Women's Views on News |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2013 07:08 AM PDT
She died on 8 June 1913 after she collided with a racehorse owned by King George V during a race at the Epsom Derby on 4 June. She was 40 years old. Events, projects and campaigns to commemorate her death and remember her life have been taking place across the country; here is a look at some of them. The 100 Deeds project gets its name from the Suffragette’s motto of ‘Deeds Not Words’. The project organisers hoped to get 100 people to do, and share, a deed, and project organisers Sarah Evans and Jenny Gaskell, have collected the ‘deeds’ on the project’s website. While the deeds have now exceeded the target number, the original 100 featured in People's History Museum, from 4 – 14 June 2013 as part of Wonder Women: Radical Manchester. Among the deeds submitted to the project were protests, campaigns, artwork and performances, blogs and events. Some were organised by groups and collectives, but many were submitted by individuals – both men and women. Deeds varied greatly and included nudity, embroidery, comedy, cakes, drilling and all sorts of other things which have been done to create a positive impact. One woman listed seven promises she is making to her baby daughter, another made an awesome female-Jedi T-shirt for her Star Wars-obsessed daughter. Anyone wanting to do a deed can still get involved, just do your deed, take a picture and upload it to the website. Various campaigns wanted to remember Emily Davison. The Emily Davison Memorial Trust has been campaigning to have a one-minute silence at the 2013 Epsom Derby. They said, “A hundred years on from Emily Davison's last protest we still face inequality and oppression. “It's vital that the sacrifice she made in the fight for democracy and women's rights is remembered. “The Emily Wilding Davison Memorial Campaign has been set up to campaign for a minute's silence at the 2013 Derby Day in her memory.” In April, as the result of another long campaign, a plaque to commemorate Emily Davison was set up at Tattenham Corner at the Epsom racecourse. It says: “It was from this place on the 4th June 1913, that suffragette Emily Wilding Davison sustained injuries that resulted in her death at Epsom Cottage Hospital. Her lifelong dedication to women’s suffrage and the contribution she made to the lives of British women, past and present, is remembered.” A further campaign has been waged at Westminster, where MPs have called for a statue of Davison to be erected. The Labour MP Emily Thornberry has led the campaign, and she feels that women are underrepresented in the Westminster statues. She said, “It is so preposterous that there are so few women, it really is time that Emily Davison was recognised at Westminster. If John Major can have two, I’m sure there is space for one for Emily.” And inside Westminster Thornberry organised a well-attended memorial ceremony for Emily, at which Theresa May, Harriet Harman, John Bercow, Helen Pankhurst – great-granddaughter of Emmeline – Sandi Toksvig and Woman’s Hour presenter Jane Garvey were speakers. The Guardian ran an article asking well-known women and those working with women or for women’s rights what they fight for today as ‘twenty-first century Suffragettes’. Answers were given by UK Feminista founder Kat Banyard, historian Mary Beard, musician Billy Bragg, and Sir Patrick Stuart, and covered topics including violence against women and girls, challenging gender stereotypes, equal representation in parliament, the pornification of popular culture and equal pay. Channel 4 showed a fascinating documentary presented by Clare Balding, which went back to the original film footage of the race in an attempt to understand what Emily Davison had been trying to do when the King’s horse, Amner, collided with her. The Emily Wilding Festival running from 13-16 June consists of a series of events in London’s Bloomsbury, where a service was held at St George’s Church before her funeral in Morpeth. The festival is curated by London based arts collective Soundcastle in partnership with the Museum of London and St George's Bloomsbury. The multi-arts programme includes music, dance, drama, talks and forums. The London School of Economics (LSE), new home of the Women’s Library, has created an online exhibition about Emily, which features letters she wrote, her personal account of being force-fed in Holloway prison and show the famous return train ticket from the Epsom Derby race. It is really encouraging to see such a wide variety of activity across the country remembering Emily Davison. The gist of the story of how she met her death is now well-known, but it is her life, and the way she lived it in utter dedication to the cause she believed in, that inspires so many people today.  |
| UK comes sixth in entrepreneurship index Posted: 13 Jun 2013 04:19 AM PDT
The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute (GEDI) found that the USA has the best conditions for female entrepreneurs to flourish, followed by Australia, Germany, France and Mexico. Egypt, India and Uganda took the bottom three places. Dell commissioned the study and released the results on 4 June at their 2013 Women's Entrepreneur Network conference, which this year was held in Istanbul. The computer giant set out to identify the areas where countries are failing to support female entrepreneurship and find a course of action for sustained development. The GEDI used 30 factors to compare countries of varying wealth, including financial access, higher education and legal rights. A low female to male business startups ratio of 46:100 and few women graduating with science degrees pushed the UK into sixth place. The overall results ranged from 76 to 32 out of a possible 100, showing that there is room for improvement even for countries that ranked high in the index and have high GDPs. Many of these countries scored low in the social norms category, which measures societal support for female entrepreneurs. The GEDI found that women worldwide face a trade-off between having a career and a family as often employers are wary of hiring women and do not have family-friendly employment options. Women are poorly represented in management even in affluent countries, with women making up just nine per cent of managers in Japan and 35 per cent in the UK. The Institute believes that this is a significant problem because 'management experience provides women with additional skills, experience and networks that facilitate female entrepreneurship success'. Other factors that impede success include access to technology, the availability of higher education and the difficulty of starting up a business. According to the GEDI, women from all over the world receive less outside funding for their businesses than men – and in some countries women do not even have access to bank accounts. Just seven per cent of women have bank accounts in Egypt and 15 per cent in Uganda. The Institute said that 'formal financing is especially important for female entrepreneurs, who tend to have less personal capital to invest in their businesses'. Greater support for female entrepreneurs would also benefit countries financially. 'To harness the full potential of a country's human capital, it is critical to eliminate the gendered institutions and gender-based barriers that exclude a large portion of women from entrepreneurial pursuits,' the non-profit research firm said in their report. Karen Quintos, chief marketing officer and senior vice-president at Dell, agreed with the GEDI, saying, "Unleashing the power of female entrepreneurship can have a dramatic effect on a country's economy. "The research clearly supports the assertion that key things need to be fixed in order for female entrepreneurship to survive and flourish. "Increased access to knowledge, networks, capital and technology are critical if countries are to empower female entrepreneurship and create a culture of success," she stressed. Dell plans to continue working with the GEDI to support female entrepreneurship and encourage change at both a local and international level.  |
| Posted: 13 Jun 2013 01:09 AM PDT
When Sleeping Women Wake, Mountains Move was the title of a conference convened by Justice for Iran recently at Regent's College, London. The symposium saw the launch of a comprehensive report by Justice for Iran on rape and sexual torture of women under the Islamic Republic. According to a blogger on rights group Amnesty International’s website, a packed Turke Hall witnessed speaker after speaker talk of their experiences of mass killings in Iran, Rwanda, and Darfur in Sudan and the heroic actions of the survivors of the atrocities. In a panel chaired by Professor Payam Akhavan, Dr Mariam Suliman, a survivor from Darfur in south Sudan, spoke of the genocide which started 10 years ago and continues to this day. Esther Mujawayo spoke of her horrific experiences during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and of the memory of the loved ones she lost. Khatereh Moini spoke of the loss of two brothers during the 1988 massacres in Iran, of the Khavaran cemetery, and the mourning mothers and their battle with the security forces who wanted to remove them and prevent them from mourning their loved ones even though they did not know where they had been buried. Other speakers talked about their experiences in Iranian prisons, of torture and rape in detention and of the continuing denial by the Islamic Republic of Iran of the genocide of 1988. Testimonies of some of the women were so unbearably horrific, reports the blogger, ‘that one could not endure to hear what human are capable to do with other human beings’. Almost all the women who so courageously came forward to speak of their experiences emphasised that they did not want revenge but justice. Justice, says the blogger, is what all the survivors and the rest of the population want. Dr Ahmad Shahid, UN Special Rapporteur on Iran, spoke of his findings during interviews with 400 Iranians outside the country. He also spoke about the reports he has presented to the UN on the situation of human rights in Iran. Shadi Sadr, one of the founders of Justice for Iran who has relentlessly worked to gather information about victims of injustices in the Iranian legal system, spoke of their findings during their research to document the facts. She said she knows that speaking about such horrific experiences is difficult but the aim was to give a voice to the voiceless, to those who cannot otherwise speak about their suffering. The event marked the 25th anniversary of the mass rape, torture and execution of political prisoners, the 4th anniversary of the 2009 post-election arrests and executions and the 30th anniversary of the deaths of the largest group of Baha'i women, executed in 1983.  |
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