Undergraduate students at Cardiff University are gearing up to discuss whether life at university is becoming more sexist. As part of this Emily Parnell, an undergraduate student, reflects on Carnage UK: Pimps ‘n’ Hoes Continue reading “Is university life becoming more sexist?”
Emily Wilding Davison Memorial Campaign, Obama and Votes for Women
This year will mark 100 years since the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison was killed after running in front of the King’s horse at the Derby. A campaign has just been launched to institute a minute’s silence at the Derby in memory of her sacrifice for women’s rights and democracy. Continue reading “Emily Wilding Davison Memorial Campaign, Obama and Votes for Women”
The sexually available versus the crooks; gender and HIV prevention education in Mozambique
The cynic in me was not surprised to find that young women in Mozambique experienced sexual harassment in schools. I had thought carefully about this eventuality prior to setting out to Mozambique to gather data for my doctoral study on HIV- and AIDS-related education, and the possible action I might take if and when confronted with a situation such as this. What did take me by surprise was the extent to which the young men were put away as inherently unreliable. It seemed they were, to paraphrase one research participant not really worth ‘speaking about’. Young women and men appeared to be firmly stuck between a ‘rock and a hard place’. In a setting such as this, the potential impact of HIV prevention education seems rather questionable. Continue reading “The sexually available versus the crooks; gender and HIV prevention education in Mozambique”
Autumn Financial Statement – Uncaring and Unequal
The UK Women’s Budget Group responds to the Chancellor’s Autumn Financial Statement:
“Today’s announcement offers nothing for women striving and working hard to take care of children, disabled and frail elderly relatives. The Chancellor spoke of investment in infrastructure, but failed to mention investment in social infrastructure, such as education and healthcare, which underpins women’s paid and unpaid participation in the economy.
Some of the measures announced today will have a disproportionate adverse impact on women’s income. For instance, ending national pay bargaining for teachers will have a greater impact on women who make up the majority of the teaching workforce. Furthermore, the below inflation uprating of benefits is particularly unfair to women because benefits make up a bigger proportion of women’s income than men’s. Continue reading “Autumn Financial Statement – Uncaring and Unequal”
Inclusion and Gender Equity in Education: A Conference at the Institute for Educational Development, Aga Khan University
Dar es Salaam, 14 – 16 November 2012
GEA Policy Report Continue reading “Inclusion and Gender Equity in Education: A Conference at the Institute for Educational Development, Aga Khan University”
Into the Woods
As a practicing middle school English Language Arts teacher and researcher in the Northeastern US, I am interested in the stories adolescents tell about their lives. To this end, my research in classrooms is ethnographic and privileges the stories girls tell about their experiences of being marginalized, silenced, and punished, often by other girls. One story in particular has resonated with me, and I have come to refer to this story as “The Story of the Sluts” – thus named, however crudely, because that is how the story was presented to me by the girls who told it. It all came about when Lily (a pseudonym), an eighth grade student, was meeting with me during a writing conference about revisions for a short story she was writing in my class. During this writing conference, it came out that a party had taken place the previous weekend. Lily explained that two of my other students, Melanie and Kelly, had gone ‘into the woods’ with two boys who also attended our school. Continue reading “Into the Woods”
In Memoriam: Eva Figes
Eva Figes, the author of Patriarchal Attitudes, died aged 80 in August 2012. Her book was published to popular British acclaim alongside several other signature books of women’s liberation, including The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer and The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. These publications signalled a new and critical mood amongst a growing number of women becoming involved in the international women’s liberation movement. Continue reading “In Memoriam: Eva Figes”
An Update: The Women’s Library
This is to report on what is happening to The Women’s Library, a resource that was set up over 75 years ago as the Fawcett Library in central London. It moved to premises in the East End of London in the 1990s, and became part of what was then the London Guildhall University. The latter then amalgamated with North London University to become London Metropolitan University. There was a contest between the London School of Economics, amongst others, and the Guildhall for housing the library as a resource for feminist historians, social scientists and arts people, back in the 1990s which Guildhall won. At the turn of the 21st century there was a bid for lottery funds to rehouse the library in a converted women’s bathhouse nearby. This bid was successful and the library was housed in an architect-designed building that opened in 2003. Continue reading “An Update: The Women’s Library”
‘Keeping it Real’: teenage girls and everyday feminism
It is an overcast Friday in mid-October as the Cardiff University contingent (that’s us!) pull up outside a rated-but-dated business hotel in Newport; we are attending the #KeepingItReal conference for teenage girls, run by the South Wales charity Full Circle, who seek to support aspiration in young people, and as we find our way into the conference suite the atmosphere of excitement and enthusiasm is already building. A large room is decked out as if an awards ceremony is about to take place, with over a dozen huge round tables, bedecked with linen and festive balloons, arranged in front of a stage where a sound check is underway. The walls are lined with exhibitors from local charities promoting sexual health, domestic violence services, and education opportunities, and what we thought to be a big purple bouncy castle in the corner turns out to be an inflatable ‘Big Brother Diary Room’ for the teenage attendees to record their thoughts about their lives and the conference away from adult eyes. No bouncing for us then, we sigh, and set up our stall nearby. Filling the table with pamphlets and adverts for our gender and sexualities research group, we also lay out our GEA leaflets and journal copies, later eagerly seized by both teachers and charity representatives alike. Continue reading “‘Keeping it Real’: teenage girls and everyday feminism”
Ester McGeeney on ‘Collisions, Coalitions and Riotous Subjects: The Riots One Year On’
A Conference Report for GEA
At the end of last month I started my week with a colleague from Sussex University, a few of our new masters students and a trip to the CLF theatre in Peckham Rye. We were there to watch The Girls – a play based on the lives of the four young people who performed in the play. The play was set at a group counselling session in South London. Four young people turned up and waited for the counsellor who never arrived. And as they waited, London started rioting and as the news of the looting and violence poured in via their mobile phones, the on-stage drama followed each young person’s story – the mistakes they had made, the anger and pain they had experienced and the hopeless, stuck position in which they found themselves. This was a harrowing welcome to child hood and youth studies for the new students. As a youth practitioner and researcher I think I am pretty hardened to harrowing tales of young peoples’ sexual exploitation, domestic violence, neglect, hunger, gang violence, anger, loss and pain, but the raw emotion and hopelessness of this play still hit me hard.