Women's Views on News |
| Posted: 11 Aug 2014 04:28 AM PDT
It’s really hard to passively watch the rapid dismantling, privatisation and destruction of the NHS. First we had the Health and Social Care Act, then Section 75 and more recently Clause 119 of the Care Bill. We don't want to see private companies operating in the NHS under the heading of ‘efficiency’ when we know they are accountable to their shareholders, who are only interested in maximum profit before patient health care. We are a the #darlomums, a group of mums concerned and outraged at the assault by government on our most prized possession. We believe every penny saved in the NHS should go back into improving and developing our NHS. We need our NHS, so it's time to join the thousands already campaigning together to keep it. If, like us, you want your voice to be heard, if you are tired of silently watching our health service be dismantled and undermined, then take up the 999 Call for the NHS and join The People’s March for the NHS! Join us for a mile or two, or join us for ten or the full 300 miles from Jarrow to London, come to our rallies, just be part of the fightback. There are lots of ways that you can help, and show your support for the NHS and the people’s march for the NHS organised by the #darlomums. For all those who, like her, may not be able to join the march, our lovely 999Gran has plenty of ideas. Here are just a few ideas from her social media 999NHSSupporter desk: Follow us on Twitter: follow @999CallforNHS to keep up to date on what we're doing – and tweet why you are supporting us. Get #March4NHS trending on Twitter: We would love to see this happen! Can you help? Use it to spread the word, tweet about why the NHS is important to you. Get resources: display posters and handout leaflets. Download, print and share our leaflets and posters. You can put them up on a community noticeboard or in your front window. Or share the Nye Bevan leaflet that explains more about what's happening to the NHS. Come to a rally or event: we have rallies and events in many of the towns we are visiting. Visit the Detailed March Route for all the locations. Come along and support our marchers! Give a donation to the Campaign Trail. We're not affiliated to any organisation, so we don't have a source of funds. We are depending totally on each other and our supporters. We need to pay for leaflet printing, banners, March Coaches and legal things like Public Liability Insurance. Can you help to fund us? Please consider giving something for our #MarchForTheNHS. Visit our blog: write a few words: share your story about why you love the NHS. Our lovely granny blogger Liz would love to hear from you. Send her a tweet, chat about what you might be able to offer. 200-300 words from you about why you love the NHS and why we must save it, together with a photo for our website would really help. Ordinary people can make things change; don’t believe that politics is something that other people take part in. If we don’t fight now for a truly National Health service,free at point of delivery then we will end up like the USA. Sign this official petition to Parliament calling for an urgent public debate about the future of the NHS. If enough people sign this petition the government will have to respond. It’s an official petition so the more signatures we have the stronger our voice will be.  |
| ‘Resilience’ is not the answer Posted: 11 Aug 2014 01:09 AM PDT
A new study published in the academic journal Sex Roles has advocated psychological support for women facing sexual objectification. But it has its priorities all wrong. The study, led by University of Tennessee researchers Dawn Szymanski and Chandra Feltman, used an online questionnaire to survey 270 young adult heterosexual undergraduate women from a US university about their responses to sexual objectification and unwanted sexual advances. "A lot of women experience sexual objectification and body objectification and sexual advances," said Szymanski, and the study aimed to see "how these experiences influence women's mental health." Unsurprisingly, the researchers concluded that young women experience psychological distress when being sexually objectified. However, the researchers also claimed that the women’s responses divided them into two rough categories: those women who internalised sexually objectifying attitudes, blamed themselves and developed poor mental health, and those women who saw the experiences as adversity to be overcome and maintained good mental health. But by using the terms 'less resilient' and 'more resilient' to separate the women into these two categories, the researchers in fact buy into the very culture of victim-blaming they are apparently trying to confront. They recommend that 'less resilient' women learn from the methods used by 'more resilient' women to view sexual objectification, harassment, and unwanted advances differently. 'Resilient women may see gender-related oppressive experiences as challenges – rather than barriers – that can be overcome,' Szymanski explained. The researchers then move on to suggest psychological support for the 'less resilient' group to get its members to become more like those in the 'more resilient' one. Apparently it is simply a change of mindset – assigning meaning to adversity and not taking sexual objectification personally – which can be achieved through therapy. 'Psychologists can help their female clients to identify and explore various ways by which they can better cope with sexually oppressive behaviour,' Feltman said. The study and its findings are flawed in many ways. Firstly, by implying 'more resilient' women are doing it right and 'less resilient' women are doing it wrong, they suggest a woman feeling psychologically affected by sexual objectification has somehow 'failed', placing the responsibility for the problem on her shoulders rather than the perpetrator's. Secondly, Szymanski and Feltman seem to applaud, even make an example of, women who apparently 'cope and adapt' in cases of sexual objectification. But how do they define cope and adapt? It would be nice to think that 'coping and adapting' included women sitting down the people who objectified them and giving them a crash course in feminist theory. However, I'd warrant a guess that many more women feel they are 'coping and adapting' by changing their clothes, their behaviour, the places they go, the amount they drink, and the routes they walk home, in order to avoid sexual objectification. I'd guess that for many women, their method of being 'resilient' includes laughing along with workplace 'banter' or wilfully ignoring the pointed comments in the office, trying not to upset the apple cart while trying to retain professional credibility. And while this 'coping and adapting' may feel necessary for many women, it is far from an ideal solution to sexual harassment and objectification, let alone a model to hold up as an example. Thirdly, seeing an endemic culture of gender-based aggression and objectification as merely 'adversity to be overcome' rather than a structural barrier to gender equality requires more than a little imagination and some therapy. Fourthly, why did Szymanski and Feltman limit their sample to heterosexual young women studying for university qualifications, as if sexual objectification is something that only happens to young, straight, educated women? And finally, why is the suggestion for 'interventions aimed at decreasing individual and cultural practices of sexually objectifying women' added as an afterthought in the research rather than the main recommendation? As Jenny Kutner wrote, in her article for Salon, this is just a repackaged version of telling women to just 'deal with it'. This approach deals with the symptoms of the problem without addressing its cause. An approach which flies in the face of efforts by groups such as the Everyday Sexism Project, Hollaback and Stop Street Harassment which aim to tackle the actual root of the problem through awareness raising, education and advocacy. 'Women are not the only ones who need to understand that objectification is a flawed cultural practice; that's something everyone should learn,’ Kutner rightly points out about one of the study's recommendations. Psychological support for women who have been victims of gender-based oppressive behaviours or sexual attacks is of course necessary, but the last thing women need to hear in these settings is that the problem is they're just not resilient enough.  |
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