Women's Views on News |
- Victories and updates 1
- Yael Farber takes Delhi rape case to the stage
- More cover for women’s sport!
- Stopping sexual offences on London transport
| Posted: 08 Aug 2013 08:48 AM PDT
The Irish edition of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid has adopted a more covered-up approach to the ‘glamour shot’, with this week's ‘stars’ including former Miss World Rosanna Davison and Dutch model Sylvie van der Vaart in swimwear, with ‘not a single nipple on show’. "Page 3 is a hugely popular pillar of the Sun in the UK and part of a package of great journalism which engages, entertains and informs in equal measure," Paul Clarkson, editor of the Irish Sun, is reported as saying in the Irish Times article reporting on this change. He went on to explain that "In the Irish Sun we strive to share the qualities that make the newspaper great in print and digital, but we also strive to cater for our own readers' needs and reflect the cultural differences in Ireland." The Guardian points out that this is a remarkable decision given that the paper has been running pictures of topless women for many years without apparently being aware of the “cultural differences”. The Dublin office, the Irish Tines reported, has received a few phone calls inquiring about the change, but only one reader is understood to have demanded its return. The petition calling on the Sun newspaper in the UK to drop Page 3 has to date attracted 113,000 signatures. But the Sun's new editor David Dinsmore’s attitude at the moment has dashed campaigners' hopes that his reign could signal a change in policy – although earlier this year Rupert Murdoch told a Twitter user she ‘may be right' when she told him topless models on page three of a newspaper was 'so last century'. Meanwhile 138 of the UK’s MPs have signed a letter to Sun editor Dinsmore saying that they could not “remain silent in the presence of a page that limits and misrepresents over half the population”. The letter said the topless Page 3 girl’ is “unacceptable” because her appearance reduces women to objects and men to objectifiers while reducing Britain to one that “upholds 1970s sexist values.” To sign the petition asking David Dinsmore to drop Page 3 from The Sun newspaper, given that boobs aren’t news, click here.  |
| Yael Farber takes Delhi rape case to the stage Posted: 08 Aug 2013 06:19 AM PDT
The story of the young Delhi woman who was gang-raped and left for dead has been brought to the stage in a piece that has just had its fifth public performance at London’s Riverside Studios, and is now to open at the Edinburgh Fringe on 5 August. On 16 December last year, a 23-year-old Indian student and her male friend were attacked on a bus in Delhi. She was savagely gang-raped; he was beaten to a pulp. They were then stripped, robbed, and left for dead at the roadside. The details were unbelievably shocking, gruesome. On 29 December the young woman died. The play, which also focuses on other stories of abuse against women in India, is called Nirbhaya – Hindi for “fearless” – an alias the Indian press gave to Jyoti Singh Pandey before her family allowed her name to go public. The playwright and director is Yael Farber, who was born and grew up in Johannesburg, and began her career making drama that responds to real events. Her South African adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie dominated last year’s festival, and is currently on a world tour. Before that, one of her best-known pieces was 'Amajuba, Like Doves We Rise' a searing play about life under apartheid, which was developed from the testimony of five survivors. The actress Poorna Jagannathan, Farber’s collaborator on this Nirbhaya project, had seen Amajuba in New York in 2006 and had the play in mind when she conscripted several women from Mumbai’s acting community for the Nirbhaya workshops. Jagannathan was only too aware that these women would probably have experienced sexual violence in some way themselves. “Look, if you’re a woman living in India you have testimony,” she told the Independent.”We didn’t screen.” Only two of the seven cast members in Nirbhaya are acting in any straightforward sense; the five other female performers, including Jagannathan, enact scenes from their own lives. Sneha Jawale is a dowry bride who was doused with kerosene and set alight by her husband, leaving her with severe burns. Another woman describes being abused as a nine-year-old. “I learn to leave my body behind,” she says. Yet another is beaten by her father, then suffers marital rape. “What was it about this case, about her?” Farber asks. “I think it just broke through the endemic numbness that we all develop.” The Delhi rape case is currently on its way through the Indian courts. But this is not an India-only problem. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) although south-east Asia has the highest rate of sexual violence, around one in three women globally experience physical or sexual abuse. And the stories in Nirbhaya may be Indian, but the silence that surrounds them exists in many cultures. Farber told the Guardian: “I want to trigger things. I want people having fierce conversations in the bar afterwards, understanding something better or seeing things differently. Opening up, waking up.” Seismic changes, she argues, can come from speaking out – simply from saying, as tens of thousands of men and women did on the streets of India – enough is enough. “The whole idea,” she said, “is that urge to speak. Let it not be a defeat that she died. Let it be this that carries us forward.” For ticket information, click here.  |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2013 03:46 AM PDT
Over the last year, hundreds of column inches have recorded how the London Olympics showed sport at its best: welcoming, uplifting, and above all inclusive. The performances by female athletes made a mockery of the idea that women's sport is somehow less engaging, or lower quality, than men's. For a few glorious weeks, equal attention and adulation were lavished on both. A year on from the Games, columnists and sports writers are returning to the topic to question whether enough is being done to build on these memories, and to build a durable "legacy". In terms of women's sport, some positive momentum does seem to be building. Almost 90,000 people have now signed the petition calling for a women's Tour de France; England's women football players have at least received a pay increase allowing them to focus full time on training; BT has pledged to show more women's football and tennis on its new sports channel; and efforts are being made to increase the numbers of women football coaches. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go. I have stated my position on the issue before: I don't think that women's sport will really be taken seriously until the media make the necessary effort to cover it properly. Since the Games, we at Women's Views on News have been making our own effort to contribute to the Olympic legacy by covering women's sport every week. By sharing our own enthusiasm, we hope we are helping to show fellow sports fans that women's sport is worth watching, and to fill in the huge gap in coverage. However, with our limited means, there is only so much we can do. This is why we welcome the decision taken by the Independent last week to provide dedicated coverage of women's sport. In a special report on July 28, the Independent on Sunday's Emily Dugan wrote:"This paper would like to see – and will call for action on: greater efforts to ensure school sport appeals to more girls; better publicity for sportswomen; better pay for female athletes; corporate sponsors investing properly in sportswomen; broadcast coverage of Britain's women at all international sporting events; and women on the boards of all national sporting governing bodies “As part of this, we promise to make sure our pages highlight the best of women's sport, as well as men's". We applaud the Independent for becoming the first national newspaper to take this step, and for giving us reason for cautious optimism that things are changing for the better.  |
| Stopping sexual offences on London transport Posted: 08 Aug 2013 01:05 AM PDT
The 2,000 police officers who monitor London's buses, trains and underground have been trained to deal with sexual offences and victims as part of Project Guardian, which was launched on 22 July. Project Guardian was set up after Transport for London's 2012 security survey revealed that 15 per cent of females had experienced unwanted sexual behaviour while using public transport. Worse still, 90 per cent of these women did not report what happened to the authorities. Over a quarter said they were worried the matter would not be taken seriously or they did not know where to report the offence. Transport for London asked three women's campaign groups, Hollaback London, the End Violence Against Women Coalition and the Everyday Sexism Project, to help them train the 2,000 police officers. The Everyday Sexism Project has recorded around 5,000 incidents of women experiencing sexual assault and harassment on London's public transport. Laura Bates, founder of Everyday Sexism and feminist writer, told the Londonist that their archive had enabled them to help the police. She explained: "We were able to advise them of the very different types of harassment and assault women were dealing with on the transport system, from being followed and stalked to photographed, without their consent, between their legs, to dealing with graphic and unwanted sexual comments to groping and sexual assault." "We explained how on transport victims often don't know who to report to and sadly how often the issue is so normalised and repeated that women start to accept it as just a part of life and wouldn't necessarily realise they have the right to report," she added. A hotline and text service have now been set up to encourage people to report incidents. Everyday Sexism and the police have also used the Twitter hashtag ProjGuardian to raise awareness of the campaign and instil the message that offences should be reported as fast as you can tweet. These efforts are certainly making a difference, as reports of sexual harassment had quadrupled just one week after Project Guardian was launched. Ellie Cosgrave, a victim of sexual harassment on the tube, wholeheartedly welcomes the scheme. She said: "Initiatives like Project Guardian are an essential part of raising awareness of sexual harassment and assault in public spaces. "The more people understand how to report incidents and the level of care they can expect to receive, the more confidence they will have in taking those steps." Ellie was travelling on the tube in 2011 when a man ejaculated on her. She reported the incident to Transport for London, but did not receive a response. Ellie has since returned to the carriage where the incident happened and performed a dance, which, she told the Guardian, was her 'form of protest' and way of reclaiming the tube for women. Ricky Twyford, the manager of Project Guardian, wants the scheme to help women like Ellie. He said: "We hope this will send a message to everyone that we will not tolerate this behaviour. "We want women to feel confident that they will be listened to and their complaints will all be taken seriously."  |
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