 2010, 2-4 P.M. (Light refreshments will be provided)
VENUE: Community Waikato, 33 Victoria Street, Hamilton

Tarrific

For many years there's been a conversation amongst feminist women involved in students' associations about how there are still tariffs on what are euphemistically referred to as "women's sanitary products." My recollection of the parts of this conversation that I heard back in my day were along the lines of some vague understanding that there were tariffs on tampons and pads on the basis that they were luxury items, but no one seemed to know precisely what the tariffs were or any other info.

For a long time now I've been meaning to find out. And now, thanks to Idiot/Savant's mention of a list of tariffs on the internet, I kind of have.

It seems that tampons currently have no tariff on them at all. Pads, referred to as "sanitary towels" in the Customs documents, do have a 5% tariff on them. Quite why this is I couldn't discover, so if anyone else can tell me please do spill the beans.

However the 5% tariff is waived for countries of origin with whom we have free trade agreements that cover these products, except for China, whose tariff is being gradually reduced to zero over the next few years, presumably as a result of the Free Trade Agreement signed with them under the last Government.

In order to see if the countries with the waiver were also countries we were importing pads from I did some exhaustive research by spending max. 2 minutes at the supermarket yesterday checking out the packaging of all the pads I could see for sale in the relevant aisle at the Onehunga Countdown. Wriggly was with me, so it wasn't a stealth mission. None of the pads I looked at (at least one type from each brand on the shelf) were made in Aotearoa.

Countries pads were imported from:

• Thailand - tariff free under the ASEAN-Australia-NZ FTA
  
• Vietnam - tariff free under the ASEAN-Australia-NZ FTA
• EU - no tariff exemption that I could see, therefore presume 5% tariff applies
  
• Australia - tariff free under several different FTAs
• China - tariff still in place - currently 2.6%, will go down to 1.3% from January 2011, then zero from January 2012

So there we have it. Yes there's a tariff on pads, the reason is still a mystery to me, and some of the places we are importing them from have exemptions.

ACC's new approach to sensitive claims not working

From the Herald this morning:

A review of new rules for sexual abuse counselling has come too late to save a South Auckland mother who died four days after her claim for ACC-funded counselling was rejected.

Counselling Services Centre manager Emma Castle said the mother-of-three's claim for counselling for sexual abuse she had suffered as a child was rejected by ACC two months ago on the grounds that she had not suffered "a significant mental injury".

"The counsellor who submitted the claim made it very clear that sexual abuse was the reason why she had suicidal ideation and was self-harming," Ms Castle said. "It took them six months to make that decision. Four days after receiving notification that the ACC claim was denied, the client passed away."

...[Speaking on the issue of the panel announced to review the policy] "None of our specialist experts that work day to day with survivors of sexual violence, and have done for decades, have been chosen to be part of this review," Dr McGregor [Head of Rape Prevention Education aka Rape Crisis] said.

She said the rules had caused a virtual "collapse" of sexual abuse counselling, with cases approved by ACC down from 472 in the first two months of last year to just 32 in the same period this year.

The Association of Counsellors' representative on the ACC's sensitive claims advisory group, Elayne Johnston, said a 15-year-old girl who was raped over Christmas had still not received counselling because ACC required her to be assessed by a psychologist to see whether she had suffered a "mental injury".

Dr McGregor said almost all of the 600 to 700 private counsellors who were registered for ACC-funded work had stopped taking applicants for ACC subsidies since the new rules took effect because of an ethical objection to labelling assault victims as mentally ill.

Survivors were now going to rape crisis agencies instead, but the agencies could not cope because they had also lost funding...

Click through for the whole article.

This whole thing just makes me so sad. The sector warned the Minister that this would happen if he changed the rules in this way. He did it anyway. And now that it's happening, with real consequences for real people in awful situations, he's announced a review that doesn't include anyone from the frontline. This is starting to be a standard MO for this Govt. It reminds me of the 1990s when anyone who was an expert or practitioner in X was written off as having a vested interest in X and therefore their views were biased and not worth consideration.

Hating

I hate cancer. There's just no other way to state it. Hate hate hate hate hate.

I hate how it's part of your own body, so you kind of end up hating your own body if you have it, or hating the body of someone you love if it's someone else suffering. It must be horrible to know that there is something inside you slowly killing you, as if your own body has turned against you.

I hate all the war dialogue that goes with the public face of having cancer: "fighting", "surviving", "losing the battle". And there's a lot of judgy stuff about who wins this fight too. Subtext: only losers lose, and by losing what people really mean is die.

I understand that everyone has to die of something and I don't expect to live forever. But my personal experience so far has been younger people getting cancer and dying of it. Sub-70 I mean. In the last month I've had a lovely neighbour diagnosed with it, a woman I knew well through work die of it, the second anniversary of the death of my father (whose death came about through a complication from surgery to cut it out), and a close friend of my partner's is likely to pass away from terminal cancer shortly. None of them have been what I would call old.

And none of them have been bad people either. It's the whole "when bad things happen to good people" injustice all over again. I'm not dealing with it very well, especially when I consider that so many of these people with cancer, still living or killed by it, are close to my son. He won't remember his Grandad, and he may well not remember any of the others either if/when they die too. It just seems so unfair.

Working Women's Seminar in Wellington

What: Working Women's Seminar
When: Saturday 1st May, 9.00am – 4.30pm
Where: St John’s Conference Centre, Cnr Dixon and Willis Streets, Wellington

Message from the organisers:
The seminar is a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Working Women's Charter by the NZ Federation of Labour. This year also marks 50 years since the passing of the Government Services Equal Pay Act 1960.

The aim of this seminar is not only to honour the past and define the present but importantly also to look to the future. Speakers include Martha Coleman, Hazel Armstrong, Taima Fagaloa, Margaret Long and others. Panel includes Maryan Street and Lyndy McIntyre.

Registration Fee $30 waged and unwaged $10.

Please contact workingwomenseminar at gmail dot com

one step forward, two steps back

from a country where the state dictates how women can dress, we have progress of sorts in terms of women's access to education:

...King Abdullah yesterday laid the foundation for the Kingdom’s first women-only university, which is to be built at a cost of SR15 billion on the eastern suburbs of Riyadh.

The Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman University, with a capacity to enroll some 40,000 students, will offer courses in subjects that women find difficulty studying at universities where strict gender segregation is enforced....

[Minister of Higher Education Khaled Al-Anqari said] “This is a milestone in the Kingdom’s history, particularly in the history of women’s education. The campus would include an administration building, a central library, conference centers, buildings for 15 academic faculties, several laboratories and a 700-bed hospital equipped with state-of-the-art facilities.

“Some areas in the campus would be allocated for research in nanotechnology, bio-sciences and information technology in collaboration with the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology,” he said.

Princess Al-Jowhara bint Fahd, the university’s president, said the institution is designed to become the world’s largest center of higher learning for women. “It would double the admission capacity of women students,” she said in a statement. “The university would have 13 colleges, including those for medicine, dentistry, nursing, naturopathy, information technology, languages, instant translation and pharmacy.”

baby steps, and no doubt this is a puff piece, but access to education is the first step towards empowerment. access to employment is the next step, and it looks like the saudi government is encouraging businesses to do that, from the article quoted. but whether or not this is more than just words remains to be seen.

and now we have another two countries who want to join the ranks of those where the state dictates how women can dress. first up is belgium:

THE collapse of the Belgian coalition government has prevented the country's parliament from voting in Europe's first ban on wearing the Islamic burqa in public.

Prime Minister Yves Leterme offered to quit after the coalition broke down, throwing the country's political institutions into turmoil....

The controversial decision could be put on the agenda for the next parliamentary session in a week's time "unless the government falls and the house of representatives is dissolved," a parliamentary spokeswoman told AFP.

this would no doubt be viewed as a case of divine intervention by the sorts of sheikhs that predict earthquakes. i certainly don't wish any ill on the belgians, but here's hoping that the vote gets put off for more than a week.

and then there is the french version, which is quite a lot more of an overt & populist political move by a president suffering from very low popularity ratings, a president who has a history of this kind of thing:

A SAVIOUR of women, or rank Islamophobe and racist? By pushing for a total ban on the burka, or full Islamic veil, in all public places, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is provoking outrage in the political establishment while winning the backing of the electorate and the far-right....

Mr Sarkozy has galvanised the Right and split the Left over the burka, with solid support from voters. Anti-racism groups are pitted against secular Muslim feminist movements, while the Socialist Party is in disarray.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon has been charged with trying to hurry the law through the National Assembly, where Socialists and Communists are at odds over whether to ban the burka at all, partially or everywhere.

the funniest quote from that article would have to be this one:

"When we go to (another) country, we vigorously respects its laws . . . therefore everyone must respect the law in France. It's like that."

o rly? is that what you did? cos, you know, some people don't remember it like that. and in case you think belgium is any better in this regard, think again. it doesn't seem to me that rwanda and the republic of congo have benefitted from that particular colonisation.

but despite all of that history, and despite the fact that many muslims are in france as a direct result of colonisation, it seems the natives from the colonies are still not deserving of respect. the attack is (again) on women. because they are the softer target? less likely to riot in the streets? more likely to submit to oppression? who knows.

what i know is that if these bans go ahead, it is highly likely that these women will become even more secluded than they are now. if the women are covering themselves from their own choice, then the state is saying that they shouldn't have that choice, thus taking away their agency for no valid reason. if they are covering because they are forced to do it, then such laws will make the situation worse as those forcing them will further restrict their movements. i mean really, isn't it basic common sense that if you want to stop abuse, you target policies towards the behaviour of the abuser?

in either case, it's a stupid move that won't liberate or empower anyone. it will, however, cause increasing tensions and divisions. sarkozy definitely knows this but doesn't care. i don't know much about belgium, but given the coalition government is on the brink of collapse, it's not a stretch to assume that this is a populist move there as well.

so while there's all the fuss around what boobquake does or doesn't say about women's empowerment, let's spare a thought for these women who don't seem to have any kind of voice at all in the political manoeuverings apparently designed to "liberate" them.


please note that moderation will be very tight on this thread.

Boobquake a comin'

Emma considers the pros and cons of the Boobquake shaking the world today in response to the Iranian cleric who reckons earthquakes are caused by adultery and adultery is caused by women's fashion choices. Here's my favourite part of Emma's post:

Firstly, they're about a woman's right to choose her own clothing. This is a feminist issue. Associated with it is a blatant refusal to accept responsibility for supposed consequences of those clothing choices, from sexual assault to earthquakes. We are refusing to make our choices on the basis of what men might do or feel, because we are NOT responsible for those actions or emotions.

Secondly, it's about women taking pride in their bodies, feeling comfortable in their own skins. This is a feminist issue. And please note, because I don't think it's unobvious, that both events were explicitly about women dressing 'provocatively' within their own comfort levels. Now, we're told (sometimes explicitly) that we shouldn't show pride in our own bodies because that makes other women feel bad. I'm not buying that, because I think it's predicated on a false assumption: that the only women who feel that comfort and pride are young, skinny, large-chested conventionally-attractive women. And that's bollocks.

People signed up for Boobquake include women my age (and even older ZOMG!), pregnant women, breast-feeding women, lesbians (only interested in getting attention from men, of course), and at least one post-operative transsexual. I think it's at least possible that seeing a wide variety of women being comfortable with their own bodies might be helpful for other women.

The final criticism I want to deal with is that these events are frivolous. To which the only response is: of course they bloody are. They are a response to criticism so stupid it shouldn't be dignified with an intelligent reasoned response.

Go read the whole thing, if you feel that way inclined.

Sexual Abuse Survivors Summit in June

Thanks to everyone who has sent this through to me, here are the details:

What: SOSA (Survivors of Sexual Abuse) Annual Summit 2010
When: 20th June
Where: Lake House, Takapuna, North Shore

Message from the organisers:
Claiming back our power and our voice!

Join us at this great event -

let your heart sing - let your spirit soar high!

Ending the silence and finding our voice
Sharing our stories and experiences
Empowerment and Emancipation
Fighting for our right to recovery
Giving and receiving support
Solidarity within survivor community
Sharing resources and information
Hearing from services what they offer

More info at the website here. You can also make a donation there to help fund the Summit.

sharing the load

here's an excellent post and discussion thread at blue milk, which i just caught up with today. it's basically about sharing the workload of housework and childrearing, and the difficulties that tend to arise from that:

I have had two important breakthroughs. Let’s skip the whole idea that one of those breakthroughs might have been achieving true equality as feminist parents with our work and family life. I don’t want to disappoint. Frankly, if becoming a parent (at least in a heterosexual way) isn’t an experience in compromising your feminist principles and seeing just how far you can bend over backwards to accommodate the patriarchy then I don’t know what else it might be.

[...]

I am five years into this working mother thing, and I am still shocked about how unfair the work-family split is – all the work of getting it to happen, getting it to work, and keeping it running smoothly is done by mothers. It seems ridiculous – two people working, two people are parents – the organisational workload should be shared, but that isn’t how it happens. I am torn between fighting to get some equality and conserving my energy to deal with making what actually happens work for me, and especially for the children (which are like the carrot to the donkey for women).

i'd really recommend reading the whole thing, including the shared experiences in comments.

i won't share my own experiences on the matter, since i don't blog anonymously. but after reading this piece, and i know it's strange, but i really came to appreciate my gardener. i mean, i did already appreciate the work he does and his reliability, friendliness and helpfulness.

admitted that this is someone i pay to do stuff for me. yet it's just so relaxing to ask him to do things and have them done in a timely fashion, and with a cheerful manner. no need for constant reminders, no having to put up with him taking as long as possible to do it just to show that he's not subservient to his wife, no huffing and dragging himself around as if it's just so inconvenient to be doing this particular thing, no acting like he's doing me a big favour just by doing something that i shouldn't have needed to ask him to do anyway, no frustration at having the job done sloppily, no bewilderment/frustration that i don't appreciate that he finally got up and did stuff that other men don't do, no arguments, no stress.

not saying that i had to deal with any or all of these, but it just nice to know that they won't be an issue. and mostly i don't even have to ask him to do stuff, he actually works out what needs to be done, checks in with me that it's ok to go ahead, then just quietly gets it done.

in fact, it's the perfect relationship.

What's offensive is subjective

The Kiwi Party want a law against "offensive behavior." They're primarily concerned about the Boobs on Bikes parades that Steve Crow runs and which we've had quite a few discussions about here before.

And they've jumped on the bandwagon that gets hauled out every year around this time, of determining precisely what our war fallen fought for (or didn't). The Kiwi Party reckons "The ‘Steve Crow type anything goes sexual freedom’ is not what they sacrificed and often gave their lives for!" (Their exclamation mark)

Here's another snippet from their release:

Kiwi Party leader Larry Baldock said they see no reason why the Summary Offences Act and Crimes Act should not be amended to clearly define what is offensive public behaviour rather than leaving it to subjective judicial interpretation. Why not have the law simply state that the 'private parts' that have been traditionally covered (boobs, bums and fronts!!) should not be publicly displayed?

Now let me tell you what I find the most offensive behaviour in a public place. Anti-abortion protesters who parade around with their misleading fetus pictures and their incredibly emotive slogans, harassing women outside clinics that offer terminations. But somehow I don't think the Kiwi Party would want a law that banned that.

As for "traditionally covered", whose traditions are we talking about?

I've written before about my ambivalence about the Boobs on Bikes stuff, although Anjum is not so conflicted. I'm just sick of morality crusades by the likes of the Kiwi Party. Their basis for opposing Boobs on Bikes is about a paternalistic attitude towards women that to my mind only seeks to reinforce the idea that our bodies can be viewed as property - just not property that we should be devaluing by flaunting. Grrr!

agreeing with rosemary

i find that i often disagree with rosemary mcleod's op-ed pieces, but she has written a couple lately that i completely agree with.

the first can be found here, and while i don't completely agree with the first half (ie that groping is mostly harmless and seeking justice for it is "revenge" rather than empowerment), the main point she makes about unfairness in sentencing is a very good one:

But it's another comment by the judge that I find troubling: that publicity was not required in his case because none of the offensive images were of New Zealanders.

Setting aside how he could possibly know that for sure, isn't it enough that vile images were spread of any women and young children, whatever their ethnicity, and wherever they might be? They were images of real people; that is their charm for people who enjoy such cruelty.

I don't buy any argument that looking is so different from acting, or that geography waters down a crime. It's in our minds that we first become evil, before we act, and in our minds that we give ourselves permission to be brutal by proxy, as both these men have been.

the second piece doesn't appear to be online yet, but covers some appalling behaviour by ACC towards a sexual abuse victim. the concluding paragraphs of rosemary's piece are as follows:

According to Labour's victims rights spokesperson, Lynne Pillay, just 32 people were approved nationally for sexual abuse counselling in the first two months of this year, compared to 472 in the same time last year.

What's that supposed to suggest?

That the other 440 were lying or that, although they were traumatised enough to seek help, they were not "mentally injured"?

If this is economising, it's short-sighted.

Victims won't go away because bureaucracy wants them to; harm doesn't evaporate spontaneously, though we wish it did; and one way or another we're bound to pay for our lack of belief in "rehabilitation and all that other babble".

Unaware?

In the Herald this morning:

A baker who sexually harassed his female assistant - leaving floury handprints on her clothing in the process - must pay her $19,000 and take classes to learn how to avoid doing the same thing to others.

A Human Rights Tribunal complaint alleged the man made unwanted sexual advances and physical contact over four months while the woman was working in his South Island cafe.

...Although the man had no sexual intention toward the woman, the case "demonstrates the dangers of running a business without any understanding of the Human Rights Act relating to sexual harassment".

It said the baker did not see how his behaviour was unwelcome and unacceptable to the woman and unlawful under the sexual harassment provisions of the act.

He had shown little awareness that some behaviour "can be unwelcome to others, no matter how innocent they may be thought by the perpetrator to be"...

Click through for the whole article, including quite a bit on the impact that the sexual harassment had on the woman involved.

What was interesting to me about this case was how unaware the baker seems to have been of the impact of his actions. Although he apparently had "no sexual intention towards the woman" he made sexual advances towards her and touched her inappropriately for several months. I don't get that mentality - a kind of "I don't want you but I'm going to act as if I do." Sounds like it was more of a power trip than a clumsy attempt at seduction.

not yours to tell

how would it feel to have someone write all about your life, especially if you didn't want them to? and talk to your friends, family members, work colleagues and other people you have interacted with, some of whom will be loyal to you and refuse to get involved, others who won't. for the ones who talk, knowing you don't want them to, it must be an awful feeling of betrayal.

we live in an age and a society where price of being a celebrity means that every little bit of your life and your appearance get picked to pieces. there is very, very little that is allowed to be private. the more successful you are, the more there are people out there anxious to dig a little dirt. because it will sell, and some people love to see other successful people brought down.

as you may guess, i'm not a fan of celebrity culture. i don't buy gossip mags, i refuse to watch shows like entertainment tonight, i tend to avoid conversations that focus on which celebrity split up with who, or did what silly thing. it's not my business, it's generally not important (unless there's some actual level of criminality involved, in which case there may be a genuine public interest), and i basically don't want to know.

given all of that, i really am not a fan of unauthorised biographies. at least not for entertainment celebrities. it's not so bad if it's a historical figure or political leader, particularly one who has caused significant harm. in that case, there is some importance in learning about the person's motivations, the influences on their lives, their childhood experiences. and an unflattering portrait is not likely to cause harm to such a person, when they aren't well thought of anyway.

and i could accept unauthorised biographies of political leaders where they bring to light important information that is of a whistleblowing nature - making us aware of unacceptable connections or behaviour.

but even then, i think even the worst people have some right to privacy, some areas which they should not have to share with the rest of the world. and where the revelations are for entertainment purposes only, ie they have no public interest value, then i think they shouldn't be made public without the express consent of the person involved.

the problem of course is how to police such a thing. i don't think it would be useful to have any laws to regulate such a thing. and with the viral nature of electronic communications and the internet, it's almost impossible to keep things from becoming public. there's the whole free speech argument, and i'd agree that any kind of suppression in this area has the potential for significant harm.

of course i want none of that. for me, it's a matter of self-policing. i'm not going to spend my money on unauthorised biographies, i'm not going to be involved in activities that pry unfairly into another person's life. because i would hate for such a thing to happen to me. i would hate for my personal stories to be broadcast to all the world, and especially by someone who was unsympathetic to me.

so why would i want to participate in something that, even in the smallest way, does that very thing to someone else?

Clelia Duel Mosher

The Stanford University magazine has a really fascinating article about Dr Clelia Duel Mosher, a woman who taught in the Hygiene Department of that university in the early 20th century. Dr Mosher undertook extensive research regarding the attitude of women to sex and relationships that predated work by Kinsey, as well as groundbreaking work in the area of female biology. The article also talks about the rediscovery in the 1970s of surveys Dr Mosher conducted of women regarding sex and relationships.

The survey's genesis—like its rediscovery—was a fortuitous accident. Mosher started it in 1892 as a 28-year-old biology undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin; she had been asked to address a local Mother's Club on "the marital relation" and as a single, childless woman seems to have used data collection to fill gaps in her knowledge. Afterward, Mosher continued conducting surveys until 1920, using variations on the same form and amassing 45 profiles in all. Yet Mosher never published or drew more than cursory observations from her data. She died in 1940, and the survey was entirely forgotten when Degler unearthed it.

It is the earliest known study of its type, long preceding, for example, the 1947 and 1953 Kinsey Reports, whose oldest female respondents were born in the 1890s. The Mosher Survey recorded not only women's sexual habits and appetites, but also their thinking about spousal relationships, children and contraception. Perhaps, it hinted, Victorian women weren't so Victorian after all.

Indeed, many of the surveyed women were decidedly unshrinking. One, born in 1844, called sex "a normal desire" and observed that "a rational use of it tends to keep people healthier." Offered another, born in 1862, "The highest devotion is based upon it, a very beautiful thing, and I am glad nature gave it to us."

Of those surveyed, 34 had attended a university or teachers' college. Nine were Stanford alumnae, six from Cornell; other alma maters included Wellesley, Vassar and the University of California. Thirty respondents had worked before marriage, mostly as teachers.
...

Slightly more than half of these educated women claimed to have known nothing of sex prior to marriage; the better informed said they'd gotten their information from books, talks with older women and natural observations like "watching farm animals." Yet no matter how sheltered they'd initially been, these women had—and enjoyed—sex. Of the 45 women, 35 said they desired sex; 34 said they had experienced orgasms; 24 felt that pleasure for both sexes was a reason for intercourse; and about three-quarters of them engaged in it at least once a week.

Unlike Mosher's other work, the survey is more qualitative than quantitative, featuring open-ended questions probing feelings and experiences. "She's actually asking these questions not about physiology or mechanics—she's really asking about sexual subjectivity and the meaning of sex to women," Freedman says. Their responses were often mixed. Some enjoyed sex but worried that they shouldn't. One slept apart from her husband "to avoid temptation of too frequent intercourse." Some didn't enjoy sex but faulted their partner. Mosher writes: [She] "Thinks men have not been properly trained."

Their responses reflected the cultural shifts of the late 19th century, as marriage became viewed as a romantic union, not just an economic one, and as people began to dissociate sex from procreation, says Freedman. One woman, born in 1867, wrote that before marriage she believed sex to be only for reproduction, but later changed her mind: "In my experience the habitual bodily expression of love has a deep psychological effect in making possible complete mental sympathy & perfecting the spiritual union that must be the lasting 'marriage' after the passion of love has passed away with the years." Wrote another, born in 1863, "It seems to me to be a natural and physical sign of a spiritual union, a renewal of the marriage vows."

Anxieties about unwanted pregnancies are also clear. This was a hot topic during the 19th century, when the marital fertility rate fell by half despite the criminalization of abortion and contraception, Freedman says. At least 30 respondents reported attempting birth control anyway. Many mentioned using douching, withdrawal or the rhythm method; a few had tried a "womb veil" or male condoms.

Mosher herself was born in 1863 and had an interesting life. In terms of her work:

Thanks to a steady supply of young female research subjects, Mosher's scholarly aim soon became clear: to prove that women were not inferior to men, and that frailties chalked up to sex were really the effects of binding garments, insufficient exercise and mental conditioning. Her master's thesis, for example, showed that women breathe from the diaphragm, as men do, rather than from the chest, as was believed at the time. She concluded that this so-called biological difference was really due to tight corsetry.

She also began tracking students' menstrual periods, hoping to upend "functional periodicity," the idea that menstruation debilitated women. It was a canny subject choice for an ambitious female investigator. "That was not research that men could do easily, so she definitely claimed an area that was not accessible to men for her own research," says Elizabeth Griego, who wrote her 1983 dissertation on Mosher for an education doctorate at UC-Berkeley and spent most of the early 1980s in the Stanford archives sifting through Mosher's papers. (Griego is now vice president for student life at the University of the Pacific.)

But it wasn't until after 1896, when Mosher had moved on to Johns Hopkins to obtain her MD, that she analyzed her data. Again, she blamed nurture over nature: Painful menstruation, she concluded, was in most cases caused by inactivity, poor muscular development and the very idea of "inevitable illness." Sending girls to bed to dwell upon their discomfort, Mosher wrote, "produce[s] a morbid attitude and favor[s] the development and exaggeration of whatever symptoms there may be." Mosher was not subtle about her motivation for seeking to discredit functional periodicity. "Equal pay for women means equal work; unnecessary menstrual absences mean less than full work," she wrote. Convinced that women should stay active throughout their periods, Mosher even invented abdominal exercises—dubbed "moshers"—to counteract menstrual pain.

‘The skirt, as modified by the vagaries of fashion, has a direct bearing on the health, development and efficiency of the woman. In 1893-96 I made a series of observations on the clothing of ninety-eight young women. The average width of skirt was then 13.5 feet. The weight of the skirt alone was often as much as the entire weight of the clothing worn by the modern girl.’
–Clelia Mosher, Strength of Women (c. 1920)

By the time Mosher received her MD in 1900, there were approximately 7,000 female doctors and surgeons in the United States (almost 6 percent of the total), but they still faced discrimination. Mosher turned down a job as an assistant to a gynecological surgeon when told that men would refuse to work under her. She returned to Palo Alto and opened a private practice, but struggled to get patient referrals from male colleagues or win grants to fund her menstruation studies. In 1910, Stanford offered her an assistant professorship in personal hygiene as the medical adviser for women, and Mosher eagerly returned to academic life. "I think she started out thinking she would like to be a doctor and perhaps a surgeon, but she found the doors closed to her very quickly," muses Griego.

Instead, Griego says, Mosher found what mattered to her: a living wage, intellectual freedom and access to research subjects. Mosher restarted her menstruation research and completed a study showing that the average height of Stanford's entering female students had increased 1.5 inches in 20 years, a change she attributed to better exercise and comfortable clothing. Mosher became a full professor in 1928, one year before she retired.

The full article is an interesting read and can be found here.

Shaken because stirred

Several people have drawn my attention to this stunner in various media today, here's a snippet from Stuff:

A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes.

..."Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Click through for whole article.

So much wrong with this where do I start? How about you help me out in comments...

Suffrage Memorial update

Readers may recall that one of Auckland City Council's committees was meeting yesterday to consider the fate of the Suffrage Memorial in Khartoum Place.

Article in the Herald this morning:

The National Council of Women has failed in its bid to get an assurance that a memorial commemorating 100 years since women could vote will stay in the CBD's Khartoum Place.

Councillors on the Auckland City Council's arts, culture and recreation Committee voted 6 to 2 against committing to keep the tiled mural, celebrating the success of New Zealand's early suffragettes, in its location off Lorne St.

Click through for the whole thing. And for an excellent backgrounder on the issue check out Councillor Cathy Casey's guest post on the matter from last week.

time to cancel my subscription, again.

i pretty much hate the waikato times just at the moment. what has let to this depth of feeling is monday's issue, which i only managed to look at this afternoon. it has back to front coverage of the v8s, which is annoying in and of itself when there is so much happening in the world right now. but it is the nature of the v8 coverage that is particularly puke inducing.

two thirds of the front page is covered by an article, which features 2 photographs. there is a small one of the crowd at the pit area, and a much larger one of the winner & some other dude. this is the main business of the v8s, the serious stuff as it were. there were 8 people quoted in the article, one of whom was a female police officer quoted right at the end on good crowd behaviour. the rest were blokes, a couple of whom were joking about the fact that "they had left their wives at home for the second year in a row and were having a 'fantastic time'". habloodyha.

page 3 then has big picture of miss v8 and a couple of contestants behind her, accompanied by a small piece about how she's a mum, and basically all about being sexy. note that the three women are white, young and slim. there are 3 other articles around this piece: one about annoyed frankton business owners where we have two female business owners quoted; another about the crowds at the city pubs, where the only women involved in the story are this quote from a bar owner "usually it's very male-oriented but this year we had a good mix"; and the third one about the annoyance caused by someone with a laser light, where we get the same female police officer quoted in the last paragraph.

page 4 is half advertisement. the other half has a big photo of a male driver who one the second race with article about him. next to that a similar sized photo of a "grid girl" in her sexy attire (white, young & slim of course), and a small piece about grid girls.

page 5 is again half ad. we also have an op-ed by a male writer about what a let-down the kiwi drivers were. below that is an article about melanoma awareness stand at the v8, and yippee, we actually get to see a woman in the driver's seat not being supersexy (though still white, young and slim, of course) in the photo accompanying the story. she has no mention in the story though. and next to that is a story about a couple who won $20,000 at the v8s. the accompanying photograph has the couple surrounded by 6 "jim beam girls" in their super sexy clothing, and you'll never guess. they're all white, young and slim.

but this is not all. wait, there's more. on the business page (yup, the business page) we have a big article about the success of a talent agency. and can you guess what the two photos accompanying the article show? i won't leave you in suspense. at the top is a large one of 4 "hood street hotties", all looking super sexy, and sitting or leaning on a red, red holden. the second is a smaller shot of two "in demand" women, also with the sexy poses. and are they all white, young and slim? you betcha!

what the F**K??? i mean, really, this is what v8s are about? a couple of whiny businesswomen (because that's how the article makes them sound) who don't even get their photo in the paper, and the rest of the coverage of women is as eye-candy, fitting narrow stereotypes of beauty. their achievements are pretty much limited to their physical appearance - except that miss v8 was apparently also judged on her personality (along with her "stage presence", her walk, and how she "looked in the little blue dress").

to be fair, page 7 has an almost full page piece about the outgoing chief executive of gracelands trust, with accompanying photograph of her and a maori woman - two average yet lovely women, though not fitting into any definition of hot. and the back page of the first section has a big article on geena davis urging strong roles for women in film (ironic, much?).

but really, i'm sick of the v8 coverage around women and the very limited public role they are allowed to have.

"enlightened sexism"

and yet another cracker interview by kathryn ryan (nine to noon, 9.40am). this time she's talking to susan j douglas of the university of michigan about the latter's new book entitled "enlightened sexism". it's a good discussion of the portrayal of women on television and the media.

because i'm at work and busy, i'll just copy the blurb from the radio nz page:

Susan J Douglas, professor of Communications at the University of Michigan, columnist and author. She argues that the media is increasingly resurrecting sexist stereotypes of girls and women because of an assumption that feminism's work has been done. She calls this "enlightened sexism" - which she says is a new subtle form of bias, that brings back sexist and shallow images of women in the media, all with a wink and a laugh.

Susan J Douglas' latest book points out that women in general are still paid much less than men, and still battle that glass ceiling which still sees men in most of the top jobs: Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work is Done (2010)

we really need our holidays...

this year we're losing two public holidays, because ANZAC day & waitangi day fall on a weekend. next year we have the same. it's not like we have a whole heap of public holidays here, that we can afford to give two away every seven years.

in australia, they always get the long weekend off for anzac day. i can't see why we shouldn't as well. whether it's a day where you commemorate those who fought, or a day when you think about the futility of war and the sad loss of life, or even a day when you go shopping or laze around at the beach, it should be a specific work holiday.

so how come everyone just seems to silently accept the current situation? i think it's time to start a movement to ensure our public holidays are exactly that. with, of course, thoughts going out to those self-employed and employees who have to work on public holidays.

Still life with glaring, and a cupcake.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Many thanks to Azlemed for sending me this.

when art and culture collide

so there's this father complaining about the statues at hamilton's te parapara garden (aka the maori garden, at hamilton gardens, cobham drive). his complaint is about the penises being too large, and him feeling uncomfortable about his children being confronted with these carvings. he somehow doesn't mind european art because the penises are smaller. hmm. i think it's best to leave this mine of humour untouched (though i'm sorely tempted).

then there's the gratuitous use of muslim families at the end of the piece, none of whom appear to be complaining themselves, but our erstwhile father seems to feel concern on their behalf. (um, we'd rather speak for ourselves when and where we need to, kthxbai). for those who are unfamiliar with this usage, let me explain it to you. our complainant is saying "see, i'm so culturally sensitive that i care about muslims. this means i can't possibly be accused of being culturally insensitive in complaining about these particularly carvings.

there is much mirth about this on facebook and the predictable penis jokes (mostly by blokes BTW, to ward off our trolls). but it led me off on a tangent, thinking about a teenage girl who stopped studying art in the 3rd form purely because of such graphic depictions. she wasn't ok with the european art being graphic either. in fact i know of more than one young person in this category.

of course we can tell such young people to suck it up (sorry, unfortunate turn of phrase there, but i just couldn't resist) and get with the local culture, appreciate the beauty of the human form etc etc. but for those who really don't feel comfortable and aren't interested in becoming comfortable with this kind of thing, their punishment is to not have access to art at school. this seems to me to be a rather harsh punishment, particularly if you love art and have talent.

i'm wondering if there is scope to have something suitable for such young people, because i hate to think of the talent being lost. there are, of course, a whole lot of cultural issues mixed in with this, and considerable scope for offence to be caused by those who take offence at other people's artistic expression. i understand that. but i also think that people should have the choice to study art in a different way, if that's what they feel most comfortable with.

or maybe this one just needs to be filed in the too hard basket.

The "But" that judgeyness wrote?

From the Herald website yesterday:

A barrister who suffered severe head injuries after she was attacked by her ex-husband has spoken out about the devastating effects of domestic violence.

The 39-year-old lawyer was bashed five times around the head with a large rock in front of her terrified 5-year-old son and suffered "horrendous" facial injuries including a broken nose, bruising and cuts to her head and face.

Her former husband, Kevin Hume, was jailed for 16 months at the North Shore District Court on Thursday for injuring with intent to injure and breaching a protection order.

The court was told Hume sent text messages saying "I will never hurt you" and "this is the final text" just a few hours before he crept into her home north of Auckland in the early hours of January 8.

When she woke up at about 2.45am, Hume chased her into her bedroom, pinning her down before beating her over the head with a large river stone.

Hume only stopped the attack when their young son, who was sleeping in the same bed, was woken by his mother's screams and switched on the bedroom light.

...The victim hopes to start a new life with her three children aged 19, 8 and 5, and did not want to be named.

But she wrote a harrowing account of the assault and posted it on the internet, and updated her 1500 Twitter followers on the case. [my emphasis]

Hang on a second, what's that "But" doing in there??

There is a world of difference between putting something up on the internet in a manner that you control, and disclosing your name to the biggest newspaper in New Zealand. For a start, searches for your name on Google are likely to rank the Herald's article top, mentioning you as a victim of a horrific beating. Who wants that to be what a prospective employer finds when they are looking to short-list you for an interview?

Good on this woman for sharing her story. She goes on to say, later in the article:

"I never thought I would be one of those women that this happened to," the lawyer said after the hearing. "I kept saying to my friends, 'I'm not a battered woman, that's not me'. Even though I know it wasn't my fault, I started blaming myself."

She said sharing the experience with others helped her to get through it: "It's given other people the opportunity to come to me with their stories."

I hope that stupid, senseless "But" doesn't put her off.

who cares who had it harder?

i saw an article in the herald last week about some kind controversy happening in australia, after someone wrote a piece saying working women had it really easy these days as compared to their predecessors. i won't link to the herald piece, because it didn't say much of value, and not interested in finding the original piece, cos it sounded rather nasty.

the woman writer basically was saying that because of labour saving devices, work in the home is so much easier than in older times. the whole tone of the piece seems to have an undertone (or perhaps an overtone) of women today whining and complaining too much when they have things so good.

then there's the predictable response from some working women about how different things are now, stresses being much higher, women staying at home more in the distant past. there are more arguments that can be put forth on either side - that working women in previous time certainly had it rough because they worked long hours, often in jobs that were little more than drudgery, then didn't have the advantages of labour saving devices at home. but then they would likely have extended family close by, and greater support because of that.

but regardless of all that, the whole debate, framed as it is, does an excellent job of absenting men from the whole discussion. let's not talk about having men be more supportive in the home by doing more of the unpaid work, and taking more responsibility for the work involved in raising children. let's not talk about the need for family friendly workplaces, so that both parents can have more time at home. let's not talk about how to make our current society better. nope, let's just create a story by putting up a controversial piece and get some predictable response, thus showing women bitching at each other about the past. that way nothing ever has to change.
bleh.

even ads about women's products centre around men

is it just me, or have all the ads for women's hygiene products lately been more about men than about women? the two that immediately come to mind are one where a woman is getting into some really tight & uncomfortable lookin jeans, tops & boots but then wants a pad that's comfortable. the ad seems to be told from the point of view of her boyfriend who is watching and waiting (and waiting). the other one is the juvenile guy plastering pads over himself and playing star wars (or something) in front of the mirror.

the first one annoys me because its all about teh women being all irrational and crazy, again! and taking hours to get ready, again! the second one is kinda funny. but the point is that here is one product is solely and exclusively designed for women. the marketing is surely targetted at women, so why can't they be bothered doing an ad from the point of view of women, or telling a women's story?? is it really that hard? can't we have like just one product where the ads are all women-friendly and about women? apparently not.

incidentally, there's a nice discussion on the first part of radio nz's "the panel" on friday (afternoons, 16.07), where simon pound talks about an episode of the ad show looking at the lack of women in the creative divisions of advertising agencies. he talks about the fact that there are a lot of female students, and a lot of women in other sections of the same agencies.

women in leadership, not.

while julie has a bit of much deserved down time, i thought i'd do a quick post on women's representation on boards. nowhere near as well as she'll be doing it, no doubt. but i found a couple of press releases on the scoop website today that seemed to be topical.

the first is from the nz federation of business and professional women, which commends hon paula bennett for gender diversity on the welfare working group, but also says:

BPWNZ deplores the fact that Mr Joyce has only appointed 20 women out of 78 to the Polytechnics councils – a mere quarter.

“The Minister for Tertiary Education, Steven Joyce surely deserves the brickbats award,” says Angela McLeod, President of [BPWNZ]. This is especially so given that nearly 50% of the graduates from polytechnics are women and that it’s proven world-wide that gender diversity on boards increases the bottom line.

this is, of course, in addition to the fact that the size of the councils have been cut significantly back in december, reducing the ability of local communities to have an input into decisions that will have a significant impact on them. these changes reduced diversity on the councils further, by refusing to guarantee maori representation.

meanwhile, the minister of women's affairs had a press release out yesterday saying, well, i'm not sure exactly what:

The dismal record of having just 8.6 percent women directors in our top 100 listed companies’ boardrooms needs to be changed, Women’s Affairs Minister Pansy Wong told the Institute of Directors’ AGM in Wellington today.

International research continues to show that women directors add competitive advantage to companies and boost performance. For example, a recent study conducted by Leeds University in the UK looked at 17,000 companies and found that those with at least one woman director were 20 percent less likely to go bankrupt.

The Harvard Business Review looked into legislation in Norway - which requires companies to have a 40 percent quota of women directors - finding companies had no negative feedback.
France also recently introduced a quota system for women on boards, while Australia’s listed companies are required to disclose the number of women they have on their boards....

[Mrs Wong says] “All we need for companies to reap the benefits is for them to give women directors a fair go. I am determined to be the catalyst of change by working with Business New Zealand and the Institute of Directors”.

so what does that last paragraph tell us exactly? what is the minister going to do to be this catalyst of change? shouldn't we get to hear about it, so we can be sure that the measures taken (if any) are likely to be effective?

given the research and overseas policies quoted in the press release, could we assume that she's considering quotas like norway and france, or at least greater disclosure like australia? although, as regards the latter option, all annual reports i've seen have a photograph of the board with members names listed below, so i think we're pretty much have that kind of disclosure already and it hasn't helped.

i do have to say that it was great that the minister was addressing the institute of directors, but it would have been nice if her press release included some specific policy initiatives. the full speech is here, but i can't say that i'm much wiser for having read it. it talks about the "women on boards initiative", but doesn't give much detail of what is being done. the only thing of substance i could find was reference to the ministry's nomination service, but that has been running for years and is nothing new.

so how about it minister? are you ready to take a really bold initiative like france and norway? and if not, why bother mentioning it at all?

Today is not a good day

Oh I had such plans for today. There would be some nice things in the morning with Wriggly and my Mum, and some blogging this afternoon while the toddler slept, maybe some baking, certainly a decent dinner prepared. I thought I was so over it all, moving on and feeling good again.

But I'm not over it and I'm not feeling good and I'm not managing to do much to plan today. It's been two years since my Dad died, and although it's not constantly at the forefront of my mind, it's undeniably making me sad, grumpy and not that great to be around. I got frustrated at some work colleagues (yes I have the day off, I usually do schedule difficult Dad-related anniversaries as days off if I can, but apparently something was urgent), was uninspired company for my mother, yelled at my son when he was naughty, was largely unexcited by one of the really very nice things I did this morning, and am generally feeling worn down by everything that I hear on the radio or see on the interwebz.

So I am going to bed. Maybe when I wake up I can pretend it's not today anymore. Sorry about the lack of quality blogging, particularly the post(s) I've been hoping to write on women's representation on boards and the like. I can't make any promises for the weekend, as this funk may last several days, but one day I will get around to it I'm sure.

And it just goes to show, even when you think you're through, even when you think you're over it, sometimes you just aren't.

Celebrating People's History exhibition in Chch

Justseeds and Beyond Resistance is proud to present 'Celebrate People's History', an exhibition of over 50 international posters documenting radical moments in history.

The poster above is called 'Jane' and is by Meredith Stern. 'Jane' was the codeword for a Chicago-based underground abortion service. Hundreds of women help thousands of others get clean, safe abortions at a time when abortion was completely illegal in the US.

Celebrate People's History - exhibition - May 17 - 29, 2010

Opening Night - Monday May 17th at 5.30pm

Eastside Gallery at the Linwood Community Arts Centre
Corner Worcester Street and Stanmore Road
Christchurch

Contact: otautahianarchists@gmail.com

Thanks to Giarne for emailing this to me :-)

Wellywood Woman scores a first

Marian Evans has recently become the first person to be awarded a PhD in Creative Writing from Victoria University, where she studied at the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML). Her thesis: “Development: Opening space for New Zealand women’s participation in scriptwriting for feature films?”

Marian found that New Zealand women writers‘ and directors’ participation in feature filmmaking is very low. She is now using her thesis screenplay – Development – to test an alternative feature film production pathway. She hopes that this project, when completed, will provide a useful model for other women storytellers.

In her superbly written blog Wellywood Woman, Marian lauds her supervisor Ken Duncum and the IIML for providing a programme and context in which, she says, “women writers flourish”.  Marian will be one of the guests in the annual Writers on Mondays series at the IIML (starts on 12 July, full details to be announced next month).

Every sperm is stolen

There's been a lot of discussion recently, as there seems to be whenever we have a Tory government, about those who are receiving the domestic purposes benefit (DPB), which exists to give sole parents who need state assistance a very modest income to provide for themselves and their children.

Note that the DPB is for those parenting on their own, not just mothers. Yet so much of the dialogue is focused on women, and on some very vile hating on women.

For example, when TVNZ 7's Simon Pound tweeted "You know what I'd like to see? Everytime the DPB is attacked how about attacking the missing deadbeat dads as the problem, not the mums" he inadvertently provoked a Facebook commenter (not Pound) to write on his wall some really misogynistic crap about women, and how we are "sperm stealers."

This Men's Rights Activist has such insight into the female of the species that he reckons not only do we steal sperm, we are also operating under a biological imperative to lie to attractive men about the success rates of contraception. He also believes that we live in a PC Feminist State (that'll explain that gender pay gap then), ladies recycle sperm harvested from blow-jobs to impregnate ourselves (after all, that is the most effective way to get preggers), and "promiscuous behaviour" leads not only to sexually transmitted infections, but also rapes and domestic violence (and Climate Change?).

Our MRA star wants the law to somehow enforce women informing men of their fertility status prior to intercourse so that males can make informed choices about whether to spend their sperm or not. Shame we don't get red bums like baboons do I guess.

The MRA doesn't get away with this crap unchallenged, thankfully. But the reality is that sadly there are people out there who have such a warped view of women, and of those who are on the DPB in particular. This guy would be right at home in many Kiwiblog comment threads for instance.

People, men and women, end up on the DPB for a wide variety of reasons. While no doubt many are there as the result of an unplanned pregnancy with no long-term partner around, others were probably in relationships when they had their child(ren) but aren't now. It actually doesn't matter why someone needs the DPB, what matters is that they get enough to support themselves and their children in their time of need.

Yet again I find myself asking, why oh why do we moralise about this one benefit and no others? Could it be because this is a benefit primarily accessed by women, and worse than that, women who have had S.E.X and aren't married!!11!!

Finally, I would be prepared to bet money that there is not a single mother on the DPB right now who stole sperm honestly donated by a man solely for the purposes of oral sex and willfully misused it to get herself up the duff. It scares me that there is someone out there, and sadly probably more than one person, who believes this kind of rubbish is real.

Thanks to the eagle-eyed reader who emailed me this tip.

Like

This one's for Nikki
From here.

The Single Mother's Manifesto

Subtitle: I *heart* JK Rowling

In which the author of Harry Potter takes Mr David Cameron, Conservative Leader in the UK, to task for his policies on single parents; policies which are quite similar to the approach John Key and Paula Bennett are advocating in New Zealand.

Here's a snippet:

I had become a single mother when my first marriage split up in 1993. In one devastating stroke, I became a hate figure to a certain section of the press, and a bogeyman to the Tory Government. Peter Lilley, then Secretary of State at the DSS, had recently entertained the Conservative Party conference with a spoof Gilbert and Sullivan number, in which he decried “young ladies who get pregnant just to jump the housing list”. The Secretary of State for Wales, John Redwood, castigated single-parent families from St Mellons, Cardiff, as “one of the biggest social problems of our day”. (John Redwood has since divorced the mother of his children.) Women like me (for it is a curious fact that lone male parents are generally portrayed as heroes, whereas women left holding the baby are vilified) were, according to popular myth, a prime cause of social breakdown, and in it for all we could get: free money, state-funded accommodation, an easy life.

An easy life. Between 1993 and 1997 I did the job of two parents, qualified and then worked as a secondary school teacher, wrote one and a half novels and did the planning for a further five. For a while, I was clinically depressed. To be told, over and over again, that I was feckless, lazy — even immoral — did not help.

Click through to read the whole thing.

Wasn't it John Key who claimed some women on the DPB were "breeding for a business"? And someone pointed out to me recently that had Ruth Richardson had her way with benefits in the early 1990s, Paula Bennett would had to give her child up for adoption*? Compassion FAIL from the Tories, both here and abroad.

Bonnet tipped to Sophia Blair, via Facebook.


* The quote from Richardson, which was in the Dominion Sunday Times on March 20th 1988, reads: "If the 16 year old engages in sexual adventure and there’s an unintended pregnancy, she has to make choices. If she chooses to have an keep the child that must be a family decision. A 16 year old is a dependent child, not an independent adult. If her family doesn’t want her and if she is not able to get her partner (who is liable to be the same age) to support her economically, she must look at other choices, which is adoption. That is not a forced choice, it’s the choice young women made before the domestic purposes benefit was available as of a right."

charity performance for rape prevention education

i just got this by email via the aotearoa ethnic network. the press release with further details is copied below.

Popular, controversial ‘Vagina Monologues’ is back

It's been five years, but Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues returns to Auckland beckoning listeners to reconnect with the “unnamed, untamed and unknown” down there.

Playwright and activist Ensler's off-Broadway hit has been so successful it's spawned an internationally touring show and a nonprofit organization that supports work to stop violence against women and girls.And for the first time, the controversial play returns to Auckland as part of VDAY 2010 to raise funds and awareness for Rape Prevention Education.

Anya Varezhkina and Colleen Olson on behalf of Auckland University Students Association are staging the show.

This is an exceptional event because The Auckland University Students Association has never dared to stage The Vagina Monologues before. Some of the stats that VDAY aims to uncover for New Zealanders is that approximately one in four Kiwi females and one males in eight Kiwi males will be affected by sexual violence or abuse, most before the age of 16 and most rapists/abusers are known to the victim.

Abusers are more likely to be family, current partners, ex-partners, friends, boyfriends, acquaintances, people known through work and caregivers than strangers.

The show’s sketch topics range from mundane yet funny (menstruation, gynecological exams, thong underwear and moaning styles) to truly poignant (rape, genital mutilation and their distressing statistics). Each topic is tacked with equal passion, in a voice as changeable as the show's tone.

As sharp as Sex and the City, as unmissable as Friends and as funny as Smack the Pony, this riotous evening is the ultimate night out --- for guys and girls alike.

All profits from the production will go to charity, 90% to Rape Prevention Education and the remaining 10% to Power to the Women and Girls of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hurry, the show typically ‘sells out’ fast and there are only three performances to book! Show dates are 22nd, 23rd and 24th of April at 7:30 pm the Maidment Theatre, University of Auckland.

Tickets are available from the Maidment Theatre, 8 Alfred Street, Auckland Private Bag 92019, Auckland Mail Centre, Auckland 1142Call 09 308 2383 or http://www.maidment.auckland.ac.nz/.

About the producers
Anya Varezhkina was the director and producer of the very popular production of The Vagina Monologues in Hamilton last year. The production sold out all 3 nights and gained a lot of media publicity. She has also produced shows for the Fuel Festival and Duffy Books. Colleen Olson is a highly qualified American producer and director and this is her first major theatre work in New Zealand.

The Vatican sux - the Facebook status update edition

Julie so if the Vatican is now saying that homosexuality and paedophilia are linked (which they aren't), doesn't that just mean they are implying that all their priests who have abused children are gay, in which case isn't this child abuse stuff STILL their problem?
6 hours ago

Giovanni You would think so.
6 hours ago

P What 'problem'...?
6 hours ago

A Just when I think the church has descended to a new low, it pulls something like this out of its big white and gold pointy hat. I don't know what's more vile - the attempt to encourage hatred against gays in the hope of deflecting criticism, or the fact that the Pope doesn't have the balls to say this stuff himself and gets his lackeys to do it for him.
6 hours ago

Julie Next they'll be blaming the Jews, honestly this is shameful.

6 hours ago

Giovanni "Next they'll be blaming the Jews"
Too late! http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7090408.ece
6 hours ago

A Been there, done that. I can't remember which senior clergyman it was, but a few weeks ago, he said that the Catholic Church was getting disproportionate blame, when a bunch of other denominations and religions have been abusing kids too - the Jews were mentioned in this context. Over Easter, a Cardinal then had the audacity to claim that the '... See morepersecution' of the Church is comparable to the experiences of the Jews during the Holocaust. PR fail, guys. We've now had gays, Jews and liberals blamed. I wonder if the bookies are taking bets on the next group of 'undesirables' to be held responsible? If I was a betting woman, I'd say feminists - but time will tell.
6 hours ago

Julie Now I really want to know what is the Italian for hedgehog.
5 hours ago

Giovanni Riccio.
5 hours ago

Julie Like Richie-o or like Rikkio?
5 hours ago

Giovanni The former. The latter actually sounds like ricchiò which is a slur against homosexuals so better stick with the right pronunciation!
5 hours ago

Julie Maybe they meant to say ricchio? Would seem somewhat fitting.
5 hours ago

Giovanni I get called names when I go there. Nonetheless, the way he speaks, the Prada shoes, the personal secretary who looks just like Cary Grant... I think my mother is right about His Holiness.
5 hours ago

Giovanni Not That There's Anything Wrong With That.
5 hours ago

P I bet he liked Joan Crawford too in her sparkly gold dresses and flash hats...oh...
5 hours ago

L Maybe it's a conspiracy by Jewish Homosexuals to bring down the Catholic church? Or something.....
about an hour ago

Julie I guess they won't be that keen to admit that Elton John was right about sorry being the hardest word.
5 minutes ago

Giovanni Do you want me to start my rant about how the Church pardoned Galileo - pardoned him! - in the 1980s
about a minute ago

Julie So Benny probably doesn't listen to Bohemian Rhapsody much either then?
A few seconds ago

seeing what we want to see

i was going to put a link to the interview about teenage girls not being violent but julie beat me to it - great minds and all that!

it was particularly relevant to me because i got the waikato times with the front page headline screaming "girls now as violent as boys". the comments were actually made by someone from the hamilton abuse intervention project, and apparently supported by dr neville robertson:

Waikato University community psychologist Dr Neville Robertson said the inhibitors that once would have prevented women becoming violent were no longer there. "That old idea that women must always be subservient and unassertive of course has decayed," he said. "In many ways that is a positive thing, but there is also flip side to that."

now i have some respect for dr robertson, given his work on domestic violence. i remember a public lecture he gave a couple of years ago, stressing the gendered nature of domestic violence and the need to rethink the way we raise our boys. so it was quite disheartening to hear these comments from people working in the field.

which is why the interview with the american academic dr meda chesney-lind (i can't believe radio nz don't have her name on the website) was such a breath of fresh air. i'd been feeling that the times article was all wrong but not able to say why, but the good doctor said it for me. she talked alot about societal expectations about women framing how we saw things. quite pertinent were her comments that where girls were involved in violence, often boys were also around or involved in some way in the same incident. also the point that male violence and agression is accepted as normal behaviour.

that point was brought home to me in another context entirely. i was having a discussion with a person brought up in australia (not of european heritage, which i only bring up because i find it odd that a person from a minority community could have such views even after her own experiences of marginalisation) about the situation of aborigines as compared to maoris. actually she brought it up, and said how strange it was to see the way maori were treated, how they were able to advocate for their rights, the fact that they had their own tv station and that maori was taught in schools etc etc. none of this had ever happened in australia, and she couldn't imagine that it would.

that was all fine, but she then went on to make some disparaging comments about aborigines, about how even when they were successful, they were still poorly behaved. but when she gave the example of success as being top sportspeople, particularly around football (meaning rugby, league etc) i really lost it*. i couldn't believe that she could identify aborigine sports people as being badly behaved, but had no comment to make about all the sexual assault and abuse that had been committed by football players of other ethnicities. she didn't even think about that until i said to her "really? they behave worse than your ABC reporter did towards the young woman from christchurch? you really think they are any worse than the rugby culture that has seen numerous complaints from women and a acknowledgment from the leadership that there needs to be change?"

and that's what it comes down to. we have expectations, and we notice examples that match our expectations and somehow manage to ignore the rest. i wonder how we cure that particular human failing, because it seems to be quite universal and also quite destructive.


*probably because, when we covered that particular incident on this blog last year, we were subject to the nastiest comments ever seen on this blog, including threats of sexual violence.

The Odds & Ends Drawer

• Amanda Fitzwater pledges to not use disableist, racist, sexist, homophobic, elitist or image-shaming language in her writing.
• Jan Logie points out that cutting access to the DPB makes women more vulnerable to domestic violence.
• Alice Boyes asks if anyone else is feeling lethargic since the end of daylight savings (me! me!) and has some answers.
• Jane Young reports on Hillary Clinton's efforts to put abortion on the agenda at G8 discussions about maternal health.
• meganwegan has become less of a Twitter bitch.
• Craig Young doesn't mourn anti-abortionist (and homophobic anti-Semite) Father Paul Marx. Hat tipped to the ALRANZ newsletter.
• anjum is over the V8s.
• Nikki found some cute vandalism.
• Sue Kedgeley chronicles National's attempts to stop investigations into the state of Aged Care.
• Brenda asks if hiring practices around open source developer positions are inherently (albeit possibly inadvertently) sexist.
• And Luddite Journo is continuing her great coverage of the Dirty Sesh issue.
  

As ever, please feel free to promote your posts or someone else's in the comments, and share gems with the world. Or at least the portion of the world that reads this blog.

Did Wong mislead Parliament?

On 18th February Catherine Delahunty asked the Minister of Women's Affairs some questions about the gender breakdown of appointments to a number of important committees established by National, specifically:

• The National Infrastructure Advisory Board (8 men, no women)
• The Tax Working Group (13 men, no women)
• Don Brash's 2025 Taskforce (5 men, 1 woman)
• The Independent Advisory Group on National Standards (4 men, 1 woman)

I blogged about the exhange around the pay gap at the time, and also about the Minister's response on the issue of women on boards, which included:

Hon PANSY WONG: The member will be pleased to know that the Government looks at the overall result, and in the quarter from October to December 2009, 47 percent of the board members appointed to Government boards and committees were women. I acknowledge my National Cabinet colleagues for recognising and appointing competent women to their boards.

Readers may recall I had been in discussion with the Ministry of Women's Affairs about accessing information to verify this, and do some further analysis*. Good on them, they came up with the goods, after a bit of a hiccup which they went to a great deal of trouble to make up for.

And what the data from the MWA shows is quite clear. Wong is correct with her 47% figure for appointments to Permanent State Sector Boards and Committees in the Oct-Dec 2009 Quarter (in fact it was 47.4%). To be counted in the Permanent category, for the stocktaking figure the Minister used to respond to Delahunty's query, a board or committee must be permanent, which is defined in the MWA information as "bodies established to work on a particular project that are expected to have completed their core business within a year."

But Delahunty didn't ask about Permanent State Sector Boards and Committees and she didn't ask about appointments made in the final quarter of 2009, which Wong relied on to respond to questioning in the House. In fact none of the appointments Delahunty asked about would have been included in the stat the Minister quoted to rebut implications her Government wasn't walking their talk on women's representation on their own boards.

The Tax Working Group was set up in May 2009 and has already completed its work (so not Permanent, and not counted in that quarter anyway). The Independent Advisory Group on National Standards started up in February 2010 and the Minister's statement indicated it will only be operating in the first year of the implementation of National Standards, i.e. for the rest of 2010 (also therefore not Permanent, and also not in that quarter).

Both the National Infrastructure Advisory Board and the 2025 Taskforce would fit in the Permanent category. But the former was established in May 2009, while the latter's spots were appointed in July 2009. So again, that single woman, and 13 men, would not have been in Wong's precious 47% figure.

I'm not an expert on what constitues appropriate responses to Parliamentary Questions, so I'll ask you, dear readers - did Wong mislead Parliament?


* More on this when I have a chance to properly write it up.