Women's Views on News |
- Volunteer Writers Wanted!
- Help reclaim the night
- ‘Breaking Bad’ and the power of women
- Object’s victory in Europe
- The media can change women’s sport
| Posted: 15 Nov 2013 09:00 AM PST
Contact us at: editor@womensviewsonnews.org We welcome applications from all: the only criteria is that you have an interest in news and want to write exclusively about women. Our writers usually have some experience, but if you have excellent English grammar and an eye for detail we can train you up. You must, however, have internet access and the ability to work remotely (e.g. from home) and some or all of the following skills:
If you want to write for us, get in touch, and tell us a little bit about yourself and why you want to get involved. We will then contact you to discuss what will be expected of you and how the site, and the team, works. If you are successful in your application, you will then be asked to regularly write at least two stories per fortnight to an assigned deadline. All stories and features must abide by two basic rules: 1. They must be about women, or told from the perspective of women. 2. They must respect our "house" rules which, in general terms, are that racist, sexist or fascist material will not be accepted.  | ||||||||||||
| Posted: 15 Nov 2013 08:16 AM PST
On 22 November, hundreds of men, women and children in Portsmouth will take to the streets to protest against domestic and sexual violence. Shonagh Dillon, chief executive of local charity for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual violence, Aurora New Dawn, is chair of the Portsmouth White Ribbon Group, which organises the march every year. The White Ribbon Campaign was created by a group of Canadian men in 1991 on the second anniversary of one man's massacre of 14 women in Montreal. They began the White Ribbon Campaign to urge men to speak out against violence against women. In 1999, the United Nations General Assembly declared 25 November the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the white ribbon has become the symbol for the day. Portsmouth's White Ribbon Group was created in 2001 by local men and women passionate about ending violence against women. The group aims to raise awareness among local communities about preventing violence against women, including by encouraging people to take the pledge never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women. Many people have now taken the pledge, including footballers David James and Linvoy Primus. Portsmouth's march, which kicks off at 7pm at the town’s Spinnaker Tower, will be lead by local drumming group Batala. It will end with a rally in the Guildhall Square, where there will be speeches from Mark Davison, from Portsmouth's White Ribbon Group and Lucy Holmes from the national No More Page 3 campaign, and local musicians El Morgan and Lauren Ross will be performing. "The March proudly welcomes every local man and woman who wants to stand up to violence against women, and this year we're also delighted to be joined by a national campaign like No More Page 3," said Dillon. Reclaim the Night is a nationwide and symbolic march that brings together women, men and children in towns and cities throughout the UK who want to enable women to reclaim public spaces and raise awareness about the high levels of violence against women both in the UK and around the world. The first Reclaim the Night march took place in 1977 after police advised women not to go out at night following the murder of several women by Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper. Angered by this approach, women across the UK organised marches to draw attention to the fact that women should be able to walk about in the streets safely and that they should not take the blame for male violence. On average 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime, and average of 2 women die every week at the hands of a partner or former partner. 400,000 women are sexually assaulted and 80,000 women are raped each year. In Portsmouth, domestic violence – defined as "Any incident of threatening behaviour, violence or abuse (psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional) between adults who are or have been intimate partners or family members, regardless of gender or sexuality” - remains the largest category of violence reported to the police, accounting for over a quarter of police recorded assaults. In 2011/12, 63.3 per cent (320) of those domestic violence assaults were recorded as affected by alcohol and 67.3 per cent were recorded as affected by drink and/or drink and drugs. This remains slightly higher than the average for all violence crime (63 per cent). Events like Reclaim the Night serve to show that on a local level victims are not alone and there are people out there who can help. "Portsmouth has a great track record for supporting victim and survivors," Dillon said, adding, "Whilst it's a very real challenge to the sector to make sure these vital services survive in the current economy, we simply can't allow the last ten years of progress to be reversed." "It makes it even more important that local people take to the streets and Reclaim the Night – we need to shout out our support for victims and survivors and say a loud 'No' to perpetrators and the social attitudes and structures that help to create and protect them."  | ||||||||||||
| ‘Breaking Bad’ and the power of women Posted: 15 Nov 2013 04:09 AM PST
Our regular cross-post from BitchFlicks. Warning: Spoilers Ahead. Throughout the last five seasons of Breaking Bad, the female characters have played key roles – from playing adversaries to aiding and abetting – yet they are often overlooked as secondary characters. In fact, a recent article in The Atlantic doesn't even mention any of the female characters (save for a passing mention of Jane being a "lovely" secondary character in an infographic). While Walt and Jesse are the focus of the series, and they operate in a largely masculine and man-centric world, without Skyler and Lydia, they would have been stopped long ago. Skyler thought of the car wash. She got the car wash. She laundered the money and kept it safe. She kept the IRS away from her boss and her household. She is consistently rational and protective of her life and her family. Lydia provided an "ocean" of methylamine. She had threats to the business taken care of. She expanded the operation overseas, and won't settle for disappointed customers. She is fiercely in charge of her business. Marie figured out the details of Skyler and Walt's deceptions quicker than Hank did. She's willing to attempt to steal – baby Holly this time, not a spoon – to punish Skyler and protect her niece. We can't help but think about the juxtaposition of scenes in last summer's "Fifty-One" when Skyler submerges herself in the pool and we cut to Lydia at an electrical grid. Each episode, these two become increasingly invested in and in control of producing and protecting Walt's legacy. Skyler confronted Lydia at the car wash, but that was her home turf. Surely they'll meet again – and that meeting (like the water and electricity) could be deadly. (It's important to note that this most recent episode, "Buried" – perhaps the most woman-centric of the series – was also directed by Emmy-nominated Michelle MacLaren, who some critics consider the show's "best director." Another fun fact? A female chemistry professor is the show's "lead meth consultant.") However, the male characters (and audience members) habitually underestimate the women. Hank assumes Skyler is an innocent victim. "Ladies first," Declan says to Lydia. Skyler covers a sickly Walt with a feminine quilt, comforting him, and nursing him back to health. "Maybe our best move here is to stay quiet," she says, acknowledging that to keep the money and keep all of them relatively safe, they need to not talk. She reassures Walt that Hank seemed to have "suspicions, but not much else." (She knows this because Hank corners her in a diner and tries to get her to talk and give him something–she refuses, screaming "Am I under arrest?" to get out of the situation.) Hank calls her a victim. By the end of the episode, it is clear that Skyler's no victim. How far could Walt have gotten without her? Lydia visits the meth lab in the desert, where Declan and company are making meth that is not up to her or her Czech clients' standards. "It's filthy," she says of the lab. "What are you, my mother?" Declan responds. They underestimate Lydia. If they would have listened to her and followed her pure-meth protocol, perhaps they would have survived. She covers her eyes as she walks past the carnage that she ordered (she was brought to the desert blindfolded, and chose to leave blindly). She steps next to corpses with her feminine, red-soled Christian Louboutins. Lydia often isn't focused on as a main character, but those Louboutins are carrying her into a pivotal role. But will she be taken seriously? A critic at Slate said, "Her girliness is annoying — calling Declan's lab 'filthy' was sure to make him reference his mom — but she also happened to be right. The man had no standards." Would Walt have been "annoying" if he had critiqued the way a lab was run? Probably not. Even with Skyler and Lydia's power plays and scheming, too many are still focused on the likability of the female characters. (In a thread on Breaking Bad's facebook page, hoards of people were calling for Skyler to be beaten or killed.) Lydia is too "girlish." And Marie? "She is so annoying that she deserves to die." Critics and audiences wring their hands over who we're "supposed" to like in Breaking Bad. If we operate in high-school superlative absolutes of "most likable" and "most hated," how would Vince Gilligan have us categorize the characters? Are we truly supposed to feel good about liking anyone but Jesse? In reality, we're allowed to like male characters who maim, kill and hurt children. We're allowed to root for male anti-heroes and revel in their dirty dealings. The women? Well, if they're not likable, Internet commenters want them dead. In "She Who Dies With the Most 'Likes' Wins?" Jessica Valenti argues, "Yes, the more successful you are — or the stronger, the more opinionated — the less you will be generally liked… But the trade off is undoubtedly worth it. Power and authenticity are worth it… Wanting to be liked means being a supporting character in your own life, using the cues of the actors around you to determine your next line rather than your own script. It means that your self-worth will always be tied to what someone else thinks about you, forever out of your control." And while I'm fairly certain Valenti wasn't cheering on money launderers, murderers, or meth dealers, the women of Breaking Bad have appeared to break bad. Their moves will undoubtedly decide the course of the rest of the series. Audiences, though, too often want to box female characters into "likable" and "hate and kill" categories. While Skyler populated the latter category for years, it seems as if people are now – to an extent – trying to wedge her into the "likable" category. (This critic lauds her as the "best character" on Breaking Bad, and describes her as a wife and mother and extols the virtues of her as a moral center–why does she have to be moral to be a good character? Is it because she's a woman?) The Breaking Bad social media team coined #Skysenberg after "Buried," showing that Skyler has crossed over and fully enmeshed herself with Heisenberg. (This is awfully and misguidedly close to her taking her husband's name and adopting his characteristics. Because Skyler isn't necessarily doing what she's doing to protect Walt.) This symbolic move into Walt's court, though, won her some new fans:
Skyler doesn't care if you like her. Neither does Lydia. Or Marie. Gilligan himself recognizes the hatred and has said, "I think the people who have these issues with the wives being too bitchy on Breaking Bad are misogynists, plain and simple." Skyler, Lydia and Marie are poised to decide the outcome of Breaking Bad. Skyler is calling the shots instead of Heisenberg. Lydia is decimating – and will certainly replace – a drug cartel. Marie desperately wants to see Walt and Skyler punished; her desire for revenge seems to overshadow Hank's desire to protect his career. In the excellent "I hate Strong Female Characters," Sophia McDougall points out that, "If Strong-Male-Character compatibility was the primary criterion of writing heroes, our fiction would be a lot poorer. But it's within this claustrophobic little box that we expect our heroines to live out their lives." Skyler and Lydia especially are clearly breaking out of these boxes, and Marie isn't very far behind. But aren't women supposed to be moral centers? Aren't their roles as "wife" and "mother" supposed to define them? Aren't they supposed to not get their hands dirty? We are so accustomed to enjoying and eagerly watching male antiheroes, but watching female characters embody the same traits has been, until now, incredibly rare. At this point in the series, though, these complex female characters are calling the shots. ("The men are basically just sitting around diddling themselves," my husband said.) We don't need to like female characters for them to be well-drawn and powerful (just like we don't need to like Walt). We need to get over that. Skyler, Lydia and Marie aren't just wives and/or mothers anymore. The are characters–not just female characters, or worse yet, "strong female characters." They are effective and compelling, just how characters who happen to be women should be. Skyler isn't Skysenberg. She's Skyler. And she's got this.  | ||||||||||||
| Posted: 15 Nov 2013 01:09 AM PST
Research shows that exposure to images that sexually objectify or stereotype women can damage women and girls' self-esteem and mental health, limit and shape their aspirations, and foster sexist attitudes and behaviours among men and boys. Such images are currently commonplace in advertising. The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) committee has repeatedly called on governments to take action against the stereotyping of women, arguing that such representations contribute to women's disadvantaged position in a number of areas including in the labour market and in access to decision-making positions, and affect women’s choices in their studies and professions. The European Parliament has also voted in favour of several gender equality resolutions, including the adoption of a report which calls on both advertisers to stop using sexist stereotypes and member states to monitor how gender is portrayed in advertising. Yet despite this and countless studies that demonstrate the discriminatory nature and harmful effects of such advertising, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) still considers sexism an issue of 'taste and decency', rather than one of discrimination. Complaints against sexist portrayals of women and girls in adverts are upheld only if an ASA Council decides that they are likely to cause 'serious or widespread offence', and a great deal of sexist advertising is judged inoffensive. For example, if demeaning portrayals of women are placed in men's magazines, they are likely to be deemed 'humorous' and unlikely to cause offence to the target audience. And the content is only judged according to 'prevailing social standards' – so if discrimination against women is commonplace, sexist advertising won't stand out as tasteless or indecent. OBJECT has campaigned for responsible advertising since its creation, highlighting the industry's massive influence in shaping society's ideas of what is normal, acceptable and desirable. Last week OBJECT joined with feminist organisations Chiennes de Garde (France) and DonneinQuota (Italy) to demand higher standards from the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA) in Brussels. EASA is the European network of advertising self-regulation bodies, of which the UK’s ASA is a member. Its purpose is to promote 'best practices' in advertising. In a meeting held at the European Parliament, and with strong support from MEPs Mary Honeyball (UK), Sylvie Guillaume (France) and Silvia Costa (Italy), we presented our positions to EASA and representatives of its member bodies. We explained why sexual objectification and sexual stereotyping of women and girls constitutes discrimination, and emphasised that objective criteria exist to assess whether the content of an advert is discriminatory. We pointed out the inconsistencies in advertisements being judged as sexist and banned in one European country but not others. We called for tighter guidelines to regulate advertising, in line with European Parliament resolutions on ending discrimination and in consultation with women's rights organisations throughout Europe. We argued that standard-setting would be positive for the advertising agencies themselves; people who work in the industry have told us of the pressure from corporate clients to develop sexually objectifying advertising campaigns, and they would no longer be forced to participate in this. As a result of our meeting, EASA has promised to consider new guidelines and to pursue dialogue with us. We look forward to further collaboration and concrete steps towards change. OBJECT will be continuing the work to end media sexism with a number of institutions at national and European levels.  | ||||||||||||
| The media can change women’s sport Posted: 15 Nov 2013 01:09 AM PST
Every week, the Guardian publishes a column called “Ask a grown-up”. Children under 10 ask a question that’s been bothering them, and the paper finds an expert to answer it. It often provides a comical insight into the way a child’s mind works. The questions are usually on those which are baffling for children, but which an adult’s experience makes clear. “Why do I get just £1 pocket money a week?” for example. Alternatively, their curiosity leads the children to ask questions most adults wouldn’t even think of: “Why do we have two breasts when we only need one?” and “How did the first person catch chicken pox?” Last week, 10 year-old Lia asked “Why is women’s sport not considered as important or exciting as men’s?” No amount of experience makes the answer to this question more clear; adults don’t tend to ask it only because they are so used to women’s sport getting short shrift. The Guardian put Lia’s question to Casey Stoney, captain of the England women’s football team. Her answer was straight down the line. “It goes back to the idea that women aren’t worthy of having the vote and that a woman’s place is in the kitchen,” she wrote. “Things have carried on like that for too long, but at last attitudes are changing. Women’s football is bigger than it’s ever been. When we go into schools, people know who we are. “The Olympics did great things for women’s sport. You could see it on TV, and the women did exceptionally well. The Olympics showed there was a real appetite for it.” Interviewed in fitness magazine Runner’s World recently, Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton described how the situation in women’s cycling has changed since she was a child. “When I was younger and out cycling with my dad on a Sunday morning, if we saw a lady cycling it was like ‘oh my god, there’s a lady on a bicycle’,” she said. “But now I see several. I see groups of women out, which I love, and have never seen it before. It's a really positive thing.” It’s anecdotal evidence, but it illustrates a point: it’s not so unusual to see women cycling any more because Pendleton and her successors have made headlines and proved that women can do it. And yet, decades after Pendleton first got on her bike, children like Lia can still see that a gaping inequality remains between men’s and women’s sport. It’s a good thing that girls are questioning this, rather than subconsciously absorbing the notion that sport isn’t for them. And Stoney is right that things are changing. However, it’s not enough to simply attribute the inequality to the old idea that “women belong in the kitchen”. To do so is to frame the problem as one which is impossible to solve. Faced with years of ingrained attitudes on women’s roles, what can possibly be done? When the issue is one of hearts and minds, what can be done to persuade? Who can really turn the tide on centuries of habit and culture? And so we give up before we have begun. The problem of inequality between men and women in sport is a huge one, but the solution is not complicated. Sport is a media machine. Much of its cultural importance comes from the coverage and exposure it receives in the press and on television. Yet only 5 per cent of screen time and column inches goes to women’s sport. As I write, the main sports page of the Guardian website links to 23 stories about men’s sport; for women, zero. On the BBC website there are more than 30 stories about men doing and talking about sport, but only five about women. The Independent pledged in July to increase its coverage of women’s sport, yet its website can still only manage to put three women’s sport stories on its main sports page. Ratios like these give the impression that men are all-conquering kings of competition and athleticism, and that only one or two women can match up. So, Lia, there’s an answer to your question: women’s sport is considered less important than men’s because the media simply don’t bother covering it. Whether this will change any time soon is another question altogether.  |
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