Women's Views on News |
- Soup kitchens as an exit strategy
- Older women still missing film roles
- England aims for redemption this summer
| Soup kitchens as an exit strategy Posted: 09 May 2013 08:42 AM PDT
‘Amsterdam. Stag weekends were pretty much made with this city in mind. ‘Even if you’re a Dam virgin, you will naturally have heard about the Red Light District. Who hasn’t? ‘Amsterdam stag weekends don’t have to be all about the neon lights, but you can’t come to the Dam and not at least take a tour of her famously debauched district. ‘All in the name of research of course! ‘We show Amsterdam stag weekends the hottest bars and strip clubs in the area, so stick with us if you want to experience the city’s wild side at her very best. It’s one of those things to do before you’re 30. ‘If by some weird twist of fate you’re over 30 and haven’t done the Red Light thing yet, Amsterdam stag weekends give you the perfect excuse to pop your cherry.’ One of many 'stag night' ads that come up when you use the internet search engines. Delightful. An estimated 70 per cent of women working in prostitution in the Netherlands are foreigners, primarily from Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and South America. Or, put another way: over 25,000 women work as prostitutes in the Netherlands, many of whom are from poor countries in Eastern Europe and around the world. The absence of job opportunities in their origin countries is widely recognized as the main reason given for their presence there. Not For Sale is working to provide dignified work for women vulnerable to exploitation in Amsterdam and other countries. Not For Sale Netherlands, located in the heart of Amsterdam’s Red Light District, offers professional skill training in culinary arts and catering to survivors of red light exploitation being rehabilitated in Amsterdam. The women training in the project's kitchen learn to prepare soup, and that is sold to individual women working in the brothels in the surrounding Red Light District. The catering programme thus becomes visible through the soup kitchen and the community space where meals are made for the women by the women and in doing so displays possible employment alternatives to prostitution. The idea is that during their internships, the women experience a normal, healthy work environment that offers a sense of equality and empowerment and gain valuable jobs and life skills that will lead to dignified employment in their home countries. As well as a healthy meal and a taste of home. Most significantly, selling soup to women in the Red Light District enables Not For Sale to build credible and lasting relationships that can through a light on their backgrounds and the factors that contributed to their current situation. This information can be used to create solutions that improve economic opportunities for those most vulnerable communities in Eastern Europe, and ultimately prevent trafficking before it occurs. For more information about Not For Sale and what you can do to help, click here.  |
| Older women still missing film roles Posted: 09 May 2013 06:30 AM PDT
A young actress pulling out of a heist movie is not usually an event to pre-occupy feminist thought. It is more the kind of ephemera reported by websites fond of the irksome term 'starlet'. Yet when Kirsten Stewart recently departed from 'Focus', claiming her co-star Will Smith was too old to play her lover, it warranted comment. Vulture magazine picked up the thread and plotted the data of 'ten middle-aged leading men and the ages of the women they wooed on-screen'. With some anomalies, the graphs were inversely proportionate: the older the actor became, the younger, comparatively, was his love interest. This is not a new phenomenon. The history of narrative cinema has, infuriatingly, been predicated upon the union between gorgeous female youth and mature male virility. The problem, as Molly Haskell and more recently Lindy West, have pointed out, is not that such relationships don't occur in reality, or shouldn't. To critique the convention is not to critique the concept per se. However, with an average two-year age gap in UK relationships, film couples are vastly unrepresentative of our reality. They are instead an unreferenced testament to the invisibility of older actresses and a startling filmic double standard: men get to stay sexy and age on screen, women don't. Proof, as Susan Sontag put it, that “getting older is less profoundly wounding for a man". It is almost 40 years since Laura Mulvey conceptualised what is now the bedrock of Western feminist film theory, the concept of 'the male gaze'. Mulvey asserted that in film women are typically the objects, rather than the possessors, of the gaze; that they are the ‘watched’, while men are the ‘watchers’. In those 40 years nothing has changed. It remains the primary function of women on screen to fit the paradigm of heterosexual male desire. Older women, and in particular older women's sexuality, is denied. A UK Film Council survey from 2011, reflected this, with 61 per cent of women aged 50-75 stating that women of their age were portrayed on film as 'not having sexual needs or desires'. The disinclination to show older women on screen has lead to absurdities such as 29 year-old Angelina Jolie playing the mother of 28 year-old Colin Farrell in Alexander. When female sexuality does appear, it is often filtered through a comic or predatory lens, particularly if the male counterpart is younger. Mrs Robinson is an obvious archetype of what has now developed the pejorative moniker of 'cougar'. Women desperately need the chance to portray their lives honestly and realistically. For if what we see on screen affects the way we view reality, the age we stop seeing women as 'useful' to society is being truncated at an alarmingly rapid rate. Unfortunately, director Nancy Meyers probably stands alone in producing films that depict sexually active older women in relationships with their peers. If it were easier for women to make mainstream films, and Hollywood didn't “worship at the alter of the 18-25 year old penis” (thank you, Helen Mirren) I'm sure we'd see a damn sight more.  |
| England aims for redemption this summer Posted: 09 May 2013 02:00 AM PDT
England’s cricketers will look to banish memories of their last two tournaments when they take on Pakistan and Australia this summer. Captain Charlotte Edwards will be hoping the team can live up to its status as favourite, especially when they take on the Aussies for the Ashes in August. The last eight months have undoubtedly been disappointing. In October Australia won a tight T20 final in Colombo. England had hoped to wrest the title from Australia, who had won it in 2010, but fell four runs short. This defeat was only England's second in 26 T20 matches. This was followed by the even bigger disappointment of finishing third in the 50-over World Cup in India in February. England went into the tournament as firm favourites, but all-too-obvious nerves caused a series of inconsistent performances including tight but telling losses to both Sri Lanka and Australia along the way. They could only watch as Australia demolished the surprise finalists West Indies to win by 114 runs and claim their second championship title in four months. In addition to these disappointments, off-field debate and controversy have proved a distraction. In Edwards' first media conference after the World Cup final she was quick to admit her frustration. "We came here to win this tournament and we haven’t even reached the final. There’s no excuse," she said. This, and other reported comment, gave rise to intense speculation over Edwards' future as captain. No sooner had that issue been settled, than the furore over Sarah Taylor's inclusion in Sussex men's second XI squad this summer erupted. Many column inches were devoted to this topic, but Charlotte Edward's commented on Sky News: "Sarah is a wonderful player and I am sure that she can adapt. "From a captain and England perspective we want them training for women's cricket. They are slightly different games." So, is there dissension in the ranks? Probably not. This is an incredibly talented, focused team that is hurting. This is a new season with new challenges and it's time to move on. England will be hoping to play themselves into form in their games against Pakistan in July. The games will be: 1 July – 1st ODI at Louth CC, Lincolnshire from 10.45am However, the real business of the summer will be against the Australians. They play three one-day internationals, three twenty20 internationals and one test match in a tight timescale in August. August 11-14 – Test match Wormsley Cricket Ground, Buckinghamshire 11.00am One concern for Australia will be the fitness of their star fast bowler, Ellyse Perry. In March, Perry had surgery on her ankle and she was on schedule to take a full part in the tour of England, but an infection has caused her to have a second operation. In an interview with the BBC, Cricket Australia's chief medical officer, Justin Paoloni said that Perry's anticipated return to bowling was another 10-12 weeks away, and that this latest surgery was “expected to set Ellyse’s rehabilitation timeline back an extra two to three weeks”. They are still expecting Perry to be fit for the vital Ashes match, but it may be touch and go. In terms of broadcast coverage, there is no word yet about radio coverage, so watch this space. However, the first T20 at Chelmsford will be televised by Sky. The second and third T20s will be part of a double-header with England's men's games and will be also be on Sky.  |
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