GEA Policy Report, March 2013

International women’s week was inaugurated in the media this year in a quiet way and yet it has spawned a tremendous amount of footage in the press and other media, culminating in the UK with a weekend festival of arts called Women of the World organized by Jude Kelly, indomitable director of the Southbank Centre in London. What is particular music to GEA is the welcome focus on Education as the main path to equality as can be seen in a myriad of articles, letters and comments and the launch of the new British Library website. Read the full story

If I had been shown this poem, ‘If you don’t come…’ by Christa Bell at age 17, I think it would have blown my mind.  (If you haven’t seen it, I guarantee it will be the best four minutes of your day if you watch it now).  I was aiming for a high shock value when I showed it to a group of sixth form students at Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridge, the top state sixth form in the country.  I had been asked to do a lunchtime talk on feminism for students by their sociology teacher, who told me that his students were sceptical about feminism and didn’t see the need for it – a red rag to a bull!  After consulting the glorious feminist twittersphere, I decided to talk about the equal right to sexual pleasure. Read the full story

GEA Policy Report, March 2013 Read the full story

Matters of gender and sexuality have already made headlines in 2013 and it seems hope is on the horizon for understanding and re-framing gender and sexuality as implicating all,  whereby the phrasing of its ‘socially constructed’ categorisation can  break out of academic sociology and enjoy a more public airing. From the continuation of last year’s backlash against ‘gendered’ products, to parliamentary time and space finally being given to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, from the mainstreaming of distaste for Page 3 to the recent outrage at the Sun’s depiction of the deceased law graduate and successful model Reeva Steenkamp, we see expansions of, in, beyond ‘the feminist classroom’. 

Recently, Yvette Taylor gave a talk at the Guildhall as part of the Brave New World, LGBT conference, collectively inspired to feel an ‘arrival’ in place as delegates remarked on entering the corridors of power. At last…Shifting cultural (mis)representations, legal (im)possibilities and movements between margins and mainstreams, force questions about the place of feminisms, its ‘publics’, policies and practices: in other words, who is feminism for and where does it reside? Who might be excluded still from those corridors and classrooms? Read the full story

Earlier this year, GEA got very excited when we discovered some feminist activity happening online led a group of teenagers who are still at school and are passionate about feminism. The Twitter Youth Feminist Army (TYFA), like GEA, is committed to  developing girls’ interest in feminist issues and ideas, but are also re-definining what feminism and being ‘a feminist’ means to them.  We invited Lili, ‘admin queen’ of the TYFA to write a blog for us and tell us what its all about…..

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Mary McIntosh was a leading feminist sociologist of her generation, namely that of what is now often referred to as ‘second-wave’ feminism, and both a pioneer and great inspiration to those of us who followed quickly in her footsteps. She started as a committed Marxist and campaigner for social justice and human rights, rapidly becoming an active member of the lesbian and gay liberation movement, and, at the same time, helping to establish an array of women’s campaigning groups. It was her activism that was an essential characteristic and was both awe-inspiring and breath-taking: she was somewhat of a reluctant writer, although her key publications were hugely influential.

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Last week’s mass school shooting in Newtown in the US has put guns back into centre stage. So now seems a timely moment to explore how the gun lobby in both the US and the UK is looking to expand its market by targeting women and children. In this post I look critically at this and ask: What does it mean when guns are presented as feminist or postfeminist woman’s new accessory? And, what kind of education does shooting for sport offer our children?

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Eva Figes, the author of Patriarchal Attitudes, died aged 80 in August 2012. Her book was published to popular British acclaim alongside several other signature books of women’s liberation, including The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer and The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. These publications signalled a new and critical mood amongst a growing number of women becoming involved in the international women’s liberation movement. Read the full story

GEA Policy Report Autumn 2012

UK Feminista is a relatively new organization of ‘ordinary women and men campaigning for gender equality’. Founded just over 2 years ago, it has wide and international aims, namely a ‘vision of a world where women enjoy all the rights enshrined in CEDAW – the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women – otherwise known as the ‘women’s bill of rights’. Read the full story

It is an overcast Friday in mid-October as the Cardiff University contingent (that’s us!) pull up outside a rated-but-dated business hotel in Newport; we are attending the #KeepingItReal conference for teenage girls, run by the South Wales charity Full Circle, who seek to support aspiration in young people, and as we find our way into the conference suite the atmosphere of excitement and enthusiasm is already building. A large room is decked out as if an awards ceremony is about to take place, with over a dozen huge round tables, bedecked with linen and festive balloons, arranged in front of a stage where a sound check is underway. The walls are lined with exhibitors from local charities promoting sexual health, domestic violence services, and education opportunities, and what we thought to be a big purple bouncy castle in the corner turns out to be an inflatable ‘Big Brother Diary Room’ for the teenage attendees to record their thoughts about their lives and the conference away from adult eyes. No bouncing for us then, we sigh, and set up our stall nearby.  Filling the table with pamphlets and adverts for our gender and sexualities research group, we also lay out our GEA leaflets and journal copies, later eagerly seized by both teachers and charity representatives alike. Read the full story