The last few days have seen a number of women’s issues raised, as International Women’s Day and Mothering Sunday were marked. It has all been rather gloomy. In the Lords on Thursday last, there were three questions about women. The first was about women and sport, where it seemed that sport for women was either diminishingly popular, or, when about to flourish was being frustrated. For example, the closing of the Don Valley stadium in Sheffield, where Jessica Ennis trained, or the lack of time for sport, especially competitive/team, at school. Not a trace of the Olympic legacy there.
Then there was a question about stopping violence against women which, if anything, is increasing. Attention was drawn to the terrible practice of female genital mutilation, which is carried out in this country as well as abroad, and so secretly that it is hard to prevent it or punish the perpetrators.
There was also a question about why there are so few women on FTSE 100 boards, especially ethnic minority women. Speaking as one who, for 30 years, has tried and failed to secure such a seat, I can tell you why. Women are not given seats on boards unless they have either worked their way up through the business, or come from outside as experienced non-executive members. It is very difficult to work one’s way up because, in my generation, business was simply never mentioned at school as a possible career choice; and in the case of the younger generation the hours demanded and the lack of affordable childcare make it almost impossible to thrive and stick at it. The potential non-exec is told that she cannot have a place unless she has experience in business, and since that is so difficult she is ruled out. Experience on public boards and in education or the arts does not count, it seems. It must be easier in the US. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, recounts in her new book that her great achievement was to secure reserved parking for pregnant women at her workplace. Is this a joke? Women at work in this country would be thrilled to have any parking at all: workplace parking is rare and most women are struggling to reach work in rush hour in the revolting conditions of our trains and underground. She highlights the pressures on mothers, especially mothers at work, to be perfect. To be like Tiger Mother, driving the children on to the highest academic and musical levels by hours of intensive home coaching; to be like French mothers, thin, laid back, with children eating adult gourmet food quietly from a young age; to be yummy mummies, regaining model figures within weeks of childbirth; and to act out 50 Shades of Grey for their grateful husbands. Sobering thoughts on Mother’s Day, as we are reminded that the other 364 days are for our children.
It has also been recounted recently that there are fewer women at the highest echelons of UK politics than elsewhere in the world and that the prospects for more are dim. Well, no wonder, given the opprobrium suffered by all politicians, and the enormous difficulties a woman politician faces in caring for her family, even just seeing them, given the working hours and conditions. Late night sittings, the financial constraints on having a home for the children in London and in the constituency, their schooling etc. And a final grim thought, having just heard about the sentence for Vicky Pryce – it must be even worse being married to a politician than being one yourself . . .
This kind of post always irritates me no end.
First and foremost women and feminists all say we must have equality, yet, that is so far from the truth it gives me a pain in the abdomen. What feminists want is equality plus.
Example, Baroness Deech, mentions the closing of a sports stadium for women. If this stadium is barely used by the ‘entire’ community, women or otherwise, then it is not value for money. And because a woman or two use it doesn’t change that fact. It is market forces and this covers men, women and children. No special treatment there then and the managers not anti female as a group. Why should it be other if we are looking for equality?
Womens event do not attract crowds and the money that goes with those crowds. Men, are the big sports fans and funders, they are not excited by womens sport it is slow and dull. Not a male turn on that. And they have a right to spend their money where they get enjoyment or are you suggesting they must be charitable and spend their cash being bored to death.
Of course, there is always the volleyball in bikini’s that may pull in the crowds, but, then that’s not for their sporting ability or competitive action, is it. It is simply for their viewing pleasure.
Then we move on to female genital mutilation. This is a horror, and the way to rid us of it in this Western society is to get mean and insist on girls being examined by a female doctor at certain ages. And if they have been subjected to this horror, then deport the entire family to wherever this kind of abuse is acceptable. It is a collusion within a family framwork and only making the entire group responsible for their miscalculation will stop it and fast.
This is illegal, if a group want to continue with an illegal act, then they should not be able to live within a Western society for they will not be happy or integrate within that society. Peace of mind for them can only be fouhnd outside the expectations of our laws. Booklets informing famillies of this expectation must be freely given and handed to anyone entering the country or living here, as a matter of course.
So, if you want to stop it, that’sthe way to do it. It would end overnight. However, this brings us back to equality doesn’t it. Why action is not taken in the matter of female mutilation is because the old equality lesson would raise the head of male mutilation or circumcision and that is a cannot broach matter because, whey hey hey, we cannot have our religions altered to stop the chopping off of the foreskin of the baby boys penis, can we? We cannot question that act of abuse as that is fundamental to their sense of unity with their pack. Isn’t it? So, if you want equality then you cannot compalin when you don’t get special treament can you? After all, we are all the ‘same’ are we not?
Violence against women is increasing because of the feminist idea of equality. Society has been indoctrinated with the notion that, once again, we are qual, no spcial treatment for women. They are as men and violence toward each other as men is the name of that game. Child video games encouraging the kicking of girls in the groin by their male foe is an acceptable way to show girls are just as powerful and aggressive as their male counterpart. No special treatment for Lara Croft. She is a killer female and we are all equal are we not? She deserves a good kicking as she likes combat and doesn’t expect to be treated with anything other than aggressive respect. Isn’t that right? We all deserve equal not special treatment, including the disabled, as they are able to take care of themselves as well. According to the IDS brigade that is. So, don’t expect women to receive anything other than masculine treament, it the progressive thinking of a modern society and we live in it. Women are able to compete on any level are they not?
Blame feminism and the feminist mind set. All really tough guys, yes/no?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5F38LMKmwo
Now the ftse. If women were interested in or had a longing for the stock exchange they would be there in their hundreds. Ethnicity has nothing to do with it. Ethnic women are not a species unto themselves they are identicle in their biological make up to white women. Women are just not turned on by that game in their hundreds the way men are. We are different in our sense of fulfilment and the ftse, in general, is a man thing. The male and female psyche does not repsond to the same stimuli in the same way. And whether feminism likes that fact or not is too bad. Take it up with mother nature. Argue the case for equality there.
All of the points made in this thread run along the same line, we are equal but want special treatment to be as equal as we are. What utter nonsense that is.
Why are women being forced to accept a masculine role? Why are they not encouraged to love themselves as women and there likes and dislikes not considered a wonderful example of the human condition? Why should we be forced into the idea that being a manlike entitiy is the sign of greatness? What is it about the female condition that is so dreadful a concept, only a dullard would want to be one, as she is and for what she is. And be respected in that form for the glorious creature she is in her entirety?
Being female is a truly remarkable and satisfying mammal to be. Why on earth would she want to trade that for the position of psuedo man? I can’t imagine what is so great in being made man. They have it rough in comparison to the respected and adored female person.
Which brings us right round to the ex wife of Chris Huhne. She was treated as an equal to her dreadful husband. A philanderer who betrayed her and his children. A man who had no respect for a woman who was his intellectual equal or even superior. And as she was seen in her position as a psuedo man, it could not be considered that such a clever female would have such deep love for her husband and fear of losing her family unity, she would stoop to his demand by taking his points knowing it to be wrong. Because, women these days are too strong to do that, aren’t they? They no longer care about the love of their husband or their need for the family unit, along with the motional security that gives them. These women forfeited that along with their expectation of equality.
This devasted woman who had to watch her husband abandon her for what resembles a cross dresser, was the end of her sense of being a woman and the destruction of her ego. Yet a judge saw fit to punish her further, by locking her up in the tower for daring to seek revenge in her time of confusion. My heart goes out her. This is as moving as any Greek tragedy can be. And who can express that better than Maria Callas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLaY2VcIEqo
I weep for the destruction of women in our Western society. Shame on all of you.
Nevertheless Maud, I suspect you are at work and using your computer – and neither of those would be there for you had it not been for the feminists, whom you so dislike, going to the lengths that they did.
@BD:
I have ultimate respect and gratitude for those women who fought for the ‘rights’ we woman take for granted today. Many of them giving their lives for our future.
However, my feelings on this entire issue are summed up here, far better than I can do it in a few paragraphs on this blog.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU1isJvsTCw
Along with these lies we are sold to force our minds to believe the unbelievable we have this study.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/04/26/jonas-himmelstrand-two-generations-of-universal-daycare-have-left-sweden%E2%80%99s-children-less-educated/
Then there is the indoctrination of female children from a very early age. Akin to the violent female killer video games they shove down the throats of the innocent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADylz6XoeWg&list=PLF592C72D7A296523
And here is a thought, why the fear of discussing this anomaly in the open and knowing how women really feel about their enforced fate. Like it or not.
Really hoping that the Chancellor will at last help working mothers with childcare and grant some tax relief. Mothers at home do not need childcare assistance. They have chosen to stay at home and not employ or be employed.
More sexist nonsense.
Eg. Where’s the tax break for men who have to wear suits?
Just the same as your demands for other people’s money.
It may have been in the 1980s and in The Listener, that an article by a USA women’s group reached the conclusion that
although women had shown, nay proved, themselves equal to men in every domain, still there remained a male-dominated less-than-efficient-and-fit-for-longterm-purpose Workplace, and Lifeplace;
nor had also extending governance-skilling to Youth done enough to improve this ages-old but flawed paradigm that ‘males make the best bosses’.
The women went into low-profile again; and I have heard not a word since.
Is it ‘evident’ that the paradigm-strides-forward that our Human Race on Earth needs, particularly-focally in our Civilisation Re-Structuring (or ‘Peaceful Revolution’-ing, see Dr Edward de Bono’s sober book of that title)
are so ‘huge’ that there is as yet no ‘critical-human-mass’ willing to proactivate them and ‘go for it’,
nor any governance-cell willing and able to ‘promote’ such ?
———————-
Some small egalitarianly and participatorily democratic young communes have been trying to share both fatherhood and motherhood essentials and duties, notably between ‘the best available but legally-non-identified biological father’ on the one hand and ‘the best and named cadre of social-fathers on the other hand’;
and motherhood in such a commune may be similarly more egalitarianly and ‘fit-for-purpose’ constituted and managed.
————————————
That a peacefully-revolutionary and newly-sustainworthy civilisation is needed, right here on Earth-One, and “Now”,
appears to me to be the greater-contextual answer to these women’s issues that the noble Baroness Deech is raising into a more public awareness.
I see the next generation of movers and shakers are firmly grasping the nettle:
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/oxford-university-college-boycotts-sun-page-3-protest
The sisters are, I’m sure, grateful. To be fair, it is some kind of progress from last year when the Cherwell breathlessly announced:
“National statistics demonstrate that more women than ever before are gaining top university positions”,
but followed up with
“The proportion of women holding the title of professor at Oxford stands at only 9.4% (correct as of 2010).”
http://www.cherwell.org/news/oxford/2012/01/26/number-of-female-professors-rises
Haven’t you enthymemed alongside “More women gaining top uni positions”
“& more men than ever not bothering to take yop uni positions
(more ‘wealth’ or ‘glamour’, if not ‘truth’ ‘skill’ or ‘effectiveness’, elsewhere perhaps ?)
Beach volley ball doubles is not quite as bad as women’s gymnastic doubles, which has not been chosen as a sport in recent years, thank goodness.
I’ve enjoyed beach volley since I was a child
but we never had the chance to cuddle anybody even though it was usually mixed, six a side! Pity really!!!
It would have given more meaning to the “Hug”
of GaretHugHowell.
And that Truss woman this morning on the Today radio programme telling us, we are going to get ‘tax breaks’ in order to make it easier for governments to force women to abandon their children almost as soon as they pop out. Softening them up for the blow with 15 hours a week ‘free’ kindergarten care if you don’t work as well. Get them used to it and then we can indoctrinate them from day one. And boy was she frightned to face any kind of questioning on it. Humphrey’s couldn’t keep her from running away the minuute he said you sell yourself as the family party, what moves have you made to help stay at home mothers, he said. She sounded as hard as nails. Don’t mention that or I’m leaving you could her sweat.
And the outcome of that abandonment of your child?
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/life/Kindergarten+quandary+Half+full+risk+kids+kids/7607845/story.html
And
http://thestir.cafemom.com/big_kid/144552/children_of_working_mothers_speak
Canot wait to separate you in orde to break the bond of family, can they?
It is simply for their viewing pleasure.
That is where the investments are made.
The turtle has a “cloaca”, which allows them to enjoy an extra pair of lungs for deep diving.
Contary to the false opinion of such people as the hon member for Hackney,(since according to them I am paedophile) and the loutish founder of UKIP, I have of course had a certain number of very good wives in the course of my life, one of whom was an Arab and had female circumcision. She has been the finest love of my life,(so far!) and a passionate one.
I really think that the Christian/ArabicMuslim detente is mainly responsible for the “anti-genital mutilation”
campaign rather than any real scientific basis.
Male circumcision is thought by many of the women’s rights campaigners to be just as ‘wrong’, and yet all Jews and all Arabs are circumcised, and a certain number of clear thinking Christians too on the basis of personal hygiene.
It is very difficult to know what the problems of personal hygiene are in the middle east/Arab Africa, which cause the Arab and Jew to have such customs, without being there and living as Arab or Jew.
My forefathers were surgeons for many generations and some still are. Nearly all the males in the family are circumcised, as a matter of hygiene.
It makes me wonder whether the UN declaration(?) is based on prejudice against a religious ritual which has its bases in sound hygiene, and is therefore mistaken.
Female circumcision may be as right as male circumcision. Genital mutilation may be just as wrong, some of which is done by men upon each other in adult life and was deemed criminal some years ago.
You might not have worked out the motive Maude.
The state is bankrupt. They want to get as many rich women back in the workforce in order to extract cash out of them.
After all, with out that they won’t be able to pay for peers at 2,700 a day.
When I was a lad there were very few “rich women” about, to get cash out of (except my mum of course).
Very few women were likely to acquire mortgages and repay them or even have a half share in their marital property. Even fewer were likely to have a professional career worth a couple of fine houses by the end of the paid up mortgages.
Today with careful economy recession/recovery speculation, a highly paid professional woman can do as well, if not better, than a man, in the capital accumulation stakes, during both a child bearing, AND full working life.
There must be a much larger proportion of the population now “in service” to such people, than there were between the wars, even as many as there were to the burgeoning,
imperially orientated, middle classes of the 19thC.
A well organized couple, both with higher professions (like the former hon member for Portsmouth) can do very well indeed, and be grossing £1/2m a year, from having two jobs in the family rather than one, whilst their two job riches, causes another man to be out of work ,and on the breadline with his family, if he has one at all.
The married partnership women politicians may be some of the worst offenders.
The dreadful scenario in all of this sham is The determination women seem to have adopted, regardless of the damage it is doing to their home and family life, to suck onto a notion of their being unecessary in the life chances of their offspring is remarkable. Are they truly unaware or do they simply not care at all about the prospective destruction of their childrens emotional psyche? Whether they are rich or poor appears to make no difference.
The political policies of this strange feminist self hatred and disdain for the natural desire most mothers have to care for and ‘nurture’ their own children, compares equally with Constanze Mozart. She spent most of her time in the spa at Baden Baden for the so called cure. Leaving her children, who did not reach their full potential and had sad and lonely emotional lives, with a wet nurse for most of their young lives.
I remember very wealthy aquaintances of mine, many, not one or two, all of them extremely brilliant people in their super careers, watch as their children mourned nanny after nanny. One child, who had his nanny from birth to four, was so in grief at her departure for a better position, he was unable to sleep for over a year. He would wait up for his mother to return from her ‘life’ in a hot shot work environment until nine, ten or twelve at night, and when she did come home, would scream relentlessly for fear that if he slept she would be gone again before he woke. And as a result felt that eventually she would abandon him entirely. A more beautiful child you could not have seen. Cherubic and smart but mortally wounded emotionally. A baby sister made it worse. The baby sister was, likewise, cared for by a nanny and by the age of six months had still not learned to smile. She remained sad faced and in what appeared a perpetual half sleep. Cruel is an understatement in that family of high earners.
And the mother did all of this ‘work’ for status and to be famed for her super woman presentation. What irony. This boy grew into a strange introverted teenager who failed to please in any way. And his drug habit became his entire obsession, as had his mother’s ‘career.’ The father was a hunting, fishing and shooting type who spent his life in his office or at his cabin in the mountains. There was no family bond. They hardly knew each other.
Here is a video from youtube telling it as it is. If anyone is at all interested or cares there is a series of them. Any women readng this should take note. You are being led up the garden path. Your children need you to build their self esteem not some other half interested automaton.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEziPGohFqI
And
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG89Qxw30BM
This indicates anyone other than the mother, who has no vested interest in emotionally caring for the child they are with, leaves a hole in their life and brain.
And the awful part in all this so called ‘new scientific evidence’ is, they have been aware of this for at least fifty years. Government, therefore, is well aware of what it is pushing the family into when it has a policy of separation between that caring bond.
It really is identical to the enforced adoption policy which took place in Australia in the 60’s and 70’s, which today their Prime Minister is having to deeply apologise for.
Why are women allowing this all knowing feminist movement to induce them into a life which leads to the emotional neglect of their children? There is no second chance in the time frame of childhood.
Re young lives Maude’s observations are very interesting, and absolutely to the point. I recall, with sadness, the case of Sally, the solicitor, who took her own life after successively losing her three babes. She is the extreme example.May she and her babes rest in peace.
On a point of information I wonder where the statistics are for women in the different higher professions, compared with their non-existence when I was in my 20s.
I should like to know for this one reason:
Nearly all girls who do not intend to have a family straight away, ‘go on the pill’.
The longer they stay on it, the more likely they are to require IVF (In vitro fertilization)treatment according to recent evidence.
To a non-scientific, woman who is keen to have her “freedom”,but no career in particular, this usually means that
being unable to understand the biology of it, or get organized for it, she has no children at all, in spite of having all the necessary maternal instincts Maude would properly consider a requisite for good motherhood.
So there are women who ignore their children
and have “High callings” and other women who have the very natural calling, and career, of motherhood, who have no children at all.
The interference in the daily lives, of biological science, in the name of progress, over the last 150 years, makes monkeys of us all.
Freedom and women’s rights need to be carefully assessed.
@GHH:
And the reality of nursery care and the wonderful nanny is this disturbing fact. Women are not keen on other peoples children on a day in day out experience. Especially when a government persistantly tells these deprived ladies their jobs are result of being a nonentity. As, they imply, to nurture a child or children for a living or for even as a vocation is the position of losers. They drum in the notion that well educated, smart and worthwhile females run from their home and children as fast as their Louboutin heels allows them to.
So, take it in. This is the outcome of child abandonment. And although those pushing this as the new way of life want to hide the facts, it’s the tip of the iceberg, as we read in our papars on a regular basis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ts-MP_GXQ
Abuse of a different kind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC9Wtn4mmr8
And the wonderful day care they tell us, the public, have to pay for in their taxes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdaKDbSpPSA
And what they get in compensation.
http://christianlouboutin.com/
The conflicting spheres of influence of Arabic Islam and Christianity of one sect or another is responsible for much of the war south of the Sahara today.
When you consider that in some of those areas the lack of water for washing the eyes of the child every day, is the main cause of blindness (ingrowing eyelashes basically), the purpose of circumcision becomes more apparent.
The Tsetse fly relies on body odour of the animal whether human or beast to makes it target. Prevention of Odour is most certainly a factor in the Islamic ritual that I mention above, and the ritual practice
is a geographical one, ie it is only done in ARABIC Muslim Countries of Africa, and the middle east.
For Christians to intrude in to such practices is a mistake unless it is based on
the severity of the operation and the lack of hygiene of the procedure itself. Given the complete lack of medical facilities in southern sub Saharan Africa that is scarcely surprising, but to campaign against “genital mutilation” per se is, to my way of thinking, a mistake. To campaign for a proper medical procedure for it to be done, would be right and proper.
I don’t like “jokes” and I only ever learnt one, and that was about a casual Jewish procedure of adult circumcision!!!