Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

British Cycling to fight gender inequality

Posted: 09 Oct 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Following Team GB's cycling success, questions are being raised about gender inequality in the sport.

British cyclists were unquestionably dominant at the London Olympics. Yet even as Victoria Pendleton, Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins racked up the medals, discontent with the opportunities available for female cyclists was on the rise.

Emma Pooley, who won silver in the time trial in Beijing in 2008, kicked off the debate back in July.

"Women's cycling really does have a problem," she told the Guardian. "It's not a lack of enthusiasm or willingness, it's just that races aren't televised for the most part, so, for sponsors, it's like night and day compared with men's cycling."

This lack of sponsorship, she said, leads to the cancellation of races, and less financial support for women's cycling teams.

After winning silver in the road race to take Team GB's first medal this summer, Lizzie Armitstead joined Pooley in criticising the situation. She told reporters that the sexism in cycling "can get quite overwhelming and very frustrating".

Post-Olympics, a host of people involved in elite cycling have added their voices to the chorus. Tour de France winner and Olympic time trial champion Bradley Wiggins called women cyclists the "forgotten ones", and double Olympic gold medallist Victoria Pendleton has bemoaned the relative lack of opportunities for women, despite working as hard as the men.

In September, British Cycling performance coach and Team Sky mastermind Dave Brailsford announced that British Cycling would be addressing the problem.

"We've got good ideas so we're on the verge of making sure we roll something out," he told BBC Sport. "When you look at the structure of women's cycling on the road there's a gender imbalance between the male and female side, there's no denying that."

There is indeed no denying that women cyclists face more challenges than men. British women are most successful on the track, where they train alongside the men at the Manchester Velodrome and benefit from well-established infrastructure and a world-leading coaching team.

When it comes to road cycling, however, women suffer from a chronic lack of investment and sponsorship. The average budget for a top men's team is €9.5 million; for women, just €500,000.

Yet with the sport still basking in post-Olympics optimism, enthusiasm to tackle these problems is high. A range of ideas have been floated in recent weeks, including a women's version of the phenomenally successful Team Sky. Directed by Brailsford, Team Sky made Mark Cavendish one of the best sprinters of all time, and carried Bradley Wiggins to his historic victory in the Tour de France.

Brailsford has pledged to implement long-term, well structured solutions rather than just "throwing money at the problem": a good sign, since previous attempts have been short-lived.

There has also been support from fans. Twitter campaign #fanbackedwomensteam aims to raise £50,000 in fan donations towards founding a commercial women's team. If nothing else, such an initiative disproves the idea that fans are less interested in watching women race.

Wiggins himself has compared the situation of British women cyclists today to that of Team Sky several years ago, and has said he would be willing to invest his own money in a women's team.

The comparison with Team Sky is apt. Twenty years ago, the achievements made by British cyclists over the last few years would have been unthinkable. But thanks to sustained investment and planning, the sport is experiencing unprecedented interest and success.

In the current environment of renewed fan interest, Olympic success, and pledges of continued government funding, it is not difficult to imagine a similar outcome for women's cycling given a similar level of investment. Watch this space.

Simple blood test could detect breast cancer

Posted: 09 Oct 2012 07:00 AM PDT

Britain's largest breast screening clinic is to begin trials on a simple new blood test which may detect breast cancer before symptoms emerge.

Researchers claim that the test may also be useful in detecting potential relapses or the type of breast cancer, enabling clinicians to prescribe treatments which tackle it most effectively, claim researchers from the University of Leicester and Imperial College.

Cancer Research UK , in collaboration with the Univeristy of Leicester and Imperial College, London have invested over £1m into the study.

Blood samples will be taken from women attending the breast screening clinic at Charing Cross hospital in London and the DNA will be compared between women diagnosed with breast cancer and those who are not to see what DNA markers are consistent.

Dr Jacqui Shaw, principal investigator from the University of Leicester, said: "Women could have an annual blood test rather than breast screening. This would remove any worry and anxiety for women who are called for further investigations after a mammogram only to find they don't have cancer.

"As things stand we aren't able to monitor breast cancer patients after they've had surgery and treatment – which is like treating diabetes, but not measuring blood sugar levels. The new blood test could change that."

Mel B’s breasts in cancer awareness row

Posted: 09 Oct 2012 04:00 AM PDT

Cosmopolitan magazine criticised for topless photo of Spice Girl Mel B in its October issue.

The shoot was done for Breast Cancer Awareness Month and to promote breast cancer charity CoppaFeel!‘s campaign to highlight the importance of women checking their breasts for signs of cancer.

Mel B posed topless with her husband Stephen Belafonte’s hands covering her breasts to recreate the iconic 1993 Rolling Stone magazine cover which featured Janet Jackson.

They were pictured together as the first signs of breast cancer are often spotted by a women's partner and the magazine thought this would make the message more powerful to the younger generation.

But in an article in the Daily Mail, Natalie Shalom, who lost her mother to breast cancer and has two sisters suffering from the disease, said Cosmopolitan magazine had taken the message of self-examination and "distorted it into a seedy, self-promoting snapshot."

She asked if Mel B and her advisers had “any idea how it might feel for a woman who has lost her breasts to look at the singer's surgically boosted cleavage being manhandled in the name of breast cancer self-awareness?"

Cosmopolitan’s editor Louise Court said the point of the campaign was for young women to take preventative action, before it was too late.

"We wanted the photograph of Mel to be eye-catching and glamorous, and knew it might be a little controversial.

"But it was never intended to be disrespectful to women battling breast cancer, or to those who have lost loved ones to the disease."

Founder of CoppaFeel! Kristin Hallenga, diagnosed with breast cancer young – at the age of 23 – defended Cosmopolitan’s stance and said the aim of these pictures was to ensure younger women knew about the signs of breast cancer.

She told the Daily Mail: "Telling young women about the dark days of chemotherapy is not going to persuade my generation to check their breasts.

"If anything, it will scare them into doing nothing – and the fear of this disease must be stamped out or many young women will be diagnosed too late, as I was."

CoppaFeel! has set out to be different, clever and cheeky, to ensure young women are taking notice of their breasts and to make sure they know that it is not just a disease for older people.

The picture may be controversial but if it shocks women enough to take preventative measures against this disease then surely it can only be a good thing.

Mirror-fasting: the ugly face of obsession

Posted: 09 Oct 2012 01:30 AM PDT

Women, take down your mirrors! And stop being vain by looking at yourself so much.

You are so self-obsessed that you can’t pass your reflection without, well, reflecting on it. Who do you think you are anyway?

Since the summer news outlets  have been trying to convince us there is a growing trend called mirror-fasting. It started in the US, travelled to Britain and this weekend reached Australia or at least it did in the media’s imagination.

Mirror-fasting is when women (not men) take a break from looking in the mirror, in order to rid themselves of their self-obsession, apparently.

This is the more self-conscious cousin of the old game of daring TO GO OUT WITHOUT WEARING MAKE-UP. (see the Mail on a daily basis but here’s one example to be going on with).

Women are now being told that it is good for their self-esteem to cover over mirrors and not look in them for a month – all in order to stop worrying about their looks.

Apparently, nine in ten women over 40 have the condition of mirror-angst reports The Mirror (somewhat ironically) – although my GP friend says she has never heard of it.

So the paper asked writer Sally Windsor "a self-confessed vain mum-of-one" to spend a week avoiding mirrors, windows and her mobile phone.

She claimed that the pressure of living in Crawley, a town near Gatwick airport, which is popular with air hostesses had led her to slap on the fake tan, and Shellac nails, just to keep up with the cabin crew set on their school run.

However, after covering her mirrors with paper and drawing a smiley face on her make-up mirror and ‘only’ wearing mascara and moisturiser, she became liberated.

"The key to feeling good about yourself is to spend less time looking for imperfections. If you can't look in the mirror and see only good things, then try to look at yourself less," she reasoned.

This clearly makes as little sense as my reasoning that if I don’t look at my bank statement somehow the truth of my finances won’t be as bad I fear it might be.

This avoidance just results in getting more depressed and paranoid. Something which a psychologist in the Mail (of all places) points out in their mirror-fasting feature.

Dr Phillippa Diedrichs, of the Centre for Appearance Research in Bristol, said 'mirror-fasting' was another way of obsessing about appearance. She added: 'When working with people who have issues around body image we encourage the  "mirror exposure technique" – to look in the mirror and take a less critical approach.”

Mirror-fasting all started with New York beauty writer Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, who went a month without mirrors and wrote about it on her blog the beheld. This is a more intelligent, interesting analysis than the watered-down version that the tabloids are pumping out. Whitefield-Madrano argues that surveillance is "an effort to carefully control our ideas about ourselves".

She said that she was exhausted from appearing to be interested, appearing to be womanly, appearing to be professional, appearing to be pretty.

After a month without mirrors, Whitefield-Madrano concludes, among other things, that she can never become an objective viewer of herself, but can better recognise the differences between herself and her image.

So the media has distorted Madrano’s intentions to highlight once again the obsession of women having to look good (don’t men pose in front of mirrors too, certainly the ones at the gym do. Don’t alpha to zeta males worry about how they look on a night out and practice their outfits, style their hair, and raise their eyebrows to their reflection? Of course they do.)

Jezebel highlighted the panic that mirror-fasting has caused among the American broadcast media, who it reports seem appalled that women could give up mirrors. NBC’s chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman went into panic overdrive saying; "How we present ourselves opens up doors for job interviews and dating."

Jezebel asks: "Is it that they are in such an image-driven industry that they cannot fathom not caring about your appearance? Or, more cynically, could it be that much of the money that they bring in through advertising is tied up in products meant to keep women concerned with their appearance?"

Mirror-fasting throws up a number of issues, but what is being reported is the superficial and the gloss, and no-one has really attempted to get under the skin of what Whitefield-Madrano was trying to do and whether her conclusions stand up to close scrutiny.

As columnist Mary-ann Seighart said, she would rather deal with the causes of insecurity than “the symptom of looking in the mirror.”

 

Safety campaign launched after Rochdale

Posted: 09 Oct 2012 01:00 AM PDT

New campaign aims to get schools to address abuse of girls.

In May, nine men were convicted of offences against children after sexually 'sharing' five girls, some as young as 13.

Despite being alerted by one of the victims in 2008, the Crown Prosecution Service felt that she would be an ‘unreliable witness’, and Greater Manchester Police took another two years to initiate an investigation.

The End Violence Against Women coalition (EVAWc) has launched a new campaign aimed at getting schools to address the issue of the abuse of girls – including sexual harassment and assault, abuse related to 'sexting', and inaction on forced marriage and FGM.

EVAWc says that harassment and abuse of girls is widespread in towns, cities and rural areas and that surveys consistently show that there are deeply-held prejudicial attitudes that can foster and tolerate abuse.

EVAWc’s director, Holly Dustin, said: “In the face of ongoing scandals about sexual exploitation and abuse of girls within our schools, homes and communities, we cannot continue to bury our head in the sand.

“Schools have legal and moral obligations to tackle these issues and to address harmful attitudes and behaviours in the long term.

"School should be a place where girls grow up and learn in a safe environment, where children experiencing abuse can report and get the information and support they need, and where young people learn about sexual consent and healthy relationships, rather than boys learning about sex and relationships from the sexist media images they are bombarded with, or from porn.

"We hope our new campaign will see thousands of parents, young people and other local people talking to schools about issues that concern them, but central government has a critical role too in sending a message that girls’ safety is a national priority.

“We want to see all forms of violence against women and girls addressed in mandatory Sex and Relationships Education lessons in every school.

“We must stop assuming that abuse is inevitable and start making the changes needed to make all schools safe for girls.”

EVAWc is calling for:

  • Parents and young people to ask schools what they are doing to tackle issues such as sexual harassment, 'sexting', teenage relationship abuse, protecting girls at risk from female genital mutilation, attitudes to sex and healthy relationships
  • Central Government to make it a statutory requirement for schools to teach personal, social and health education (PSHE) and sex and relationships education (SRE) and to ensure all forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG), gender stereotyping and gender equality are included
  • Ongoing teacher training about identifying and addressing all forms of VAWG.
  • Funding for local women's groups to go into schools to do prevention work and support young people experiencing abuse
  • Local authorities to develop public campaigns such as Lambeth's 'Know the Difference' campaign on sexual assault. This should be a part of local VAWG strategies.

The campaign will feature as Mumsnet's 'campaign of the week' from 8 October. And activists from around the country will be meeting their MP on 24 October to discuss these issues as part of UK Feminista's lobby of parliament.

Template letters and factsheets can be downloaded from the EVAW Coalition website.

World Day for Decent Work day of action

Posted: 09 Oct 2012 01:00 AM PDT

Trade unions around the world have been demanding decent jobs and full respect for workers' rights.

From dawn in Fiji to sunset in Hawaii, workers from more than 100 countries took part in a global day of action, organising mobilisations, events and activities to demand stronger government action for economic recovery, job creation for young people, decent working conditions and full respect for workers' rights.

World Day for Decent Work 2012 – the fifth such day of action – was co-ordinated by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), and highlighted youth unemployment – which is as high as 60 per cent in some countries, and a whole generation of young people face exclusion from the labour market.

"The crisis, and the inability or unwillingness of governments to restore jobs and growth, is having a particularly brutal impact on young people.

"Official figures show that 75 million young people are without jobs across the world, many millions more are trapped in informal or precarious work, and tens of millions of new job seekers have no prospect of finding work, or education and training to equip them for work in the future," said Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the ITUC.

As well as events taking place worldwide, the ITUC has launched a special campaign website with a weather forecast theme where young workers can find the outlook for their own country.

They can also take action by writing to their labour ministers.

"The issue of unemployment for young people is a global crisis but where each national government needs to take its own responsibility, and this is a big responsibility for the labour ministers," Sharan Burrow said.

To mark the 2012 World Day for Decent Work, the British TUC released ‘A decent job?’ – a report assessing the Department for International Development’s (DFID) efforts to secure decent jobs for the world’s poor.

DFID scores just 25 out of 56 points based on criteria developed from the International Labour Organisation’s Decent Work Agenda.

To find out more about the global forecast for young people’s employment, visit the ITUC’s special website for the day.

New call for women’s literacy

Posted: 09 Oct 2012 12:00 AM PDT

A new campaign aims to ensure women and girls in developing countries can read and write.

Women's Right to Literacy is calling upon international organisations and agencies, including UNESCO and WHO, to develop dedicated strategies that will improve women's access to literacy learning.

And this includes more support for primary education for girls.

The initiative has been launched by the educational charity NIACE and the Literacy Working Group, a small voluntary group of representatives of key organisations and experienced individuals.

They will organise a series of events and online discussions over the next few months to develop the campaign.

Their report says that educated girls are more likely to access health care, marry later, and contribute more effectively to the family economy.

Educated women and girls are also more confident at claiming their rights and insisting on the education of their own daughters.

Jan Eldred, Chair of the Literacy Working Group and NIACE Senior Research Fellow said: "We recognise that there are many programmes, projects and initiatives which work hard to address women's literacy. However a lack of committed policies has led to minimal impact.

"We believe our calls for action will lead to more effective programmes for gender equity.

"They will increase community support for girls' education and enable women to make greater contributions to local and national decision-making."

Official figures cited in the campaign report indicate that around 514 million women across the world are illiterate. The majority of the 115 million children out of school are girls.

The UK government has already pledged to invest millions of pounds over the next few years to enable girls in 19 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East to take up and remain in primary education.

Organisations and individuals who wish to get involved in Women's Right to Literacy initiative can do so by clicking here.