Victoria Browne made the case for celebrating even the smallest of victories as a way of not losing heart and staying engaged. Afterwards, Victoria and Fiona were joined by Louise MacKenzie and Judith Hunter from Glasgow City Council Equality Network, Kate Reid, Louise Sheridan and Valerie Wright, for a roundtable which lead to a surprisingly personal discussion about the challenges faced by women today – especially when trying to bring up children, and girls in particular, in a culture of intense sexualisation of women …
Tag: sexism
Black & Asian women’s history: enslaved women on ships
‘A slave is a human being classed as property and who is forced to work for nothing. An enslaved person is a human being who is made to be a slave. This language is often used instead of the word slave, to refer to the person and their experiences and to avoid the use of dehumanising language’ … But in internet searches using the search term, ‘enslaved women’ not ‘slave’ doesn’t bring anything like as many hits.
Dramatic stories of … enslaved women on ships reveal something about the realities of the long cooped-up and traumatic voyages and gendered relations ….
The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act – A History of Equal Pay
Lilly Ledbetter’s eight year battle started with a little note she found in the women’s bathroom at work. The note ranked her salary alongside the much higher salaries of three male tire-room managers, and Ledbetter was shocked to see that her male peers were making $14,000 and more per year than she was. “I’d worried about being paid less than the men who were doing the same work I was,” Ledbetter records in her memoir, but she never had evidence to prove her suspicions (5). Armed with this alarming new information, Ledbetter took action and sued Goodyear for pay discrimination.
Jessie Kenney and women seafarers
Jessie battled on but to no avail. ‘These gentlemen … had dark and impenetrable notions on the subject.’ Instead she ‘decided to go to sea as a stewardess in the hopes that later I may be allowed to practice as a wireless operator.’
(Victoria Drummond had similarly been advised to give up and become a stewardess, but refused.)
By autumn 1926, Jessie was working on the Otranto – as a stewardess. She sailed for ten years with Furness and Orient line, and kept her dream fed by reading science and philosophy books when she could, as the lists in her diaries show.
But ‘How often I looked up at the wireless cabin … afterwards. How I had longed for the peace and solitude of the wireless cabin where after my labours I could study in peace.’ She wasn’t even accepted in WW2.
Media & The Woman … The Right to Write & Be Read – Part 3
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 and worked his way through a list of pretty much every older woman in
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.