Noliwe Rooks … gave a keynote address entitled ‘Black Women and “Real Beauty”: The Rise and Fall of the Dove Beauty Campaign’ analysing the way ‘black women’s bodies are used to market products to consumers who are not black, in a cultural moment, desperately seeking to evade race’. This sparked off extensive reflection, both in the session and outside it – in corridors, over coffee, lunch and dinner, and in other sessions – on magazine culture, advertising, beauty products and campaigns, and the place of women’s bodies and colour in promoting cultural sameness and difference.
Category: Event
Girl Space – History, Culture & the Right to Play
Kindergartens long pre-dated the 1970s Movement, and childcare was a part of government action during wartime … In the First World War and the Second World War, governments – local, regional/state and national – established centres for children who were below school age or who required after-school care … Children gained the right to play, even if the motive in establishing centres was primarily the war effort and the need to have women move into posts vacated by men joining up and going to the front.
The Tyranny of Numbers – Women & Political Power
Yet commitment and activism was not all that promoted Margaret Bondfield into posts where no woman had sat or stood before. It took tremendous will, a belief in herself and in the ideas and ideals she espoused, the courage to keep going when the going was tough – as it so often must have been – and the will to continue to affirm that politics, trade unionism and, indeed, engagement with the world of rights, power, influence and authority was right where women should be.
Girls & Boys Come Out to Play?
‘Some [Girl Guide] accounts eulogize girls who were models of patience. One girl who had to lie in bed all the time made friends with the birds who flew in. In 1946, Daphne was presented with the ‘Badge of Fortitude’. She spent all her life in a plaster bed but could still do gardening from her spinal chair was ‘the friend of all the children in the neighourhood’. Nevertheless, pictures and stories of girls [with a disability] at camp also emphasized the value of the outdoor smells, sounds and relative freedom to blind girls, or how ‘”higher-grade”’ defectives’ were almost the same as other Guides, and badge requirements should remain the same …’
Is a Woman Leader Possible? Eleanor Roosevelt, Hilary Clinton and Australia’s Prime Minister
Returning, then, to Eleanor Roosevelt’s nomination of ‘age-old prejudice’. It is this – a phenomenon now termed ‘sexism’ – that dogged Hilary Clinton’s 2008 White House bid. Misogynist invective came from the right, the left, and even her pre-selection opponent’s camp. Samantha Power, an Obama campaign worker, took the hit for the sexist comment emanating from the candidate’s office – but ended up on his Presidential staff in any event.
Is a Woman Leader Possible? Eleanor Roosevelt, Hilary Clinton & Australia’s Prime Minister
In becoming Australia’s first woman Prime Minister, Julia Gillard broke through the barrier recognised by Eleanor Roosevelt. Yet Eleanor Roosevelt saw more than simply gaining office as the goal. For her, it was necessary to make something of it, through implementing a policy programme of the leader’s own making. This, for Roosevelt, was a major barrier. ‘Age-old prejudice’ was the key.
Basque Children and their Seafaring ‘Aunties’ – An Evacuation
In world wars, women, almost always volunteers, escorted children – together with disoriented adult refugees – on British ships. Often they were not even being paid expenses. Some were captured, interned and even killed during their WW2 voyages.
Called ‘aunty’, many of the women were experienced travellers and lively independent types, at a time when women’s mobility was still limited and their solo travel problematic. Unsung and overlooked, these pioneers deserve recognition. They were members of a minority who cleverly utilised gendered conventions (‘women are suitable carers for little ones’) to do all the travelling they could, despite low incomes.
The Writings of Constance Maynard (1849-1935)
One aspect of Constance Maynard’s life which still intrigues researchers and is the subject of on-going research today is her close relationships with women. As female sexuality was not discussed or understood in the Victorian period, interpreting Maynard’s words requires an appreciation of the context and time in which they were written. Her diary entries detail intimate encounters with students and friends … In her autobiography, Maynard in 1926 writes candidly about her close relationships, showing her awareness of theories by psychoanalysts such as Freud …
Luddite Women
Of the activists, the best-known are the Molyneux sisters: ‘Set fire to it! Now lads!’ the two very young women urged Luddite men on 24 April 1812, at Westhoughton Mill near Bolton, Lancs. It was only an hour after the soldiers sent to protect it had gone away. The mill was a cotton mill, newly driven by steam.