Did Jackie Blue say the LOBBY word? Could this mean that if National wins next year’s election, the MWA would stop peddling government policy and begin to work for women instead??? Check out this link too: NZ Herald

Tania

Women face sexist backlash
By PATRICK CREWDSON – The Dominion Post | Thursday, 19 July 2007

Women may have claimed some top jobs but worsening domestic violence and a sexist backlash show they still face discrimination, a New Zealand delegation will tell the United Nations.
A report to be presented to an international committee warns of a “marked change for the worse in the social and political climate”, eroding some of the gains made in gender equality.
New Zealanders were increasingly dismissing anti-discrimination work as unnecessary political correctness – often citing the success of prominent women such as Prime Minister Helen Clark and Chief Justice Sian Elias as evidence women had achieved full equality with men.
Though New Zealand women no longer faced prejudice enshrined in law, the “far-reaching effects of social and cultural discrimination” could still be seen.
The report was compiled by the National Council of Women of New Zealand based on submissions from 93 non-governmental organisations.
Council representatives Beryl Anderson and Anne Todd-Lambie will present it to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women monitoring committee in New York at the end of the month.
Ms Anderson said the overall tone of the report was optimistic and there had been areas of clear progress – such as paid parental leave and student loan reform – since the previous report in 2002.
But domestic violence rates had increased, many workplace issues such as pay parity remained unresolved, and women were no better represented in the top echelons of companies.
“Sexist attitudes and the `Old Boy network’ still prevail in many areas of public and professional life where men are in positions of power,” the report says.
Lesbian and bisexual women faced particular discrimination in the workplace.
Ms Anderson said that having had women as prime minister, chief justice, governor-general, speaker of Parliament, and chief executive of Telecom had created a misleading impression that gender parity had been achieved.
“There has been a bit of a backlash because so much emphasis was given on having women in those top positions. People thought everything was resolved when in actual fact the pay equity gap is greater now than it was 20 years ago.”
The report expresses concern that sexist jokes are becoming more common as part of a reaction against “political correctness” that included developments such as the National Party appointing a `PC eradicator’, a position that has since been disestablished.
Other concerns included women’s treatment in the male-dominated prison system, where their needs as mothers were not met, and migrant women being subjected to oppressive customs transplanted from their countries of origin.
Women’s sport still received meagre media coverage and advertisers used stereotypes to sell products.
“We’re seeing more and more young women sexualised in television programmes and advertising and it’s happening at an earlier and earlier age,” Ms Anderson said.
The report criticises National’s intention to abolish the Women’s Affairs Ministry if it had won the 2005 election, but newly appointed women’s affairs spokeswoman Jackie Blue said the party had abandoned that policy.
She said Women’s Affairs was a small ministry and she would like to see its funding increased so it could move on from “tick-a-box” policy work to more active work.
“I would like to see it have more teeth and to actually lobby for women’s issues and causes.”
A Government delegation will present its official report three days after the National Council of Women presents its findings.
That report also identifies domestic violence and gender pay parity as areas that need addressing.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/fashion/story/0,,2124290,00.html

Panel stops short of calling for rigorous measures to tackle eating disorders.

Hadley Freeman, deputy fashion editor
Thursday July 12, 2007
The Guardian

Models under 16 should be banned from the runways, designers should be trained to help models with eating disorders and shows should be “demonstrably” drug-free, an investigation into the fashion industry has concluded.
The measures are set out by the Model Health Inquiry, which was set up in response to concerns about the use of ultra-thin models during last year’s London fashion week.

But the panel, headed by Labour peer Lady Kingsmill and made up of health specialists and fashion industry insiders, including designers Giles Deacon and Betty Jackson, has stopped short of trying to enforce rigorous measures to weigh models or test their body mass index (BMI) before they are allowed on the catwalk.

The independent study was keen to focus attention on issues other than weight, such as long working hours and, in particular, the use of models under 16. Inevitably, though, the question of models’ weight was the focus of the press conference yesterday at which the report was presented. Dr Adrienne Key, clinical director at the Priory hospital’s eating disorder unit, said at the conference that as many as 40% of models may have eating disorders and almost all the models the panel spoke to confessed to having an “unhealthy relationship with food”.
The report rejected the suggestion that there should be an agreed BMI all models should fulfil.

The model Erin O’Connor, who sat on the panel, told the Guardian it would “compromise the dignity of the models”. Instead, the panel recommended that those who work in the industry should be trained to recognise problems.

One suggestion being considered is that models should submit to random drug testing, with the risk of bans and fines. But panel member Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm model agency and the woman who discovered Kate Moss, disagreed with this idea. She said: “I wouldn’t fine them, I would try to help them. If it continues to be a problem for that one model then, yes, you have to take action and once I did have to fire a model, which was an extremely painful event.”

Lady Kingsmill, former deputy chair of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, was riled when one journalist described the report as “idealistic” but admitted that “this report won’t bring about a revolution. It is moving the peanut forward. I can think of no other industry which has such a highlighted health issue but no one does anything about it.”

Critics felt the report did not go far enough, however. Dee Doocey, Liberal Democrat culture spokeswoman on the London assembly, said: “This report has been a huge disappointment. We were led to believe that this inquiry would produce recommendations that would actually protect young models in London fashion week from exploitation and illness. Unless some real action is taken the health of our young models will continue to suffer.”

The difficulty for the panel is that the most powerful designers are not British but Italian, French and American, and they often prefer to use very thin models. To many in the business, the skinnier the model, the more fashionable the label must be. Lady Kingsmill said she was surprised by what she had seen at the Paris couture shows last week: “All was not well there.”

The report admits that if British models are discouraged from losing an excessive amount of weight, it could harm their careers elsewhere.

“Models told the panel that they are required to shed extra weight to be successful in Paris, Milan and New York. Would action in London be undermined by the demand of other international fashion centres?” the report asks rhetorically.

Other fashion weeks, including Madrid and Milan, have said they are taking steps to ban obviously unhealthy models from their runways. However, the report says that some contributors described Madrid’s move as “window dressing without substance” and, of Milan, the report says that there has been “no evidence that this has been enforced or that intervention has been effective”.

Ms Doukas told the Guardian that the situation was much worse in New York, Milan and Paris.

Lady Kingsmill agreed: “I hope one day we will have international cooperation, but right now we focused on London and I would like to set up London fashion week as the gold standard in terms of the treatment of models,” she said.

Yet even this may be difficult. Lady Kingsmill said that “it is unclear who should enforce these recommendations. We think the British Fashion Council should do it, but they lack the funding.”

Even before the press conference took place, Hilary Riva, the head of the BFC, released a statement saying: “Supporting models does not fall within the BFC’s remit. If the BFC is to take a broader role in this important area, new funding will be required.”

Ms Doukas also told the Guardian that the schedules of fashion weeks in other countries were not conducive to healthy working.

“If there are five or six shows in the daytime, you’re going to fit the models for the clothes for the shows the next day in the middle of the night. And then they have to get up the next day to do those shows. It’s very difficult and I don’t know what you can do.”

Betty Jackson said at the launch of the report: “No designer wants to have an ill person walking in their show.”

Others, though, have a different starting point. Karl Lagerfeld, the designer behind Chanel, Fendi and his own line, recently said: “We don’t see anorexic [girls]. The girls are skinny. They have skinny bones.”

Recommendations

· Initiate model health education in the industry, including workshops about eating disorders

· Provide a healthy backstage area for models at the shows, with good-quality food

· Model agencies to provide regular health checks and recruit experienced models as mentors to younger ones

· Create a representative body or union for models

· Backstage environments should be demonstrably drug and cigarette free

· Models under 16 should not be used in London fashion week

· A formal licensing system for model agencies to be established

The sociologist, Dorothy Smith, argues that we are all expert practitioners of our everyday world, knowledgeable in the most intimate ways of how it is put together and of its routine daily accomplishments. But our aim as scholars or analysts is to find the objective or generalisable correlates of what seem to be a private experience (of oppression).

In Tania’s experience this morning, encountering the father with the obnoxious t-shirt, we can find some “truths” of our gendered everyday world. That father, also a police officer, (and we know about police officers in New Zealand) was expressing his masculine gender identity. The T-shirt associates political expression and power (party-partisan, “Anti-Bush”) with female sexual subordination. And it’s relevant to our understanding of gender and politics.

This makes me wonder whether movements to replace Bush, i.e. the Democratic Party or the anti-Iraq war movement, will be any less masculinist in the way they wield power in the world than the Bush administration.

I like better the “My love” union of Bush and Blair. It puts both their “manliness” in question…Maybe you could get a T-shirt printed Tania??

– Jacqui

In a recent article in music magazine UNCUT, Bjork reveals how having a daughter has made her connect with feminist issues:

“Having a little girl changed my perspective on everything. As a woman, you start thinking about the relationship between you and your mother, and your mother’s mother, and a gate opens up to the past and the future. My mother was pretty fierce about feminism and I reacted against that a bit. I felt that her generation had achieved a lot but now it was my turn to get on with it and not moan. Now I’m not so sure. I go to the toy shop and everything is pink, all the stories are about how the most important thing in the universe is for girls to find their prince. And I hate that”.

Isn’t it the case that our personal lives and day to day experiences are often what makes us think (and hopefully act!) politically? The personal is political indeed!

Tania

I was dropping my six year old girls (twins) at school this morning when I came across the father of one of the boys in their year mingling with other parents in the playground. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw what was on his t-shirt: a picture of George Bush with the slogan BAD BUSH next to a picture of a woman pulling her knickers down with the slogan GOOD BUSH (see attached link: http://www.phatpimpclothing.com/hi/phatpimp/getgoodbushbadbush.html )

Quite apart from how seeing that t-shirt made ME feel (and I’m sure the many other mothers and teachers who saw him), how incredibly WRONG to wear it to a PRIMARY SCHOOL!! Will parents this evening have to handle some tricky questions from their kids around the dinner table? How on earth does he explain its meaning to his son and will this boy start referring to my girls in this way? Oh, and guess what? This guy is a member of the New Zealand Police Force!

I told him I didn’t think much of his t-shirt, but he said it was “a good one”. Not sure I did the right thing picking a fight with a parent at my kids’ school (!) but for me feminism is something that is practiced every day in a variety of different contexts. You know, everyday feminism…

Tania

Hello fellow bloggers

I would also like to welcome you to the site – I think it is great that Jacqui and Tania have invited the Gender and Politics class to the site and hopefully this will be a dynamic shared space.

I found this blog today from a student at the University of New Brunswick that I thought we would all find inspirational, including some great links to feminist websites, blogs and journals. I like her discussion of the idea of space, and I think the notion of a safe feminist space is an important one to explore.
http://v37s3b4h7dn47s37hg1br4h7rs7n3du7s8nu.unbf.ca/~o52mv/
Cheers

Anita.

What do you think “politics” is about? What’s your definition? For me, its about the power relations and social hierarchies that underlie our social and political institutions, including, the family, civil society, the church, business, public organizations and political institutions.

What are your thoughts?

Jacqui

I’m delighted to see Megan’s post. I’m going to comment on her post. But does anyone have any suggestions for our subheading/themes in addition to “Hot Topics” “Eco-Friendly Handy Hints”; “Happenings and Events”? “Feminist-Blogs and other Links”.

What will our columns be called?

Are there images you have we could upload – Tania what about the ones I sent you?

I’m going to ask Morgan to give us each our own passwords.

Did you see this morning’s Herald editorial. “http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10439684. “Broad the right man to lead the way”. Apparently and I quote:

We are in danger of succumbing to moral panic on any sexual subject these days. Society is much more sensitive to sexually exploitive images of women, though not of men, than it was 20 or 30 years ago and overt displays of sexuality have become less acceptable. The change is all to the good and owes much to the advancement of women in politics and other professions. The police have lagged behind the trend somewhat and the masculine requirements of the job might mean that they continue to do so.

Overt displays of female sexuality less acceptable? Since when? Hello, hello …parades of topless women on bikes through Auckland’s main street? And being a guy who likes pornography is a requirement for police work?

Your thoughts?

— JT

Hi everyone,

I am going to Noumea for a Pacific Women’s conference in 2 wks time. I thought I’d use it as an opportunity to talk about some feminist issues that come out of the discussions.  It would be good to use the context of the current budget (NZ aid to Pacific has just increased by quite a bit)to make it ‘newsworthy’. I’m also going to Solomons in June, so should come back with some more material.  There are lots of feminist issues of global relevance that are bing played out in Melanesia (well, of course) so it should be interesting.Â

On the subject of columns - hot topics seems to cover a lot. If we wanted to, we could even split this into more specific columns. One suggestion would be themes, like current isssues around work and economics, enviroment etc. But this might get hard to keep up and the separation sometimes ends up being false.Â

Some green handy hints would be great, I’ll try to come up with some if you like.Â

MeganÂ

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