Women's Views on News

A looker wins the Booker
Sticky fingers
Women can’t afford to save for pensions

Posted: 30 Oct 2013 09:09 AM PDT

‘The Times seemed to forget this was a literary prize’.

by D H Kelly

Eleanor Catton became the youngest ever winner of the Man Booker Prize with her epic novel The Luminaries. At only 28, there was bound to be some comment about the age of the author, but the Times (via @forbookssake) seemed to forget that this was a literary prize:

“…when Catton stepped nervously into the spotlight on Tuesday night, bookish girls everywhere had a new kind of role model. She’s a chick, but nobody could mistake her work for any kind of chick-lit; this young woman has been recognised for being a genuine artist; The Luminaries emphatically does not belong with the interchangeable fiction on the three-for-two table.”

Because that’s what women authors – especially young women – usually write. Meanwhile, men write all the important sophisticated novels (never throw away books about spies, fast cars and implausibly flexible women – those books simply don’t exist).

“Catton in person is a slight, pale (unassisted) blonde young woman, quietly spoken and understandably dazed after only two hours’ sleep…”

It’s a good job that Catton is a natural blonde. If you were going to write an 852 page novel before the age of 28, there’d be no time to maintain your roots.

“She’s an unashamed nerd, positively reeking of the library, but with a pretty, user-friendly Glee-like nerdiness; just the sort that’s fashionable among clever teenage girls who don’t aspire to be Katie Price.”

When teenage girls are looking for a role model, these are the two directions they can go in. One is the busty glamour model, the other is a writer who wears specs but is still thin, blonde and cute. No teenage girl is going to see Catton win critical acclaim with an epic novel and think, “Wow, writing serious books isn’t just for old men. Maybe I could do something like that?” They’re going to think, “Now, that’s a look I could work with.”

The Times may as well have illustrated their article with one of Buzzfeed’s stock photos of women reading. Women authors, even when they win one of the world’s most prestigious fiction prizes, are not taken seriously.

Women buy and read more books than men and the best-selling novels of recent years are by J K Rowling and E L James. Yet men’s books are more likely to be published and reviewed in in literary magazines, newspapers and on review programmes. It is men – usually white, straight, middle-aged and middle-class men who dominate the podiums (or perhaps library steps) of literary prizes. Many of our best-selling women authors feel it necessary to write under gender-neutral or masculine pen-names.

Earlier this year, Young Adult author Maureen Johnson responded to regular complaints from male readers that the girlie covers, that she had no control over, made Johnson’s books impossible to read in public. The results of the Coverflip challenge, where readers redesigned the covers of classic books as if they were written by authors of another gender, are a powerful illustration of the assumptions made about a book with a woman’s name on it.

Male literary giants are often happy to defend the status quo, with V S Naipaul talking of women writers’ “narrow view of the world” and in a recent interview, David Gilmour (no, the other one) defending the absence of women on his literature course at Toronto University with:

“I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers go down the hall. What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth.”

This isn’t about what women write about, but what women are assumed to be writing about. When Hilary Mantel spoke last year about the historic and current media treatment of royal women’s bodies as ornamental baby-making machines, the content of her speech was widely ignored and she was attacked for bitching about Kate Middleton’s body – the sort of the thing a woman is, apparently, expected to do.

Eleanor Catton herself talks about the way women writers are regarded, in a recent Guardian interview:

“I have observed that male writers tend to get asked what they think and women what they feel,” she says. “In my experience, and that of a lot of other women writers, all of the questions coming at them from interviewers tend to be about how lucky they are to be where they are – about luck and identity and how the idea struck them. The interviews much more seldom engage with the woman as a serious thinker, a philosopher, as a person with preoccupations that are going to sustain them for their lifetime.”

I hope that Catton does get to be a role model to girls and young women, but as with her literary success, this will have nothing to do with what she looks like.

Cross-posted with permission from writer D H Kelly. Originally posted at The F Word.

Sticky fingers

Posted: 30 Oct 2013 04:47 AM PDT

Boycott Nestlé for refusing to warn of risks from formula and how to reduce them.

International Nestlé-Free Week – 28 October -4 November – is a time for people who boycott Nestlé over the way it pushes baby milk to do more to promote the boycott – and for those who don’t yet boycott Nestlé to give it a go.

According to Baby Milk Action, Nestlé is the worst of the baby food companies, pushing baby milk around the world using strategies that are prohibited by international marketing standards.

Nestlé, Baby Milk Action says, knows that babies fed on formula are more likely to become sick than breastfed babies and, in conditions of poverty, more likely to die, but it puts its own profits before babies’ health.

Nestlé also refuses to warn that powdered formula is not sterile and refuses to take the simple steps to reduce the risks of possible contamination with harmful bacteria, such as Enterobacter Sakazakii and Salmonella.

Instead, it promotes its formula with health and nutrition claims, such as colourful logos saying its formula ‘protects’ babies and provides a “natural start”.

Thanks to the boycott Nestlé dropped its claim that its formula is “The new ‘Gold Standard’ in infant nutrition”.

But Nestlé’s latest strategy says the Action group, is to tell mothers its formula ‘protects’ their babies, when according to UNICEF: “Improved breastfeeding practices and reduction of artificial feeding could save an estimated 1.5 million children a year.”

So the idea behind this phase of the boycott is to give Nestlé a financial reason to think again – and get the company to change.

One main target of the boycott is Nescafé coffee.

But try giving all Nestlé products a miss – or if you don’t want to boycott Nestlé because you don’t want to miss out on a Nestlé brand, try it for just one week.

Because baby milk, the Action group points out, is not the only Nestlé problem. There is for example, KitKat.

And why would you think about boycotting Nestlé Fairtrade KitKat?

One reason is that Nestlé is not a Fairtrade company – only 1 per cent of its cocoa is certified Fairtrade.

Another is that Nestlé has still not delivered on a promise to end child slavery in the rest of its cocoa supply chain.

The announcement of the Android KitKat smartphone operating system by Google provides an opportunity to spread the word – click here for a great cartoon to share.

To take part in this boycott, or one of your very own, simply stay Nestlé free during this or one other week.

And spread the word wherever you see Nestlé products.

Click here to send a message to Nestlé via email and/or Twitter calling on it to stop its misleading marketing of baby milk.

There will also be activities to join in during the week: click here to see the event page on Facebook and invite your friends.

Have a look at the email Nestlé page for a suggested message and more examples of Nestlé’s practices that break internationally agreed marketing standards.

Nestlé’s Chairman rejected Baby Milk Action’s four-point plan for saving infant lives and ultimately ending the boycott when Baby Milk Action raised it at the Nestlé shareholder meeting on 19 April 2012.

As well as continuing to violate the baby milk marketing requirements, Nestlé is currently pushing for a new law in the Philippines to replace the regulations introduced to protect babies, mothers and their families.

Please share the petition of solidarity with the people of the Philippines – which is on the Avaaz site. To see more about the Action group’s Philippines campaign page click here.

You can also use hand out the Action group’s credit-card sized cards which lists the main brands and explains the basics of the campaign, For one of those, click here.

You will find sources of information, Nestlé-Free logos for blogs and lots more in the group’s year-round Nestlé-Free Zone – because the boycott is not just for one week, it’s until Nestlé accepts and delivers on our four-point plan for saving infants’ lives.

Women can’t afford to save for pensions

Posted: 30 Oct 2013 02:09 AM PDT

A third of women cannot afford to save a penny towards their pensions, and will face a vulnerable old age.

Women say other commitments, such as providing for their children, mean that they cannot afford to put anything by.

Some admit their only provision, apart from a state pension, will be living off their partner’s pension.

The state pension age for women, which used to be 60, is being increased every few months, rising to 65 in 2018, 66 in 2020 and 67 by 2028.

And of those who are managing to put some funds into a separate pension pot, many are not paying in enough to provide a sustainable pension.

Women are on average putting £1,000 per year less into funds than their male counterparts.

According to a Scottish Widows report, women save an average £182 per month compared to a male average of £260 per month.

The report found that "women are coming up against barriers to saving at every stage of life, with different lifestyle factors taking their toll on women of different ages".

Part-time workers are more likely to be non-savers, and more women work part-time than men.

The increasing cost of raising a family and looking after elderly parents is also taking its toll.

Sarah Pennells, founder of financial advice website SavvyWoman, told the Telegraph: “The continued squeeze on the cost of living has made it much harder for many women to consider saving for their retirement and, in previous years, the gender pay gap has played a significant part in explaining why this is.”

Malcolm McLean, of pensions advisers Barnett Waddingham, told the Daily Mail that pension provision must change for women.

He said: 'The situation where women are in some way treated almost as second-class citizens belongs in the past and certainly should not exist in the 21st century.

'Greater equality in pension provision is an important part of the change that we need to achieve as soon as possible.'

Lynn Graves, head of business development for corporate pensions at Scottish Widows, said it is important that women try to achieve financial independence.

Of particular concern is the number of women in their 40s who are planning to rely on their partner to help support them in retirement, but are unsure of what their pension provision would be were they to separate.

“We should encourage these individuals to take full responsibility for their financial independence. Knowing what you are entitled to allows you to make informed choices and gives you a back-up plan if anything were to go wrong," she told the Daily Express.

The Pensions Advisory Service said there are five areas of specific concern for women.

These are: an increase in State Pension Age; a shortfall in National Insurance records (due to breaks in their working career); the new automatic enrolment into a pension scheme; divorce and women’s rights; and death benefits.

A spokesperson from the service said: "A worrying finding in the reports is that the vast majority of divorcees say that pension arrangements were not discussed as part of the settlement, leaving them unsure of their entitlements.”

The Pensions Advisory Service helpline number is 0845 601 2923 and has just launched a webchat service.