On the Agenda: Gender Making News
Naomi Wynter-Vincent
National News
- Babyfather – A new survey by the Equal Opportunities Commission
has found that a majority of fathers in the UK are still failing to pull
their weight in the home. EOC chairwoman Julie Mellor said: “Until we have
equal pay, decent childcare and more opportunities to work flexible hours,
many fathers will continue to find it hard to be there for their
children; and many women will continue to lose out at work. This is not
necessarily the best solution for parents, children or employers.” The
study identified four ‘styles’ of fathering: from the ‘Enforcer’ dads who
spend little time with their children but see themselves as the final
arbiter of rules in the household; the ‘Entertainer’ dad, who gets
involved in the ‘fun’ aspects of parenting, like playing with the
children, but rarely helps to help with cooking and cleaning; the ‘Useful’
father, who is happy to help with household and parental tasks, but still
takes his cues from the mother, and the ‘fully involved’ dad, who is
equally involved in household tasks and raising the children. The EOC
found that most men in the UK fall into the middle two categories.
- Designer babies – The UK moved one step closer to parents
being allowed to choose the sex of their baby. The Human Fertilisation and
Embryology Authority has produced a consultation paper this month making
the case for a relaxation of the rules surrounding sex-selection
techniques, following medical advances in fertility treatments. Currently,
reproductive sex-selection may be made only where there is a clear medical
case, for example where there is a high risk of a sex-specific hereditary
illness being passed to the foetus, but changes to legislation might mean
that couples could choose the sex of their baby on ‘family balancing’
grounds as well.
- Date rape – The revelation that TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson
was date-raped when she was 19 has put date-rape firmly back on the
agenda. The Home Office is set to tighten up the ‘honest belief’ defence,
in which defendants are able to say that they believed the woman had
consented to sex. Men accused of rape will now have to convince the court
that they took all reasonable attempts to gain explicit consent at the
time. Currently only one in ten reports of rape ever result in a
conviction and thousands of attacks go unreported each year.
- Smooth criminals – It has been interesting again to note the
way in which the press responds to women associated with violent crimes
against children. Whilst the tabloid press still can’t countenance the
release of jailed Moors murderer, Myra Hindley, many years after finishing
her original sentence, Maxine Carr, charged with seeking to pervert the
course of justice in the Soham murder case, has been the subject of
frenzied media interest. Amidst speculation that she may have attempted
suicide a couple of weeks ago, it is interesting to consider her treatment
by the press compared to that of her partner, Ian Hunter. Unlike him,
Maxine Carr has not been accused of murder but she has suffered as much if
not more vilification in the press, and was the subject of the serious
crowd incident which happened outside Peterborough Magistrates Court, when
hundreds of people gathered to shout abuse (such as ‘Kill her! Kill her!),
despite her case not yet having reached trial.
International News
- Indians with attitude – The results of a survey in India
suggest that Indian women are becoming more sexually assertive and less
willing to put up with abusive or uncaring husbands. It found that Indian
women valued sensitivity and honesty over good looks or money, and
preferred to marry a man who was sexually inexperienced. Nearly half of
the 2000 women interviewed declared that they were happy to take the
initiative in sex and tell their husbands about former boyfriends. The
survey also found a marked unwillingness to put up with domestic violence,
with a third of those questioned saying they would fight back or leave
their husbands. The survey has gone some way to reflect the changing
attitudes of women in a country widely thought to be still traditionally
patriarchal.
- Lipstick liberation? – There are plans to open a
western-style beauty school in Afghanistan, funded by American companies,
in January 2003. The school, which will be based inside the Afghan
Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul, will provide courses on hairdressing
and beauty therapy, as well as advice on setting up and running a
business. Companies such as Revlon and MAC will be donating make-up and
beauty products. The idea was devised by American Aid worker Mary
MacMakin, who sees the school as a way to encourage financial independence
as well as a boost to the confidence of Afghan women who are only now
emerging from their burkhas after the demise of the Taliban. Critics say
that instruction in beauty techniques should be low on the list of
development priorities: “Women in Afghanistan need midwives, then
mascara,” said a spokesperson for the Women’s Alliance for Peace and Human
Rights in Afghanistan. Supporters point out that there were underground
beauty parlours during the Taliban regime, and that this is one way to
help Afghan women to support themselves, re-establish themselves in the
workforce and feel more confident about their future.
- Sex trade in the Middle East – A conference in Dhaka has
highlighted the problem of migrant Bangladeshi women being forced into the
sex trade in India and the Middle East. Thousands of young women, some as
young as 12, travel abroad to India, Kuwait, Dubai, Bahrain and Saudi
Arabia, looking to escape a life of poverty. The Bangladesh government has
banned young, unskilled women from travelling overseas by themselves,
ostensibly to protect them from being sucked into the sex trade, but in
practice women continue to travel abroad through the black market by
paying large sums of money to unscrupulous black-market dealers who
subsequently force the women to repay the money through prostitution.
- Women’s gun club in US – the Second Amendment Sisters (SAS),
a women’s pro-gun lobby, has opened its first college group at Mount
Holyoke, a prestigious and historically left-wing women’s college in
Massachusetts. Reacting against women’s groups in the US who oppose the
gun-lobby, SAS see themselves as an empowered and even feminist group of
women who do not need to rely on men to defend them: “I feel like
self-defence is a natural part of empowerment, and I really question those
who say they’re feminists… usually they turn to men for defence, and
depend on them. That’s not what I was taught taking care of yourself
meant.”
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