Globally, things are better, but not much.

Howard University’s Professor Caroline Byerly used a sample of almost 2000 editorial and administrative to conclude that in 2011 36.1 per cent of the world’s journalists are women. Her figures reveal that women’s participation in management roles might be creeping upward, now to 26 per cent of governing roles and 27 per cent of top management jobs around the globe in 2011, but that is still just one quarter of the whole.

Dr Louise North’s published research – and my rather unacademic Facebook foray – also show that the news industry in Australia continues to embody what she described in her academic paper as a “blokey and ego-driven” culture that’s for the most part ignored – and systemic and ongoing gender (and race) inequity permeates the workforce.

This was probably best illustrated several months ago when one of Australia’s best known female TV journalists and presenters wrote an excoriating speech which she titled ‘Dear Mr Sexist’. Driven to fury and what she described as an inferno in her belly, Tracey Spicer recounted the male excutive that shouted across the newsroom at her: “I want two inches off your hair and two inches off your arse.” And the radio executive, who, during a job interview said: “There’s a reason why you don’t hear women on commercial talkback radio. No-one wants to hear the whiney sound of a female voice. Us blokes get enough nagging at home!” And then there was  the station manager who came down after her first night news reading, saying: “You need to stick your tits out more.” On and on it went,  the executive who pointed at her forehead wrinkles and said it was time to give the youngsters a  go, the sacking by email just after she had given birth to her second child (fought in court and won) and a litany of other stories so awful, you would be hard pressed to make them up.

Tracey Spicer’s experience reminded me of the editor who, on hearing I had been appointed Europe correspondent, pointed at my eyes and said: ” …‘a spell in the northern hemisphere out of the Australian sun will do your face wrinkles a world of good.” I hate to tell you but this one came from a woman.

During her 2012 research on women and newsroom culture, Dr North interviewed 600 female journalists in Australia  – the biggest study of its kind. Her findings revealed that a staggering 57.3 per cent had been sexually harassed in the workplace, with the majority reporting that this had happened within the last five years. North found  the problem infected all newsrooms although the commercial TV sector seemed to have higher rates than newspaper newsrooms or the national broadcaster.

Ironically, all this research has emerged around the time that Australia’s first woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, rebelled with such spirit against the mysoginistic culture she perceives both in the Parliament and among the media that report politics. I’m sure few of you would have missed that speech but you might not know that it went viral on Youtube globally, sparking headlines in Europe, America and the developing world but was virtually ignored by the Parliamentary reporters until they realised their blunder.

Which brings me back, sadly, to where I began – my informal ask-around for anecdotes about being a woman in a modern newsroom.

In a moment of odd serendipity, about 24 hours after I posted a request for my colleagues’ observations, a debate exploded about The Sydney Morning Herald‘s rebrand and renaming of what was previously called the ‘Daily Life’ section into ‘Women’s Perspective’ while the more masculine sections were rebadged ‘Executive Style’ – as if women can’t be executives. This move outraged not just the paper’s readers but the section’s editor herself who risked her job and broke ranks to blog about her own internal arguments against the name change with the all male editorial team. Hundreds of women tweeted and wrote comments along these lines: “Do you think it could have even been possible for you to decide on a more patronising tactic to show exactly which sections of the newspaper you think matter and which don’t?”

In this case, the men were forced to capitulate and the sections returned to its less offensive name.

While all this was going on, my colleagues started to email me: the first one arrived from an Australian colleague I worked with in Sydney, who spent a decade in the Middle East in Jerusalem and is now a well known TV face in Europe. She is also married to a reporter and described her conversation with an editor, requesting a payrise: “The editor looked at me outraged and said, what?! I have just given your husband a rise.”

Another told of internal 2012 research quietly testing  suspicions that a new section editor was commissioning only men to write cover stories and this was then checked against by lines. “In a year or so of his editing that section there were zero cover stories from women, 100% from men,” my colleague wrote. “When we confronted him, he seemed genuinely shocked and seemed not to realize he had done this. We figured that perhaps it was personality related – he was not comfortable talking to women. . .net result was the same though. Zero result for us women”.

Another, currently stationed in the Middle East, described the first words of a new chief of staff as she reported back about a story: “ So luv, is it a ball-tearer or a blue-veiner?” She was quck to add that despite this, he turned out to be a “good bloke”. Another described a particular editor’s penchant for coming up to her and the younger women on staff and massaging shoulders while looking over copy. One remembers, as a young cadet, being warned by the trainee counselor that part of working in a newsroom was playing “the game” after she raised feeling uncomfortable with this behaviour.

The worst anecdotes, just as Dr North reported, came from colleagues in commercial TV newsrooms, with some truly shocking me. In one case, a 30 something reporter, winner of a recent prize in investigative reporting, told me how she asked privately not to work with a particular producer due to his insistent lewd comments and behaviour. She asked her superiors that her name not be mentioned as she did not want to make a formal complaint. The man was not only told of her complaint but he then turned the tables on her warning colleagues and cameramen against her and making her work life impossible. She has now moved and is working at the public broadcaster. Another described standing open mouthed as an executive, in his late fifties, stood beside her working his way through a list of pretty much every older woman in Australian TV journalism. With some, he asked rhetorically why they hadn’t just stepped aside, others he observed he felt sorry for them, still others he said blatantly that they were too old and shouldn’t be on TV. It was her second day on the job and she chose, like so many of us, to say nothing.

The stories keep coming in.

I haven’t painted a particularly pretty picture although all of us – young and older – agree that it’s much, much better than even ten years ago. In Australia, Julia Gillard’s feisty diatribe against sexism appears to have touched a nerve and many of you might have read about the extraordinary social media campaign #destroythejoint that harnessed collective female anger against a particularly mysoginistic radio host – and the subsequent loss of millions in advertising as commercial sponsors realised the dollar effect of women scorned.

And so, I leave the last words to one of my youngest colleagues – a TV reporter – and a colleague at the other end of the totem pole, one of the few very senior women media executives in Australia. The youngest put it this way: “My perception of ‘this day and age’ is that it is better, much better. Less overt stuff goes on and most men are much, much better in the workplace than they were.” But, as we all know – and researcher Dr Louise North has confirmed – when it does go on, unfortunately, too many women are finding that it still doesn’t pay to rock the boat.

My executive colleague was succinct in her verdict and I quote her email directly: “I asked all my most senior colleagues what a pair of testicles would mean to them in this industry. They all answered, without bitterness or rancour that being male would mean a minimum of $50,000 a year to them. And these women included a Sunday newspaper editor, an investigative editor, a chief sub editor, a magazine editor, Most were on well above the 140,000 range – so this was a significant proportion of salary.”

“The sad thing,” reported my friend, “is that nobody was ANGRY. They all answered with a kind of quiet, tired acceptance of fact.”

Paola Totaro (c) March 2013

Paola Totaro is a journalist who lives in London and worked with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne, Australia, before coming to the United Kingdom as European Correspondent. She studied at the University of Sydney and the University of New England in Australia, and is presently enrolled in an MA (Culture & Criticism) at the University of the Arts, London. She includes French and Italian amongst her languages, and lists her hometown as Naples, Italy.

References:

Caroline Byerly, 2011, pp. 9, 219

Hyland, 2010

Louise North, 2009

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At the Herald, I’m told, it wasn’t until World War II that the very first woman was even used as a general reporter. Her name was Neil Bedford (no, you didn’t hear wrong, it was Neil!). She emerged from the women’s section, home to most of the female staff, after so many men left to go to war, including about two dozen Herald men sent off as war correspondents. For similar wartime reasons, a second woman, Molly Luke became the first staff female photographer. Neither stayed very long after the war ended: who knows if they were given the choice to stay or were pushed back into the home by the returning men?

During the ’60s and ’70s, there was a trickle of women doing general news and features, but it wasn’t until the late 1970s that the first woman general news subeditor was appointed. My wonderfully helpful former editor told me that the men’s reluctance to appoint a female was that male sub editors tended to – and I quote – swear quite colorfully – as edition deadlines approached. Hilarious when I think how my team, lots of them women, used to turn the air blue at edition time. And it wouldn’t be until the late 1970s that a woman staff photographer was appointed – and management at the time had reservations even then because of “possible problems” – and I quote again “created by men and women sharing a darkroom”!

Funnily enough, the first woman chief of staff ever appointed to the paper was on deck when I was a rookie. I remember she was the one who sent me home to change clothing when I arrived at work in jeans. “You must dress always ready for the possibility that you could meet the queen,” she said.

Yep that was said, in Sydney, Australia in 1982. This was the same boss who refused to deploy me to the teams covering bushfires not long after saying ‘not appropriate, you’re a young woman’.

Extraordinary as it may seem, the Herald‘s first female Chief Sub-editor was not appointed until the late 1990s and a woman Managing Chief Sub-editor (in charge of all editorial production) was appointed in the 2000s. I won’t even bother going into the continuing rows over women reporters who in some places are still fighting to enter male territory such as football dressing rooms. How do you cover sport if you are not allowed to report the traditional end-of-game press conferences?!

Fast forward a century and the world of news is unrecognizable and I, like so many correspondents of this era have had to revolutionize the way I work – from an often barely daily deadline and workload to a virtual 24/7, stand alone operation. As Vice President of the Foreign Press Association in London, 125 years old this year, I have been intrigued thinking back to the old guard, the newspaper correspondents, pretty much all of them male, who filed once every couple of weeks from the outposts of the empire, including often horrendous theatres of war, to newspapers back home.

No, they did not have Google, sat phones, laptops or the safety that comes from immediacy, and a part of me remains open mouthed at the hardship they encountered. But the other part of me believes honestly that the modern correspondent – and the new demands of a 24 hour news cycle as well as the inhuman amount of information we have to scan and filter every hour – means our professional lives, in some ways, are tougher. For women correspondents, it was the legendary 20th century author and journalist Martha Gellhorn who broke the gender barrier nearly 80 years ago. And today, unfortunately as we saw with Marie Colvin – women are losing their lives alongside the male reporters as they document the wor;d’s conflict zones. Some of the greatest chroniclers of war in our generation are women — among them CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, the BBC’s formidable Kate Adie, Alex Crawford from Sky, Lara Logan from CBS News – and many, many others.

Last year, Logan – who survived a horrendous attack at the hands of what she described as “300 baying men” reporting in Cairo joined 40 other media women in a book which graphically described the special additional risks they’ve faced over the years — and offer their advice on how to prepare for these dangers and best do our jobs.

Their words and experiences provide a powerful reminder that female journalists often offer a different take on war and conflict and unlike many of their male counterparts, remain utterly unimpressed by the whiz bang of the boys toys, knowing only too well that “collateral damage” means people: men, women and so often, little children. Like them, I believe that understanding makes them better journalists.

In all this, there is one fundamental that has changed very little and that is the presence of women at the pointy end of news, the place where the decisions are made – in executive offices, in the publishers’ suite, in the boardrooms of big media companies.

Returning to Dr Louise North’s work published in August 2012 in Australia, we learned that not one woman was entrusted with the editing role in a daily edition of the nation’s 21 metropolitan newspapers although three currently edit weekend editions – as I did before being posted to London.

Similarly, in broadcasting, women’s exclusion from leadership roles is evident although public broadcasters fared slightly better. But even at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), equivalent of the BBC, it wasn’t until 2009 that they appointed the first female director of news, Kate Torney. On morning and drive time radio shifts, commercial and public radio is dominated by male voices.

At CEO level, 23 of 24 of the big mainstream media companies in Oz are men – the only woman runs a regional network outside Sydney. Back at my old paper, of the 13 member executive team, 11 are men. The only women at that level are the chief legal counsel and human resources CEO.

And this is in the new world, a nation just 200 years old that prides itself on being open minded, easy going, classless!

Paola Totaro (c) March 2013

Paola Totaro is a journalist who lives in London and worked with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne, Australia, before coming to the United Kingdom as European Correspondent. She studied at the University of Sydney and the University of New England in Australia, and is presently enrolled in an MA (Culture & Criticism) at the University of the Arts, London. She includes French and Italian amongst her languages, and lists her hometown as Naples, Italy.

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Asked to speak at the WWAFE House of Lords seminar, as I first began to muse about the issue a few weeks ago, I decided to put a call out on Facebook to elicit some observations from the many female colleagues I left behind in Australian media – and the many more I have met since my posting as a foreign correspondent to London in 2008. How did they see their profession when they began? Have things changed for those of us who are well into our careers?

And what about the youngest cohort, those who have entered the fray as the digital revolution continues to shake the industry to its core?

While many of us have busted barriers to report from war zones the world over, how many women have managed to infiltrate media boardrooms or editor’s offices and publisher’s top floor suites?

That first call out for anecdotes was an incredible eye opener. I thought I might glean a few good stories, even a few jokes. But what I heard, often messaged almost with a sense of apology to me in private, saddened and shocked me.

Before I head down that path, let me tell you a little of my own professional trajectory. I began as a young, trainee journalist on Australia’s oldest and most august broadsheet daily in the middle of 1981 – the last undergraduate, Italian born and the only non Australian rookie. Six months later, a colleague of Hungarian Jewish background joined as a trainee and she – a trailblazing feminist – and I laughed the other night about being The Sydney Morning Herald‘s ‘token ethnics’ of the time. When I started at the paper, stories were written on manual typewriters, every page of the eight-ply carbon paper allowed to contain just two paragraphs to ease the sub-editing and production process. Every day, we bloodied our thumbs pushing pins through the great wads of paper that made a whole article. The paper’s printing presses thrummed to life three or four times throughout the night but once the last edition was in bed that was it, another day was over. I will always remember the excitement of the facsimile machine and what we called gram machines, great big heavy drums that transmitted photographs via a telephone line at the speed of a snail on tranquillizers.

Now, as a correspondent covering Europe for Australian newspapers just two decades later, news can break and I will be able to get it out, into the ether or on our websites, sometimes in seconds. These days, the news cycle runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week and have filed stories from the strangest places: Congo River, the remotest foothills of the Himalayas, an earthquake torn mountain village in Italy and from 40,000 feet above the earth in a plane carrying Pope Benedict and a cabal – I’m not sure that is the collective noun for Cardinals!

In an effort to quantify change specifically for women in media, I hunted down a former editor of the time, one of Australia’s finest – and, it turns out, something of a newspaper historian. He told me that in the year I joined The Sydney Morning Herald, there were 180 journalist writing the paper – of which 39 or 22 per cent – were women.

Thirty years later, work done by Australian academic, Dr Louise North, and published last year reveals that there has been a slight improvement – but women still occupy only 30 per cent of the editorial positions at the Herald. There has been a technological – but not a gender – revolution.

I’m fairly sure that the year I began in what I still feel is the best job in the world was also the year the paper celebrated its 150^th birthday. Three decades – 30 years! – would pass before the first female editor was appointed – and she lasted less than two years, removed in a purge in 2012 which saw her replaced with two men!

Chatting to colleagues and editors who also began their careers in the 1980s, I realized that my generation was at the pointy end of huge changes for women in news and yet most of us were pretty much oblivious that what we were doing was trying to change the world. One reminded me with great gusto of the daily battle in news conference – the place where editors, mostly male, meet twice a day to create the newslist and place stories. The fight was never ending to get placement for stories about equal pay and equal opportunity, welfare, reproductive rights, balancing family life, stories about childbirth, about breast feeding into the paper, let alone onto page one alongside the nation’s male dominated political affairs. One year, this same colleague reminded me, childcare fees rocketed by 25 per cent in one go – none of us even had kids then but she remembers it took a full week of lobbying to get an editor (whose wife happened to be a feminist and mum of two young children) – to agree to running the story, let alone putting it on page one where it belonged.

Over the next decade, we fought and won a battle for purpose built childcare at work, we watched the election of a trickle of women to the nation’s parliaments, seethed with fury as the first female Deputy Opposition Leader in a Lower House was literally driven out of politics by the mysoginist language and political attacks by a Premier who is remembered also as one of Australia’s most erudite, eloquent and reforming QCs.

And national research shows still that in Australia today, women even now manage to get just 30 per cent of newspaper bylines on page one – and it’s the same percentage if you look at the main focus of news stories. As my trailblazer colleague says it’s still ‘news about blokes, by blokes.’

And yet, eight years ago, when I was appointed Editor of the Saturday edition of the Herald – the one with the biggest circulation and fattest income – the last thing I thought of myself was being a pioneer. I remember feeling that somehow, I had not earned it, was a fraud soon to be found out, felt amazingly thankful when my salary was given an unexpectedly big hoik. I suspect a male colleague would have asked for even more, out of principle. It’s funny because looking back, I now see that I was – and still am – one of a mere handful of women appointed to executive, decision making positions in Australian media – but somehow I didn’t feel I deserved it. I don’t think I am alone in these secret misgivings and thoughts.

Paola Totaro (c) March 2013

Paola Totaro is a journalist who lives in London and worked with the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne, Australia, before coming to the United Kingdom as European Correspondent. She studied at the University of Sydney and the University of New England in Australia, and is presently enrolled in an MA (Culture & Criticism) at the University of the Arts, London. She includes French and Italian amongst her languages, and lists her hometown as Naples, Italy.

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Women and politics was high on the agenda at UN CSW 57, with attention being paid to politics in its broad and narrower sense. ‘Gender Sensitive Parliaments’ , discussing and debating the way to chage the culture of parliaments to ensure their responsiveness ‘to the needs and interests of both men and women in their structures, operations, methods and work’ was one topic holding enthralled all attending that side event. Another CSW 57 side event, also run by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU),  covered the way in which parliaments around the world have taken steps to ensure representation, or greater representation, of women as members, as cabinet members, as speaker, as whips, and in other posts of parliamentary authority.

Aotearoa/New Zealand was the first country in the world to grant women the vote, acceding in 1893 to women’s demands for the introduction of real democracy, where ‘democracy’ had, in the past, referred to government by men alone. South Australia was the first state-entity in the world to grant women not only the vote, but the right to stand for Parliament. In 1894 the South Australian Parliament had before it a Bill to extend the vote to women and one member, seeking to disrupt the process and impede passage of the Bill, introduced an amendment whereby the vote would be complemented by the right to stand. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for the democratic cause, the Bill passed – with both rights included.

In 1902 Australia became the first country in the world to extend the vote to women, along with the right to stand for Parliament. In 1903, three women stood in the Australian election. Although none succeeded, Vida Goldstein – the first woman to register to stand for the Senate, gained a goodly swathe of votes. She stood three more times over the years, up to 1920, despite not gaining a seat.

Just as men do not accept that the right to vote is sufficient – Parliamentary representation must be possible for all men, or at least all men are entitled to seek parliamentary places – neither do women accept that the vote is enough. Democracy means that women and men must have the right to vote for women or men as members of Parliament. Democracy means that women and men must have the right to stand for Parliament.

In the 1970s, the Australian Women’s Movement raised the slogan: ‘A Woman’s Place is in the House – and in the Senate’. This encapsulated the demand for democratic representation: women should be able to take their place in the lower house, the House of Representatives, and in the upper house, the Senate. The demand extended, too, to the state and territory legislatures when they came into being in the Northern Territory and the ACT (Australian Capital Territory – Canberra).

Although women were elected to state Parliaments, beginning with Edith Cowan in Western Australia in 1921, the numbers were few. Women were elected to the federal Parliament for the first time in 1942 – Dorothy Tangney going into the Senate, and Enid Lyons into the House of Representatives. In the 1970s for the first time three women sat in the House of Representatives – Joan Child from Victoria, Ros Kelly from the ACT, and Jeanette McHugh from New South Wales, being elected in 1983. Although Joan Child had been elected earlier and other women had sat in the federal Parliament from other states at other times, Jeanette McHugh was the first NSW woman ever to be elected to that Parliament.

Why so few, and why has it taken so long for women to be elected? Australia has for the first time a woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, yet this came about not by chance but through the Australian Labor Party’s adoption on affirmative action in the parliamentary sphere. In the late 1980s, the ACT led the way, adopting a 50% standard in local legisature elections. There, the voting system enabled this to be introduced relatively simply: with two seats, Canberra and Fraser, and a ‘list’ system, the proposal was that lists should be constructed on a ‘woman, man, woman, man’ basis down the list. Women gained first place on the ballot because that is the way the party voted, so that there was no need to promote women artificially over men on the lists. Yet the principle was established.

It was more difficult in the states and NT, and federally, for Tasmania (with the Hare Clark system) alone operates under a system similar to that in the ACT. All other jurisdictions operate on the basis of ‘one seat, one member’. In the 1980s, however, ALP women organised to ensure passage through the ALP National Conference of a resolution committing to a quota of 30% women preselected for all state and federal elections. Joan Kirner, first woman Premier of Victoria, was a leading figure in this struggle. She and others established Emily’s List (Early Money is Like Yeast – it helps women rise) to provide funds for women candidates who adhere to feminist principles, in particular the right to abortion.

The UN CSW 57 side event looking at getting women into parliament covered a number of ways in which parliaments and legislatures have sought to effect this change. The British Labour Party runs ‘women’s lists’ – where women only are entitled to stand for selection – and not only in unwinnable seats. Women’s lists must be run in winnable and safe seats, too. Burkina Faso adopted a policy of granting public fund bonuses to  political parties succeeding in having women elected under their banner.  Other countries have set aside a certain  number of parliamentary seats for women, some have introduced quotas – which must be met by having women stand and win seats representing general constituencies, some have simply called ‘quotas’ ‘targets’ – on the basis that ‘targets’ are more palatable than ‘quotas’ which is taken to imply the use of coercion or at least a firm hand. ‘Targets’ as seen as ‘softer’, something to be aimed for rather than (necessarily) achieved.

It may be significant that it is generally ‘newer’ democracies that have taken the most significant steps to ensure women’s  parliamentary membership. Whether they have set down rules in constitutions or statutes, or simply articulated policies, many African countries, in particular, are leading the way to ensure that parliaments are not populated by men alone. In this, they are following rapidly in the steps of Scandinavian countries, with Rwanda having topped the list in having more women than men in the parliament and cabinet. Beginning with a quota requiring no fewer than 30% of women in parliamentary seats, at the first election under that regime, women held 44 of the 80 seats.

In the 1980s, Senator Susan Ryan of the Australian Parliament commissioned research into voters’ views of women and men parliamentarians. The outcome was salutary. A majority said they preferred female to male politicians, as they believed the former to be ‘more trustworthy’ and ‘honest’. Voters were more prepared to put their and their country’s future into the hands of women. Clearly, political parties which do not recognise the importance of promoting women into parliament and thence into positions of authority and power at all parliamentary levels, are missing a sigificant feature of politics today.

Promoting women into safe and winnable seats will bring to the parties so doing, the opportunity of taking power and governing the country. On the basis of Senator Ryan’s research, they will also be ensuring that the country’s governance will be all the more positive, productive and progressive.

Jocelynne A. Scutt (c) March 2013

Jocelynne Scutt’s book, Taking a Stand – Women in Politics and Society, was published in 1996 as one of the ten volumes, so far, in the ‘Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives’ series.  In the volume, women speak of their involvement in politics, whether standing for parliament, campaigning for women’s rights, engaged in the struggle to end violence against women, or as members and officials active in the trade union movement.

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What problems do archives raise in trying to reconstruct the lives of women who leave no written record? My first contact with these problems relating to sources can be traced back nearly 40 years ago to my post-graduate studies at the University of Waterloo in Canada. As part of my Master’s course I took a module on Slave Societies.  The tutor, Michael Craton, had written a seminal text on slave resistance  in the Caribbean, Searching for the Invisible Man.  It was this text that gave me the inspiration for the research into African and African Caribbean slave women that was transformed into my first book.  Where was the ‘Invisible Woman’ and what was her contribution to slave resistance?  What I discovered was that slave women were far from ‘invisible’;  they  existed in parliamentary papers and reports, contemporary published accounts, illustrations  and unpublished diaries, plantation records and ship’s logs and registers in various archives. But such sources revealed the slave woman of the white imagination, what Maya Angelou described as a ‘fabulous fiction’ of multiple, predominantly negative, identities.

Archival sources and published accounts provide descriptions of slave life refracted  through white, mostly male, eyes and, on the surface, reveal more about the preoccupations, prejudices and fantasies of contemporary observers than the realities of slave women’s lives. The same may be said of accounts by white women, pro-planter and abolitionist, for whom female slaves reinforced their own sense of racial and class superiority.  Additionally, such sources recorded only aspects of slave life that directly related to European interests. Slave owners had little interest in the culture of the slaves unless it directly threatened those interests. Moreover, there is evidence that slaves were keen to protect certain aspects of their lives from prying white eyes.

Nevertheless, we can glean insight from archival sources by reading them against the grain and with a fresh eye.  For instance the diaries of Thomas Thistlewood, a small-scale slave owner in Jamaica in the latter half of the eighteenth century, are often cited in relation to sexual exploitation of slave women and related cruelties.  Yet his diaries can also enable us to piece together the lives on his long-term slave ‘wife’, Phibba, and her close female kin, their entrepreneurial activities and contribution to the slave community life.  The women in Thistlewood’s world were clearly immersed in the shadowland of African rituals of which whites had little knowledge or understanding.

Thistlewood’s diaries are exceptional in their richness and detail but, in general, when working with archival and other sources, we can only catch glimpses of women’s inner, private lives, as opposed to their public persona as economic units of production and reproduction.  Thus such sources provide but limited insight into how female slaves subjectively experienced the trauma of enforced migration and the Hobbesian fabric of their everyday lives. Can we ever really get into the minds of women such as Thistlewood’s ‘Old Sybil, bit with a spider….delirious [and] singing her country’? Arguably, to gain a more rounded understanding such women’s lives and those of their free descendents in the African diaspora, we must also incorporate interdisciplinary sources such as anthropological and archaeological evidence.  Perhaps more controversially we need also to draw on oral traditions, and ‘sites of memory’ which embrace cultural forms such as dance. The value of such sources in reconstructing the histories  of oppressed groups who leave few written records now has fuller recognition. Searching for the ‘invisible woman’ also demands a degree of what the late Eric Hobsbawm termed ‘imaginative empathy’ to compensate for absence of sources.  But in using less conventional approaches one is exposed to criticisms stemming from a deep prejudice on the part of historians (often male) who are wedded to the archives and orthodox history writing. This raises the question as the whether there is a hierarchy of subjects deemed suitable for allegedly ‘real’ historical research. At the top of this hierarchy are studies of essentially masculine power and privilege, for which ample archives exist, whilst working class, Black and indigenous women, marginalized or absent in such archives, are located at the bottom.

My latest research has moved on to the lives of African and African Caribbean women in the era of late colonialism post 1918 and I have made extensive use of the rich archival sources at LSE relating  to colonial development and decolonisation.  Sources for this period are plentiful. However, I have encountered similar problems with the ways in which African women are represented in white writings and archival collections such as personal diaries.  The official archives are either silent on women or reiterate historical stereotypes going back to the slave era. Women focus primarily when they are seen as a barrier to modernizing development policies, or a threat to colonial stability as with the Women’s War in Southern Nigeria in 1929.  An important development in this era is the expansion of archives left by women. This reflects the emancipation of women after 1918 which enabled them to more fully participate in academia and the colonial project. Yet white women continued define their own superior identities in relation to African women with whom who they found little common ground and this is reflected in archival collections.

In conclusion, I have always had a difficult relationship with the archives, in particular the allegedly authoritative, official archives.  I recognise the importance of archival sources but also the need to subvert them, to read between the lines, and to go beyond the contemporary discourses and knowledge frameworks in which they are embedded.  I am irritated by dismissal of what are regarded as less valid sources that can help illuminate silences in history, particularly the invisible women of the past who are usually not part of the consciousness of the originators and gatekeepers of archives. This raises important issues relating to the very nature of archives; is there a gender bias in the way they are selected, catalogued and prioritised in relation to historical worth? Who determines what subjects are historically valid?  Are women’s archives, including the letters, diaries, life memorabilia of ordinary women, regarded as less valuable than men’s as sources of ‘authoritative’ history?   Here lies the indispensable value of the Women’s Library as a unique resource to protect and promote sources for researching women’s and gender history that can challenge the masculine bias in archival and other sources that are fundamental to working with the past.

Barbara Bush (c) March 201

Barbara Bush is convenor of the Women’s History Network and Emeritus Professor, Sheffield Hallam University.

This was my contribution to a panel discussion on ‘Working With the Past’, organised by Asiya Islam, Equality and Diversity Adviser, London School of Economics and Political Science,  on the 12th March to celebrate Women’s History Month and to promote  the rich Women’s Library archives, recently relocated to LSE library. The other panel members were Sally Alexander and Kate Murphy and the three brief presentations generated a lively discussion about archival research. Thanks to Asiya and her colleagues the evening was a great success.

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Background -

The Commission on the Status of Women, held in New York at the United Nations every year, has concluded. CSW 57 ended with agreed conclusions, despite fears that – as with CSW 56 – no agreed conclusions would be reached. That there were agreed conclusions is due to the hard work of nation states delegations in combination with women’s organisations (NGOs) which worked tirelessly, particularly regional caucuses, lobbying governments and their delegations to bring about this outcome. Below appears the draft agreed conclusions published by UN Women, for historical and herstorical reference.

UN COMMISSION ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN 57

DRAFT AGREED CONCLUSIONS – UN WOMEN

March 15, 2013 – At the conclusion of the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, UN Women welcomes the outcome of the meeting. The Agreed Conclusions are a testimony to the commitment of Member States to do the right thing, to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls. In the last two weeks during the meeting in New York, and in the lead-up to this session, we witnessed global engagement and mobilization, high-profile advocacy by civil society, and determined leadership by many Member States. Expectations of the world’s women and girls were extremely high for this session of the Commission.

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ARAB WOMEN CSW 57 CAUCUS CONCERN ABOUT GOVERNMENT POSITIONS ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS

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Background:

UN CSW 57 has concluded in New York with ‘agreed conclusions’ from member states. As in 2012 CSW 56 ended without agreed conclusions, concerns were great that this negative outcome might result in 2013. Hence, the women’s caucuses – based on regions – met solidly over the period of CSW, discussing ways of effectively lobbying nation states to ensure that they would stick solidly to the notion that the ‘zero draft’ prepared by UN Women would indeed remain the zero draft, and that it would be built upward, without any detractions. Caucuses also published statements emphasising women and NGO’s solidarity and support for proper and effective measures against violence against women and girls would be included in agreed conclusions.

This is the African Women’s Caucus Statement, published on 13 March 2013

AFRICAN WOMEN’S CAUCUS STATEMENT

African Women’s Caucus Position Statement 57th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women Elimination and Prevention of All Forms of Violence against Women and Girls

The African Women’s Caucus representing African civil society organizations from all the five sub-regions of Africa and the diaspora committed to advancing women’s human rights, call on Member States to declare zero tolerance of all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls and to prioritize preventive measures in the fight to eliminate violence from the lives of women and girls.

 
Women’s Human Rights are non-negotiable and in this regard, we reaffirm the commitments made by UN Member states in the Beijing Platform for Action; the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; the United Nations General Assembly Resolution to Ban Female Genital Mutilation; United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and its supporting resolutions; and those reflected in African regional instruments such as the Maputo Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa and the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa. We therefore call on all Member States to match these commitments with national action plans where they do not exist, gender-responsive budgets, evidence-based research, time-bound targets and indicators as a matter of urgency. Violence against women and girls constitutes a gross human rights violation and should be duly elevated to crisis status so that it is addressed with urgency.

We are deeply concerned that in 2003 during the CSW47 member states failed to arrive at Agreed Conclusions on this specific issue of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAW/G). There was a repeat of this situation in 2012 when the CSW56 Session ended without Agreed Conclusions on the theme of Rural Women that was of great relevance to African women. Furthermore, we are greatly concerned that some member states make attempts to go back on commitments already made on the rights of women and girls by recalling rather than reaffirming their commitments to full implementation. We however, commend member states that have recognized that women’s human rights are non-negotiable and have moved progressively.

Discrimination and inequality, which are the root causes of violence against women and girls, must be addressed in order to end this global challenge through the engagement of men and boys, as well as traditional and religious leaders amongst other strategies. Only by addressing the root causes will women and girls reach their full political, social and economic potential.

Manifestations of VAW/G including harmful traditional, customary and contemporary practices such as child, early and forced marriages; female genital mutilation; torture; intimate partner and domestic violence; rape; trafficking; and violence in the media must end now.
Factors that perpetuate VAW/G such as increasing militarization including the proliferation and trafficking of small arms and light weapons must be curbed.

We call on Member States to embed issues of gender equality and violence prevention in school curriculums from early childhood level.

we call on our leaders to ensure that:

• Women participate fully in all sectors and decision-making spaces.
• Survivors have a right to regain their bodily integrity and autonomy.

We urge Member States to strengthen multi-sectoral services and responses to violence against women and girls, including provision of services to secure their sexual and reproductive health and rights, psychosocial counseling and support, as well as long-term assistance and reparations.

We remain deeply concerned and stand in solidarity with all of our sisters in conflict zones globally with particular regard to those in DRC, Mali, Central African Republic, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan. Women’s full and effective participation in peace building processes is critical for prevention, mitigation and a durable end to conflicts. We are further concerned that women continue to be excluded from formal peace negotiation processes. Therefore, we strongly urge member states to maintain specific reference to UNSC Resolution 1325 and supporting resolutions and commit to their full implementation.
We call on Members States to ensure that peace agreements tackle the issue of sexual and gender-based violence in conflict and post-conflict situations, and to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice and impunity is dealt with decisively.

We further call for the recognition and protection of those who defend the rights of women and women human rights defenders.

We strongly recommend that the elimination of violence against women and girls be reflected as a priority area in the post-2015 development framework.

We strongly support the Addis Ababa Declaration of the Africa Ministerial Preparatory Meeting for CSW57 and urge African Member States to use it as a basis for their negotiations to reach Agreed Conclusions on this critical priority theme of the 57th Session of
CSW towards the well-being and prosperity for women, girls and society as a whole.

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“I regret husband will not be with me”: The Wartime Letters of Abigail Chew

As we’ve begun to expand our understanding of USS Constitution’s 1812 crew over the past decade, we’ve learned that the shipboard lives of the officers, sailors, and Marines is only one part of a complex story. Though it was the men who fought the battles and suffered physical wounds, for the women left at home, wives, sisters, and mothers, the war brought its own traumas and hardships.

The letters exchanged by Constitution Purser Thomas J. Chew and his wife Abigail give us a glimpse into the personal lives of one upper middle class family and how they coped with the stresses of wartime.  Both were exquisitely literate, and they wrote their letters in the lively, conversational tone so common at the time.  In keeping with their playful nature, Abigail frequently signed her letters “your attached Hortensia”, a reference to a famous female orator of the Roman Republic.  For his part, Thomas signed his letters, “your loving husband”.

Purser Chew’s sea bag.  Many of Abigail’s letters probably nestled in this bag.  USS Constitution Museum collection, photo by David Bohl.

Chew had secured a Navy purser’s commission in 1809 and joined Constitution’s crew on June 1, 1812.  Thanks to Thomas’ position and other investments, the Chews were financially comfortable and did not suffer from the acute poverty that afflicted so many sailors’ families. Nevertheless, Abigail never became accustomed to Thomas’ frequent absences, nor reconciled to the dangers of his job. He came home briefly after Constitution’s successful battle with HMS Guerriere but was soon appointed to the ill-fated Chesapeake, commanded by his friend James Lawrence.

On June 1, 1813, Abigail sat to write to her husband, never guessing that at that very moment, the Chesapeake was engaged in a bloody battle with HMS Shannon.  She wrote, “to assure you I continued to feel as cheerful as our separation would admit – I will not indulge myself with gloomy fears – but anticipate the pleasures your safe return, will, certainly produce -…adieu my Dear husband may heaven watch over & protect & may you soon be returned to the arms of an affectionate wife.” [1][1]

The American ship surrendered to the British.  Stationed down below to oversee the moving of cartridges from the magazine to the guns, Thomas survived unscathed, but he was present when Capt. Lawrence issued his final command: “Don’t give up the ship”.

While worry and anxiety compelled Abigail to write to her husband, she sometimes wished to share with him the seemingly little details of life and family that he missed while away at sea.  After the birth of their son James Lawrence (named, of course, after Thomas’ slain friend), Abigail kept Thomas abreast of his development: “You have ‘ere this received a letter from me & heard that  Lawrence & myself were well – we continue to be so & the little fellow looks quite plump…to day he is four weeks old & weighs 7lb 1oz…”[1][2] Only six days later, Abigail updated Thomas: “The boy continues well & to grow, his eyes are very brilliant and appear quite strong, his mouth, Tho’ not entirely well, is not troublesome. – his aunts discover daily new beauties.”[1][3]

A week later, Abigail wrote again: “My little Lawrence is not taking his morning naps-…he is becoming a more substantial boy every day – he now weighs 8 ½, which is gaining very fast.  Indeed he is a beautiful boy & looks just like his dady [sic].”[1][4]  Stationed far away at Sackets Harbor, NY, Thomas could only picture his son from the details Abigail gave him.

Though surrounded by a support system of family, friends, and neighbors, Abigail often felt the private pain of loneliness occasioned by her separation from Thomas, even for only a few days.  On September 9, 1814, Abigail confided to a friend, my “husband left me very early yesterday morning for Portland, being Prize Agent for the Enterprize, & will not return till Saturday night-…To morrow is the anniversary of my wedding- I regret husband will not be with me that we might make merry together- I shall take my wine alone….”[1][5]

The distance could be frustrating in other ways.  With no sure way to deliver letters rapidly, if indeed they ever reached their destination at all, weeks could pass before news arrived home.   In a half-scolding, half-teasing way, Abigail expressed her frustrations at visiting the post office, only to find that there were no letters waiting for her:  “What must I think of your uncommon silence – neglect, I will not think it – you have never before given me cause to complain so justly- 3 weeks on Tuesday since you left & only one short  letter of etiquette – surely I have not become less dear to you since your return from the Harbour – no my dear husband, I think too well of myself, to suppose your affection will cool easily- I must still think there is a detention of the mails & hope tomorrow will be more propitious.”  The hoped for letters came a few days later, and Abigail could write, “At length, my dear husband, are my wishes gratified, & the reception of two letters this morning, have given me a new spring to my feelings- I find I must rail at the bad roads, & not again think you negligent.”

After long months of separation, the hope of an imminent reunion enthralled Abigail.  The uncertainties of travel prevented her getting her hopes up, however: “Your last letter has given me more pleasure than any almost since you have been gone, as you hint at a return in a few days-I trust I shall not be disappointed in seeing you by the middle or last of the next week-I allow more than I otherwise should do, from having been disappointed in former calculations.”[1][6]

A coral brooch, earrings, and bracelet brought home for Abigail from the Mediterranean.  USS Constitution Museum collection.

At long last, Thomas came home.  In the years following the war, he served on at least four other ships, but his absences did not prevent the young couple from creating a family.  Little James Lawrence was the first of five children.  Thomas resigned from the Navy for good in 1832 and lived happily with his little brood in Brooklyn, NY.  He died in 1846 in his 70^th year.  Abigail outlived him by 28 years.  In the end, they were laid to rest side by side in Brooklyn’s glorious Green-Wood Cemetery.

Matthew Brenckle (c) March 2013

Matthew Brenckle is Research Historian with the USS Constitution Museum, Charlestown Navy Yard, Boston, MA 02129. www.ussconstiutionmuseum.org       US 617-426-1812

[1][1] June 1, 1813, Chew Family Papers, Clement Library, University of Michigan.

[1][2] Ibid., May 1, 1814.

[1][3] Ibid., May 7, 1814.

[1][4]Ibid.,  May 16, 1814.

[1][5] Ibid., September 9, 1814.

[1][6] Ibid., Nov 4, 1813.

CONTACT:  Jodie McMenamin

USS Constitution Museum

Development Officer

617-426-1812, ext. 124

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