Women's Views on News |
- Don’t measure female success on appearance
- Polish women discuss life in the UK
- G8 addresses sexual violence in war
| Don’t measure female success on appearance Posted: 25 Apr 2013 07:00 AM PDT
You may have carved out an amazing career, juggled it with family life and your sanity, but can you still fit into a size ten? Controversial headline hunter and Daily Mail columnist Samantha Brick set Twitter alight with fury recently with the claim that fat equals failure, for women at least. It could have been an interesting take on how society still measures a woman’s success based on the way she looks – Brick was a successful TV exec herself before going bankrupt in 2006 and surely has plenty of experience to draw on. But oh no. The 42 year-old claims to have been on a permanent diet for the last 30 years, and said: "Any self-respecting woman wants to be thin, and to be thin you need to spend your life on a diet." All I can say is that must be so boring. “Chocolate, cakes, sweets and any other calorie-rich, fat-laden ‘foods’ are banned in my home.” Yawn. “For three decades, self-denial has been my best friend. And one of my biggest incentives is that I know men prefer slim women.” What?! I’d bet that her obsession with food, or the lack of it, is driven by deeper issues than simply her desire to get a date. What her article did do was shine a huge beacon of unflattering light on the demands that modern media, the Daily Mail certainly being no exception, place on women today. I’m sure it also drove a lot of traffic to the paper’s website, where you might want to follow up with articles such as ‘Miley Cyrus showcases her long legs in tiny hotpants’, ‘Molly Ringwald shows off her legs at book reading in Los Angeles’ and my particular favourite, ‘Hotter after heartbreak! Recently divorced Danica McKellar shows off her sexy single figure.’ There’s nothing like a devastating break up to help you get into shape. Anyhow, instead of discussing the pressures she encountered in the industry that she worked in, Brick goes on to boast about how she maintained her ‘svelte’ figure, advocating fad diets, skipping meals and existing on a meagre 1,000 calories a day. Her ramblings sound akin to someone with an eating disorder; fainting from lack of food and enjoying the hunger pangs because they remind you you’re in control. This woman has an unhealthy relationship with food, and for that matter with her husband, who has “Luckily for me, there is no better weight-loss incentive than a Frenchman. “Pascal would not tolerate a fat wife and has told me that if I put on weight, our marriage is over. “What more motivation do I need?” He sounds lovely. I know I should be ignoring this kind of attention-seeking drivel, but in a society where young women and girls seek out ‘thinspiration’ online, it’s just downright irresponsible for a national newspaper to advocate a life of miserable self-denial in the name of beauty. According to a government study, girls’ happiness lags behind boys’, purely because of the anxieties they have over body image. The research suggested that one in three 11-15 year-old girls struggle with their appearance. The internet has long provided a forum for girls and women to reaffirm their commitment to attaining that ultimate marker of success; skinny. Since Kate Moss proclaimed that ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ the motto has become a mantra for pro-anorexia websites, and just as social media has exploded in recent years, so has its use by the pro-ana and ‘thinspiration’ community. Instagram, Tumblr and Pintrest have put policies in place to curtail material that promotes eating disorders. Twitter failed to take a similar stance, and there is now a petition calling on the site to ban thinspiration hashtags. Material such as this, which promotes skinny as a lifestyle, fails to recognise the obsession as a very real mental illness, which makes trite commentary such as Brick’s all the more insidious. By putting such a focus on women’s physical appearance as a marker of success, she is just accepting the notion that women and girls will only ever be valued for how they look.  |
| Polish women discuss life in the UK Posted: 25 Apr 2013 04:55 AM PDT
Rachel Salmon spoke to some of the women who took part. "The main goal is to show that Polish women living in the UK are the ambitious ones, the passionate ones. They are hard working and can achieve great success," said Alexandra Musial, a student from London, and one of the organisers of the conference, called the United Kingdom of Polish Women. This event was put together by volunteers, government bodies and community organisations, and Saturday’s opening session attracted over 200 women. The conference was run on similar lines to the Women's Congress, an annual event which has brought women together to discuss gender equality in Poland for the last five years. Polish people now make up Britain’s second largest migrant community, so the organisers wanted to explore how the diaspora had affected women. There were workshops on women’s rights, arts, science, health and personal development as well as a Woman of the Year award ceremony, to celebrate the contribution Polish women are making to British life. All of the women I spoke to enjoyed living in the UK. They appreciated the multiculturalism and opportunities available, especially in London. "I can meet lots of different people. Britain has more opportunities to spread your wings," Alexandra Musial said. Kinga Goodwin, a cultural psychologist, and one of the panelists in the discussion about women in science at the conference, agreed. Goodwin has lived in the UK for eight years with her British husband. She believes that British culture is quite similar to that of Poland, and any prejudices are more to do with class than race. "People assume that migrants are working class because they tend to do working class jobs. "People have a patronising attitude, 'you must be a cleaner'. It may have been the case several years ago but now it is completely different. "I have heard about discrimination because of some vague economic reasons rather than nationalism," she said. Olivia Kapchia, who runs an estate agency in west London, believes you need to be a very hard worker to survive, especially in the capital. "But you can develop in any areas you want, personal as well as business, which you could not do outside London," she said. The conference also featured a Polish Woman of the Year competition. One of the finalists, Eva Sadowska, runs Barka UK, the British branch of a charity established by her parents in Poland in the wake of the fall of communism. Barka UK supports vulnerable people from across Eastern Europe. It has offices in Hackney and the Elephant and Castle. Most of its staff do outreach work with street homeless people. The charity also runs a national helpline. Sadowska said fewer Eastern Europeans are coming to this country now, and those who do face huge problems. "Even people with Masters Degrees are cleaning toilets in bars and hotels. Their potential is being devalued. "Well educated people who lose their jobs sometimes lose their flats and are finding themselves on the streets. "This is a very difficult time for migrants," she said Sadowska believes that older migrants, who spent most of their time living under communism, can find life in the UK particularly difficult. "They find it very challenging to deal with the free market economy, not having the state having a monopoly over everything," she said. Barka has helped over 3,000 Eastern Europeans to return to their home countries, where they can access a range of services, from vocational training to detoxing. Some return to Britain, and a number of Barca's 15 UK-based staff are former clients. "If you take overall migration into Britain it is only a small minority who fail, but we must do what we can to support them," said Sadowska.  |
| G8 addresses sexual violence in war Posted: 25 Apr 2013 02:53 AM PDT
Ministers from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US met with UK Foreign Secretary William Hague in London on 10-11 April to discuss urgent international issues. As well as debating problems in Africa, Iran, North Korea and Syria, the foreign ministers agreed to embark on the first international effort to prevent sexual violence in conflict and to help victims. Sexual violence has long been used as a military tactic and has inflicted suffering on many women. Tens of thousands of women were raped in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s in the name of ethnic cleansing and nearly 250,000 were raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the last decade. Hague, who has led the UK's Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and raised the crisis to the G8 agenda, labelled wartime sexual violence as "one of the greatest and most persistent injustices in the world". He said he was "delighted" to announce the actions that eight of the world's wealthiest countries have agreed upon, including making "a historic declaration that rape and serious sexual violence in conflict are grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, as well as war crimes". This will make it easier to search for and prosecute anyone who is accused of rape or sexual violence, regardless of their nationality and location. The foreign ministers also committed to deploying experts and developing international protocol on documenting and investigating cases, which should increase the number of successful prosecutions. In addition, these steps will ensure that victims receive appropriate and long-term support, as will the G8 nations' promise to review the training that is currently provided to military and police. Women in particular will be better protected as the foreign ministers agreed to promote "women's active and equal political, social and economic participation" in conflict prevention and resolution and to encourage equality between men and women so that gender-based violence ends. Further commitments comprise defending and supporting female human rights defenders and pledging £23 million to funding preventative action and response efforts. Hague said that while the G8 Declaration on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict is "a turning point in our collective history", it is vital that the cause is sustained and gathers momentum. "Now that we have put warzone rape on the international agenda, it must never slip off it again and it must be given even greater prominence," he said. Zainab Hawa Bangura, who attended the meeting and is the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, said: "We have an opportunity like at no time before in history to break the back of this age-old evil. "May this be a decisive moment; our moment to put an end to this crime which is a blight on our collective humanity," she said. Angelina Jolie, actress and Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, was also present. She visited the Democratic Republic of Congo with Hague last month to highlight the issue of sexual violence in war and, according to Hague, has helped him "every step of the way" with the campaign. Jolie commended the G8 for deciding to take a "long-overdue stand" and said she particularly endorsed the Declaration's strong words on rights and freedoms for women and children. "Hundreds of thousands of women and children have been sexually assaulted, tortured, or forced into sexual slavery in the wars of our generation. Time and again the world has failed to prevent this abuse, or to hold attackers accountable," she said. Jolie said that this violence could be prevented and must be confronted, and that it was encouraging to see men in leadership positions speaking out against rape. Hague plans to take the campaign to the UN Security Council in June and the UN General Assembly in September.  |
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