Friday, April 6, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Girl gangs on the rise in Cape Town

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 01:00 PM PDT

Jale Arif
WVoN co-editor

Concerns are growing as teenage girls begin to play an active role in gang culture in Khayelitsha in Cape Town.

The Khayelitsha gangs are still dominated by teenage boys but girl gangs have sprung up, often taking the name of their male counterparts, such as the Voora babes representing the Voora gang.

On Monday, in the latest of a rash of attacks, a 16-year-old girl was stabbed by a group of 10 girls from a rival gang.

The victim who asked to remain anonymous refused hospital treatment or to press charges. “I will get my revenge, that is a promise.” she told West Cape News.

Residents say the problems are increasing, there are fights every Friday night and the current school holidays are not helping matters.

Fezekile Gubevu, director of the South African National Civic Organisation said that efforts were being made to negotiate with the girl gangs, but little progress was being made.

He called on parents to be more aware of their children’s activities and to provide information to help end the violence.

Bin Laden’s three wives and eldest daughters jailed

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 10:30 AM PDT

Jale Arif
WVoN co-editor

Osama Bin Laden's three widows and two eldest daughters have been jailed for living in Pakistan illegally.

They were given a jail term of 45 days in prison and fined 10,000 rupees (£123) each.

The women have already served a month of their sentence and are expected to be deported in two weeks to their homelands with their children, their lawyer, Mohammed Amir Khalil, said.

Two of the widows, Siham Saber and Khairiah Sabar are Saudi and the youngest wife Amal Ahmed al-Sadah is Yemeni.

The Daily Mail reported that Pakistani authorities formally arrested the women on March 3, and the three wives are currently under house arrest in Islamabad.

Their lawyer  told the Associated Press news agency that he is not planning to appeal  the decision.

He said: “The wives had confessed to illegally entering the country. Courts usually take a lenient view if confessional statements are made.”

The wives have been in the custody of Pakistani authorities since last May, when American Navy SEAL commandos stormed a house in Abbottabad and killed Bin Laden.

Lonely Hearts Club not for women?

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Deborah Cowan
WVoN co-editor

In June 1967, English pop artist Sir Peter Blake created cultural history when he co-designed perhaps the most iconic album cover of all time – that of the Beatles 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.

Arguably, the album cover has reached equitable artistic standing due to its instant recognisability leading to it being parodied again and again by the likes of The Ruttles, The Simpsons and Frank Zappa.

The original cover for Sgt. Pepper features life-size cardboard cut outs of some of the people most admired by the Beatles at the time – in excess of sixty 2-D models of the great and the good make an appearance.

They include Albert Einstein, Edgar Allan Poe, Bob Dylan, Aldous Huxley, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Dylan Thomas – even Fred Astaire, WC Fields and Laurel and Hardy seem fitting choices amongst such distinguished company.

But  what of the female contingent ?

Well, here a different pattern emerges, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Diana Dors and – rather confusingly in such grown up company – Shirley Temple.

Whilst the significance and power of these women should not be diminished or understated in any way we have to ask why these five women in particular were chosen?

Ms Temple aside, the answer may seem all too obvious,  they were the biggest sex symbols of their time.

Had feminism fallen off the map?

Cut to 45 years later, and the latest incarnation of the album cover comes once again courtesy of Sir Peter Blake.

The new design is entitled 'Family Friends and Icons' and was released this week to mark his 80th birthday.

It's very much in keeping with the original, except that he has replaced John, Paul, Ringo and George with his own wife and daughters, and there are now 18 other female figures represented from a total of 79, a slight improvement.

Sir Peter’s choices include Delia Smith and Fanny Craddock, Stella McCartney, Vivienne Westwood, Mary Quant, Twiggy and Kate Moss, by way of Audrey Hepburn, Helen Mirren and Shirley Bassey.

Let's not dwell on the fact that a majority of these women are known because of how they look, or how they make other women look.

But if the poster was redesigned to simply include icons in the feminist field, would any of these women make the cut?

One doesn't have to think too hard for the most obvious choices to come bursting forth in an epic roll call – Virginia Woolf, Gloria Steinem, Emmeline Pankhurst, Benazir Bhutto, Rosa Parks, Aung San Suu Kyi, Marilyn French, Germaine Greer, Corazon Aquino, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Wollstonecraft………….

A veritable powerhouse of warrior women.

Yet what has happened to the 'now' generation?  Where are the feminist icons of today?  What does a 2012 feminist look like?

If I were to make just one suggestion, it would be perhaps the most hotly debated figure on the modern feminist horizon – Lady Gaga.

Ms Gaga herself is contradictory on the matter, one minute saying, “I'm not a feminist – I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars and muscle cars…” and the next saying that she is in fact a feminist, and making indisputably feminist statements: “When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves.”

While she makes her mind up, perhaps we need to ask whether she is an asset to the struggle for the advancement of the women's movement and for female empowerment.

Yes, she sometimes parades in her pants, but she uses her sexuality in a powerful 'don't mess with me' kind of way.

And she dresses in an absurdly idiosyncratic fashion that has no description because it simply hasn't been done before.  It doesn't always win her complimentary column inches, but frankly my dear, she doesn't give a damn.  Perhaps therein lies her greatest power.

After the famous Gaga meat-dress incident, British journalist Kira Cochrane asked in The Guardian, 'Is she a brilliant performance artist – or an empty provocateur? Is she driven by ideas, or neediness? Is she a feminist icon, or just a slightly offbeat sex object?'

I have a few questions of my own which I think may help to clarify my choice:

Does she challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality? Absolutely she does.  Does she support the sexual empowerment of women?  In spades.

Is she herself a powerful woman, unhindered by male opinion or authority?  Oh yes. Does she always present a good role model for the feminists of tomorrow? Well, that's another debate altogether.

While I would definitely put Ms Gaga on my feminist album cover, up front and centre, I know that not everyone would agree with me, including, probably, Sir Peter Blake.

The fact that she is not shy of baring a yard of flesh or three – be it hers or that of some unfortunate bovine – should not really be the point.

Lady Gaga clearly uses her sexuality and her body in the name of popular music.   But does this mean she can't use the F word? Does a woman have to cover up to be a feminist icon?  Discuss.

Pinterest imposes restrictions in bid to curb self-harm

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 06:30 AM PDT

Lucy Miller
WVoN co-editor

Pinterest boards are fuelling self-harm, it is being claimed.

Pro-anorexia sites dedicated to images of dangerously thin girls have been on the internet for years – but in recent months the potentially dangerous images have moved into the realm of social media.

Pinterest, which has seen its popularity boom in 2012, is now planning on introducing restrictions on what can be shared between users on its site.

'Thinspiration' messages include 'if it were easy everyone would be thin', 'sweat is fat crying', and 'the difference between want and need is self-control'.

Adrienna Ressier, a body image specialist at the Renfrew Center, which has clinics across the US, says that some of her patients have become addicted to the pro-anorexia sites.

The new restrictions will come into force on Friday 6 April and will ban users from sharing images that are likely to 'explicitly encourage self-harm or abuse'.

Photographs of models such as Kate Moss and Karlie Kloss, both noted for their slender frames as well as goal weights and 'motivational' messages, are common amongst the 'thinspiration' material that is being shared.

Tumblr and Facebook have already imposed similar restrictions on their content, after encountering the same problems.

‘Attractive’ women should avoid photos with job applications, study finds

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Lindsay Carroll
WVoN co-editor

When you hear about studies on attractiveness and success, you usually hear about how it puts you at an advantage.

But two Israeli researchers found that the opposite might be true for women — and that attractive women shouldn’t include photos of themselves on their job applications, according to a report in The Economist.

Bradley Ruffle of Ben-Gurion University and Ze’ev Shtudiner of Ariel University Centre sent out fake applications for more than 2,500 jobs, including two similar resumes, one with a photo of an attractive person and one without.

They found that while attractive men were more likely to be called in for an interview, the opposite was true for attractive women.

The researchers concluded that these women face disadvantages because those choosing who to interview — in Israel, mostly women — were jealous.

Just a few days ago The Daily Mail’s Samantha Brick wrote a column that discussed the hardships she says she faces for being attractive, because of other women’s jealousy.

The column went viral with ridicule, but in light of this Israeli study Ms Brick may, at least in part, be right.

“And it is not just jealous wives who have frozen me out of their lives,” Ms Brick wrote yesterday. “Insecure female bosses have also barred me from promotions at work.”

She described situations in which she said female bosses discriminated against her because of jealousy.

One summer, when she was wearing knee-length, cap-sleeved dresses — “more Kate Middleton than Katie Price”, Ms Brick said — her boss told her her dress was distracting male employees.

“It was clear that when you have a female boss, it’s best to let them shine, but when you have a male boss, it’s a different game …” she wrote, saying she’s flirted to “get ahead” at work.

Apart from anecdotes such as that of Ms Brick, a study from 2001 also concluded that attractiveness benefited men more than women. It found that good-looking women get better raises, but not better job offers or starting salaries — in contrast with men, for whom handsomeness can get them all three.

Other research produced similar results. Two years ago, the University of Colorado Denver Business School found that attractive women applying for stereotypically masculine jobs such as finance director, research manager and mechanical engineer face a disadvantage, unlike handsome men.

“In these professions being attractive was highly detrimental to women,” lead researcher Stefanie Johnson said. “In every other kind of job, attractive women were preferred. This wasn’t the case with men which shows that there is still a double standard when it comes to gender.”

Racy American Apparel faces ad ban – again

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Lucy Miller
WVoN co-editor

An ad campaign by US clothing retailer American Apparel has been banned in the UK after being called 'pornographic and exploitative'.

The campaign, consisting of eight adverts displayed on American Apparel's website, featured partially clothed young women, some of whom were topless.

American Apparel defended the photographs, saying that they depicted 'real people' and weren't air-brushed.

However the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) have deemed the ads unsuitable, saying the images used were 'gratuitous' because the clothes being advertised were not lingerie.

It isn't the first time American Apparel has run into trouble with its depiction of women (see WVoN coverage).

In 2009 an advert featuring a young female wearing nothing but an unzipped hoody and black knickers was also banned by the ASA.

Although the model used was 23, the ban was brought about because she was deemed by the ASA to look 'vulnerable', as well as considerably younger than her age.

When God made man, was she only joking?

Posted: 05 Apr 2012 01:00 AM PDT

Deborah Cowan
WVoN co-editor

As the debate over women bishops rages on, Bettany Hughes, author and historian, adds fuel to the fire and the oily issue of the rightful place of women in the church.

In her new series for the BBC, entitled Divine Women, Ms Hughes challenges the belief that women cannot be bishops and argues that they are deeply – and historically – linked to the divine.

Episode one, controversially entitled 'When God was a girl', doesn't quite go as far as to insist that God is a woman, but does suggest we look closely at history to gauge the importance of women in religion through time.

“Who knows whether God was a girl?” she asks.

The programme traces the history of women in religion and examines their importance in the development of spiritual traditions, arguing that the important role of women has often been overlooked or obscured.

One piece of evidence Ms Hughes presents for this is quite extraordinary, especially considering the opposition faced by women wishing to be ordained as Bishops in the Church of England.

She says that Christianity was originally “a faith where the female of the species held sway”, adding that for more than 200 years after the religion’s genesis, over half of the churches in Rome were built by women.

In a piece for The Telegraph, she wrote “Headstones from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD celebrate women who were ‘episcopa’ – not just the wives of bishops, as has often been claimed, but bishops themselves.”

She describes her visit to the catacombs of Priscilla, the underground tombs of Rome, and the beautifully painted walls of early Christian settings.

There is depiction after depiction of women in the act of worship, dressed in holy garb, even giving communion.  In the last picture, the woman is wearing an alb, one of the oldest liturgical vestments and the marker of an ordained priest.

As Ms Hughes says, “Unlike the modern world of faith, women here are conspicuous not by their absence but their presence.

“Fierce, powerful females were at the very roots of early faiths – and made Christianity what it is today”, she asserts.

This seems to be a view echoed by other notable historians such as Geoffrey Blainey.

In his book 'A Short History of Christianity', he wrote that women were more influential during the time of Christ than they were in the next thousand years of Christianity, and were probably the majority of Christians in the first century AD.

He points to the Bible itself, to Galatians 3:28, from the apostle Paul : “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ”.

Yet by the 4th century, says Ms Hughes, women were no longer leading figures in the Christian movement.

Rather, they had been ousted as the ‘footsoldiers’ of Jesus and relegated to the role of 'handmaids' of God.

A patriarchal society had emerged fully formed.

Since then, she argues, evidence of the power and influence of women in early religion – not just Christianity – has been deliberately censored.

“The legion protests of churchmen through history speaks volumes. Tertullian writes in the 2nd century AD of the ‘mad insolence of women who have dared to wish to teach’, the Council of Nimes in 394 outlawed the ‘priestly service of women’, Pope Gelasius rails that ‘everything that is exclusively entrusted to the service of men has been carried out by the sex that has no right to do it’.”

She goes on to say that “as late as 829 AD the Reform Synod of Paris trumpeted "women press around the altar… indeed even dispense the body and blood of the Lord to the people. This is shameful and must not take place."’

Hundreds of years later,  that voice doesn't sound terribly unfamiliar.

There is still conflict within the church – whatever church that may be – as to the future role of women.

It's ironic, given that at least 65% of all those who go to Anglican Churches are women.

Hughes concludes by saying: “When our earliest ancestors tried to work out what it was to be human – in this life and the next – they turned to the female of the species for guidance.

“Once monotheism finally arrived, it was built upon these foundations.

“This year, when some women will once again take a pole position in the Church, following the Synod's anticipated vote on female bishops, this will not be a radical departure; but a return to the very roots of religion itself.”

For those not necessarily of a religious bent, you can take part in a poll run by The Huffington Post to accompany their piece on Bettany Hughes.

This asks readers to vote on whether God was a) a man, b) a woman or c) a manufactured concept beset by logical problems created to assuage the fear of death.