SubScribe: Feminism Google+
Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

Women of note

Feminists face a tough battle, it's time for some tactical thinking



When you've been a woman for as long as I have - almost as long as the Queen's been the Queen - you get used to the way that sexism pervades our society.

It ranges from builders' wolf whistles to rape; from ironic references to cushions and hoovering to violence of the tongue as devastating as a blow to the stomach. And for all the equality laws of the past four decades, women are still lower paid and still find it harder to get full-time jobs.

There are the ignorant - people who lump women together with the disabled, homosexuals, immigrants and 'other minorities', forgetting that women are the majority - and the unthinking. Female votes put the brake on 80mph shouted the Times splash headline on Saturday, almost inviting every bloke who picked up the paper to blame the missus for spoiling the fun.

In fact most drivers, both male and female, were in favour of the higher limit. But Downing Street was apparently afraid of losing the votes of  women who were against the change and so abandoned the plan.

The logic of this escapes me, so I'll run through that again: 53% of women were in favour of an 80mph limit, 41% were not - so rather than upset the 41%, the plan was dropped. Sounds like nonsense, and of course it is. But it's so much easier to put the focus on unidentifiable 'females' than on the safety campaigners and vested interests that lobbied against the change.

When it comes to equality, certain sectors of society are locked in the first half of the last century,  most particularly business and finance, politics, the police and the media. They beat their chests and wring their hands saying 'We'd love more women to come forward/move up'. But they don't mean a word of it. They talk about ratios and quotas and positive discrimination.

Women don't need these things; the need is for there to be a will to treat everyone equally - for without that will, no artificial devices can correct the imbalance.

More women than men are qualifying as doctors, vets,  lawyers and dentists - the most competitive fields of study - and there are far more female undergraduates across our universities than there are male. So there is no doubt the talent is there, it just all goes pear-shaped in the workplace.

There are only three women at the helm of FTSE 100 companies because businesses and boardrooms are stuffed with stuffed shirts in black suits who think that a woman's role is the packed lunch in their briefcases. Tory deadwoodsmen in the shires are the same, picking wideboys over intelligent women as their parliamentary candidates. We had a woman prime minister once, didn't we? What more do we want? (The irony of that is that these diehards would have shaken the ladder as she climbed the first few rungs, and then ended up adoring her.)

But they've always been like that. They just need educating - though preferably not by the Australian political classes.

More worrying are the police and the media, who seem to be regressing towards the 19th century.

No matter how often codes of conduct are revised, no matter how many public inquiries condemn police practices, nothing seems to shift the mindset that only white men are worthy of respect - whether inside or outside of the force.

Meanwhile television networks that regard grey hair in male presenters as a sign of gravitas continue to push women off camera the moment the first wrinkle appears. Within the Press, middle-aged white men are again dominant in setting the news agendas while women, with few exceptions, are once more consigned to features or subordinate roles. This is especially galling after the great strides of the 80s and 90s.


Given all this, it's hardly surprising that there has been an upsurge in interest in the feminist movement - and the centenary this month of Emily Davison's Derby death has been a convenient peg for a new call to action.

Lest there is any doubt that action is required, take a look at the Everyday Sexism Project,   an alarming catalogue of evidence of the contempt in which women are held, especially by young men who should have been taught better by baby-boomer parents. Fresh examples appear on the site and on Twitter every minute (no exaggeration), here is a random selection:








So how are we women countering the louts and the dinosaurs?

By demanding an end to page 3 girls and a petition to have a woman's picture on a banknote.

I'm treading on dangerous ground here, but these don't seem to me to be the vital issues of the day. Pretty young girls are queueing up to feature on page 3 and if they want to take off their bras and pose for photographs in the hope of advancing themselves, why stop them?  The budding lawyers, doctors, vets and dentists have their opportunities, is it right to deny those with a little less up top (but a bit more further down) their chance of a richer life?

Is it exploitative? Is it demeaning? Is it offensive? Perhaps, but I find I object more to the nudge, nudge, wink, wink captions than to the generally cheery photographs. I'm glad the days of women draping themselves over boats and cars are over, and I wouldn't be sorry to see page 3 disappear, but I think there are more troubling matters for feminists to worry about.

The No More Page 3 campaign believes, however, that the easy accessibility of what it describes as soft porn helps to shape men's view of women and diminishes their respect. Given the oafish behaviour detailed in Everyday Sexism, it is a fair argument.

The banknote campaign is different and, whisper it softly, I don't think it serves the feminist cause very well. You can never be equal if you need or demand special treatment.

The Bank of England clearly didn't think too long or hard, if at all, about the gender of the next person to be honoured on the £5 note. And that's a good thing.

In whatever walk of life or area of society, people should be treated in the way merited by their actions and achievements. It's a shame there will no longer be a woman other than the Queen on our currrency, but it would have been a greater shame if whoever chose the replacement for Elizabeth Fry had thought 'We'd better have another woman.'


Criado-Perez. Photograph: audioboo.fm

Caroline Criado-Perez has worked ferociously and tenaciously to garner nearly 30,000 signatures for her 'keep a woman on English banknotes' petition. That's some achievement, but no more than might be expected from Ms C-P, who is, by all accounts, one smart cookie. The Oxford graduate describes herself as a furious feminist and she is particularly angered by the under-representation and misrepresentation of women in the media. She has set up a website to ensure that female experts are available to offer opinions on any number of issues, she runs a blog with the slogan 'a pox on the patriarchy', and works as a freelance journalist - all the while studying for her master's.

In the course of her banknote campaign, she has written repeatedly to Sir Mervyn King, publishing the correspondence, and appeared in every national paper, the Huffington Post and on radio and television stations all over the country. Her efforts have wrong-footed the Governor to the point where he has been forced to say that the Bank has a contingency plan for someone other than Sir Winston Churchill to feature on the fiver and that Jane Austen is 'quietly waiting in the wings' to make her appearance.

Between them, they've stirred the pot so that every paper seems to be running 'Which woman should be on the banknote?' features. The same half dozen names appear at every turn - Mary Seacole, Ada Lovelace, Mary Wollstonecraft, Rosalind Franklin, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and the blessed Jane.

Odd that, isn't it? Well no. Asked to name great British women, most people run out of steam after Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry, as the Bank seems to have done. Yet I'd bet that anyone could rattle off ten times as many men in sixty seconds flat - and be aware of why they were in the frame. You can see how easy it was for the Bank to fall into the trap.

My problem with the debate is the letter 'a'.
Keep a woman on English banknotes
Which woman should be on the fiver?

Imagine if that has been 'which man should be on the fiver?' Or 'which black/gay/blind person...'

This isn't equality, it's tokenism. It's as though the feminists are saying 'We don't care who it is, we just want a woman', while those (presumably men) commissioning the newspaper articles are saying 'If you were allowed one, who should it be?'

There have been many, many great men through British history - and rather fewer great women. There is an interesting debate to be held on what should be the criteria for recognition on a banknote, but gender ought not to be one of them. Should candidates be instantly recognisable to all Britons? Towering giants of the arts, science, social reform? People of international renown? Or people whose retrospective importance outweighs their fame?


If  the women's cause is to be advanced, then the latter needs to be emphasised. That way we would highlight the achievements of people whose efforts have been under-reported and under-estimated for decades. People like Rosalind Franklin, above, whose DNA X-ray work provided the vital key to the mapping of the human genome. She was sneered at and patronised in the lab by Crick and Watson, who danced off to collect their Nobel prizes and then took a quarter of a century to make grudging acknowledgement of her contribution.

Had Ms Criado-Perez approached the Bank (and the media) with an extensive list and said 'You know there are so many unsung British women who achieved great things, how about raising their profile by putting them [not "one of them"] on the currency?' she might have found that the door opened easily. The Bank would probably have been grateful for the suggestions.

Instead we have a campaign that has the air of women stamping their feet shouting 'It's not fair.'

And that means we also have men patting us on the head saying 'Calm down, dear, we'll give you that Pride and Prejudice woman next time...

'Now get back to the hoovering.'



SubScribe also writes about feminism in the posts The truth is never pure and rarely simple and Women's rights and wrongs.






How do you see the future of journalism? Do you still have a paper delivered or pick one up at the station? Do you prefer print, web, Kindle or iPad? Or have you given up on the mainstream media and moved to Twitter and blogs? Please join in the SubScribe survey here. Thank you.








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Monday, 11 March 2013

The truth is never pure and rarely simple






Remember the five Ws? Of course you do, but just in case, let's get them down in blue and white

 Who, What, When, Where, Why...

 Whether we learnt our journalism in college, university, local rag or graduate training scheme,  lesson one on day one was that without these five facts no story was complete. Indeed, where possible we were encouraged to add a sixth: hoW.

 The shorthand may get rusty, the typing slower, the difference between a non-metropolitan borough and a district council more blurred, but we never forget that first lesson. 
Yet some of us still ignore it.
Maybe we're working on a breaking story and not all the details are clear; maybe we're subbing against the clock and we can't see a way to fit them all in 25 words; maybe the desk is demanding the copy when we're still waiting for that vital call back - or maybe we can't be bothered to do a proper check; and maybe some of the Ws are too inconvenient.
The Ws rule isn't just about getting basic facts across to the reader: 'Becky Smallbone bit a chunk out of a stranger's burger in Middlewallop High Street, Fleabridge magistrates were told yesterday. She said she'd been dieting for a week and was so hungry she could eat a horse.

 It's about setting information in context, so that the reader can make a reasonable judgment on the events reported. And to serve that reader we have a responsibility to make sure that what we write or how we sub a story is faithful to the truth.
That sounds so obvious that you may think I'm daft to mention it. But even before the reader has got to the second sentence, he or she will have been given signals on what to think: the position of the story within the paper and on the page, the headline type and wording, the accompanying picture and caption (which will always be read before the story).
Most people know which direction most papers are coming from - a Guardian reader isn't likely to wake up tomorrow and buy the Telegraph just for a change - but most people also think that the news is the news and that the politics or agenda of the paper is reflected in the leaders, features and comment sections. Very few people see more than one paper, so they won't know that the page lead in the Express was a down-page single in the Telegraph, a nib in The Times and didn't even make the Guardian. They have to draw conclusions from the material they have in front of them, and what is written into or left out of the story will help to form opinions that will be aired at the breakfast table, in the workplace, down the pub, on Question Time or Any Questions? and even in Parliament.
Quite a responsibility for the humble hack, then.
Last Friday SubScribe published a post about International Women's Day, which mentioned a Daily Mail report headlined 'The generation that's finished with feminism'. The Mail didn't acknowledge IWD, but it did put five stories with the vague theme of 'women's issues' on a spread under the umbrella head 'Portrait of 21st century British woman'. The feminism story was the right-hand page lead and it troubled me. It troubled me, and continued to do so all weekend, because of what it contained and because of what it didn't contain (and because I didn't feel I'd made enough of it in a portmanteau blog). So please forgive me as I return to Steve Doughty's report in a little more detail.

 Most young women strongly object to being called a feminist - and say that they like men, say state-funded researchers.
In fact, they believe that the aims of the feminist movement have all but been achieved in the Western world.
Rather than supporting a movement for new rights and equality, they admire the notion of femininity.
The story is based on a study of forty German and British women who were interviewed by Dr Christina Scharff of King's College, London, a couple of years ago. Her work was financed by an £80,000 grant from the Economic and Social Research Council, which in turn receives most of its funds from Vince Cable's Business department. 
Most young women strongly object...Dr Scharff actually reported that thirty of her subjects would not describe themselves as feminists; two would, while the other eight accepted the description with caveats - for example, that they weren't man-haters. Those who rejected the feminist label often did so because they did not want to be associated with the negative man-hating stereotype.
Say they like men...This seems an odd phrase and unnecessary. Does anyone seriously think that most young women don't like men?
The aims of the feminist movement have all but been achieved...Dr Scharff found that many of those she interviewed saw feminism as an historical collective movement that brought women together to fight for their rights. They believed that movement had achieved its purpose and was redundant. Dr Scharff also pointed out, however, that there was no single movement with a unified set of goals: 'What gets overlooked in all these responses is that feminism represents many different theories and approaches.'
Rather than supporting a movement for new rights..they admire...femininity...This sentence suggests that equality and femininity are mutually exclusive; Dr Scharff did not offer her interviewees any such choice. She did find that they saw themselves 'within conventional norms of femininity and heterosexuality', but that is not the same as admiring femininity.

 The Mail report does not tell us:
  • That the survey was conducted two years ago and its results published in a book called Repudiating Feminism in May last year;
  • That the survey involved only 40 women
  • That these women were from different class and racial backgrounds and included lesbians, bisexuals and heterosexuals
  • That Dr Scharff describes herself as a feminist
Going in search of the who, when and why, I looked up Dr Scharff and the ESRC and discovered that the research council had issued a press release last week which included several of the phrases that appeared in the Mail on Friday. The notes for editors on the release clearly stated that the material had been published in the 2012 book. So why had the ESRC issued the release - had there been further analysis of the research, or new findings? No, came the swift and candid reply: 'We used Dr Scharff’s research on feminism to tie in with international women’s day...this does not stem from a new report or event.'

So the PR team had done their job (although they didn't mention IWD as the peg and they did use the phrase 'new research'). Did the Mail team do theirs? 

Dr Scharff is quoted in the press release - but not quite as extensively as she is in the Mail. Various bits of the release are put together in a different order to create a series of 'direct quotes'. For example:
Dr Sharff said the young women...were united in rejecting feminism. 'They thought there was no need for it any more.'  The women may have been overwhelmingly opposed to being described as feminists, but they were not united; and while the interpretation in 'they thought there was no need for it' may be accurate, the paper is putting its own words in Dr Scharff's mouth.
The paper also quotes 'the Scharff report' as saying 'Increased opportunities to work and to decide when to have children allowed contemporary women to see themselves as empowered individuals who have benefited from social changes'. This is, in fact, a direct quote from the PR's summary of the researcher's findings.  

 The end result is a story that may be described as  'accurate', but one that is also misleading. That old joke 'never let the facts get in the way of a good story' isn't so funny in real life.


A reader might well come away from this newspaper report under the impression that thousands, if not millions, of young women today are more interested in being seen as feminine than in being treated decently and fairly. I would venture to suggest that this is not the way Dr Scharff, above, would interpret her work. 
In her book, she explains that she embarked on her study because she had been struck by the hostility towards the concept of 'feminism', even in the context of conversations about continued inequalities. She wanted to find out why, especially, she writes, in the  light of  recent  developments, such as the resurgence of young women’s feminist activism in both countries. It was clearly a study into the rejection of the label feminism, not the rejection of the quest for  equality, and she concluded that it was the lesbian bra-burning stereotype that was turning the young women off. This point was clearly understood by the PRs, who headlined their handout Myths of man-hating feminists make feminism unpopular.

But, most important of all, Dr Scharff states unambiguously: My aim in this book is not  to make a general statement about young women’s relationship with feminism; a sample of forty women does not allow me to draw such conclusions. 



Well, the Mail had no such inhibitions. Doughty's story describes the Scharff report as 'the latest in a number of studies which have found that feminism - which remains a major influence on politicians, in Whitehall and on broadcast media - is unpopular among a large proportion of women.

Two years ago a consortium of pressure groups including the feminist Fawcett Society and political freedom campaigners Amnesty International found that fewer than four out of ten women had ever experienced derogatory treatment because of their sex...'

It also asserts that a Blair government research project into bias against women at work had admitted that it could find no evidence of discrimination. The story gives no further details of this  project - could it have meant Baroness Prosser's examination of the pay gap and ways to reduce it? The one that says Many women are, day-in, day-out, working far below their abilities and this waste of talent is a national outrage...if we do not act now...women will continue to lose out...'

The Fawcett Society/Amnesty exercise was easier to find, though the four out of ten statistic wasn't. The organisations combined with ActionAid and Women's Aid to commission an Ipsos MORI poll to mark the centenary of International Women's Day in 2011. The survey found what it called significant levels of inequality, that gender stereotypes were still a strong force at work and at home, that 47% of  women did not feel they were being treated equally to men  and that 60% of the women aged between 15 and 30 surveyed had  experienced sexist remarks and other forms of sexist behaviour whilst going about their daily lives, including being whistled at, having sexist comments directed at them, being touched inappropriately or being discriminated against because of their gender. 
And even if fewer than four out of ten had suffered derogatory treatment because of their sex, is that something to be pleased about? Is it ok for more than a third of women to have to put up with this sort of behaviour?

It is perfectly reasonable for reporters to take a press release as a starting point for a wider story, and of course they aren't going to reproduce it wholesale - that takes us to the realms of puffery. But a story made up of a handout and minimal cuts research is not a story. Cherry-picking the convenient facts, moulding them into a different shape and leaving out anything that might weaken the impact is not journalism. It's propaganda.





Well, here's a bit of blatant propaganda from SubScribe

 In spite of the Mail's best efforts, feminism appears to be alive and well among intelligent young women - and men. Last year sixteen women at Duke University, North Carolina, posed the question 'Who needs feminism?' They asked fellow students to write their answers on a whiteboard and to be photographed with their efforts. They struck a chord and the idea was copied in Canada, Lahore and at Oxford and Leeds universities, among others. If you search the hashtags #ineedfeminismbecause and #whoneedsfeminism and #thisiswhatafeministlookslike you will find that Twitter is full of people of all colours, shapes, sizes and ages holding whiteboards; there is even a Twitter Youth Feminist Army.

Mr Doughty and his colleagues appear to be hoisting the flags prematurely.


How do you see the future of journalism? Do you still have a paper delivered or pick one up at the station on the way to work? Do you prefer print, Kindle or iPad? Or have you given up on the mainstream media and switched to Twitter and blogs? Please join in the SubScribe survey here. Thank you.





  
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Friday, 8 March 2013

Women's rights and wrongs




Did your husband tell you to put your feet up and bring you a cup of tea? Did your boss give you the day off and a couple of cinema tickets? Did your name appear on a list of modern heroines? Did you join a demonstration, attend a seminar on feminism, teach someone how to make cupcakes?
International Women's Day has been around for 101 years, and for 100 of them most people were about as aware of it as St Cuthbert's Day (March 20). This year, however, it has made its presence felt much more strongly, with a thriving Facebook page, thousands of tweets and features in real touchy-feely newsprint as well as on newspapers' websites.

 The initial idea of the movement was to fight for votes, equality in employment, decent pay. Well, we have the vote almost everywhere - although in some countries it is a case of principle rather than  practice - but even in the West women are still struggling to find jobs and to receive proper reward for their efforts.
Look further afield and we can see that the lack of a job is hardly the biggest concern when you are being beaten nightly, forced into a marriage before puberty, gang-raped while bus passengers sit and look the other way, jailed for daring to poke fun at authority, shot for wanting to go to school, trafficked abroad  to become an unpaid prostitute, mutilated to inhibit your sex drive...or aborted because your parents want only a boy child.
There are so many areas in so many countries where women are still abused, downtrodden and defeated, that it's hard to know where to begin to raise awareness - and start to redress the balance.
Perhaps by declaring the day a bank holiday? Twenty-seven countries have given their workers the day off today - many of them well known for their enlightened approach to human rights: China, Cuba, Uganda,  a clutch of former Soviet states. 
Nepal is another, this the country accused by Human Rights Watch of a 'year of backsliding' in a report last month which said:  Women continued to face violence in various forms in Nepal; rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence remained serious concerns. Also, without the assistance of male family members, the citizenship law makes it difficult for women to secure legal proof of citizenship – a sure way to deny them rights to marital property, inheritance, or land.


There are no Western countries on the holiday list. America doles out badges to foreigners and British politicians spout inanities about their determination to continue on the road to full equality. There were nearly 500 events across the UK - the most in any one country - but many had more than a smack of corporate interests jumping on the bandwagon. You could go on a shopping evening at Hobbs, have a swig of fizz and a mini sausage toad and come home with a goodie bag. You could paint yourself as a goddess in Vienna (thought this was a list of British events?) in an 'empowering process to create powerful portrait painting...using lush visualisations, gentle movement, breathing, relaxation, and chocolate!' [Why the exclamation mark? Why do people think the word chocolate will drive women wild?] 
There were plenty of picnics and baking sessions, or the more cerebral could go to a concert celebrating women composers, look at exhibitions of women in the workplace or - best of all - go to Cardiff City football ground for a day designed to encourage teenagers to look at non-stereotypical careers and take part in activities to raise aspirations.

 So, given IWD's raised profile, how did our media approach the day?

 The Independent gave us a little spread, naming ten women being honoured by Michelle Obama with America's International Women of Courage award. The paper carried a big picture of Ms Obama, a smaller picture of each of the ten winners in action and a thumbnail of the woman of courage herself. They included the Delhi bus rape victim, an Egyptian protester, a Honduran political campaigner and a Tibetan poet. Sadly, there were fewer than a dozen words available to give us each of their names and what they had done. But if you click here, you can read more about them.
Online, the Indy went from the breathtaking to the banal, with a pair of blogs about life for single women.  Dr Binni writes about how girls are a burden in India and about how she is working to improve their lot. Married at 16, Dr Binni found herself ostracised when she could not have children. She and her husband moved from their hometown to another part of Jharkhand  state and set up an organisation to empower single women in the state and beyond, eventually linking up with a similar group in Rajhasthan to create a nationwide association to encourage and help single women living alone. It's quite a task, she tells us that there are 43 million widows, 22 million divorcees and 33 million women who have never married. Her story was selfless and inspirational and well worth reading in full.
Natasha Devon meanwhile argues that some women choose to be single and aren't to be pitied as sad Bridget Joneses. a valid point but expressed in nauseatingly selfish terms:
Single people are answerable to no one (excluding the Grim Reaper and the Tax Man). We make our own rules. If we want to spend an entire Saturday reading frothy chick-lit, or the complete works of Lord Byron, or the Financial Times whilst sucking the chocolate off Kit Kat Chunkies and pinging the wafer at the cat, we can.
She also recommends the ability to 'stomp around in Kurt Geiger boots listening to Ziggy Stardust', finishing with the glib payoff line 'I'm probably having more sex than you, too.' Charming.

The Guardian also devoted a spread to IWD, but with more purpose, using it as a peg for a frightening story about wife-bashing  in  Britain - 1.2 million women suffered domestic violence last year and there was an 11 per cent rise in the number of people reporting such incidents (which may well be a good thing). There was also a thoughtful analysis about educating children in equality and a delightful set of pictures of teenagers with signs showing what feminism means to them. Serious stuff and all close to home.
Online, Jane Martinson told us in The Women's Blog how one sex assault victim was going to mark IWD by going back to the Tube line where she had been abused. An interesting element of the piece was the phrase  'the new wave of feminism sweeping the UK'.

Christina Scharff of King's College, London

New wave of feminism? Not if you believe the Mail. The paper marked IWD in its inimitable way, without mentioning it,  but in a spread entitled 'Portrait of 21st century British woman'. The main story is based on an ONS report that one in five women is childess at 45. Careers and the decline of marriage are 'to blame' writes Steve Doughty. He also tells us that fewer than half of women are married, although 16% are cohabiting, so if you look at it another way 67% of women are in that 'ideal' one man, one woman environment. We also learn that British women are unfit and lazy and that 30,000 are being 'forced' to work at 60 because of state pension changes that were announced yonks ago.

 But the real delight on this spread is the piece headlined
'The generation that's finished with feminism'.
Most young women strongly object to being called a feminist - and say that they like men, say state-funded researchers. In fact, they believe that the aims of the feminist movement have all but been achieved in the Western world.

 Doughty (yes, he wrote both page leads) goes on to quote from a study based on interviews with young British and German women:
In rejecting feminism, women are often seeking to position themselves within conventional norms of femininity and heterosexuality. Although none of the participants could point to specific individuals, most still viewed pioneers of gender equality as lesbian, man-hating feminists.'

 Wow! So who wrote this study, where was it published, why didn't any other paper take it up? There are no details in the report, other than to say that it was funded by the taxpayer-supported Economic and Social Research Council and written by Dr Christina Scharff of King's College, London.
So I thought I'd look her up.I couldn't find any report published today - maybe I was so beguiled by the IWD Google doodle that I missed it. I did, however, find a book called Repudiating Feminism, by Christina Scharff, published by Ashgate in May 2012, price £55.

 In the introduction Scharff writes:
Feminism, it seems, is met with suspicion, even in countries that pride themselves on their allegedly  progressive stance on gender and sexuality. Young women also seem to be reluctant to claim feminism. they want to be treated equally, and are aware of gender inequalities. Yet, the term feminism often gives rise to negative, affect-laden responses.
We also learn from the introduction that three-quarters of those she interviewed would not describe themselves as feminists. Quite a lot then, until you consider the section headed Scope of the study, in which she writes:
The research is based on a qualitative study, involving forty semi-structured in-depth interviews with young women in Germany and Britain.
And she cautions the reader:
My aim in this book is not to make a general statement about young women’s relationship with feminism; a sample of forty women does not allow me to draw such conclusions.

 Interesting, then, that ten months after publication of this book, the Mail should choose to make a general statement about young women's relationship with feminism on the basis of that author's interviews with young women in Germany and Britain.

Sahar Parniyan, photographed
 by Ben Gurr of The Times
The Times didn't mention IWD either, but it did focus on women's role in the international workplace in its Business Dashboard, and sorry reading it made, too. The PwC Women in Work index puts Britain 18th in a league of 27 OECD nations on the basis of a variety of indicators, including the number in employment and pay equality. Scandinavia, as ever in such surveys, comes out top, South Korea is at the bottom. The bad news for Britain is that we have lost ground and while most other countries are still making progress, we are going backwards. The average basic salary of a male executive last year was £40,325; for a woman of the same status it was £30,265. We have a long way to go.

 Not as far, thank goodness, as the women of Afghanistan - one of the countries celebrating a bank holiday today. Martin Fletcher again gets to the human heart of an international story:

 I'm safe here, says star who fled Taleban
Until recently, Sahar Parniyan was a well known Afghan actress. Today she is a refugee in West London, jobless, almost friendless, unable to speak more than a few words of English...
Despite that, she is happy in some ways. For the first time in her life, Ms Parniyan, 22, feels respected as a woman, not oppressed. For the first time she feels that she has a government that protects her, not threatens her. 'I feel safe,' she says - three words she has seldom uttered before. 

 Fletcher writes that Ms Parniyan was  a television reporter in eastern Afghanistan, until the Taleban threatened her four years ago. She says they told her:  'You are working with men. You are acting against Sharia. We will come to your home and kill your family.'
The family moved to Kabul, where Ms Parniyan became an actress,  playing assertive women who went to work and defied their husbands, before joining the cast of a satirical comedy. 'I wanted to be a role model for other Afghan women, to give them courage,' she told Fletcher.
But then two sisters also on the show were stabbbed to death outside their home,  and Ms Parniyan received a 3.30am phone call, threatening her: 'We warned you not to work on screen. We made an example of your two colleagues and you'll be next.'
I could easily reproduce the entire article here, but much better for you to read it yourself.
Such stories, not cupcakes and frippery, are what a real International Women's Day should be about.



Vicky Pryce photographed by The Sun

For every paper, however, there was one special gift for IWD: Vicky Pryce. How the misogynists and harpies clapped their hands in delight as they untied the ribbons and peeled away the packaging.  The Mail devoted eleven pages to her, the Independent nine. The Guardian and The Times a splash and a spread. Most made some fatuous play on the fact that Pryce is Greek, so we had myths and pyrrhic victories and tragedies; oh yes, and lots of furies.
The Telegraph committed the cardinal sin (in my book) of making a pun out of someone's name with The Pryce of revenge in humungous 'world comes to an end' splash head type, while inside Allison Pearson was let loose to raise some pertinent questions interspersed with such gems as Bernard Bresslaw lookalike to describe Chris Huhne's lover Carina Trimmingham.

A clever, successful woman brought low by an act of spite, a mother dragging her children through the mire, a spurned wife intent on vengeance destroying her husband's career. And all over three points on a driving licence. What's not to hate? What's not to celebrate?
Well, hang on. She was bloody stupid, not least in that ridiculous marriage coercion defence, and she'll be going to jail;  Huhne was manipulative and dishonest, yet he might just stay free thanks to his last-minute guilty plea.
Let's go back a bit. First he gets her to take his points because he doesn't want the bad publicity of a driving ban. Then he cheats on her. The first she learns of the affair is while she's sitting on the sofa at home watching a World Cup football match. Huhne comes in  and announces that the press has got wind of his relationship. Twenty minutes later he tells the world that he's leaving his wife for Trimmingham and, job done,  heads for the gym, shouting the instruction: 'Don't talk to the newspapers.'
Does that bit of the story remind you of anyone? Remember Robin Cook and the marriage brought abruptly to a halt at Heathrow Airport on Alastair Campbell's orders. One minute the minister and his wife were about to start their holiday, a mobile phone call or two later and the holiday is cancelled and the marriage is over. And do you also remember the bad press both the abandoned Margaret Cook and the new model Gaynor Regan suffered? Do you remember David Mellor parading his family at the garden gate to try to rescue his career after he unzipped his fly in the wrong house once too often? Why is it OK for these men to behave so despicably? Why are we so unforgiving when the wife fails to sit quietly and take the humiliation? Do we want to be a nation of Mary Archers?


And finally, for a bit of fun, the blogger Fleet Street Fox invited her Twitter followers to come up with phrases you would never hear spoken of a man. There were some gems, so I shamelessly reproduce a few here. If you want more, they can be found - with attributions -  in her Mirror column, Of Mice and Men.

 Who did he sleep with to get that job?
Still fabulous at 40
Is the woman of the house in? 
How do you juggle being a father and a sportsman?
Kids, marriage, career, why men still can't have it all
Is it moral for a man to become a father at 50?
That's the problem with male bosses
And here comes Sir Fred in his grey Armani suit, looking lovely today
He hasn't done any real work since he had kids
Sassy Apprentice star Lord Sugar makes an emotional appearance at tribunal...















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Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Just a pretty face



Maria Sharapova seems to be a cutie when it comes to business. She may not be doing quite so well on the tennis court these days, but she has amassed wealth estimated at some $90 million and is the world's most highly paid sportswoman. This is in large measure a result of her eight-year deal with Nike, which should earn her at least $70 million. Her sports clothing range is achieving buoyant sales, even in the downturn, and the shoes that bear her name (and sell at $150 a pair) have been hailed by fashionistas as the perfect ballet pump.
Not entirely surprising, then, to see her on the front page of the Telegraph's business section then? Well yes, actually.
There she was, all grit and determination, under the headline 

 Disadvantage Sony Reforms to cost 10,000 jobs.

 Excuse me? Has Sharapova lost her job? Perhaps the caption might be more enlightening?

 Sony, the electronics giant and sponsor of the Sony Ericsson Open in Florida, has suffered falling sales. Full story, B2

 Sharapova isn't identified and even the word tennis doesn't appear, so a  business reader with limited interest in sport wouldn't have the faintest idea what this was all about. In fact, the photograph appears to have been taken during the final in Miami the previous week - a match that Sharapova lost to Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland.
None of this is mentioned in the front page or in the fuller story inside - a story, by the way, that describes Sony as a retailer and then goes on to explain that most of the job cuts will fall on the chemical unit. Of course, every retailer has a chemical unit.
The iPad edition was even more enigmatic: its business front carried the same photograph under the heading 

 Disadvantage Sony

 There was no caption, so even the tenuous link of the tennis tournament was lost. The  story a few pages on made no mention of tennis, but focused on the straight news - and was accompanied by a photograph of the chief executive in front of a presentation screen.
Illustrating business stories is difficult if you don't want your pages to be filled with a succession of middle-aged white men in suits, so designers and chief subs are always on the lookout for an imaginative alternative.
The preference across Fleet Street is to use pictures of women wherever possible on all news pages. Men like looking at pictures of women; women like looking at pictures of women. Fair enough. But surely there must be some rationale behind the choice of illustration  - and the least a chief sub can do is to let the reader into the secret by identifying the person in the photograph and explaining what she has to do with the story.
This was an extreme example, but the Telegraph is beginning to resemble the Sunday Express of the John Junor era, where pages were randomly illustrated with pictures of pretty women for no reason other than that they were pretty women.
The Telegraph has its favourites: the Duchess of Cambridge is clearly at the top of the list, closely followed by the Queen, Samantha Cameron, Michelle Dockery, Kate Winslet and Helen Mirren. Liz Hurley, who was top of the charts when the Times was going through its Johnny Wilkinson phase,  has fallen out of favour.
Do readers really want to see these same faces day after day? It might be understandable if they were doing something unusual or the image was in some way remarkable. But they are largely simply standing and staring at the camera. And why this fixation with stand-alone pictures that are frequently incongruous with the serious stories surrounding them? What is wrong with having photographs or graphics  that  have some bearing on the real news being reported on the page?
Stand-alone pictures have become such a staple of the Telegraph formula that a formal style has been established for captions. There is either a little box in a corner of the photograph that allows a couple of pars of copy or an 18pt head that sits along two lines of caption. In each case a pun kicker is required and this is set in blue. Sometimes the blue heading is followed by  another in black as on page 3 yesterday

 American dream Acting ambitions

 In this case, there were four pars of copy about some Olivier-nominated actors who had given interviews to the Radio Times - which was credited in the story and with a cover photograph.
This is another feature of this picture policy: most are blatant puffs with no news value at all.
Listed below are a series of headings and captions taken from photographs published in the paper over the past two weeks. Every one is given in full and with the published punctuation and capitalisation. I leave you to judge their merit:

 I spy A Russian doll 
Anna Chapman, who was deported from the US on charges of espionage, models in Moscow
Page 2, March 23. Double-column  photograph of red-haired woman on catwalk

 Sister act, Jagger-style
Sisters Jade, left, and Georgia May Jagger, daughters of Sir Mick, in Soho, London, at a dinner to mark the release of the latest issue of Another Man magazine
Page 8, March 24, bottom nib photograph of the two women hugging

 Mirror, mirror...
Model Lily Cole prepares to help launch The Body Shop's "Beauty with Heart" marketing campaign
Page 10, March 24. Double-column photograph of woman in front of make-up mirror

 Taking flight Firebird premiere
Adela Ramires catches the eye as "Lead celebrity" in the English National Ballet's new version of The Firebird, choreographed by George Williamson. The ballet had its premiere at the Coliseum in London this week
Page 16, March 24. Four-column picture of ballerina being lifted by leading man

 Respect Aretha at 70 
Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, celebrates her 70th birthday at a party in New York on Saturday
Page 7, March 26. Double-column picture of Franklin with cake

 Maddening Parents are too uptight, says star
Parents were more relaxed in the 1960s but have now become too uptight about raising children, according to January Jones, one of the stars of the TV series Mad Men. Jones, who as Betty Draper slaps her on-screen daughter, said that while she did not condone the practice, the show was right to remind viewers of changing times.
Page 8, March 26, Double-column photograph of January Jones in character

 Kate resurfaces Titanic returns in 3D
Kate Winslet, at the world premiere of Titanic 3D at the Royal Albert Hall last night. The original version, in which she starred, is the second-highest earning film of all time
Page 11, March 28, Double-column red-carpet picture of Winslet in black dress 

 Sunshine skater 
Alex Hamilton, 33, of Notting Hill, made the most of the sunshine yesterday with a skate in Hyde Park. The warm weather is to continue before clouds roll in at the weekend Weather, back page
Page 8, March 29. Three-column picture of bare-midriffed woman skating by the Serpentine with dog on lead

 Biker chic Samantha in leather
Samantha Cameron chose a leather jacket instead of the lycra gear favoured by many cyclists as she rode out from No 10 yesterday
Page 10, March 29 Double-olumn photograph of Mrs Cameron on her bike 

 Ace of hearts Dame Helen's first aid
Over the years, Dame Helen Mirren has warmed many hearts. But yesterday she learnt the secrets of heart massage with the London Ambulance Service. The actress is a patron of a charity supporting volunteer lifesavers
Page 8, March 30 Three-column picture of Mirren on her knees gazing at an ambulance person while pretending to pump the heart of a dummy

 Spectator sport Party time for Samantha and mother
While Samantha Cameron attended a book launch in London for her friend Alexandra Shulman, her mother Annabel was at The Spectator party just a few streets away with her husband Lord Astor. Miss Shulman, the editor of the British edition of Vogue, was launching her novel Can We Still be Friends. Also attending the Spectator party was the actress Olivia Grant, far right
Page 14, March 30. Three-column picture of Cameron and Shulman, single-column of Lord and Lady Astor, half stick of Grant

 Helena vamps it up
Helena Bonham Carter in the first production stills for the forthcoming vampire film Dark Shadows
Page 15, March 30. Double-column picture of the actress posing with full make-up - and cleavage

 All heart Sport talk
David Walliams, the comedian, and his wife Lara Stone were at No 10 to discuss Sport Relief
Page 8, March 31 Double-column shot of the couple in a clench on the steps at Downing Street

 Smooth finish Swimmer in shape
Jenna Randall, the captain of Britain's Olympic synchronised swimming team, has won a new title as the legs of Braun shavers
Page 12, April 2 Double-column picture of Randall in provocative pose in swimsuit and killer heels being splashed with water

 Olympic babe Team GB nappies
Paula Radcliffe, the 38-year-old British marathon runner, holds her 18-month-old son Raphael, who is wearing a nappy created by Pampers to celebrate the London 2012 Olympic Games
Page 2, April 3 Four-column picture of Radcliffe and son both with huge smiles. The toddler is in a red, white and blue nappy

 King's cast Stars in Soho story
Annia Friel, top, filming The King of Soho at the Savile Club in Mayfair. The film also stars Steve Coogan, above left, as Paul Raymond, who opened the UK's first strip club, and David Walliams.
Page 5, April 3. Double-column pic of Friel in clinch with unnamed man, single-column shots of Coogan and Walliams

 American girl Dockery stars in the States
She is already one of the most recognisable faces on our television screens, and now Downton Abbey has made Michelle Dockery a star in the US as well.
The actress is a cover girl for the latest Vanity Fair, which hails her as one of the "most watchable women" on television.
Dockery, 30, posed in bed with the actresses Julianna Margulies, Claire Danes and Sofia Vergara. The magazine called Downton "a sophisticated sensation".
Dockery said she was still getting used to US fame: "I was in a tea shop in New York and the couple next to me were talking about Downton Abbey and recognised me."
The May issue of Vanity Fair is on sale on Friday.
Page 5, April 4. three-column picture as described. Single-column magazine cover shot

 Wheels of power
Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister, arrives at No 10 Downing Streets on a Brompton bike yesterday
Page 6, April 4. double-col pic of minister on a bike (photographed by Steve Black, who also took the cycling Sam pic - and the jogging Sam pix of a few weeks back)

 Flower girl Ballet opens
An English National Ballet dancer performs in My First Sleeping Beauty, which opened last night at the Peacock Theatre in London
Page 10, April 4. Three-col picture of unnamed dancer on points

 Big step Ballet fun
Four-year-old Daisy Anne Bolton meets the Sugar Plum Fairy, Northern Ballet dancer Lori Gilchrist. Northern Ballet is seeking sponsorship following a 15 per cent cut in core funding
Page 2, April 5. Three-col pic of dancer on points with the little girl at the barre

 Charlize Single mother
Charlize Theron poses for the May issue of Vogue, in which she discusses her new role as a single mother. The Hollywood actress, 36, recently adopted an African-American baby called Jackson. In the magazine, out on Monday, she describes her son as "the greatest gift", adding: "I've always known I wanted a family."
Page 9, April 5. Five-column  pic of actresss lying on couch or bed in low-cut dress with legs apart

 No problem Sound of Music star is back
Connie Fisher, who starred in The Sound of Music after the TV talent show How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? is in Wonderful Town at The Lowry in Salford Quays. She was told last August she might never sing again because of a throat condition
Page 10, April 5. Double-column pic of Fisher dancing on stage in dress slit to the crotch

 Stung Kiss for Meryl
Meryl Streep and Sting perform in the Concert for the Rainforest Fund at Carnegie Hall, New York
Page 12, April 5 Double-column picture of Sting kissing Streep on the lips

 Step up Paula leads
The marathon champion Paula Radcliffe on Westmiinster Bridge yesterday with fellow athletes ahead of the Great British 10k run on July 8. The route goes past the Houses of Parliament
Page 14, April 5. Deep three-column pic of a dozen women running past Parliament

 Titanic task
The singer Katie Melua will be part of the Titanic commemoration show in Belfast on April 14. It will be broadcast on BBC Two
Page 15, April 6 Deep double-column of Melua in long red dress, sitting on a trunk

 Stop! Stop! We get the message, I hear you cry. 
But this barely scratches the surface and almost entirely ignores the obsession with the Royal Family. During this fortnight, we had pictures of the Queen and the Duke going to Waltham Forest and having a disagreement over whether they had been there before; Kate increasing the sales of hockey kit; Charles playing basketball (in the same issue); Camilla visiting Liverpool and remembering that teenagers used to scream at the Beatles; Zara playing with her nephew; the Queen visiting the BBC Salford studios and doing stuff for Sport Relief; William and Kate not going to a memorial service for the Queen Mother - followed the next day by a line-up of all the royals who did attend. It goes on and on....and don't get me started on the Camerons.
And all this before we even begin to examine the picture choices and caption writing outside of this stand-alone format - a three-column shot of Helen Mirren in that bikini to illustrate a story about a row over her Italian villa, for example. And, to my mind the worst of the lot, a double-column picture of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Manchester United shirts alongside a story headlined 

 I'm no longer haunted by last photo of murdered girls, says Holly's father

 It is nearly ten years since the girls were killed by Ian Huntley and Kevin Wells gave an interview to announce that he would be running the marathon to raise funds for the Grief Encounter  bereavement charity of which he is patron. He told the charity's newsletter that he didn't want to talk about what life had been like the past ten years, but said that he now imagined his daughter as a woman of 21 and not the girl in the famous photograph. "That photo no longer impacts on me," he said.
Maybe not, but I still feel it was crass to use it as the main photograph.

 A newspaper's use of  pictures  defines it almost as strongly as its splashes and its columnists. And caption writing is one of the supreme arts of the sub-editor. The Telegraph is strong on wildlife, often picking up photographs that are under-displayed by rival papers. But this sub-glamour PR handout approach demeans it as a quality broadsheet , and the banality of the captions compounds the problem. 
OK, in some of these instances there is barely room to say anything, in which case it is the sub's job to approach the page designer or chief sub or night editor and ask for an extra line or three. None of these pictures would suffer from a little being shaved top or bottom.
But even where there is enough space to make something of the job, there is no apparent enthusiasm. An actress adopts a child and says "I always knew I wanted a family." Well, wowwee, what an unusual woman; move the story to the front. 
And that five-par Vanity Fair puff. This magazine has its finger on the pulse. Those four actresses didn't fall into bed together by accident: they are the real TV stars of the era. Juliana Margulies was watched by an average audience of 10 million in her ER days, in the Good Wife she draws 12 million; Sofia Vergera's performance in Modern Family picks up a regular audience of 14 million; Downton averaged 10 million at its peak.  Claire Danes may not be reaching quite those figures with her stunning performance in Homeland, but she has been nominated for a hatful of awards - and the programme has been endorsed by President Obama.  Perhaps some of that could have made its way into print? But no, we get this vapid comment from Dockery about being recognised in a tea shop. God save us.
Maybe it's  too much to ask subs to use their imagination in the face of such pappy subject matter. But surely they shouldn't be so disenchanted by the material that they can't be bothered even with the basics - such as identifying the woman in the picture on the front page. 

Thank you for sticking with it to the end. Please do share your thoughts below. And please take a look at the other posts. They are all media related.

 Sold down the river the Beeb's flotilla and fireworks fiasco - and a feeble fightback. Why didn't the top man have his hand on the tiller?

 Hello and goodbye to Wapping a personal diary of life inside the fortress in the days before the strike that changed newspapers forever

 Out of print a love letter to newspapers in this digital age. Why they don't have to die if we have the will to let them live and thrive

 Why local newspapers matter Why we should care about the revolution in the regional press

 Missing: an opportunity How the hunt for Madeleine McCann could be turned into a force for good instead of just a festival of mawkish sentimentality

 Riding for a fall Does buying a ticket for a jolly day out at the races mean you are fair game for the snobs who sneer and snipe?

 Food for thought a case study in why we should take health advice with a pinch of salt (and a glass of red wine and a helping of roast beef) 

 The world's gone mad Don Draper returns and  the drooling thirtysomethings go into overdrive But does anybody watch the show? (But there is more Whipple in this post!)




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