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.
Tag: politics
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.
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.
A Lasting Literary Collaboration – Beyond the Grave
Ross might have been surprised had she known that after her death Somerville would go on to publish another seventeen books as collaborations between them. Six months dead, it seems, Ross sent a message through a medium to her partner: “You and I have not finished our work. Dear, we shall.” Later attempts to get her to manifest herself at spiritualist seances proved unsuccessful or inconclusive, yet she apparently collaborated willingly, even on the stories in Stray-aways, 1920, many of which involve spiritualism and the occult.
Ellen Wilkinson – Minister of Education
Ellen’s main concern was to raise the school leaving age to 15 … [She] had to find 5,000 extra classrooms and train 13,000 more teachers for the expected extra 390,000 pupils. The Labour Cabinet, hard-pressed by post-war financial limitations, were disinclined to allocate sufficient money … And when she realised there was no money to build new schools she devised special pre-fabricated huts to accommodate the new pupils. A one-year Emergency Training Scheme provided the teachers. Ellen faced complaints from Labour MPs and others that [this] would dump hordes of ill-trained teachers on the schools.
Constance Smedley – Renaissance Woman
The Cotswolds caused Smedley, hitherto a Tory by inheritance, to move sharply to the left in her politics. She carried her idealism and activism back to London to run the Greenleaf Theatre and theatre school, to the USA for the years 1915-22, where she and Armfield left their impress on theatre movements in New York and California, and she was no less active in her late years back in England.
16 Days Against Violence Against Women: Lucy Faithfull (or was she Lady Faithless?) – Mother to Hundreds
An account of Lucy Faithfull’s life is a history of child care in the twentieth century. She was a passionate campaigner for children, Children’s Officer for Oxford, and the first social worker to sit in the House of Lords. In…
Legal Aid, Divorce and Lessons from History
This week the UK government has announced a cut of £350 million from the legal budget for England and Wales, leading to the withdrawal of support from all cases but those that involve life and liberty. It effectively means that…