Friday, June 1, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Future of women’s literary prize no longer Orange

Posted: 31 May 2012 10:00 AM PDT

Deborah Cowan
WVoN co-editor 

The winner of the Orange Prize for Women's Fiction was announced in London's Southbank last night, with the honours going to American author Madeline Miller for her debut novel 'The Song of Achilles', inspired by the tale of Homer’s Illiad.

Ms Miller teaches Latin, Greek and Shakespeare in an American High School and has spent ten years penning her first book.

The Orange Prize for Fiction was founded to 'celebrate and promote the very best of international fiction written by women.'  

Ms Miller will not only take her place in literary history as one of only a handful of recipients of the esteemed title, but also as the very last recipient of the Orange Prize as we know it.

The mobile phone company announced last week that, after 17 years, they are withdrawing as official sponsor of the award, directing its marketing budget towards the silver screen instead.

Given that the prize money itself is gifted from a private donor, the award will still be made every year.  But what of a sponsor?

Although 17 years is a healthy amount of time for a large corporation such as Orange to sponsor an artistic endeavour such as this literary award, it's not as though interest in the market has waned.  Which is good news for the (no longer Orange) Literary Prize for Women's Fiction.

The award has traditionally afforded the winner both reputational and commercial success – previous winners have included Zadie Smith, Rose Tremain, Lionel Shriver and Andrea Levy, all now household names.

Winning the title has also had a serious impact on winners' book sales, so expectations are high that a new sponsor will be forthcoming.  Kate Mosse, co-founder of the prize has said that she hopes to be able to make an announcement by the end of the summer.

So it looks as though the future may not be orange, but it's certainly still bright.

However, the question that has dogged the prize since its inception in 1996 still remains, and rumblings have been heard in journo-land this week to the same tune – is this type of gender exclusive prize actually still necessary?

Legend has it that the Orange prize was founded in response to anger over an all-male Booker Prize short list.  But given its runaway success and the fact that it has actively promoted the writing of women in a largely male dominated market place, does it really matter?

A certain journalist from the Evening Standard thinks it does, saying that it was 'the first literary award that excluded men' and 'was rightly attacked as patronising and positive discrimination gone wrong.'

He (for it is a he) goes on to state that 'Simon Jenkins called it sexist, the late Auberon Waugh nicknamed it the Lemon Prize and AS Byatt said that it "ghettoised" women.'

This from the mouth of one Sebastian Shakespeare.  I kid you not.

Of course, support for the award remains strong.  British historian and patron of the prize Lisa Jardine, dismissed the idea that there was no need for a women only prize, citing the success of the Orange prize as vindication enough.

‘The world is a different place now. We're excited because now people are queuing up, and that shows us how far we've come.’

Perhaps we need to look more broadly across the world of literature in general to decide whether women should be promoted exclusively, or whether gender specifics don't matter and men and women enjoy parity.

Well, last year, the London Review Of Books reviewed a mere 58 books by women as opposed to 163 by men and employed just 29 women reviewers compared with 155 men – ridiculous when you consider that over two thirds of books sold in this country are bought by women.

Book stores are also more likely to display books by male authors than those by their female counterparts.

More startlingly, Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul said publicly that when he reads something that has been written by a woman, he can tell it is inferior to his own writing.

If these are the attitudes and practices that exist openly and publicly, then a literary prize for women should be welcomed and promoted.

I'm sure Shakespeare (the original) would agree.

South Africa’s Traditional Courts Bill impairs rights of 12 million rural women

Posted: 31 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT

Sabine Clappaert
IPS news journalist 

The Traditional Courts Bill currently under discussion in South Africa's parliament and due to be enacted by the end of 2012, could undermine the basic rights of some of the country's most vulnerable inhabitants: the 12 million women living in remote rural communities across the country.

The bill aims to “provide more South Africans improved access to justice” by recognising traditional authorities and laws. Through it, traditional leaders in remote areas would be given unilateral power to create and enforce customary law.

The bill sparked an outcry in 2008 when it was first tabled in the National Assembly. But with it due to come into effect at the end of 2012, civil rights groups are becoming increasingly vocal in their demand to have it declared unconstitutional.

The bill will allow traditional leaders to hear civil cases including disputes surrounding contract breach, damage to property, theft and crimen injuria or “unlawfully, intentionally and seriously impairing the dignity of another,” if such assault does not result in grievous bodily harm.

But many civil rights groups have slammed the proposed bill. According to Jennifer Williams, director of the Women's Legal Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, the bill would “place all power in the hands of a single individual – in almost all cases a man – and effectively make him judge, jury and implementer”.

Not only does the proposed bill give a single individual the power to interpret custom in a particular community, it also forbids defendants from having an attorney – even in criminal cases.

Furthermore, is does not allow the option to try the case in a mainstream court.

“The bill simply does not include any checks on the power of traditional leaders, nor does it hold them accountable,” says Williams.

Women in particular will be affected by the bill. And it has sparked a nationwide debate.

Rights activist Siyasanga Mazinyo of the Rural People's Movement in Grahamstown, South Africa told local newspaper the New Age on May 2 that the bill violated women's rights.

“In the past these traditional court processes were heard near the kraal (cattle enclosure) and according to our traditions, women are not supposed to sit near kraals.”

Many similar traditions are still in place today, Williams says.

“According to tribal traditions, women are not allowed to attend hearings while they are menstruating, neither are widows allowed to attend traditional courts when in mourning.

“In reality this means that a man will represent her during the court hearing and she will have no impact on the hearing whatsoever. She will know her fate only once the judge has made his decision.”

Williams says that the Traditional Courts Bill is “clearly rooted in a patriarchal system.

“Although it tries to use equal language by allowing men to represent women and women to represent men in the courts, it goes on to stipulate that this should be permitted only according to existing custom.

“Exactly herein lies the problem: custom in most places prevents women from appearing in courts and certainly does not permit them to represent men.”

She says that one of South Africa's main challenges is how to harmonise custom with its current legal dispensation, and the bill fails to do this.

“It will take us back to a position where men will make and interpret custom in courts in a way that may not be consistent, clear or certain.

“Women and children (and other men) will be compelled to submit to the jurisdiction of these courts, regardless of choice. This will in effect create a second class of citizens,” Williams says.

The South African Commission for Gender Equality (CGE), an independent statutory body mandated to promote and protect the attainment of gender equality in South Africa, rejected the bill, saying it is fatally flawed.

“Numerous provisions within the bill are unconstitutional, and we have raised our concerns over issues relating to women's representation and participation in traditional courts, and the impact this is likely to have on their constitutional rights to equality,” says Janice Hicks, acting chairwoman of the CGE.

The reality of tribal law would be harsh, as illustrated by the case of M*, a young woman from the country's Xhosa ethnic group who approached the Women's Legal Centre for assistance.

The young woman was married when she was 14 to an older man who lived with his girlfriend and worked in Johannesburg.

However, M* was forced to live with her husband's parents in a remote rural area, where she was expected to assist in the family home. Unhappy that she was unable to live with her husband or attend school, she fled to her parents' home more than 500 kilometres away.

Angered by her departure, her husband brought legal action in the local magistrates court demanding the return of his wife, as well as the lobola (bride price) he had paid and legal costs.

After an intervention by the Women's Legal Centre, this claim was dismissed with an order that the plaintiff pay the defendant's costs.

If, however, the case were to be decided under the Traditional Courts Bill – as the remote rural area where she lived with her parents-in-law would fall under its jurisdiction – things would have turned out vastly different.

“Firstly, under Xhosa customary law, when a wife separates from her husband and returns to her father, the husband is required to fetch her,” explained Williams.

“The father and husband may then also negotiate the terms of the wife's return without consulting the wife.”

Customary law also considers the marriage of a 14-year-old legal, while under civil law the marriage would be considered invalid and the husband would be found guilty of statutory rape. The traditional court would also have requested the return of the bride price.

How could custom and constitution best be reconciled in the new South Africa? This remains a burning question to which the country's leaders must find an answer before the end of the year when the bill is expected to become law.

The CGE recently met with Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities Lulu Xingwana, to raise concerns regarding the bill.

“She stated that the bill does not have a place in a democratic South Africa, and has publicly called for it to be withdrawn,” Hicks says.

As Jennifer Johnny of the South African Law Reform Commission stated in an interview on May 9 with Independent Newspapers:

“If there is such a desire to regulate customary law, should we rather not have specialist courts which deal specifically with customary law, like the courts we have now that deal with maintenance and domestic violence?”

If the Traditional Courts Bill does get passed into law, Williams says that the Women's Legal Centre will take the matter to court to have it declared unconstitutional.

*Name withheld to protect identity of source.

This article was first published in IPS news and reproduced in its entirety with their permission.

Beauty, body image and the media – guest blog by Bidisha

Posted: 31 May 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Bidisha*
writer, critic and broadcaster

Yesterday a cross party group of MPs produced yet another report on the subject of what is fast becoming a national body image crisis (see WVoN story).

Everywhere we look, we are surrounded by unrealistic, unattainable and often fabricated images of the human body – usually the young female body, usually being used to sell something.

If it's not flogging insurance or toothpaste or washing up liquid or plane tickets to exotic places or bio-active yoghurt then it's clothes, underwear, shampoo, soap…all things which men surely also use in equal amounts, and yet the products are marketed wholly on the image of a young woman.

Every day we see thousands of these images, not only in advertising but in the print, magazine, TV features and online media which now surrounds us.

Almost all of the images we see through these media have been altered in some way: made thinner, brighter, sharper, had so-called 'defects (which are nothing more than natural lines, curves and shadows) erased or 'corrected'.

They form the wallpaper, the backdrop, the muzak, the white noise to our everyday lives, leaking invisibly like a toxic gas into our pores.

We often believe that these images do not affect us and perhaps, consciously, they don't. We tell ourselves that we are intelligent and educated adults with some degree of nuanced understanding about the beauty myth, the objectification of women and the profit-driven wiles of public image-making and are perfectly able to separate real life from glossy fantasy.

But the images have an overwhelming subconscious effect which is very complex, deep and damaging in its consequences.

It affects the way we understand ourselves as people; the way we meet, assess, make assumptions about and sometimes negatively judge other people.

It affects the kind of value we place on ourselves and others within the working world, in culture and in our own relationships; the roles we feel comfortable with adopting in society and work.

And it governs what we deem acceptable when it comes to what we do (and what is done) to our bodies in our lives and our most intimate relationships.

Appearances are not important – and yet the message we receive, particularly regarding girls and women, is that appearance is the only thing which is important.

This tragically distorts the way we value ourselves. It makes us hate ourselves, rate ourselves (and always find ourselves wanting) and think of ourselves, and others, as objects, not people.

The damaging message that appearance is all is bolstered by the fallacy that being a beautiful woman by profession – that is, being a model, a presenter or an actress – is lucrative, easy money for little work, a way of exploiting natural assets, a quick route to success and visibility.

None of these things are true.

These jobs require incredibly hard work, long hours, intense concentration and total commitment. They come with great career insecurity and a very long road to become a top earner.

The careers are, typically, of only four or five years' duration and the proportion of women who ultimately succeed in these industries, compared to the numbers who enter and try, is infinitesimal.

The vast and overwhelming majority are thrown by the wayside, taken for a ride, underpaid, exploited and overworked.

They suffer great pressure to look 'perfect' and are spoken about, and to, as if they are disposable pieces of meat. In fact, this is how they are treated.

The film industry, modelling and presenting are notorious for both their depiction and their brutal treatment of women. Meanwhile, the really fulfilling, influential and challenging jobs in the same industries – directing, designing, producing, writing – are very gender-unequal and discriminatory.

And yet…. to love beauty and elegance, style and aesthetics is natural. People of both sexes have decorated themselves and their surroundings for thousands of years, in every part of the world.

What's dangerous, however, is repeat compulsive behaviour driven by anxiety: obsessive worries about tiny details which nobody else can see, fuelled by overblown and unrealistic expectations; an extreme focusing on oneself as a collection of body parts instead of as a whole person with a soul and mind as well as a body; and a skewed and unbalanced perception of the importance of appearance.

There is a prevalence of wholly false images of what the body looks like: hairless, fatless, smooth, silent, young, pleasurable for the beholder but blank within, toned enough to be pleasing but not so toned that it looks powerful.

Image culture affects everything and everyone, whether we want them to or not. The starkest and most shocking effect can be witnessed on the young, who are growing up in a culture of ubiquitous objectification, falsification and mass media.

The media, for them, is so close and ever-present that it is in their school bag, their hand, their pocket, on their desk or beside their bed 24 hours a day.

The young watch, film, follow and photograph themselves and others – and this affects how they see themselves and others.

The entire culture, from adverts to music videos and films to the pervasiveness of beauty and fashion marketing and the ready availability of porn to ever younger viewers, sexualises girls from an ever younger age and surely also affect the way boys see girls, sex, relationships – and themselves.

The female bodily sexuality depicted in all the media from pop to porn is of a pleasing, silent, ever-ready yet emotionally numb type devoid of humour, friendship, warmth, conversation or free, fair and equal exchange between partners.

Meanwhile, the wider culture gives girls in particular very strong messages that they are only acceptable if they are unnaturally slim, unnaturally beautiful, excessively groomed, pretty, smiling, passive, pleasing and accessible.

Yet the grooming and self-consciousness this requires eats up a girl's time, her confidence, her sexual autonomy, her attention, her resources and her sense of value in herself.

It plays directly into the steep increase in anorexia, bulimia and body dysmorphia among girls (and increasingly amongst boys too) and great pressure being placed on girls to enter into sexual relations and to behave sexually before they are ready, before they feel any desire and before they have any understanding of the subtlety of sensuality.

They may feel pressure to behave sexually before they are even interested in matters of sexuality. And they are in danger of losing any sense of the sacredness of their own body: that it is perfect as it is and doesn't need constant changing, checking, correcting, tweaking or vigilance.

Once you have begun to see yourself as an object to which anything can be done, it is a short road to seeing yourself as an object to whom anyone else can do anything they like.

Once a girl or woman has internalised the message that she is nothing more than an imperfect sexual object, it is but a short, fatal step towards numbly accepting sexual harassment, sexual bullying, staring, remarks, even sexual violence, control and abusiveness from others.

If a woman does not value herself as a person, she cannot stand up for herself as a person, because she truly doesn't believe she deserves any better. The entire beauty, fashion, cosmetic surgery and body-policing industries are run on female self-hatred.

The prevalence of false and passive images is not counterbalanced by other more positive and realistic images of girls or women anywhere else in cultural and public life.

There is a massive under-representation and under-celebration of women in all areas of the media when it comes to women as politicians, academics, experts, speakers, authority figures, commentators and leaders.

Women are also under-represented, except as sexist clichés, in mainstream films and other fictional narratives like TV programmes.

Even when they are presenting, it has become the norm to pair a very young, beautiful woman with a much older man – and to replace the woman when she passes a certain (shockingly young) age.

The only time females achieve equal or increased representation in the media is in beauty and fashion features, where the golden rule of advertising always applies: if you want people to buy a product, make them feel bad about themselves.

*BIDISHA is a writer, critic and journalist who focuses on culture, the arts and issues of gender as well as international human rights reporting.

Report says body image should be taught in schools

Posted: 31 May 2012 05:30 AM PDT

Brogan Driscoll
WVoN co-editor 

A cross party group of Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK have said in a report published yesterday that body image lessons should be given in school.

“Reflections on Body Image”, written in conjunction with the health and education charity, Central YMCA, revealed that girls as young as five worry about their weight and appearance.

It revealed that over half the UK public suffer from a negative body image, seen as an underlying cause of health and relationship problems, a key contributor to low self-esteem and a major barrier to participation in school and progression at work.

It found that children and adolescents are the groups who are the most susceptible to concerns about body image, as they are highly likely to pick up on their parents’  insecurities and peer pressure.

Looks are the most common cause of bullying in schools with 50% of young girls having dieted to lose weight.

It found that media, advertising and celebrity culture together account for almost three quarters of the influence on body image in society, yet the "body ideal" that they typically present is not physically achievable by nearly 95% of the population.

Body image expert and recovered bulimic Natasha Devon agrees that the issue needs to be addressed in schools.

Co-director of the Body Gossip campaign and founder of award-winning educational programme Gossip School, she has been visiting schools across the country conducting self-esteem classes since 2008.

“My lesson's core message is that, however you look or are, you can only be the best version of yourself, which is so much better than chasing some arbitrary beauty paradigm,” she told the Times Education Supplement.

“By the end of the class, I hope I have been able to give them a fresh perspective – one that will put them on the road to self-acceptance and to knowing they can do anything they set their minds to.”

Less than a third of top jobs held by women in the UK

Posted: 31 May 2012 04:00 AM PDT

Alex Morgan
WVoN co-editor

Research by BBC News published this week showed that women in the UK hold less than a third of the most senior positions in 11 sectors, including business and politics.

Women were represented more strongly in secondary education, making up 36.7% of head teachers and 36.4% of public appointments.

In the armed forces and the judiciary, however, women fill  just 1.3% and 13.2% of the top jobs.

The European Commission is considering new laws to get more women further up the ladder and a consultation which closed earlier this week included a proposal to introduce mandatory quotas, an issue which generally divides people along political lines.

Cue former conservative health minister Edwina Currie who said on BBC Breakfast that: "the moment you start having special arrangements, the people who come through have not acquired the talents and the skills that they will need for the majority."

But Cherie Blair, a barrister and wife of former prime minister Tony Blair, said she supported them, making the point that "unless we do take special measures to look at the systematic reasons why women aren't making it to the top we are never going to succeed."

To HRT or not to HRT? That’s still the question…

Posted: 31 May 2012 02:30 AM PDT

Deborah Cowan
WVoN co-editor 

Since the fanfare surrounding the introduction of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) over 60 years ago, there has been a steady stream of conflicting information with regards to the benefits versus the risk of hormone use.

Initially thought to be a panacea for menopausal women, with medicinal properties which counteracted some of the chronic conditions related to ageing, it subsequently lost its popularity when it was thought it might increase the risk of developing cancer of the uterus.

This was in the 50s, when the drug was still in its developmental stages, and contained only one hormone – oestrogen.  The addition of progesterone seemed to solve this problem and HRT marched onwards.

For years afterwards, HRT was linked positively to a reduction in heart disease and osteoporosis, fewer bone fractures and protection against cognitive decline.

However, ten years ago, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) published a report which was to radically turn all conventional thinking about HRT firmly on its head.

The WHI had undertaken a mammoth study of over 160,000 generally healthy postmenopausal women, to test the effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy, diet modification, and calcium and vitamin D supplements on heart disease, fractures, and breast cancer.

For the HRT study, half of the women involved took hormone replacements and half took placebos.

The study was to take place over a number of years.  However, the results after the first five years were so alarming that the trial was prematurely halted.

Evidence had shown an increase in the incidences of  heart disease and certain forms of cancer, including breast cancer, in those who were taking hormone replacement therapy.

Not surprisingly, women stopped taking the drug in their droves, and prescription rates halved in the year immediately following the publication of the report.

This week, those findings, along with updated evidence and the results of other HRT studies from the last decade, have been reassessed by the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF),  a panel of independent experts who analyse medical evidence and make health based recommendations.

Lead author of the USPSTF report, Dr Heidi Nelson said:

'We looked at all the published studies on hormone therapy for the prevention of chronic disease.

‘What is new here is, we’ve taken all the results from the last 10 years and tried to distill them into the latest, most current results and how they might apply to individuals.'

The results, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine this week, present a somewhat more complex picture of the balance between risk and benefit.

There are two types of HRT medication – oestrogen and progesterone combined, and oestrogen on its own.

The combined HRT does, according to the Task Force, seem to increase the risk of breast cancer, strokes and dementia.  There was also evidence of an increased risk of blood clots and incontinence.

On the other hand, it did seem to offer some protection against bone fractures.

Confusingly, HRT that contained oestrogen alone seemed to lower incidences of breast cancer, and the WHI have said that many of the negative effects that arose from their study were only seen in women in their 60s and 70s (those women who were new to the menopause did not take part in their study).

The USPSTF have said that the recommendations are based on 'at least fair' evidence that the harm of taking HRT outweighs the benefits.

So where do we stand?  It's (fairly) clear that the risks outweigh the benefits for those women who are post-menopausal, and the advice is not to take HRT as a preventative measure against bone fractures, heart disease or dementia.

And for those who are going through 'the change' (which is the majority of women on HRT)?

The recommendation seems to be that HRT can still be taken to alleviate the associated oppressive symptoms of menopause – hot flushes, night sweats, insomnia – but that the lowest dose possible should be taken over the shortest period of time.

There is still a great deal of uncertainty surrounding this issue and there are those in the medical profession who are still rightly worried about any woman taking hormones.

The problem is that there is no definitive evidence relating to women who are in the throes of menopause on hormone replacement therapy.  The waters here still seem to be dangerously murky.

As Nelson says: 'We looked at what we could find in this area and tried to find the most final results at this time.'

Murky waters indeed.

New UK rape investigation squad will deploy to war zones

Posted: 31 May 2012 01:00 AM PDT

Alex Morgan
WVoN co-editor

The UK this week announced the creation of a special rape investigation squad which can be deployed to investigate and collect evidence on rape, when used as a weapon of conflict, in war zones.

Launched by foreign secretary William Hague, the team of experts will be made up of police, forensic experts, and doctors and it is hoped that it will be in place by the end of 2012.

The UK hopes to use its presidency of the G8 in 2013 to encourage other countries to engage in tackling rape as a weapon of war.

Speaking at the event Hague said "there are chilling reports of rape in Syria today along with the murder, torture and repression of thousands of innocent civilians."

He also expressed his shock that out of the estimated 50,000 women who were raped during the Bosnian conflict only 30 prosecutions have taken place.

The launch event also saw an advance screening of Angelina Jolie's film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, which focusses on the use of sexual violence during the Bosnia war in the 1990s.

Jolie, who is a UN High Commissioner for Refugees, also spoke at the event in support of the initiative.