FEMINIST NARCISSISM AND POLITICAL POWER

I found this extremely interesting to read, as well as funny. Its the yang to our yin or is it yin to our yang? (is that right?) It’s a book, written by Peter Zohrab, titled Sex, Lies and Feminism. I have never read it, but the one chapter i read, made me smile (and shake my head)

Reviews: Sex, Lies & Feminism is one of those rare books that instantly reads like a movement classic…. Zohrab’s intellect and knack for fresh re-examination … had me turning the pages almost as raptly as if I were reading a novel…. A book that can actually get the reader to develop or expand useful new modes of thought is rare indeed.”

just some ‘light’ reading!

have a good week all! 

In his article, “The Women Are At Fault” Matthias Matussek refers to the modern women’s “excitedly-chattering programs of feminine self-elevation.”1 He asks, “Why do they constantly stand before the fairy-tale mirror-on-the wall, to reassure themselves that they are the most beautiful, the smartest, the most courageous?” He suggests their “narcissistic posturing before the mirror, as silly as it is, is part of the prescribed role-acting for the ‘modern woman,’ something that she finds almost impossible to escape.” (Translator: W. Schneider, www.pappa.com/emanzi/mm_fault.htm)

He also cites the widespread popular feeling that “women are on the ascent, men on the descent.” These two features of modern western societies – women’s narcissism and their ascent, relative to men – are closely connected. To understand these phenomena, we need to analyse developments in both political and social thinking since World War II.

One major result of the Second World War has been that conservative and right-wing policies were discredited by the defeat of their apparently most extremist (Fascist and Nazi) proponents. Any policy promoted by Hitler, Mussolini, the Nazis or the Fascists (even just moderately conservative ones) is vulnerable to attack because of its association with the “Bad Guys.” In fact, Germany was probably lucky the autobahns weren’t all dug up on that pretext after World War II! The Left/Right dichotomy is to some extent artificial, or course, and Nazism was to some extent a Socialist ideology. However, in popular culture Nazism is classed as being on the Right and Socialism is classed as being on the Left.

In response, our gurus (Hollywood, plus university lecturers and journalists) inundated the second half of the 20th Century with the “lessons” they thought we should learn from the WW II. Apparently, they believed the main lesson is that, by definition, anyone who is “oppressed” is good, while “oppressors” are bad. My point is not that this precept is wrong, but that, by virtue of this connection with Nazi atrocities, it has become the moral cornerstone of western society. It is so pervasive that as westerners we might need to learn Arabic or an Asian language and go live in certain parts of Muslim or non-Muslim Asia before we could even conceive how it is possible to think of Hitler without the moral overtones that have become second nature for westerners. Hitler and his actions have become synonymous with extreme evil, and are often used by political movements as reference-points, with which to compare some evil that they are attacking.

Why should that matter? Because of how it causes us to view victims (both real and alleged).

Virtue of the victim class
Generations of academics and journalists have told us women are chief among the victims of oppression, and men are their oppressors. In the post-W.W.II paradigm, this makes all women “good” and all men “bad.” This story told long and loud has produced a virtual cult of oppression, and there has been an unholy scramble by various sections of our societies to prove themselves oppressed, and therefore good.

Getting classified as one of the oppressed provides all sorts of benefits. First, it all but guarantees positive media coverage, and even ordinary women can now expect to be treated as victims in situations where men would not.

Then there is the research into one’s oppression, government subsidies of various kinds and possibly even a clutch of Hollywood movies. (Despite a growing body of evidence proving women commit as much domestic violence as men, for example, scarcely a month goes by without the release of a new movie about how husbands beat up their wives, and the Battered Woman’s Shelter movement has become a lucrative government subsidized business.) With all that, who wouldn’t want to be one of the oppressed? Or at least recognized as one.

Today the view women are victims is taken for granted, and we live in a culture obsessed by their issues. Society revolves around women and their needs, with so many Feminist Special Interest Groups (SIGs) demanding whatever they feel might benefit women as a whole, or one sector of the female population in particular, that men’s issues are virtually ignored, by comparison. Such is Feminists’ power that few politicians are willing to oppose them for fear of being labeled “sexist.”

With men and society so obsessed with women’s issues, it is only natural for women – like the spoiled only-child of doting parents – to become ever more self-obsessed and narcissistic. If everything else revolves around you, you may as well revolve around yourself as well. Only the strongest resist. Making derogatory remarks about men is habitual in some Feminist circles – but men can hardly make derogatory remarks about women without being shamed or bullied into an apology.
Women’s self-esteem is constantly built up by exaggerated headlines (any woman who is able to breathe is a candidate for being called a “Superwoman” in a Feminist journalists’s puffery.) And this, together with the absence of criticism, means that women can blame external forces for all their problems, and need never taken responsibility for them.

Women’s narcissism is partly a result of women’s power (see chapter 14). But it is also a source of their power. Since women are so tuned-in to themselves, they have ample opportunity to discover “needs” (i.e. wants) which Society (i.e. men) must fulfill. Complaining about all these new unfulfilled needs creates more evidence of their victimization by men, and this reinforces their power.

Who’s got the power?
On both the Left and Right, philosophers, politicians and ideologues often use a “straw man” model of their opponents’ ideas – a distorted model which they can attack more easily than the real thing. Similarly, Feminists have used a straw man model of political power, emphasizing the power of politicians and top bureaucrats, to deflect attention from the real bastions of power in western democracies. Decision-makers such as politicians do have power, but that power is severely limited by those who control the flow of information, stereotypes and ideas in popular culture.

The really powerful people are the journalists, Hollywood personnel, and researchers who control information and stereotypes, and thereby control the choices decision-makers think are available to them. Joseph McCarthy once tried to purge Hollywood of Communist sympathisers. He failed, and our sympathies are now supposed to be with those whose careers he damaged.

However, it would be naïve to assume he was wrong in his analysis — however heavy-handed his methods. Hollywood, the media, and the education system control or at the least strongly influence what policies the electorate thinks are good, realistic or credible. I have first-hand experience of blatant left-wing indoctrination in the education sector, where many professionals think it is sufficient to label something or someone as “left” for she/it/he to be worthy of promotion – and labelling something or someone as “right” is sufficient cause to oppress or censor him/it/her. In universities, it has long been fashionable for Leftists to label something or someone as “Fascist” if it or they are even slightly to the Right of their own stance on an issue.

I am talking here about the actual workers (e.g., journalists) in these fields – not the financial backers, who are usually too interested in making money to care about influencing the content of what is produced by their sometimes one-eyed Left/Liberal workers. Even print media which have a conservative editorial line do not always insist on that same bias in other sections of their publication.

For example, the Wellington, New Zealand, conservative Dominion morning daily newspaper once periodically ran prominent articles on Feminism and female politicians in France. What makes this remarkable is how irrelevant it is to most New Zealanders, who have very little interest in internal French politics. Could it be a subtle way of disguising Feminist propaganda? Hitler’s infamous henchman Goebbels preferred to use historical analogies rather than direct propaganda, in order to conceal his “art.” Were Dominion Feminist journalists using geographical displacement to package their propaganda the same way Goebbels used historical displacement to package the Nazis’ propaganda.

Parallel to the degree of control Feminists exert in the media is the difficulty men have in finding publishers for books on men’s issues.

The Internet promises to liberate us from this covert censorship, but librarians and teachers are working hard to prevent that and reclaim their pre-Internet control over information. Articles such as “Testing the Surf: Criteria for Evaluating Internet Information Resources” (Alastair Smith, The Public Access Computer Systems Review 8, No. 3, 1997) argue that people should be taught to avoid web sites that are “biased” in favour of those that have “authority” or “reputable organizations” behind them. It just so happens the latter category of web sites are likely to belong to libraries and educational institutions. Librarianship and education are female-dominated occupations, and these institutions typically teach Feminism as fact and ignore or deprecate men’s rights.

Take the well-known Feminist journalist and author, Susan Faludi. According to the author of the Femjour web page,

“Faludi thinks a journalist’s job is to create social change by educating people and taking the time to investigate things. A journalist needs to be passionate about a cause, she says.” (www.dnai.com/~ljtaflin/FEMJOUR/faludi.html )
Leftist journalists are often “engaged” or “committed” in this way. I once read a “news” article in the Guardian Weekly about a new or resurgent right-wing party in Austria (Austrian Freedom Party) that wanted to restrict immigration. This party later became part of the Government and one of its Ministers, Mr. Haupt, founded the World’s first Men’s Department (in the Ministry of Social Security and Generations). Because immigration is such an emotive issue when it concerns German-speaking countries, I had to read about half-way into the article before I could find any indication of the reasons this party gave for its policies – the first half was pure rhetoric about how dangerous this party was! Yet the Guardian counts as one of the “quality” newspapers of Britain!

When this Men’s Department was founded, I started to take an interest in whether the Austrian Freedom Party was actually a Neo-Nazi party, as the media tended to imply. I did a brief search of the Internet, which confirmed my initial impression that most of the opposition to this party was based on Left-wing hysteria and rhetoric, rather than fact.

Later, I attended a lecture on the history of Austria given by a retired Professor of German (himself of Austrian origin), who also called the party “Neo-Nazi”, but gave no evidence for this. So I challenged him to give some concrete evidence that it was Neo-Nazi, but all he could say was that the party’s original leader, Mr. Harder, was “too clever” to say anything specifically Nazi, and that he had addressed a gathering of former SS soldiers. Interestingly, he also characterised the New Zealand politician, Winston Peters, as “too clever” ! I pointed out that, if Communists voted for a left-wing party, he would not then say that that entire party was Communist ! He was most reluctant to consider even the possibility that the Austrian Freedom Party was not Neo-Nazi, but he did eventually admit that possibility.

He mentioned that these former SS soldiers (if that is what they actually were) explained their vote for the Austrian Freedom Party as a vote for “Freedom” – and he was very scornful of that. However, he himself explained that the ruling Leftists in Austria had become very corrupt, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see that conservatives in the Austrian countryside might indeed have justifiably seen a vote against the ruling Leftists as a vote for freedom from oppression. I constantly come up against the Leftist attitude (in the capital city of New Zealand, where I live) that, if you don’t have the correct Leftist views, you should go and live in a provincial town ! That bias is also reflected in the kind of service I get from Leftist bureaucrats. Often the bias is so great as to be unbelievable.

Since World War II, an entire intellectual culture of hysteria has grown up, where certain topics (e.g. restricting immigration) are taboo, and anyone broaching those topics is considered to be a racist or even a Neo-Nazi, who is simply too clever to say what he/she really thinks. Every country restricts immigration to some extent, and I would guess that Third-World countries, from which refugees typically flow into Western countries, restrict immigation much more than Western countries do, on the whole. No country, surely, can afford to open its borders to everyone who wants to come in !

When I read the left-liberal British Guardian Weekly newspaper, I filter out the bias. One of its subscribers, however, told me he reads it specifically for its bias! This kind of person is what is known in Britain as a “Guardian-Reader”; i.e., someone with a fairly predictable set of politically correct views. Such people, who graduate en masse from our Liberal Arts colleges and universities, provide a ready market for committed Leftist journalists to carry out political activism as part of their professional activities.

In the 1970’s, in Auckland, New Zealand, I failed to get into journalism school while a Marxist female friend succeeded. She told me my mistake had been to wear a suit at the interview – the panel was looking for crusading journalists, not conservative types. And I am sure I gave the wrong answer when the interviewers asked me if I wanted to “change the World.” “Of course not!” I said. As a consequence of this pervasive bias, the West is flooded with journalists who have been selected for courses or for jobs on the basis of their leftist credentials, and their determination to avoid objectivity at all costs.

In 1997, I made an oral submission to a committee of the national legislature, which was considering some draft legislation on a Sex War issue.2 The actual issue was the provision of social welfare payments to people (i.e., women, in most cases) who were deemed to be victims of ongoing domestic violence. They were to be eligible to receive these payments even if their partners already had an income which would normally make them ineligible to receive social welfare payments.

On behalf of my Association, I made a written and oral submission, focusing on the use of the term unscientific term “Battered Woman Syndrome” in the preamble to the Bill. I had some hand-outs for the media and when I saw some women sitting at the back of the committee room who were taking notes, I asked if any members of the media were present. No one responded, though much was written.
There were two oral submissions made before mine, and at least one after. Despite this, an article appeared next day in the Dominion, the city’s only morning newspaper, describing the committee’s activities as though there had been only one submission – from a Feminist. It gave what amounted to a Feminist press release; no comment or criticism of any kind. Obviously, an insider on the staff of the newspaper was determined to give only one side of the story – the Feminist’s. The paper is known for its conservative editorial line, but this line is obviously not enforced in all sections of the paper.

The combined efforts of the New Zealand Men’s and Fathers’ Movement did succeed in persuading the Committee to throw out the concept of the “Battered Woman’s Syndrome,” but the Law Commission, as I write, is trying to get it introduced into New Zealand law under another name. I see such one-sided reporting as typical of my experience with the media, though the situation has gradually improved due to our persistent opposition to media bias.

This media/Hollywood/university/publishing industry brainwashing process, however, does not have to continue perpetually. Despite their best efforts, reality may yet gatecrash this particular Hollywood set. I hope that day is close at hand and that this book, together with other events happening around the world will mark a watershed in this process.

The Soviet Union and Comecon are no more, China has declared that to be rich is glorious, and there has been a massive swing to the Right in western economic policies. Countries in East and Southeast Asia have also helped weaken the stereotype that only Whites can be rich (and therefore “bad”). The old Left-wing stereotypes are breaking down all over the world. Leftism in social policy matters cannot remain unaffected because it is a state of mind maintained by a victim coalition. If one part of it is undermined, all are undermined.

I am not attacking the victim coalition here – just analysing their power-structure in relation to Feminism, as defined in the Introduction. The victim coalition and its ideology, Political Correctness, have become very powerful. I do not desire their total destruction, but I do acknowledge that attacking one of their pillars – Feminism – has the potential to weaken the entire edifice.

Domestic and Family Violence – NZ Herald 21 July 2007

I would like to comment on the recent reports highlighting the continuing problem of systematic domestic violence in New Zealand. A couple of weekends ago there was a feature in the Weekend Herald on domestic and family violence. The story makes for a dissapointing read – basically because there is no story. The article merely presents the statistics, discusses various measurement problems with those statistics and advises on how they can be best interpreted – i.e. conservatively. The focus remains safely on measurement, not the substantive problem. The article talks to a couple of key women involved in supporting or counteracting the violence. These women I’m sure do incredible and necessary work – but they are the usual suspects to be consulted. Furthermore, the accompanying picture of a forlorn, passive looking woman with a stage make-up bruise seems to misrepresent or perhaps underrepresent the nature of the problem. Is the nature of domestic violence really captured by a picture of a woman with a black eye?

I think what is also missing from this and other reports like it is discussion of the initiatives to prevent domestic violence which men are involved in. We hear little about mens organisations to conbat this violence in NZ or even overseas initiatives involving men. Of course this is in large part becuae there are relatively few. But they do exist and are growing. The White Ribbon campaign which started in Canada and now has presence here and in many other countries is an example. Perhaps journalists could think outside the box a bit and key into emerging movements like these.

Many men’s reticence on the issue of domestic violence and the lack of institutional support structures in society for men or men’s groups mean that the burden of analsyisng and investigating gender based violence is carried by women and women’s organisations. But this problem is not going to go away until men and masculinities are brought into analysis. Some campaigns in the media are slowly starting to do this through the use of celebrity – a great step. However, there is still perhaps a lack of understanding about routinely addressing the issue as a men’s as well as a women’s issue. The picture accompanying the article I think also demonstrates a lack of udnerstanding of the contextual, relational nature of violence.

A Mexican researcher Juan Carlos Ramirez Rodrigeuz argues that when men are approached to talk about their violence against their partners and children it is often perceived to be confrontational. To aviod this in his own work (in Mexico) he has used a narrative approach. He lets the men tell their stories and allows the issue of violence to come up ‘naturally’ in the flow of their dialogue about their lives. This gives better results on how the men perceive, manage and justify their violence and at the same time does not separate their acts from the broader context of thier lives.

He says “I believe we need to capture the relationships that are constantly in flux, and that are shaped by other linkages – to other men, to one’s original family, to the workplace, to sons and daughters, and to institutionalised discourses, whether firmly established or only nascent” (referene below).

I think approaching the problem this way allows us to see gender as a relational concept, not as something that women and men have. I think this sort of approach allows us to see better that men and women are gendered. Perhaps this way we can start to take for granted much less the masculine foundations of our society, many of which condone the manhy forms of violence against women.

I know there is a lot of work around masculinities and violence in some quarters, I just wish the mainstream media would get a bit more savvy. But a commercially owned press is not a free press, I suppose – but debating statistics under the guise of true analysis of a crucial social issue is disappointing.

Finally and importantly, I would like to paraphrase masculinities expert Robert Connell in saying that although statistically most violence in society is perpetrated by men, this does not mean all men are violent. Having said that at the level of the UN Violence Against Women is treated as a serious issue of ‘epidemic’ proportions. There are many UN sites dealing with it, but take a look at

http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/index.html

should give a few leads.

megan

Rodrigeuz, J., 2006. Revisioning Male Violence in Men of the Global South: a reader (ed) Jones, A. London: Zed Books pp67-71.

A Room of One's Own

It was great to have the opportunity to see Coco Fusco’s performance-lecture “A Room of One’s Own: Women and Power in the New America” yesterday. It’s not often we get a chance to see an internationally renowned performance artist – let alone for free!

I was really pleased to be able to go along with a number of Gender and Politics students. What did you all think of it? What do you think Fusco was saying? What do you think her point was about what happens when women gain entry to overtly masculine institutions, for instance?

I’m looking forward to discussing this further!

Tania

Sex, Marriage and Feminism

This article in The Bulletin caused quite a stir in Australia last week and I was wondering how other people felt about women being encouraged to acquiesce to their husband’s ‘demands’.  For those of us in 213 it might be nice to couch responses in differing feminist perspectives – Mel

Happily married sexThe Bulletin   Thursday, July 26, 2007The hand comes creeping across the bed,and the wife once again pretends to be asleep. Nightly in the nation’s bedrooms women are turning off sex in their droves. Now, new research by Bettina Arndt suggests a provocative solution.Remember that wonderful scene in the movie Annie Hall when the camera switches between Woody Allen in his psychiatrist’s office and his lover, Diane Keaton, in hers. They are each asked how often they have sex. “Hardly ever,” Allen says plaintively. “Maybe three times a week.” “Constantly,” Keaton groans. “I’d say three times a week.”It’s great stuff, touching on the yawning gulf between men and women in everyday sexual desire. It’s true that most men feel they aren’t getting enough and women feel under pressure to come up with what the men want. That’s the elephant in the room in many relationships, the often unspoken source of much marital tension.Sex in marriage isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the days when sex was simply part of women’s wifely duties. Now most men find themselves on the back foot, feeling very much at the mercy of women’s whim. And that makes for lean pickings given the large numbers of women who go off sex.There seems to be a universal epidemic of women not wanting to have sex. Or at least not wanting as much sex as their partners. On daytime television there’s a passing parade of women worrying about their lost libido. “It would be totally fine if I never had sex again,” one young wife tearfully told Oprah Winfrey.That means trouble. How do couples deal with the strain of the man wishing and hoping while all she longs for is uninterrupted sleep? “That’s what we fought about most in the first 10 years of our marriage,” says 54-year-old Amy who, with her husband Jim, 56, is filling out diaries as part of my research on how couples negotiate their sex supply. “Every night he’d have a go. He’d reach across the bed and it was my decision whether it was on or not. It was this big ogre between us.”Amy continues: “Even if I refused him, I’d be so upset that I’d lie awake at night thinking, ‘Why did I say no?’ I might as well have let him have it because the next day he’d be so grumpy.” “That’s right,” Jim acknowledges ruefully, “I was a great sulker.” Even on days he didn’t approach her, Amy says she was nervous. “He’d be snoring loudly and I’d still lie there worrying that the hand was going to come creeping over.”It’s a drama being played out in bedrooms across the country. But this is usually a silent movie, with couples rarely talking about their subtle negotiations. His calculations: “What if I …? Will she then …?” Her excuses: dropping her book and feigning sleep as he enters the bedroom. Tensions. Resentment. Guilt. But still joy, of course. How reassuring that, despite the sags and bulges of a less-than-perfect body, you are still wanted. How comforting that warm and familiar body.It’s now almost 30 years since Amy lay rigid in bed, dreading the creeping hand. “I look back and am amazed now that we let sex become such a source of tension between us. It was because we couldn’t talk about it.” But there was another huge stumbling block – in Amy’s head. This was the 1970s, a time when women’s sexual rights had become a rallying cry. Women must no longer act as spittoons for men, preached Germaine Greer. Women were to reclaim their bodies for their own pleasure and that meant having sex only when they felt like it. Female desire must come first, pronounced the famous sex researchers Masters and Johnson. Without desire, there was no arousal, no pleasure, they said.But as Amy discovered, if she waited for her own libido to rear its weedy little head, the couple’s sex frequency would have hit the red very quickly. After one particularly nasty fight, Jim announced he was sick of having to approach her. “If you ever want sex again, you are going to have to ask me for it,” he told her. “That was a complete and utter disaster,” says Amy, describing how she’d lie awake worrying about not wanting sex yet knowing how grumpy he’d be.She’d got it all wrong, Amy now realises. As we all have had it wrong. The assumption that women need to want sex to enjoy it has been a really damaging idea that has wreaked havoc in relationships for the past 40 years. But now research by Professor Rosemary Basson from the

University of
British Columbia has shown that many women do experience arousal and orgasm if they have sex without any prior desire, provided there’s a “willingness to be receptive”.“Just do it!” suggests sex therapist Michele Weiner-Davis in her best-seller The Sex Starved Marriage. She says desire is a decision – you have to make it happen. She’s reached that conclusion after years of counselling married couples experiencing tension as a result of one of them – usually the wife – not being interested in sex. She found that many reluctant lovers reported that when they did have sex, they ended up feeling good.Weiner-Davis poses the revolutionary idea that there’s no point worrying about the reasons why women aren’t interested in sex – there’ll always be plenty of them: squalling infants, stress, tiredness, irritation that he won’t help with the housework. “Knowing why you are not so interested in sex won’t boost your desire one bit. Doing something about it will,” she says.It seems many women are willing to do it. They manage the sex supply by sometimes having sex when they don’t feel like it. An internet survey by The Australian Women’s Weekly found 73% of respondents reported that they sometimes have sex when not in the mood. Half of them gave the reason, “I know I am likely to end up enjoying it”, while a third did it to keep their partners happy.Amy discovered it worked for her. “It doesn’t matter to me whether I’m desperate for sex or not, whether I want it or not. As soon as it gets started, it’s OK. I’ll enjoy it. But that took me a long time to learn.” Amy now counsels other women through her church and finds many are extremely resistant to that message. “They often haven’t had sex for years because they say they have no desire, yet they are looking for love and intimacy and closeness to come back. I explain to them that’s never going to happen unless they start having sex again. But when I tell them to just do it, they are often horrified, saying that’s like being a prostitute.” But many find their sex lives improve immensely if they can get their head around this radical rethink.That’s the funny thing. The idea of having sex without desire is now considered radical – a challenge to long-time feminist orthodoxy. “To contemporary women, the notion that sex might have any function other than personal fulfilment is a violation of the very tenets of the sexual revolution that so deeply shaped their attitudes on such matters,” comments Caitlin Flanagan in her thoughtful Atlantic Monthly essay, “No Sex Please, We’re Married”.Flanagan points out this has made life very difficult for the poor married man hoping for a bit of comfort from the wife at the day’s end. “He must somehow seduce a woman who is economically independent of him, bone-tired, philosophically disinclined to have sex unless she is jolly well in the mood, numbingly familiar with his every sexual manoeuvre and still doing a slow burn over his failure to wipe down the worktops and fold the tea-towel after cooking the children’s dinner. He can hardly be blamed for opting instead to check his emails, catch a few minutes of sport on television and call it a night.”Joan Sewell is the author of a funny and provocative new book, I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love my Low Libido in which she acknowledges how difficult it is for men to keep women in the Zen-like state needed for arousal. And she admits that with her it’s a lost cause. “My libido is not very strong. It’s as fickle as hell. It’s apathetic and it’s not easily aroused or easily sustained,” she writes, concluding that’s actually pretty normal for women. Sewell argues that women have naturally lower sex drives. That it’s a hormonal thing. Testosterone makes humans horny and men have lots more than women. Sewell reports feeling envy for genuinely lusty women, mentioning she met one who described herself as a juicy tomato. “If you were a vegetable, what would you be?” the woman had asked Sewell. “I don’t know, maybe a celery stalk,” she replied.But are most women really celery sticks? Certainly not, says Susan Davis,

Monash
University’s professor of women’s health and a world leader in the study of hormones affecting female drive. She’s met lots of juicy tomatoes. “Oh God, yes. I have one patient who is an academic who tells me she sometimes has to close the door of her university office so she can masturbate,” adding there are also plenty of men who have a low libido. There’s a huge variation in both genders.
Davis says very little of it is due to hormones, although much of her recent work has focused on treating women with low sexual drive by using testosterone.Testosterone is the nearest thing we have to a pink Viagra. The Pfizer company abandoned research on women using Viagra-like drugs when it discovered that even though these increased pelvic blood flow, many women didn’t notice. There’s a disconnect between what’s happening in women’s heads and between their legs. New research is directed at drugs focusing on parts of the brain directly connected with arousal and orgasm. Meanwhile, testosterone is helping boost libido in some – perhaps one in every two – but the hormonal issue is very complex: some women have low sex drive yet naturally high testosterone levels and some very juicy tomatoes show very low levels.Hormones are only part of the story. Women’s libido is simply different from men’s. Female sexual drive tends to be less robust, more easily distracted and dampened by stress, fatigue and relationship hiccups; more bound up in the desire for intimacy. As one woman once told me: “I wrap up sex in all the garbage of the day.” Male desire is comparatively resilient, urgent and less dependent on the right conditions. That’s why Joan Sewell’s husband Kip would have sex five or six times a week if he could have as much sex as he wanted, compared to her once or twice a month. “If I had a choice between reading a good book and having sex, the book wins,” Sewell confesses.But she still feels guilty about it and has tried to rev up her libido. She’s tried everything from talking to therapists, taking hormones, to talking dirty and smearing chocolate on her husband’s genitals – all to no avail. Sewell concludes the real problem is that no one is trying to lower men’s sex drives. Why don’t we hear men saying, “Doctor, my sex drive is too high. Please do something about it. I feel guilty and ashamed that I don’t want less sex. It’s killing my marriage.”Her plea prompted a response from Don Savage, widely syndicated sex advice columnist ( www.citypages.com/savagelove). He comments that whenever he publishes a letter from a man who complains about not getting enough, he’s deluged by what he calls “if only” letters from women … If only she didn’t have to do all the housework, she’d want sex. If only he would talk to her about her day, she’d want sex. By proclaiming that low-libido women are normal, Sewell has done men a favour, suggests Savage: “Well now, thanks to Sewell, straight guys everywhere know that it doesn’t matter how much housework you do, or how sincerely interested you are in her day, or how much of the childcare you take on: she still won’t want to f*** you. So leave the dishes in the sink, grab a beer and go play a video game, guys. Your ‘if only’ nightmares are over.”We wish. But “if only” days aren’t over. So many men, and the occasional woman, are still trying to find the key to a welcoming lover. There’s a great story about one of those old pubs which offer a row of bedrooms above the bar, all with paper-thin walls. This night, everyone was bunkered down trying to sleep when, from one of the rooms, there were sounds of bedclothes rustling, a bed creaking and then a plaintive male voice, “Oh come on, Beryl. Come on!” Silence … and then the rustling started up again. “Berrrylll, oh come on!” So it went on until another irritated male voice called from a nearby room, “For Christ’s sake, Beryl, give it to him! Then we can all get some sleep.”That’s the consolation. This is such a familiar bedtime story with men and women everywhere struggling through the same old, same old.  

"The Physical Health Benefits of Marriage" – Maxim Institute

I couldn’t resist posting this article sent to me as part of an unsolicited email from the Maxim Institute – a social conservative think tank based in Auckland. I thought the research showed it was specifically men who physically benefitted from marriage cf. unmarried men. I guess the Maxim Institute don’t gender disaggregate their data. What a surprise… Still David Benson-Pope could do with a few of those physical benefits!

Read on…. Jacqui

Marriage-the healthy choice

While debate on the role and importance of marriage has been raging for years overseas, in New Zealand such debates are not so frequently heard. International research reveals various ways in which marriage is beneficial to society and individuals, including more than 100 years of research that shows married people have better physical health, on average, than unmarried. Married people get sick less often and tend to live longer than single or divorced people. Emerging research also suggests it is likely there are health differences between those who are married and those living in de facto relationships.

There are three main reasons offered for these health differences. One is that married couples’ long-term mutual investment in each other encourages healthy habits and discourages unhealthy ones. Unlike those in more casual relationships, married couples expect to rely on each other in the long term for childcare and financial support, so they are more likely to take an active interest in each other’s health. While people living together in de facto relationships may also benefit from this to some degree, statistics show that on average marriage lasts longer than de facto relationships. Therefore, accumulated health benefits are not as significant over time outside of marriage. Secondly, married couples generally accumulate more wealth and this is associated with better health, due to improved diets, and a greater ability to visit doctors and dentists and to take out medical insurance. There is also a link between relationship quality and physical health. Married couples tend to have higher quality relationships than those in less formal relationships, often because of the added security that comes from long-term mutual commitment.

Internationally, sceptics who question the benefits of marriage have argued that marriage does not cause better health for adults-or any other associated advantages observed for the married-but that healthier and wealthier people are more likely to marry, therefore ensuring that they will continue to have the best health over the long term. The weight of social science evidence, though, does not support this view. This is because long-term research shows health advantages for married couples accrue after they marry; they are not evident beforehand. Similarly, after divorce, physical health tends to deteriorate, which indicates there are a number of factors associated with marriage that lead to better health. The fact that there are many social and taxpayer costs related to ill health reminds us that marriage is not only personally beneficial, it is a social good as well, not just for individuals, but for the whole community.

Read a Maxim Institute research note on The physical health benefits of marriage

Is Hilary Clinton 'satisfactorily feminine enough'?

I keep finding articles in The Guardian that inspire me to ask questions – at the very end of this article on a recent YouTube broadcast and interactive (interesting in itself) candidates debate, you will see two rather incredible questions directed first at Obama and then at Clinton.  I am horrified that a female candidate for a Presidential nomination be questioned on the degree of her feminity – what do you think?  What do think the person who posed the question is getting at?  Do we ask this of women leaders in NZ?  Can women in positions of public leadership escape such questions?  How?  

Anita.

Clinton and Obama clash after YouTube debate

· Candidates grilled by public’s video clips
· Accusations of naivety over foreign policy

Ewen MacAskill in Charleston and Ed Pilkington
Wednesday July 25, 2007
The Guardian
New York Senator Hillary Clinton speaks with Illinois Senator Barack Obama after the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential candidates debate
Hillary Clinton speaks with Barack Obama after the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential candidates debate. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty images
 

Bickering broke out yesterday between the camps of the two main contestants for the 2008 Democratic nomination with Hillary Clinton’s team seeking to portray Barack Obama as naive in his approach to foreign policy in the wake of an experimental debate organised by CNN and YouTube.Mr Obama, responding to a question from a YouTube user in Monday night’s debate, said he would meet without preconditions the leaders of countries with which the US has strained relations – Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

Article continues



Mrs Clinton, asked the same question, said she would not as she did not want to be used “for propaganda purposes”.Yesterday she said she thought Mr Obama’s response was “irresponsible and frankly naive”. Mr Obama’s camp highlighted a quote from Mrs Clinton in April in which she said: “I think it’s a terrible mistake for our president to say he won’t talk to bad people.”

The spat demonstrated how intense the rivalry between the two has become six months before the first primary contests begin. It also shows the impact of the new irreverent style of debate that was pioneered on Monday. The organisers of next year’s key US presidential debates are planning to dispense with much of the old formula and incorporate the freewheeling style of the YouTube website and other new media favourites.

Presidential hopefuls, television companies and political websites yesterday judged the debate, organised by CNN as well as YouTube, as a success. The eight candidates for the Democratic nomination faced two hours of questions from a cross-section of Americans who submitted 30-second video clips.

The debate, in Charleston, South Carolina, included questions about Iraq from a mother whose son was to be deployed there and a father who had lost a son in the country. There were also questions about health from brothers spoon-feeding dinner to a father suffering from Alzheimer’s, about Darfur from an American in a refugee camp, and about gun laws from a man cradling a rifle which he described as his “baby”. Some questions were gimmicky and aimed at winning laughs.

One of the organisers said it would now be impossible to return to the old format. Although the candidates at times seemed uncomfortable with the uncertainty, listening with fixed grins, their campaign managers yesterday said it had been refreshing. Joe Trippi, who is part of John Edwards’ campaign, said: “I thought it was great. It was more freewheeling.”

David Axelrod, the campaign strategist for Mr Obama, said: “I think he relished this. He thinks the American people have been cut out of Washington politics.”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, co-author of a history of presidential debates, called the move a milestone. The humour in some of the videos inspired interest in topics that might otherwise bore viewers, as did the images of “real” people talking about troubles in their lives, she said.

YouTube bloggers generally welcomed the format but objected to CNN choosing the questions: 39 were selected from almost 3,000 clips sent in.

Typical of the format’s directness was Jordan Williams, a Kansas student, who asked Mr Obama whether he was “authentically black enough”. Mr Obama said he had suffered the same difficulties as other African-Americans in hailing a taxi in New York: “You know, when I’m catching a cab in Manhattan in the past, I think I’ve given my credentials.” He also asked Mrs Clinton if she was “satisfactorily feminine enough”. She replied: “Well, I couldn’t run as anything other than a woman.”




The power of a name

Not in the name of the father

By Shelley Bridgeman

It’s 114 years since New Zealand women got the vote, Helen Clark is our second female Prime Minister, and women are starting to dismantle one of the few remaining bastions of male supremacy.

A small but growing number of women are passing their own surnames on to their children, rather than their husbands’ or partners’.

While this practice is well established in situations where the father is absent or unwilling to be involved with his children, it is increasingly being considered a viable option when the family unit is intact.

Suzanne Broadbent, 37, of Pakuranga in east Auckland, gave 8-year-old daughter Tessa her surname.

“It was purely a logical decision,” she says. “It wasn’t an emotional thing. It wasn’t a feminist thing.

“It was just: this is silly, that boys and girls get their father’s name.”

Suzanne’s son, Taylor, 9, has the surname of her partner, David Rooney, 35. “He may have preferred to have both his children with his name, but there’s always got to be a little bit of compromise,” she says. “Obviously, I’ve compromised by my son having his father’s last name.”

show_ad_tag(‘http://ads.apn.co.nz’,’NZH’,’SEC’,’NATIONAL’,’STY’,’300X250′,”,”);Both of 36-year-old Nelson woman Sharon Gibson’s daughters – Milla, 4, and Stella, 2 – have her surname. Before the gender of their first child was known, she and husband Wayne Pool, 46, decided girls would be given Sharon’s name and boys given his. “That seemed fair. It seemed odd to us to accept the fact that your children get the husband’s name,” she says. “This works really well. The only down side is that I figure people who don’t know us might think that Wayne’s not the father.”

Feilding mum Rachael McLaughlin, 24, passed her surname down to daughters Leah, 3, and Shania, 2. Pragmatism rather than ideology drove the decision.

Around the time of Leah’s birth, a convicted murderer from Masterton with the same surname as her partner Martyn Howse, 27, was back in the media, and Martyn was keen that his daughter not be associated with that high-profile case.

“He wanted to give our second daughter his last name, though,” says Rachael. But having grown up in a household as the child with the odd surname out, she promptly vetoed that suggestion.

“It was horrible. I’d never put that on a child.”

Maureen Molloy, women’s studies professor at the University of Auckland, says she’s observed a raft of unconventional naming options, including using the mother’s name.

“I guess the message is that people have more choice. It’s partly feminism, that kind of egalitarianism that women are no longer absorbed under their husbands’ identity.”

Chairperson of the Auckland branch of the Celebrants Association of New Zealand Kerry-Ann Stanton believes it’s a trend that is likely to gain momentum. While she hasn’t personally performed a naming ceremony for a child receiving its mother’s surname, she knows of instances where that has occurred.

“As more women keep their maiden names, I imagine, it will trickle through into giving children their surnames, especially as more women start to realise it’s only a social convention that a child is given the father’s surname,” she says.

So entrenched is the patriarchal naming tradition, it’s often believed that parents are legally obliged to give a child her or his father’s surname. In fact, the Department of Internal Affairs advises that a child may be given any surname, provided it doesn’t cause offence or bump the length of the full name over 100 characters.

What happened to the traditional way of hyphening your surnames?

JoanneC 213

Are feminist spaces still needed?

In these two pieces from the UK-based Guardian newspaper, Polly Toynbee and Kira Cochrane tell of the newspaper’s long-running women’s page, its history and they offer arguments as to why such feminist spaces are still needed. The posts following these articles are as interesting as the pieces themselves.
What do you think? Are feminist ‘spaces’ needed? Are there feminist spaces in your lives?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2128820,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/50years/story/0,,2128681,00.html

Why does the Guardian still need a women’s page? Because the feminist revolution is only half made

Polly Toynbee
Wednesday July 18, 2007

Guardian

How did the Guardian women’s page become so influential? It helped that as the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s got under way, Private Eye regularly sneered at the page, with male newspaper columnists writing biliously about hairy, dungaree-wearing, lentil-eating, man-hating Guardian wimmin. There were reams of articles in the tabloids and rightwing broadsheets back then about why men should now slam doors in women’s faces to prove that women couldn’t have it both ways – not chivalry AND equality. And that vitriolic backlash proved the making of the women’s pages.
The section raised all the difficult issues – battered wives, the menopause, women prisoners giving birth while chained down. It asked why girls were put in pink, what’s hard-wired and what’s not, why sex was often rubbish for women, why men were often rubbish but women had no means of escape. Why should women always do the housework and why shouldn’t they do anything a man could do? Back before the Equal Pay Act in 1970, the unions insisted on lower rates of pay for women doing the same job as men in the same factory. Back before the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975, all kinds of jobs were forbidden to women.

It’s hard to recapture the shock and fury that feminism caused but, never forget, these were, and still are, revolutionary ideas. The very notion that women, that mothers, can be equal in everything reaches down into the heart of family life and questions everything. And there is no denying that feminism caused a soaring divorce rate and an explosion of single motherhood. Women walked away from bad men. Bad said: “If you want equality, then I can abandon my family responsibilities and pay no maintenance.” So it is still an unfinished revolution, where women’s attitudes changed fast, but men’s only slightly, and society has done too little to accommodate this great eruption. The economic system still demands a male wage to bring up a child – jobs aren’t flexible enough and women’s pay is too low for mothers alone to be breadwinners.

The Guardian women’s page had a huge influence in spreading revolutionary ideas. The secret was that it alerted one of the most powerful, but usually all too politically dormant forces in the land – the women’s magazines – to what was being written. The Guardian was the conduit for ideas from the US, from Rosie Boycott’s Spare Rib, Virago, the wages for housework campaign and some dottier ones too. Suddenly the editors of Woman’s Own and Woman took up these themes and popularised them for a mass audience. I doubt any revolutionary ideas were ever spread as far, as fast and as effectively as by those magazines, read by women under men’s noses. Glossy magazines became the underground press for women. The trouble was, men didn’t get it, didn’t read it and didn’t understand what was in the air. They were startled to find women growing discontented and demanding. Where were they getting these ideas from?

Sometimes we were startled too. There was the woman who wrote a card to Jill Tweedie, the greatest women’s page writer, sent from a remote caravan park: “I’ve done it! I’ve left my violent husband and taken the children and we’re living in a caravan. What should I do now?” Jill was appalled. What did she know? No one wanting advice would have taken Jill’s own life story as any kind of template. But her insights into her own life became the anvil on which she pounded out what she knew of how life was for women in general – and it turned out she knew a lot and was funny and wry about it too.

By the time I started writing a column for the women’s pages in 1977, the battle lines had been drawn years before, starting with Mary Stott. But the perennial question was asked then as now – why do you need a women’s page? Isn’t it a harem that confines and diminishes women, as if the rest of the paper was not really women’s domain? For journalists, it was a problem. I was a reporter on the Observer, covering strikes and industrial relations when, out of the blue, I was offered the column. I suspect nervous male editors and features editors kept trying to find women to edit and work on the pages who were not known for feminist writing.

Although it was a great honour, I’m ashamed to admit that, like many others, I hesitated before joining. Although I was always a feminist and never a feminism-denier, I worried I’d be branded a single-issue women’s columnist, a bit frivolous, no longer fit for the men’s newsroom. Would I ever get back to the “mainstream”? Lurking somewhere beneath was that old fear of being branded as a bra-burning harridan.

Well, I stayed for 11 years, some of the best years of my working life, and it changed my view of the world. All through those Tory years there were fierce battles to be fought.

I might be on the women’s page still if I hadn’t unexpectedly been offered a job as social affairs editor at the BBC. Would I ever have made the jump from Guardian women’s page to Guardian comment page without leaving first? The fact that I even ask this question shows that the word “women” still signifies what it always did – “other”, “second class”, “not serious”, “not one of the boys”. That – paradoxically – is exactly why we still need a women’s page. The revolution is only half made, and sometimes it seems to go backwards. Who else will keep banging the drum?

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Still so much to do
Kira Cochrane, 2006 – present

Kira Cochrane
Wednesday July 18, 2007

Guardian

It happened to Mary Stott fifty years ago, and it still happens to me now. That moment (usually, annoyingly, at parties) when someone asks – “what’s the point of a women’s page anyway?”
Even before the inquisitor lays out their case, even if I’m on my third martini, I can still guess what’s to come. The suggestion that a women’s page is intrinsically sexist (why no men’s page?); that a women’s page is patronising, ghettoising; that we are living in a post-feminist age of such blinding, cast-iron equality that a section dedicated to women is an anachronism.

Reading through fifty years of the pages, as I have over the past few months, women’s changing status has hit me harder than ever. In the late 1950s, well into the ‘swinging’ sixties, and on into the feminist heyday of the seventies, the constrictions of women’s lives seem, with hindsight, incredible.

Women unable to get a mortgage in their own name; banished from the table at the end of dinner parties; having no access to safe, legal abortion; being told that their career options were nursing, secretarial work or, at a push, teaching; being sacked, quite legally, if they became pregnant; being paid – again, quite legally – less than a man in the same job. Treated like children. Or worse.

Back when the pages started in 1957 there was still a clear split between the public sphere and the home, with women often confined to the latter. In those days the women’s pages had a clear purpose, being the only section that discussed women’s specific concerns. Now, of course, women have entered the public sphere in droves, and, at the same time, coverage of ‘women’s issues’ has found its way onto the news pages, the general features pages, even – just occasionally – the sports pages too.

Is there still a place, a need, for the women’s pages then? Yes (and I’m not saying that simply because I love my job and quite fancy keeping it).

However much women’s situation may have improved, the fact remains that we are still some distance from equality. There is still a 12.6% pay gap between men and women – rising to 40.2% when it comes to part-time work; only 30% of women get a full state pension, compared to 85% of men; rape conviction rates are at an all-time low of 5.6%, down from 33% in the late 1970s.

Equally, while ‘women’s stories’ do make the news pages, men still dominate – and they account for 80% of MPs, 89% of high court judges, and 97% of the Chief Executives of FTSE 100 companies. If the women’s pages – which now run on two days a week – were the only place to showcase ‘women’s’ stories the ghetto argument would be more than fair. In fact though what they now provide is simply a guaranteed space, a space that persists and provides at least some balance on those days when every single major news story pivots around a bloke.

Uniquely among women’s sections, our pages don’t centre around fashion, food or general family stories – we have other extremely good sections that deal with all of those. What they provide is a dedicated space for stories that solely affect women – some of them frivolous (frivolity being essential to anyone’s sense of liberation, I would guess) but many of them political, serious and campaigning.

While other sources are adamant that feminism is over, the women’s pages have recently covered all manner of activism – from the revival of the Reclaim the Night protests, to the rise of anti-pornography campaigns, to the creation of six new British feminist magazines in the last eighteen months.

While others talk about living in a post-feminist age, the women’s pages are still looking forward to a truly feminist age – one in which men and women are treated equally, no more, no less.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

Women's pay gap widens – Business Herald today

You’d think that well-educated and qualified women who are in professional jobs would earn as much as their male counterparts. That the problem of the gender pay gap is at the bottom not the top. Well you’d be wrong if you did.

Professional male full time workers earn abut 20% more than professioanl female full time workers, on average $10,000 per year. And since 2000, the median hourly gap among men and women professionals has worsened, and it is worst among young women and men.

How can we explain this gap – what is fueling it? As Sarah Wilshaw-Sparkes and Galia Barhava-Monteith write in this morning’s Business Magazine of the Herald “Women’s pay has a direct impact on their ability to keep working full-time. If they don’t earn enough to afford childcare its harder for them to decide to stay on at work. High quality care means haing a nanny or in-home care [since childcare centres often close at 5pm etc]. That can easily cost $60,000 in pre-tax income. Its not hard to see that the $10,000 less that professional women earn than men in equivalent jobs would make a material difference to the professional working mother’s calculation.” I can say from personal experience that two-thirds of my income as a university senior lecturer goes toward child care while I work. In other words, you have to be in a really, really good job to afford the cost of childcare these days.

Wilshaw-Sparkes and Barhava-Monteith run a website for working women: www.professionelle.co.nz [like the feminine ending!] Their database shows 90% of 26-30 years olds are in paid work compared with ust 50% of 41-45 year olds. OH thank you school hours 9-3pm — what job can fit into those hours and volunteering at the underfunded schools to help their kids to read and write.

Wilshaw-Sparkes and Barhava-Monteith conclude: “There’s a lot of talent being lost to employers, to say nothing of sunk recruiting and professional development costs. The men who stay on and rise into more senior, high-paying positions cannot logically all be the very best candidates, but instead represent the best available after female contenders have left”.

How many men want us to leave the field open for them?

How many women and men reinforce the myth that mothers should stay home with their preschool children all the time?

Can New Zealand and New Zealand employers afford to lose professional women and indeed all women (and in such a tight labour market?)

– Jacqui

New Zealand Women Face a Sexist Backlash – Dom Post Thursday

Do you think there is a sexist backlash in New Zealand? Do we have any examples or personal experience of “sexism” living in New Zealand?

Background Link: http://www.scoop.co.nz:80/stories/PO0612/S00158.htm

NEW ZEALAND – 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.