Friday, October 12, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Pregnancy ‘formula’ criticised

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 09:00 AM PDT

Critics of a new pregnancy formula say it offers no new answers to fertility problems.

A new formula to predict a woman's chance of falling pregnant has been criticised for not giving couples any new answers to fertility problems.

In a study carried out by researchers from Warwick Medical School, a complex mathematical formula was developed in order to estimate a couple's chances of falling pregnant.

The formula combines information on how the chance of fertility drops with age with the length of time a woman has been trying to start a family, to come up with the odds of conceiving in any given month.

Usually it is thought acceptable for a couple to see a doctor if they have been trying to conceive for a year or more but the aim of this formula is to help doctors to decide whether to refer patients for costly fertility treatments or to advise them to keep trying for a while longer.

Professor Geraldine Hartshorne said: "As time goes by and people have been trying for a while, they start to get stressed and upset and that can affect their chances of having sex and then becoming pregnant.

"Approaching a doctor about a personal matter is daunting, so knowing the right time to start investigations would be a useful step forward."

One of the objectives of the research was to have an online calculator for couples trying to conceive so they can predict their chance of when they may get pregnant, thus helping their decision of whether to see their doctor or not.

But according to NHS Choices, this highly complex formula cannot really be a reliable tool for couples to use as people vary so much and it is highly unlikely to be brought into clinical use without further study.

“It is difficult to draw conclusions from the current study. The mathematical formula is highly complex and its reliability will need to be assessed with further testing.”

The research showed that for women aged from 25 to 30 there is little difference in their chances of conceiving on the next cycle, but the chances drop when a woman is 35 and up.

The advice from this research is that if you are in your mid-30′s you should go to a doctor after only 6 months of trying to conceive, rather than wait the year.

So, for all its complexity, the formula just cements the fact that it is more difficult to get pregnant as you get older rather than providing couples who are struggling to conceive with any new information on how to increase their chances.

As NHS Choices say, "Overall, the main finding of this study is not going to come as any great surprise either to fertility experts, or the general public: fertility declines with age."

Tories wade in deeper on abortion

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 04:00 AM PDT

Members of the Conservative Government back a reduction to the current 24 week abortion limit.

The highest echelons of the Conservative Government are backing a reduction to the current 24 week abortion limit – although the Prime Minister denies that the government has plans to bring forward new legislation on the issue.

Maria Miller, Minister for Women and Equalities, brought the contentious issue to the fore in an interview with the Telegraph.

When asked whether she would repeat her vote in the 2008 parliamentary debate to cut the legal limit from 24 to 20 weeks, she replied, "Absolutely. You have got to look at these matters in a very common sense way."

She continued: "What we are trying to do here is not to put obstacles in people's way but to reflect the way medial science has moved on."

The developments in science to which Miller alludes, perhaps, are that approximately one per cent of babies born at 22 weeks survive - although not without disability or severe health issues.

Of the 196,082 abortions carried out in 2011 in England and Wales, only 2,729 were carried out after 20 weeks gestation, and a considerable number of those were of fetuses with congenital abnormalities that simply could not have been picked up until later in pregnancy.

The science bit, then, does not seem to support Miller's comments.

Indeed, Clare Murphy, spokesperson for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) expressed anger at the appropriation of science as a foundation for Miller's ‘common sense’ approach.

"It is appropriate for them [the ministers supporting a reduction to the limit] to have their own personal convictions, but it is not appropriate for them to misuse science to bolster those convictions.

“They may have their moral qualms, but they are not entitled to transpose those moral qualms on to scientists and on to women," she said.

Nonetheless, it was scientific developments which the new Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, cited when he suggested the limit should be halved to 12 weeks – a point when women have barely had their first ultrasound and begun to reconcile themselves to becoming parents, let alone determined any foetal abnormalities.

In an interview with the Times, Hunt said: "Everyone looks at the evidence and comes to a view about when they think that moment is, and my view is that 12 weeks is the right point for it.

“It is just my view about that incredibly difficult question about the moment that we should deem life to start."

Despite a denial that his view is informed by his own religious beliefs, Hunt's comments echo those made by Rowan Williams, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury: "I would say that as soon as there is what you would call an individual there, we have something that begins to make the claim of a person."

A Women's Minister and Secretary for Health who ground their arguments falsely in medical science and implement the rhetoric of Christian ethics have unsurprisingly outraged Pro Choice campaigners and MPs alike.

The shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, described Hunt's remarks as "chilling“ and Diane Abbott suggested a reduction in the limit would be a move towards "anti-women politics“.

Surprisingly then, amid the cacophony of voices opposed to a reduction in the limit and frustrated by the topic's reappearance on the Conservative Party agenda, both Theresa May and David Cameron have conceded their personal preference for a reduction to the current limit.

Both have stressed that while the Government has no plans to bring legislation on the issue, Cameron would support a “modest” cut and May thinks that, ‘there is scope for some reduction.’

The timing of the comments has angered some political commentators who have suggested that the issue has been raised as a ploy to detract media attention from the public fury surrounding the dismantling of the NHS.

Indeed, suspicion has even been aroused from within the party, with Nadine Dorries blogging that 'Number 10 needed to do something to placate the Christian community' because the Conservative Party Conference may hold an announcement surrounding gay marriage.

The renewed Conservative threat to a woman's right to choose is indeed troubling, but what is more disquieting, perhaps, is the proposition that the government would raise such an emotive issue simply to distract the public or pacify a far-right minority.

Why so few women in tech?

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 04:00 AM PDT

Just 17 per cent of technology workforces are women – what is keeping them away?

Recent figures from the UK Home Office show that despite making up nearly half of the total UK workforce, women account for just 17 per cent of those working in IT and Telecoms.

Despite increasing media coverage of high profile women in technology, such as Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook) and Marissa Mayer (CEO and President of Yahoo) the figures are clear that these women are the exception and not a new rule.

It is not so surprising, then, that the media coverage of these prominent female figures focuses more on their experiences as a woman in technology than their actual job roles.

Sandberg is asked to speak frequently but her more popular talks and headlines cover such areas as being a woman in a senior role or saying its OK to cry at work.

Whereas Mayer has made the headlines because she was hired when she was pregnant, then again after adding motherhood to her list of "challenges".

Would her male counterpart's family status received such coverage?

Inequality in boardrooms across all industries has received attention in recent months, it is an international issue with women making up just 21% of senior managers.

However, the technology industry doesn’t just have an issue with senior mobility of women but they have trouble attracting them in the first place.

The problem starts in our schools according to the Royal Artillery Centre for Personal Development who report that those choosing IT at GCSE level is declining for both genders but the numbers are even smaller for women.

At A-level in 2011 92 per cent of those studying ITC were male and moving on into higher education women made up just 14 per cent of applicants and 16 per cent of acceptances overall.

Yet, for those 17 per cent that make it into the technology industry there seems to be growing support within companies. For example Facebook's Girl Geek Dinners or organisations, such as Lady Geek, created primarily to support women in Technology.

So with a growing set of female role models and active encouragement, why is technology still failing to interest women?

One suggestion raised time and again is that it simply isn’t attractive enough, it is still thought to be the domain of men with only unnaturally intelligent and nerdy girls getting a look in.

A recent article by the Guardian referenced a quote from Belinda Parmar’s book, Little Miss Geek, which says that commonly: “The ultimate goal is to make Tech more glamorous and desirable to women."

An unrealistic task given that large aspects of the industry are simply neither. The Guardian article goes on to ponder whether it could actually be that “low-key nature of developing, perhaps even the male environment ” that is a key attracter for women. However others argue that it is the male environment that puts women off.

Parmar goes on to say “The industry wants to change – it knows the gender balance is off, and will probably do things to address that.”

Of course, one could argue that the title of her book "Little Miss Geek" is pandering to and perpetuating the very stereotypes she is trying to combat, but her message is strong:  What women want from roles in Technology is not access to more men or glamour but exciting career opportunities, creative encouragement and a clear career path.

South Korea’s “disposable babies”

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Is a new law to blame for an increase in abandoned babies?

A pastor has accused the South Korean government of increasing the number of abandoned babies in the country after it passed a law intended to protect them.

Pastor Lee Jong-rak, who runs a "baby box" for women to drop off unwanted babies like a “delivery”, has witnessed an increase in the number of new-borns being left there after the new law took effect in August.

He claims the number rose from about five children a month to about 15 in September. ITN describes it as a “disposable society” gone extreme.

South Korea is trying to change its reputation of being a source of babies for adoption by people abroad.

According to the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare, the number of children adopted overseas from South Korea was as high as 148,394 between 1953 and 2001.

1079 South Korean children were adopted to the United States alone in 2009, the same year US actress, Kathrine Heigl and her husband, musician Josh Kelley, adopted one year old Naleigh from South Korea, joining the list of celebrities who have made international adoption a fad.

Now South Korea is encouraging domestic adoption and tightening up the process of a child's transfer from birth mother to adoptive parents, making it mandatory for parents to register newborns if they want to give them up. Under the new law, children may be adopted by overseas parents only if no adoptive family can be found within South Korea.

The new law also better protects the rights of single mothers and adoptees. Adoptees will also gain greater access to their birth records.

But this has not gone down well and has sparked a surge of undocumented babies being abandoned, said Pastor Lee Jong-rak. "If you look at the letters that mothers leave with their babies, they say they have nowhere to go, and it's because of the new law," Jong-rak told Reuters.

In the opinion of some analysts, to decrease the number of children available for adoption, support for single mothers should be increased. “Nearly 90 percent of children who are adopted in Korea are children from single mothers.”

Jong-rak, who has run the service at his Joosarang church since 2010, said people have become so desperate that for the first time they now drop off babies in broad daylight. “In the past, babies used to be abandoned at night but nowadays babies are abandoned in the daytime as well,” he said.

According to the Malaysian Insider, many of the babies abandoned in the box have physical or mental disabilities. The pastor has adopted 10 of them himself and is in the process of adopting four more despite critics accusing him of encouraging desperate mothers to neglect their babies.

 

Run for Love and end child sex slavery

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 01:33 AM PDT

Three hundred participants ran 14.6k in Richmond Park to raise money for charity earlier this week.

It was Love146′s Run forLove.

An international charity that works towards the abolition of child sex slavery and exploitation, Love146 estimates that over 1.2million children are trafficked around the world every year.

That’s two children every minute.

The charity, which has just celebrated its 10th year, gets its name from the number that was pinned to one girl’s red dress in a brothel in South East Asia that the charity’s founders visited in 2002.

Since then the charity has worked tirelessly around the world to prevent child sex trafficking and exploitation, and to provide aftercare for victims of child slavery.

Amongst the runners were members of the Hollyoaks cast and BBC Wipeout host Amanda Byram, who is Love146′s Associate Director of Advocacy.

Amanda Byram spoke to WVoN about her work with the charity and why she joined the run on Saturday, saying: “Run For Love is a way in which people can engage practically with the issues, and running on Saturday, with others who feel as deeply as I do about seeing the exploitation and slavery of children end, was fantastic.

"Working with Love146 I really get to understand how far reaching this issue of child slavery and exploitation is and how it is not an issue happening in the developing world, it is also happening on our own doorstep to our own children.

“It was wonderful to visit the Love146 survivor home in the Philippines and attend a double wedding of two girls who have been restored from the most terrible of experiences.

“It is saddening to know that children trafficked internationally or from our own communities here in the UK and Ireland are not afforded the same level of care as those children.”

One of the main focuses for the European arm of the charity is to address the grooming and pimping of UK children.

Love 146 Europe has recently published a review, created in partnership with the Centre for Crime & Justice Research at the University of Stirling, which looks at better survivor care for child trafficking victims in the UK.

This year has seen two high profile news stories which relate to this horrific crime, with the exposure of the Rochdale grooming ring, and the arrest of 13 men in Oxford accussed of child sex trafficking.

And a report due to be published by the Children’s Commissioner in November is expected to reveal the widespread incidence of child sex exploitation.

Deputy children’s commissioner Sue Berelowitz said she was “far from surprised at the revelations of horrific acts of child sexual exploitation”.

“In our two-year inquiry into child sexual exploitation, we are continuing to uncover what is happening to far too many vulnerable children and young people…”

Love146 Europe is working on prevention tools piloted in eastern Europe to address the exploitation of children in the UK.

And the charity will also be partnering with the National Working Group on Sexually Exploited Children and Young People to launch an online version of their Escape magazine.

This magazine, aimed at young people, was originally developed in Moldova and aims to reveal exploitation strategies and educate young people in making themselves less vulnerable to sex gangs.

The stories of child exploitation on Love146′s website make for heartbreaking reading. The horrors which these millions of children worldwide are subjected to sometimes feel beyond comprehension. But the charity is clear that there is life after slavery for victims. Their extensive survivor-care programmes have helped child victims recover and reclaim their lives.

However, as Europe Operations Director, Gaz Kishere says, their main goal is ending child trafficking altogether.

“The critical thing about this word "abolition" is that is refers to an active pursuit of something ending, and in this instance this is for the global exploitation of children to come to a full stop.

“It is this word "abolition" which has to remain our plumb line for the global anti-trafficking community.

“It is this need for an end which should be the factor which most defines us and drives us forwards together.”

To find out more about how you can support the work of Love146 and help end child sex slavery, click here.

Mummy, where’s your gene gone?

Posted: 11 Oct 2012 01:21 AM PDT

New research suggests women either have a ‘mummy gene’ or they don’t.

Here we go again. Following on from ‘mummy wars’ involving everything from stay-at-home mothers versus working mothers, breast versus bottle, cloth nappies versus disposables, attachment mothers to cry-it-out mothers, we have a new way to divide women when it comes to motherhood.

Following a recent study, scientists at Rockefeller University in New York say they may have found a single gene which may be responsible for motivating mothers to protect, feed and raise their young.

The ‘mummy gene’, no less.

By suppressing the gene in question in some female mice, researchers found that the mice spent less time licking, nurturing and caring for their little mice babies.

Now, I’m no scientist and I’m not an expert in genetics, but I’m slightly suspicious of this ‘finding’.

Not least because it immediately gets reported like this:

“Rory Delaney is a three-year-old who has not been out of diapers that long, but she already knows something about changing them.

“Her sister, Saorise, is a five-year-old kindergarten student who already knows what she wants to be when she grows up, a mom.

“Now, researchers…say the inclination that both Rory and Saorise feel at such a young age to nurture and feed their baby dolls and play with items like strollers could be something they were born with, and something that will definitely impact their futures.”

Aside from being confused as to what kind of mother gets her three-year-old daughter to change nappies (does she contract her out to daycare centres or what?), my immediate response is, so? My three-year-old knows something about doing a cracking Liam Gallagher impression, but I’m not convinced he’s going to grow up to be a swaggering Mancunian with a bad attitude and a dodgy haircut.

Speaking as somebody who never as a child so much as picked up a doll unless it was to ‘experiment’ with it by decapitating it, or throwing it out the bathroom window (y’know, to test gravity), and who could count on the fingers of one hand the amount of times I’d even touched a baby before some ignorant midwife plonked one of my own in my arms (terrified? you have no idea), I feel it’s only right I should warn my kids that they were a terrible mistake.

A crime against nature, no less.

It seems harsh, so I probably won’t bother. They’ll find out soon enough they’ve been short-changed in the mother department. It’s genetic, see?

Reporting aside, I’m still suspicious.

Scientists have so far found it exceedingly difficult to isolate a single gene to explain something as nebulous as ‘behaviour’, invariably finding such things are governed by complex interactions between several different genes. ‘Finding’ one gene to explain whether or not a woman has children, or adequately cares for them when she does, just seems… unlikely.

More importantly, the possession or otherwise of a single gene is largely meaningless in itself in terms of how you’ll behave. As the great Cordelia Fine explains in her book, “Delusions of Gender”:

“When it comes to genes, you get what you get. But gene activity is another story: genes switch on and off depending on what else is going on.

“Our environment, our behaviour, even our thinking, can all change what genes are expressed.”

Which means that mice – not known for thinking like humans at the best of times –  artificially manipulated in a controlled environment, may not tell us much at all about how a single gene expresses itself in women.

You know, those actual, human women who may express a desire to have children or not because of a thousand different reasons, and who may find the care of those children satisfying or soul-destroying depending on an equally varied number of reasons.

Despite this completely obvious fact, we get this from the study’s leader, Ana Ribeiro:

“Our studies certainly show that the type of receptor, or the total lack thereof, alters the ability to be a 'good' mother," Ribeiro said.

So somebody’s finally managed to define what a ‘good’ mother is? I missed the memo it seems. I don’t know about other mothers, but I for one don’t spend any time at all licking my children. Clearly mice mums are one up on me already.

Told you I was missing the gene.

Far from telling us who the ‘good’ mothers are, the study only really tells us that any ‘evidence’ that seeks to divide women, that seeks to reduce us to our ‘biology’, is still considered ‘news’.

And from where I’m sitting, that isn’t news at all.