Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Petitions challenge blue-pink divide

Posted: 11 Dec 2012 06:00 AM PST

Fighting the gender bias in toys.

More than 25,000 people have signed a petition calling for a toy manufacturer to produce and market a child’s play oven in a gender neutral way.

The petition was started by 13-year-old McKenna Pope of New Jersery who wanted to buy an oven for her four-year-old brother for Christmas but was appalled to find the packaging was either pink or purple, and this put her off buying the item for him.

She appeared on CNN to promote her campaign saying: "I’m sure there are a lot of kids out there like my brother who want Easy-Bake ovens but don’t ask for them because they’re told they’re not supposed to want them,” she said.

“There’s a lot of toys specifically marketed towards boys and girls, but guys need to learn to cook and take care of children, too.”

Hasbro, who make the toy, have so far not responded.

It follows a similar petition which has attracted 2,000 respondents, set up by Carolyn Danckaert in Washington DC who started her petition after shopping for presents for her four young nieces.

‘When walking into a Toys R Us store or opening their catalogue, it’s instantly clear to kids that science, building, vehicles, and superheroes are the purview of boys while girls’ toys options are limited dolls, crafts, beauty supplies, and ofcourse princess paraphenalia,’ she writes.

When WVoN contacted Toys R Us, Kathleen Waugh, vice-president of Toys R Us corporate communications, denied there was a gender divide in their stores.

She said: "At Toys R Us, we do not merchandise, or promote in marketing vehicles, toys by gender.

“Toys are merchandised by product category, so customers can easily see the breadth of assortment.

“All learning toys, for example, from a variety of manufacturers, are merchandised together.

“The same is true for all categories, including sports toys, pre-school toys, construction sets, bikes, dolls, arts and crafts, action figures, musical instruments and more."

In Sweden, consumer pressure led to Toys R Us producing a catalogue for that country showing boys baking and girls playing with ‘boys toys’.

In an article entitled ‘Let toys be toys’ WVoN co-editor Jem McCarron looked into finding stereotyping in various British toy stores and departments, and has taken to searching for individual items online.

She wrote: "The associated marketing to parents begins before you even give birth via the 'boys' and 'girls' sections of Mothercare and the like but the children become direct targets frighteningly early."

A very interesting article on Policymic looks at whether gender neutrality leads to gender equality.

It points out that Mattel has introduced a construction set for girls but fails to comment that the manufacturer has dressed this up in a Barbie brand Mega Bloks Barbie Build and Style.

In other words, it has been pinky-fied and become a mansion which every future WAG or princess should aspire to.

But British store Harrod’s re-opened its toy department organised by themes rather than gender this year.

The Guardian reported that Matt Smith, of Shed Design, lead designer of the new-look department, said that the six zones it contains are "deliberately non-gender-specific, because we felt that was an antiquated way of looking at toys.

“I think increasingly kids are playing with an array of different toys and we wanted to give that balance.”

Harrods is following in the footsteps of London’s Hamley’s toy shop, which last year changed its layout away from separating boy toys from girls toys.

Dr Laura Nelson, who set up the Breakthrough campaign to challenge gender stereotyping, and specifically targeted Hamley’s, told The Guardian: "Until all toys and the shop layouts are completely gender-neutral, there will always be pressure on girls and boys to pursue the route in life consistent with their stereotype.”

The question more women should be asking…

Posted: 11 Dec 2012 01:00 AM PST

Men and women are sticking to the gender stereotypes when it comes to marriage proposals.

Ever since I got engaged last month, I’ve noticed some rather worrying trends in my behaviour.

My internet search history is now peppered with wedding blogs; I’ve started to view carboot sales as veritable treasure troves of adorable vintage wedding ephemera.

And perhaps most shamefully of all, I sometimes find myself mid-conversation, gazing distractedly much like a magpie in a jewellers, at the rather shiny and beautiful ring that now adorns my finger.

If I’m honest, I’ve been judging myself a little for this unforseen capitulation to gender stereotypes – occasionally I feel that it’s barely a step from here to desperately scraping together a dowry or promising to love honour and obey.

But perhaps it isn’t entirely my fault, because new research from the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests that many women, even liberal and well educated women, are still drawn in by the charms of the traditional marriage proposal and the cultural fairytale that surrounds it.

The university’s survey of 278 straight college students failed to find a single man willing to admit to wanting a woman to do the asking, and of the 2.8 per cent of women prepared to even consider popping the question themselves, the furthest they were willing to go was ‘kind of’ wanting to propose.

It’s not a problem unique to the US either.

A 2010 survey of British attitudes revealed that just 1 in ten UK women do the asking, and three quarters of that minority still wish their partner ‘had gotten in’ first!

Let’s not forget that this is the generation which helped to vote in the US’s first Black president and push for the legalisation of gay marriage.

So why do progressive attitudes stall when it comes to the tyranny of the traditional proposal?

In the Santa Cruz study, both men and women cited gender-based expectations as key reasons for their preferences.

Researcher Rachael Robnett, a graduate student in psychology, explained: “A really commonly cited [explanation] was a desire to adhere to gender-role traditions, so this is something that is coming through very explicitly, straight from the mouths of our participants.”

Put simply, men often felt that failure to propose themselves would be a failure to live up to the strong, active, decisive role required of them.

Whereas a woman who took the bull by the horns (or the groom by the hand) faced anxieties about being seen as too needy or pushy.

For women in particular, the choice seems to be between being lumbered with one of two stereotypes: the passive, delicate flower awaiting her knight in shining armour, or the desperate, needy shrew trying in vain to tie down a man who’s just not that bothered.

It’s hardly surprising then, that many women prefer to opt for the former.

Of course, it isn’t as if men have it easily either.

For my boyfriend, finding the perfect ring and making the perfect proposal seemed like some medieval style test of his love.

In the past he could have simply fought a dragon, or written a sonnet, but these days, it’s getting the asking right that counts.

“I felt that if I loved you, I’d know how you wanted it to be,” he confessed to me when the deal was sealed, after months of looking at every ring in a 100-mile radius and practising in front of the mirror.

But the truth is, we do ourselves huge disservices when we paint ourselves into such a rigid structure.

Very few women these days intend to spend their marriages living up to stereotypes of ‘women’s roles’ so why not at least consider starting as you mean to go on.

Because ultimately, if you love someone enough to spend your life with them, who cares who asks the question that sets that in motion?

It would be great to hear from WVoN readers about attitudes to marriage and proposals.

Would you/have you proposed to your partner? Do you have strong feelings one way or the other?

’16 Days’ and ending impunity

Posted: 11 Dec 2012 01:00 AM PST

This year the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office is marking the 16 Days.

The UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) marked the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence – which ran from from 25 November until 10 December - by participating in a global campaign to highlight issues around sexual violence in conflict.

The campaign looked at who sexual violence in conflict affects and where, what the issues and challenges to addressing this are and how the international community can respond.

Journalist Lauren Wolfe is director of Women Under Siege, an independent initiative documenting how rape and other forms of sexual violence have been used as tools in genocide and conflict throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.

Asked to write a feature for the Foreign Office, she wrote about the urgency of tracking sexualised violence in Syria.

She explained that what is so difficult about documenting sexualised violence in conflict, is that there's rarely "proof" of rape.

“It's not like we can see physical marks on a woman's body for the most part; the mark is often on her psyche, which suffers when she is forced to hide what is societally thought to be her ‘shame’."

Syria in particular, she continues, has proven acutely problematic in terms of the stigma of rape.

Women Under Siege have reports ‘of women killing themselves, being forced to divorce, and being murdered because they have been sexually violated’.

“And while we may not be able to verify sexual crimes against women – and men – being perpetrated right now during the ongoing war in Syria, we can collect the stories for future corroboration.”

For, as she points out, it is important to gather these stories before they are lost.

The reports recorded so far are shocking, sickening, tragic.

For example Journalist Aishi Zidan was told by a family about a 17 or 18 years old woman arrested recently in Latakia after participating in a demonstration. She was held for two weeks in an unidentified government detention centre, according to the family, where she was tortured and raped repeatedly.

After she was freed, the family said, she went to her parents house and threw herself from their balcony and died.

One prisoner reported that he and other male prisoners were forced to watch as a young woman was raped by government officers, that four separate groups of prisoners were forced to watch the woman being raped and that this was the fifth rape that one prisoner had been forced to witness.

In another report, a talk show featured an interview in which a former member of the Syrian parliament described a threat he allegedly received from the Syrian government. "You will hear your daughter crying if you do not retract the resignation." and he took it to mean she would be raped.

"When your daughter is threatened, what can you do?" he said. He and his family have since fled the country.

In an interview with Lauren Wolfe, Gloria Steinem – founder of Women under Siege - spoke about the intrinsic link between sexualised violence during the USA’s civil rights movement and the Holocaust, and present-day sexualised violence in conflict.

Steinem said: “Documenting the problem allows individual victims to know they're not alone or at fault, and allows the institutions of society to create remedies, from laws to education.

“Naming sexualised violence as a weapon of war makes it visible and subject to prosecution.

“By making clear that sexualised violence is political and public, it breaches that wall. It admits that sexualised violence can be changed.”

And today, Steinem's assertion about the significance of reporting, recording, and bearing witness to sexualised violence deeply resonates as targeted attacks against women and girls are being utilised to assert cultural, sexual, and political domination in conflict zones worldwide from Syria to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Earlier this year, the UK's Foreign Secretary William Hague launched the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, the aim of which is to replace the culture of impunity with one of deterrence.

The UK assumes the presidency of the G8 in January 2013, and hopes to build a global partnership to prevent sexual violence in conflict.