Friday, February 1, 2013

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Uncovering ‘invisible’ forms of sexism

Posted: 31 Jan 2013 08:25 AM PST

mouthStreet harassment made me scared to walk down the street.

Guest post by Louise Rogers.

On 8 January a hashtag called #ShoutingBack was created.

When I read the tweets there I was quite alarmed at the content of them – and the high number them.

These were tales by women of all ages, on street harassment.

Reading them, I became quite enraged at what these women had gone through.

‘Walked home when I was 14. Man said "hello pretty lady" ignored him and he replied with "Well fuck you then"; ‘Being followed by a car of teenage boys who then tried to reverse into me when I wouldn't talk to them’; ‘Walking home in the afternoon. Drunk guy says: If I knew where you lived, I'd follow you home and rape you.’

The stories tweeted  range from women being abused verbally in the street, to disturbing reports of physical assault or grabbing on public transport.

And for many women being catcalled, groped and sometimes even assaulted on the street is the norm.

It is what happens almost every day.

Hundreds of tweets were posted to #ShoutingBack in just a few hours, shining a light on the sheer volume of this problem and showed the rest of twitter just how rife the problem is today.

It has also given women a platform and a voice where they can speak about their experiences, when many before have felt silenced.

#ShoutingBack was created by The Everyday Sexism Project.

Laura Bates, from The Everyday Sexism Project, told Stylist magazine: "One of the big problems with street harassment is that if you don’t experience it, you rarely see it, so there’s a huge lack of awareness about just how serious the issue still is.

“We started #ShoutingBack as part of The Everyday Sexism Project's goal of uncovering 'invisible' forms of sexism.

“We wanted to open the world's eyes to the serious harassment women still face on a daily basis.”

I myself have been subjected to street harassment and it is one of the most terrifying things to go through.

I have been followed and asked for money, but the most frightening occasion was the time I was grabbed in broad daylight.

There were two of them, one guy just stood near me laughing as his friend grabbed me from behind.

He pulled at my arm as his other hand was on my waist, trying to drag me down another street.

It was two o'clock on a sunny afternoon and there were many people walking past, but no one batted an eyelid.

I rang the police and made a statement.

They rang me a few days later telling me they had seen the incident taking place on CCTV, but because I wasn't assaulted or sexually assaulted, they wouldn't be taking the matter any further.

I was angry.

I was angry at the fact these guys did this to me, I was angry because no one who was walking past stopped to help or ask if I was okay, and I was angry because the police did nothing.

Since then I have avoided that street.

Every time I pass a stranger in public I avoid all eye contact.

If I hear someone walking behind me, I speed up.

That incident made me paranoid.

When I read through the #ShoutingBack hashtag, it made me angrier.

No one should have to go through anything like that just when walking down the street.

Then I promised myself I would no longer be frightened when walking down the street.

I have a right to be there, just like anyone else.

Street harassment is not a compliment and is in actual fact a human rights violation, gender violence and a crime which must end.

All our stories matter greatly.

Let's all do some #ShoutingBack at this violating crime, these are also our streets.

The fight back has begun.

Baby boom pressure on maternity services

Posted: 31 Jan 2013 06:15 AM PST

mother_and_babyEngland is 5,000 midwives short claims Royal College.

The Royal College of Midwives [RCM] has just published its annual State of Maternity Services report.

The report quotes figures from the Office for National Statistics which show the number of new babies born, especially in England, is booming.

There were 688,120 babies born in England in 2011, 124,000 or 22 per cent more than in 2001, the highest number since 1971.

This trend is set to continue, at least until 2014, when 743,000 babies are expected to be born in England, a third more than in 2001.

And the number of older mothers is also increasing, up 81 per cent in England since 2001 – and older mothers can experience more complications during pregnancy and birth than younger women.

Yet the number of midwives has barely kept pace with these changes.

There were 3,000 more midwives in England in 2012 than 2001, up 19 per cent.

The Royal College of Midwives estimates that England is short of 5,000 full time midwives, and this shortage is affecting the quality of care they can provide.

It quotes a Bounty Word of Mum survey in 2012 which found 20 per cent of respondents did not feel supported by the NHS during their pregnancy and birth, 40 per cent said they saw a different midwife each time and 30 per cent said they were not adequately supported after the birth.

In 2011 half of the midwives in England were over 45 years old, compared to a third in 2002.

The government plans an extra 2,576 training places in 2012/13, which should help reverse this trend, so the number of training places in England should reach 6,000 for the first time – a development the report hails as a 'real milestone'.

But the RCM said had recently received reports from newly-qualified midwives saying that they were finding it hard to find work.

"Student midwives' hard work and taxpayers' money invested in their valuable training should not be squandered by a short-sighted approach to cost reduction," said the report.

According to the report, the baby boom has trailed off in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but the RCM believes this should an opportunity to improve care, not cut midwife numbers.

Scotland has maintained training numbers, and the RCM believes there is not currently a shortage, but there could be in future, because of the age of current midwives.

The RCM has put Wales ‘on watch’, as training numbers have been trimmed and midwife numbers are falling.

Are men doing it too?

Posted: 31 Jan 2013 02:00 AM PST

ErevanNew projects are providing alternatives to "sexy" images of women.

Are men doing it? That question is posed by Caitlin Moran in her book ‘How to Be a Woman’ and The Hawkeye Initiative (THI) as a quick test for sexism.

When asked about the images used in media and publication, the answer is usually no.

The "sex sells" marketing adage still appears to be true, with the unsaid aspect of the adage being that it is usually only when a woman is doing the posing.

The No More Page 3 campaign showed this last year when it presented the Sun newspaper with a card comparing images of men and women used in UK tabloid newspapers.

The main differences between the images were the amount of clothing worn and the poses used – the men were clothed and posed as professionals, whereas the women were in various states of undress and posed provocatively.

When a photo of the card was posted on Facebook, it was removed because of explicit content. Yet all the images had been gathered from publicly available newspapers.

As a riposte to the many instances of everyday sexism facing women, several new projects are highlighting, and providing alternatives to, the continued use of objectifying imagery.

Photographer Rion Sabean used a recent series of photographs "to have the viewer question their responses" and "ask two things: why is it considered sexy for a woman to pose in such ways, and why isn’t it sexy for a man to do the same?"

"Men-Ups" is Sabean's reimagining of traditional pin-up poses with men accompanied by props associated with maleness.

Similarly, in science fiction, fantasy and superhero comic book series, an indication of power and strength is often the ownership and use of a weapon.

For female characters in the genres, their skills and power are more-often-than-not accompanied by minimal clothing on fantastical bodies.

While bikinis are probably not most people's choice of combat-ready clothing, in this case it is the decoration on the woman's body striking a pose often described as disproportionate, deformed and contorted.

The Hawkeye Initiative's (THI) Test challenges, "If your female character can be replaced by Hawkeye [a bow-wielding male superhero] in the same pose without looking silly or stupid, then it's acceptable and probably non-sexist. If you can't, then just forget about it."

The purpose of The Hawkeye Initiative is "to draw attention to how deformed, hyper-sexualized, and unrealistically posed/dressed women are drawn in comics."

Fantasy author Jim Hines has taken The Hawkeye Test one step further by recreating objectifying book covers with himself in the title role.

The photos, taken by his wife, and accompanying blog posts became so popular that he extended the series to become a fundraiser for Aicardi syndrome, a genetic disorder that mostly affects girls.

“The way women are portrayed is just so ridiculous, so often, you just stop seeing it,” Hines said in a BBC article.

“I think posing has made people see it again – you see how ridiculous it is when a 38-year-old fantasy writer is doing it.”

Hines also points out that the responsibility for the current situation lies within every layer of our society, including all aspects of the publishing industry.

The solution, he says, will be found by continuing to talk about the problem and looking for and using good examples whenever possible.

Providing some of that solution is exactly what Tracy Hurley and Daniel Solis are trying to do with the Prismatic Art Collection.

Hurley, a freelance writer and blogger, and Solis, a game designer, say that "in geek culture, there are plenty of Lukes, but not enough Landos or Leias."

The purpose of the Prismatic Art Collection is to "hire a diverse group of artists to create fantasy art depicting heroes of all backgrounds" for the role-playing game industry and beyond.

Hurley said in an interview with Wired magazine that in comics, "the way women were drawn actively turned me off… so I spent a lot of my time reading and trying to do the mental gymnastics of changing the mostly male characters into someone more like me."

As a way to make more inclusive art more broadly available, the Prismatic Art Collection releases the work it commissions with a Creative Commons license, meaning that each piece is freely available for download.

This may go some way to counter-balancing the industry bias that Irene Gallo, creative director of Tor Books, believes is due to male artists greatly outnumbering their female counterparts; a particularly frustrating situation given that she says genders at art school courses are fairly equally balanced.

Contributing to the momentum, and awareness of need, for change are female-focused organisations like Team Girl Comic in Glasgow. "We are all girls, but we're not just for girls," the group says on its website.

Recognition of the diversity of audiences is supported by research like that from the Codex Group that found that less overtly explicit covers have a wider general appeal.

While projects like those above show the continued need for such work, persistent conversation and collaboration are making a future of more balanced and realistic representations of women in media and publishing more likely.

Image: “Erevan” © 2012 Crystal Frasier