Women's Views on News |
- A psychological room of your own
- Immunologist Brigitte Askonas has died
- Women’s rights and children’s rights
- Change in children’s medical care needed
| A psychological room of your own Posted: 05 Apr 2013 07:10 AM PDT
It is more than 80 years since Virginia Woolf wrote her iconic essay of the same name. It is also 40 years this year since Virago Books started championing female writers. In 2013, has the story for women changed? ‘Outside was the noisy quarrel, the commotion of the street market, the world barging its way through the thin, blue curtains into the inner sanctum of a writer’s room and writer’s mind – sparking a nightmare where peace once slept’. Doris Lessing’s vivid picture of security and insecurity, of real and imagined memories, in her feature essay ‘A Room Of One’s Own’ was republished last week by The New Statesman, 50 years after its original outing. A year before, in 1962, Lessing’s novel "The Golden Notebook" had been hailed a feminist bible. The Golden Notebook is famous for invoking the spirit of Virginia Woolf; and just as Woolf exhorted in her own original and iconic essay female writers needed to have ‘A Room of One’s Own’, here Lessing had found a physical space of her own. It gave Lessing the mental freedom to let her thoughts flow – both peaceful and disturbing. Women, as underlined by a report this week in the Daily Telegraph, still take on the lion’s share of domestic duties along with paid employment. And statistics show that women are twice as lightly as men to have depression. What women now need is the peaceful psychological room rather than an actual physical one. For 80 years after Woolf wrote her essay, and 40 years, this year, after Virago Books was set up, male writers still outstrip women both in literature and media as the VIDA count for 2012 shows. The two issues of women writers not being as prominent as men, and women being twice as likely to have depression, could emanate from the same source: the absence of any clear thinking space as women’s lives are crowded by the ‘busy-ness’ of it all. Journalist Allison Pearson has talked about her own battle with depression and that she has fallen foul of sandwich woman, the woman caught between the generations of being home provider, and career woman. She asked: "Is it women who are mad, or is it the society we live in? We always suspected there would be a price for Having It All, and we were happy to pay it; but we didn't know the cost would be our mental health." Kira Cochrane in her exploration of why women should be twice as susceptible to the ‘black dog’ as men, quotes psychologist Dorothy Rowe saying: "Now, says Rowe, while women are still often seen as mothers rather than individuals, there are many more pressures at play. "There’s still this idea that you’ve got to be a wonderful mother, but you also have to have a brilliant career, and you’ve got to look attractive all the time," she said. "There is no way that you can maintain that and bring up children. But it’s still being presented to women all the time, in every magazine, on every screen, that you should." Virginia Woolf talked about Shakespeare’s sister, who died young but never wrote a word because she never had the opportunity. Woolf said: “Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. “She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. “But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.” Shakespeare’s sister lives in Lessing, and she found space for her in her flat, where her bedroom becomes her place to think. “I spend a lot of time in the bedroom. Bed is the best place for reading, thinking or doing nothing. It is my room; it is where I feel I live – though the shape is bad and there are things about it that can never be anything but ugly.” A metaphor then for the mind, too. From her apartment, Lessing can hear the Swedish woman upstairs, who has an obsession with cleaning, and dresses ‘like a bride’ when her husband returns from trips abroad. Lessing is separate from her, pursuing a different life from that strand of domesticity, but she is glad the other woman is there, acknowledging their dual existence and sisterhood. “I think of her and of myself, lying horizontally above each other, as if we were on two shelves," Lessing wrote. In the afternoons Lessing takes a nap, entering a dream world where vivid images and loose connections ultimately informed her writing. While most naps were benign, she recounts how one occasion left her feeling frightened and lonely, how the room she had lovingly painted took on a different, faded hue. “I was alone in the room, though someone was next door: I could hear sounds that made me unhappy, apprehensive. From upstairs a laugh, hostile to me.” She was part of the world, but apart from it. The nightmare stayed with her, but she was never to revisit that particular room again. But what Lessing vividly articulates, thousands of women can identify with – lives lived in a crowded world, but ones that at their core have moments – and for some, many years – of intense loneliness and fear; and how if women break from the expected norm of provider, domestic worker, supporter of partner, they can become outsiders. Woman as "all things to all men" is still firmly fixed in society’s mindset. As Cochrane pointed out in another Guardian article, the feminist book press has made an impact. However, there is still a long search and mass spring clean of sexism and stereotyping to be had, before women can truly find their own sacred room of their own. A place where women are free to dream, and where the outside world stays beyond the thin, blue curtains.  |
| Immunologist Brigitte Askonas has died Posted: 05 Apr 2013 04:07 AM PDT
Professor Askonas, widely known as Ita, built on the work of the science’s earlier pioneers, Louis Pasteur and Paul Ehrlich, by increasing understanding of the immune system. She was born in Vienna in 1923 to Czech parents, Jewish converts to Catholicism. The family left Vienna in March 1938, finally settling in Canada in 1940. She spent two years at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, before going to McGill University, Montreal, from which she graduated in biochemistry in 1944. She gained an MSc then moved on to a post at the newly founded Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry at McGill. There she worked on the biochemistry of dementia with Karl Stern, before moving to England in 1949 to the biochemistry department at Cambridge University to do a PhD on muscle enzymes. In 1952 she joined the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), in London, and spent 36 years there, the last 12 of them as head of the immunology division. She retired in 1988. Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1973 she then began her seminal work on the role of T lymphocytes in infection, especially infections with the influenza and respiratory syncytial viruses, now widely regarded as her major contribution. Her work had important implications for the development of new vaccines against the infections that cause HIV/Aids, malaria, TB and pandemic influenza. Her work on respiratory syncytial virus, which afflicts infants, led to major insights into disease pathogenesis. She had a profound influence on immunology not only in her own research but also by fostering an interest in immunology in young scientists and supporting them in the development of their careers. Many of today's leading immunologists around the world began their careers as her PhD or postdoctoral students, among them Professors Andrew McMichael, Alain Townsend, Peter Openshaw, Charles Bangham and David Wraith. As a Fellow of the Royal Society, she served on its council and was a vice-president of the Society in 1989-90. She was a founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences; and an honorary member of the American Society of Immunology, of the Société Française d'Immunologie and of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Immunologie, Visiting Professor of Leucocyte Biology, Imperial College London. In 2007 she was awarded the Robert Koch Gold Medal, the leading international scientific prize in microbiology, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate, the highest honour that Cambridge University can bestow, in 2012.  |
| Women’s rights and children’s rights Posted: 05 Apr 2013 02:30 AM PDT
Guest post from Equality Now. Born and raised in Lebanon to a Lebanese mother, Nour was married off at age 15 to a relative of her father in Egypt. Her parents were scared that since she was not entitled to claim Lebanese citizenship through her mother, she would not be able to stay in Lebanon as an adult or have access to further education or work, leaving her vulnerable. Lebanon is not the only country where this is a problem. There are a number of countries where women cannot pass on their nationality either to their children, born at home or abroad, or to their spouses. Shireen is not allowed to register her Jordanian-born children on her Jordanian passport because their father is from another country. She has a troubled marriage and is terrified that her husband will take the children back to his country, leaving her with few and arduous options to get them back or have access to them. She, too, thinks of marrying off her daughter early in order to give her the sense of security that she herself lacks. In these two examples, had Nour's father rather than her mother been Lebanese and Shireen's husband rather than Shireen been Jordanian, the children would have had an automatic right to citizenship and would not face consequences, such as child marriage, which can result from discriminatory nationality laws. Over the last 13 years, Equality Now has been calling for the repeal of all sex discriminatory laws; however, despite repeated commitments by governments to do so, sex discrimination persists, including in citizenship and nationality laws. Nationality is an essential step in helping individuals access a fair and decent life and their equal rights – to education, healthcare, work, marriage choices and much more. Women and men should have equal rights to transfer their nationality to their children and their spouse, but too often the laws governing citizenship are based on – and so reinforce – stereotypical roles for women and men. This not only denies equality to women and men, it also causes unnecessary suffering, vulnerability and harm to all affected by the discrimination. Equality Now's full report, Campaign to End Sex Discrimination in Nationality and Citizenship Laws, which has been sent to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, documents a wide range of harmful consequences and calls on governments to remove all discrimination against women in passing on their nationality to their husbands and children. It highlights those countries where women do not have the same rights as men to convey their nationality, engendering much hardship for the families concerned. It is available online here. Consequences arising from the inability, largely of women, to pass on their nationality to their children or spouse can be very grave. They include: statelessness (lack of citizenship) fear of deportation of children and husband additional vulnerability of girls to forced and early marriage increased vulnerability of women in abusive marriages difficulties for women in claiming child custody/access on marriage breakup lack of access to publicly-funded education for the children lack of access to publicly-funded medical services and national health insurance lack of access to social benefits inability to register personal property limited freedom of movement, including to travel abroad limited access to jobs and economic opportunities trauma and anxiety Nationality laws can be very complex, but removing any discrimination between men and women is straightforward and should be achieved through immediate legal reform. Please sign our petition calling for the repeal of discriminatory nationality laws. This petition calls on the governments of the following countries to amend all discriminatory provisions in their constitutions, laws, regulations and policies that prevent women and men from passing on their nationality to their children and their spouse on an equal basis: Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Brunei, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo (Republic of), Denmark, Egypt, Guatemala, Guinea, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kiribati, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Nauru, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United States of America, Vanuatu, Yemen. Please share the petition with your friends and colleagues and urge them to take part in the campaign. Thanks.  |
| Change in children’s medical care needed Posted: 05 Apr 2013 01:09 AM PDT
Almost 2,000 British children a year die from "avoidable" causes because family doctors lack training in paediatric care, according to a recent study. The UK was at the bottom of a European league, with the highest number of excess child deaths among 15 member states of the European Union. The study was led by Ingrid Wolfe, programme director for the Evelina London Children's Hospital at Guy's and St Thomas's NHS Foundation Trust. Part of a series on the state of health in Europe, the study, published in the medical journal The Lancet, charts the widening gap in life expectancy between Eastern and Western Europe. The UK has one of the highest child death rates from pneumonia, twice as high as Sweden's and three times those of France and Austria, even though the condition can be treated with antibiotics. And the UK has the highest death rate and the highest prevalence of asthma out of eight European countries. Sweden has the lowest death rate and average prevalence. "This is a preventable cause of death," Dr Wolfe said. "If anything, [asthma] being commoner in the UK means we should be better at preventing deaths from it." And today's children are more likely to face such chronic problems as asthma, diabetes or behavioural difficulties, rather than the infectious diseases that were dominant a generation ago. Death rates among children have been cut dramatically throughout Europe over the past three decades as a result of better housing and nutrition, improved healthcare and stronger public-health measures such as smoking bans. But Dr Wolfe said health services were not keeping pace with changes in children's health needs. "Arguably, we should not be allowing children to die from pneumonia in countries with high-functioning health systems," she said. "Five more children a day die in Britain compared with Sweden. I think that is a national scandal and we don't make enough of it. "Two thousand families lose a child each year – arguably avoidably."  |
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