Superinjunctions – super sexist?
First of all, I’m not even going to touch with a barge pole any of the spurious gossip surrounding the identity of those who have taken out superinjunctions. So anyone looking for blind item style reveals, go forth and Google!
However, I am going to point out the troubling impact such injunctions have in terms of creating a two tier system of justice and in terms of tilting the favour of law in rich men at the expense of women. Gill Phillips in the Guardian expresses her concern that “by granting these privacy orders, courts were in effect allowing men to treat women like chattels. That power imbalance still exists and it is clear that the courts are not willing to engage with it.”
Ridiculously, in some cases involving superinjunctions, the woman’s details have been made available for all to see (and shame her with) whilst the men’s have been protected thanks to his phalanx of expensive lawyers. Does it not take two to allegedly tango in these cases?
It seems the language of ‘human rights’, developed to protect those who had long been unprotected, has been deviously twisted to mean ‘rights for those who can buy them, even using terms of breathtaking hypocrisy’. Women’s legal rights in this country are already at risk following moves to cut legal aid – often poor women’s only recourse to justice – and moves to charge for child maintenance cases. Such injunctions make it perfectly clear to women that, when two sides misbehave, nonetheless in the eyes of the law it is the wealthier party who is considered worthy of protection.
Soon Lord Neuberger will be releasing his details of his review into the use and the issue of superinjunctions. It will be interesting to see what he finds, but whatever conclusions are reached one of them, surely, should be that the balance of power should be shifted to one that is fairer for all, not just those of a certain privileged class. But no – extraordinarily, this news story in The First Post says Lord Neuberger will actually argue such injunctions are necessary. Necessary for whom, I would ask …
America’s new ‘pundit brat pack’ – where are the women?
I must commend Feministe for pulling together this post decrying the New York Times for its article on Washington DC’s hip gun-slinging new pundits, all of whom happen to be young, white and male. They point to Ann Friedman’s very funny parody of the article to make a salient point that the conversation in DC – which let’s face it shapes so many other political conversations across the US and the wider world – will never be diverse until its representatives are.
This is not to denigrate the fine work of those pundits interviewed in the piece, all have worked hard and, as Feministe points out, would be the first to credit a certain amount of luck for their position.
Nonetheless, there is a wealth of talented female critics, authors and writers out there (from diverse backgrounds, too) who could have been interviewed, and weren’t. As I (and many, many others) have banged on about constantly in this blog and beyond, it is not good enough to pay lip service to 50 per cent of the world’s population. At a time when the glass ceiling still very much remains in place for women working in the media (women make up 23 percent of top-level management of American newspapers, television and radio stations and 35 percent of executive positions), the sector has to ensure the air waves are fair waves for women.
Why we need to get more women in UK newsrooms
The Women in Journalism group has released a depressing study coinciding with next Tuesday’s International Women’s Day revealing that just 33 per cent of editors on UK national newspapers are women – and just 30 per cent of reporters on the nationals are female.
In addition, the report’s survey of the UK’s top 28 national newspapers shows a pathetic mere four per cent per cent of sports journalists are women, while so-called ‘soft topics’ are also heavily covered by men, with 49 per cent of lifestyle reporters and 70 per cent of arts reporters being male.
Hello, newsdesk? Can I NOT be assigned a story on fluffy kittens?
“Broken down by topic, the split between men and women is evident. So-called ‘soft’ topics such as Lifestyle are the closest to parity, while News, Sport, Financial, and Politics contain disproportionate numbers of men. Columnists – widely viewed as agenda and opinion leaders – were also found to be primarily male,” the research adds. And this just the UK, the report does not cover global newsrooms or international newsrooms (and if anyone can point to such research let me know), but I have a feeling the results will be depressingly similar.
This is, quite frankly, appalling, and needs to be addressed. Notwithstanding the blindingly obvious need for proportional representation, I would have thought it obvious that news does not do well when it is written by a non-representative section of the population. And news will not be consumed if it does not reflect the population’s demography in turn.
I was a journalist for 11 years and will always consider myself one at heart, but in a time when the majority of journalism degree applicants are women (as Journalism.co.uk discovered when it asked City University) it is cold comfort to them, and me, that they face a much smaller likelihood of entering into and thriving in the profession.
So why the lack of women in national newsrooms? Many point to the unsociable hours, the tendency of women to be pushed to so-called ‘lifestyle’ sections or feature desks, and particularly in some sections of the news media eg politics and sport, a boys club mentality (just ask Andy Gray and Richard Keys!) that excludes women, and of course the temerity of women to take time off when they have children.
Furthermore, as the report points out, the lack of women in senior positions is also a factor – it cites a recent EHRC report that notes only 11% of directorships of the top 100 FTSE companies are women-held.
Certainly in my experience of several newsdesks, the planning and features desks have been staffed more by women and this can partly be offset by the number of women in part-time work, but it does reflect a need to retain and encourage women who work in hard news.
So where do we go from here? We could start by beginning to reflect the diversity of this nation much more adequately in newsrooms – and calling out those who don’t – and I see no reason why more flexible working patterns for women cannot be improved upon.
But ultimately it’s about attitudes. Newsrooms will not change unless there is a commitment and buy in by editorial boards and media owners that they need to be more representative. Otherwise the attitudes of the likes of Keys and Gray – who let’s face it only suffered punishment because they were caught – will prevail.
The Oscars – still no-one takes a chance with women
So I watched a little of the Oscars last night, and while I don’t think James Franco and Anne Hathaway was as bad as everyone said, the Oscar winners reached new heights of predicability and inanity for me, particularly when it came to, (yes, you guessed it) the women winners.
I do love Melissa Leo, ever since Homicide Life on the Street, in which she was the fantastically dry Kay Howard (and was later, reportedly, sidelined so they could bring in more of Hollywood’s definition of aethetically pleasing female chracters), so it’s thrilling to see her career propelled forward to such a degree.
Melissa Leo bringing it as Kay Howard in Homicide
However she should have won for Frozen River, an extraordinary film – the Winter’s Bone of 2008 – that had women as front and centre in the story. In The Fighter it’s, as ever, the wife, the mother, the sister, the girlfriend, and while some snarky types could argue for Christian Bale’s character as being only the brother – at least he’s given the back story of being a former boxer.
And I’ve already ranted on about Black Swan (a bit further down below), so at least I was glad it only got one major award, and I did think Portman did good work with a one-dimensional trope (too obvious to even call it a character) but it’s still the old, boring stereotypes of sexually repressed vs sexually overconfident women, at times the film became almost a ‘gender studies in film’ primer of the characters women are shoehorned into.
So all in all, I was disappointed, even the dresses weren’t that great. Which just seems to typify to me that nobody, not even sartorially, seems to want to take a chance for and with women at the cinema these days.
Why can’t women criticise? The dearth of female pundits
Bookslut has published a great piece by Alizah Salario about the dearth of female critical voices in the New Yorker magazine, and while it pains me to hear even the faintest of mutterings against a magazine I have at times referred to as ‘my boyfriend’, I have to admit a few points hit home – for example, that on average three -quarters of their critical pieces in the magazine at any given time are men and that of the fiction it published from 2003 to 2009, 36.6 per cent were by women.
One thing I would disagree with is Salario is when she asserts at the end of the piece that in the grant scheme of things it is a ‘relatively small injustice’ that more women are not heard in their pages, indeed not more heard in media at all per se except in the ways that she details in her piece. I would not underestimate the effect a lack of female voices and perspective has on media, on other women, on society in general, in terms of distorted representations of our gender and the resulting damage that can cause.
Salario’s piece in Bookslut comes the same day as London’s City University announced it was to expand some excellent work it began during the UK election on the number of women experts used as pundits throughout the election news cycle, something I wrote about earlier this year. As City’s head of broadcast journalism Lis Howell points out in this article, male pundits outnumbered female ones almost five to one in some reporting, while women were all too often used only as ‘vox pops or victims’.
In both these cases, the impact of such inequity in this country and others when women are not fairly visible, represented, or heard in the media can hardly be a positive one. Hopefully the more attention is brought to these numbers, the more likely this inequity can be addressed.
Why northern Europe gets it – The Killing versus Black Swan
I went to see Black Swan this weekend, and it was ridiculous. Yes, the presence of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis was a bonus and they both certainly turned in excellent performances, but overall it was a preposterous, and not particularly original take on female hysteria and psychosis. I got very bored very quickly of the stereotypes (the overbearing mother! the over the hill Baby Jane dancer played by – egad! – 80s teen also ran Winona Ryder! the virginal sexually fre
All in all it left me feeling that the film was lazy, marketed as a tense psychological thriller it’s little more than a high camp drama with none of the nuance and true creepiness a good, taut thriller should have. If this is what Hollywood markets as highbrow it’s yet another reason for us to dispair at the lowest common denominator that passes for the thinking person’s film nowadays. Add to this a latent dose of misogyny and sexual repulsion and I was thoroughly irritated by the credits. Portman is excellent, Kunis also, and both work the best out of what they have (I’m ignoring the sex scene, it seemed too tacked on to appease horny teenage boys) and both may well get Oscars. but as a film it’s not worthy of them.
All of which is an extremely roundabout way of saying that the night before I watched on BBC 4 ‘The Killing’, the first two of a series about a detective who investigates the murder of a young woman in Copenhagen. And the contrast could not have been more different.
Yes it opens rather sensationally with a terrified woman running through the forests (more rather obvious Freudian overtones) but it swiftly moves to a more nuanced take on the psychology of a murder and its repercussions. And in the middle of it is police investigator Sarah Lund, who leads on the case and who quietly, yet assuredly, leads the hunt for the young woman’s killer. Lund’s character is calm, collected to the point of brusqueness, forced to delay a move to Sweden with her child and lover she relies on Nicorette gum and her own instincts and good old fashioned police work to get her through it.
Northern European crime fiction has been throwing up some interesting crime writers in recent decades, some women, many with woman characters. Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg, the Stig Larsson books and Karin Fossum to name a few have all taken a look at the darker underbelly of the relationship between the sexes in a particularly Nordic manner, cool, sardonic and pitiless. It’s a welcome change from the Hollywood hysterics (remember the etymology of that word) and, with The Killing set to continue over the next few weeks I for one welcome it.
Of all the many, many pieces that have already been written about the tragic shooting of US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Arizona on Sunday, it is this excellent opinion by US feminist writer and blogger Jessica Valenti that captures a nuance few others have addressed throughout the course of the coverage.
Valenti slates the hysterically macho tone of US political discourse over the past few years, condemning those – including women politicians on the right – for co-opting language such as the phrase ‘man up’ to belittle opponents’ masculinity and slate politicians not considered ‘manly’ enough for the task of office. The US, as she notes, is a nation that has prized itself on its masculinity, creating as its male images the virile Marlboro man, the cowboys of the West, to become key tropes in a nation’s mythology.
That such language, and such tropes, have been adopted by right wing women as well (Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and Sharron Angle among others), she argues, reveals “a sad state of affairs when women in politics have to resort to using the same gendered stereotypes that kept all women out of public service for so long.”
But man up politics is not unique to the US. Indeed, it’s interesting to compare notes with the political rhetoric that comes out of the UK. I remember in the aftermath of Labour’s downfall, several books published by commentators and actors in the whole sorry drama, while picking over the bones of what went wrong, related tales of the overly macho style of politics in the Blair and Brown governments.
Labour politicians, almost all male, it is claimed, swore like troopers, threatened to punch each other, acted aggressively and derided ‘sissies’. Ed Balls, Brown, Prescott, Alastair Campbell, all were apparently keen to present themselves as bruisers (in Prescott’s case, of course, literally) as though the namby pamby business of politics had to be compensated for with macho posturing.
Where the similarities end in one big way, is that supporters and detractors on either side of such political behaviours in this country do not have access to lethal weapons. In one respect, in seems, we in the UK have come off the better. For those who lost their lives in Arizona, however, it is too late.
Hip Hop ‘honeys’ break me out in hives …
I was going to write a much longer piece on the BBC Three programme ‘Music, Money and Hip Hop Honeys’ about the objectification of women and the appalling effect such misogynistic attitudes are having on women but then the excellent Bossy blog beat me to it.
Such is the perversion of our fame and perfection obsessed culture nowadays that writhing around with little on in a pop video is now seen as a worthy, even an ‘empowering’ career (and lord knows how irritated I am that that word has been hijacked from its true meaning, repackaged, rebranded and sold back to women as sexual exploitation – eg pole dancing ‘keep fit’ classes, ugh …) Later in the programme two idiots speak frankly, bluntly, about how if they pay money they expect to see, well, ‘titties’. Which is the type of horrifying language and objectification you see on loathsome sites about sex workers.
If you look into the eyes of Tashie, the first ‘dancer’ you can see the sheer conviction that what she is doing is empowering, in her US-style self help speak she talks of ‘me myself and I’ and of the big boat she plans on having in a few years time. She speaks with a forceful intensity of wanting to be successful but with in a career that is at best superficial and at worst exploitative of her assets (pun intended). She genuinely believes in the fantasy life of being a star, and who knows? by today’s standards she may be right.
What I would add, on reflection, is that I am almost surprised the presenter, Nel Hedayat, is surprised by the way women are routinely exploited and oppressed in such a manner, and that so many are complicit in it.I commend Ms Hedayat for taking on some of the people in this programme and exposing the rather grubby realities of the ‘video girl’ world, although she digs up no real surprises throughout. What I find interesting is how it reflects the attitudes towards fame, how to achieve it, and how the language of empowerment has been warped in the process. Most depressingly, some women it seems are happy to be complicit in this.
Years ago when Madonna started out she gave an interview about how when one of her first singles came out with her face on the cover it meant that listeners could put a face to a name, see her as an artist and follow her music. She spoke with the same passion and intensity, and some blame artists like her for the vacuousness and objectivity of women in popular culture now. But at least she had a music record she had written to show for it. What will these women have?
The top 10 news events for women in 2010
I’m not even going to PRETEND this list is exhaustive, impartial or definitive, it’s just stories that either a)would obviously have an impact on women’s lives (and obviously made an impact in the world’s media) or simply caught my eye. But what do you think? Add your own in the comments!
1. UN Women, the United Nations ‘super agency’ to promote women’s equality and empowerment across the world, was finally approved and given its mandate in July 2010 (It formally launched on January 1 this year, but we’ll squeak it in). There was some controversy over the inclusion of Saudi Arabia as a member of the organisation’s board, nonetheless this is a huge step for women across the world.
2. Dilma Rousseff, the former Marxist guerrilla fighter tortured under Brazil’s dictatorship, becomes president of Brazil, and one of the most powerful people, let alone women, in the world. Rousseff has big shoes to fill, coming off the back of Lula’s enormous popularity and charisma, and people would be wrong to expect similar from her, but nonetheless it will be fascinating to see how she steers the Latin American powerhouse.
3. The stoning sentence against Iranian woman Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, which spawned widespread protests, anger and confusion as the Iranian authorities prevaricated, panicked and paraded her about in equal measures. Her story hit media (and social media) hard, more so when she was shown off on Iranian TV and when Iranian-backed Press TV did a bizarre re-enactment of her case including her as some bizarre actress in her own mortality drama.
4. Julia Gillard becomes Australia’s first female prime minister. Strewth, a Sheila in office in Oz matey! And all other stereotypes. With some Machiavellian moves to grasp power and facing down frankly disgraceful comments from opposition politicians, some of whom derided her as ‘barren’ for not having children, Welsh born Gillard nonetheless has taken the reins swiftly and firmly since her election last year, presiding over one of the world’s strongest (and there ain’t many right now) economies. The recent floods in Queensland will prove a test to her ability to galvanise the country at a time of need.
5. UK women had a generally crap year – barely featured or mentioned in the elections, bearing the brunt of the new coalition government’s swingeing cuts, jailed if retracting rape allegations under the murkiest of circumstances and so on. Bah humbug.
6. An Afghan woman’s face became THE face of why we are (apparently) fighting the war in Afghanistan. The decision to put Bibi Aisha’s face on the cover of TIME sparked considerable discussion about whether the issue of women’s rights in such a notoriously patriarchal country was being misapropriated by those keen to shore up support for the conflict. Either way, it looks like the war, and the troubles faced by women such as Bibi Aisha, are not going anywhere soon.
7. Aung San Suu Kyi is released from house arrest. A truly remarkable woman by all accounts, her release after 10 years sparked celebrations in Myanmar/Burma (where a heavily criticised recent election kept the country’s military junta in power) and abroad and much ruminating on what lay next for Burma’s rulers and their people. Aung San Suu Kyi, known in Myanmar as, enigmatically, ‘The Lady’, has said she wants to prepare the country for ‘democratisation’. It will not be an easy road.
8. Kathryn Bigelow wins the Oscar for best director – The Hurt Locker was released in 2009 but the awards were in 2010, so this counts, and damn well right. It is nigh on extraordinary that it took until 2010 for women to finally get their hands on one of the little gold statues, but when one looks at the miserable situation for women (and also diversity of any form) in film it makes sense. Unfortunately films made by, or for, women remain rare in Hollywood aside from anodyne chick flicks.
9. An impressive 40% of all US businesses are now owned or co-owned by women. Let’s get it up to 50%, eh? But many countries still lag in boardroom equality, such as the UK, where only 12.5% of its FTSE 100 companies are run by women.
10. To end on a medical breakthrough – Scientists uncovered important new genetic variants in ovarian cancer, which will greatly help in both the detection and the prevention of the disease.
But enough of this, what have I missed?
Quickpost: On the frontline – US women marines in Afghanistan
While pootling around on Jezebel today I found these extraordinary images by photographer Paula Bronstein of the all female Marine teams that the US is currently deploying in Afghanistan which are well worth a look.
Just the sight of women doing (relatively) frontline patrols in a war zone is an intriguing one. The UK recently reiterated its ban on women serving in close combat, arguing that ‘gender mixing’ could have grave consequences. This struck me, and other observers, as a statement which throws up more questions than answers (they’ve mixed in every other aspect of society, what makes the army so special?) but the issue remains one that the army and navy in both the UK and US struggle with. The female US patrols are interesting in that they are frontline but are directly tasked with issues that may be percieved as more ‘feminine eg health, childcare etc, the fighting remains largely elsewhere, and overwhelmingly male – watch Restrepo to see what happens to a group of male marines left to fester with no female interaction for months. However these women have engaged, albeit mostly superficially, with ‘the enemy’. So does this break down barriers, or merely reinforce gender roles?
You can also read a New York Times article on the teams here which I recommend (although the headline leaves a lot to be desired). There’s an interesting quote from one woman who serves in the team but leaves after a male colleague is killed. “[I'm] too much of a girl to deal with these guys getting killed” she tells the reporter. To me, this states less that women aren’t capable of doing the job, more than women are conditioned societally to believe they cannot.
