Female British Muslims are at last finding their voice

(Photo credit: mishox)

News for 28 April 2012 has been taken from The Guardian.

Anyone who has worked in British Muslim communities will tell you the very notion of women’s rights is still considered a taboo subject. Like many women who have spent years challenging gender-based discrimination, I know how much resistance there is to equality. Recently, there has been talk about an explosion of grassroots feminist organisations – and there is also a new generation of confident, articulate Muslim women who are at the forefront of fighting inequality, which has become part and parcel of everyday life for many British Muslim women.

As diverse as Muslim women are, many face cultural, ideological and societal barriers that affect their social mobility. Cultural barriers can include forced marriages, female genital mutilation and honour crimes – with recent figures indicating 2,823 honour attacks took place last year. Campaigners tell me these numbers are rising not decreasing, and although these attacks are not based on religion, it is undeniable that vast numbers of victims are Muslim women.

Asian women are also more likely to suffer from depression then the rest of the British population, yet are least likely to seek help. Rates of self-harm and suicide are higher among south-Asian women then white women and generally Muslim women report poor health. Increasing ideological and theological narratives have included the idea that Muslim women are barred from holding leadership positions and are confined to the private sphere. It is not surprising, therefore, that there has been a woeful lack of Muslim women’s leadership within mainstream Muslim organisations and university Islamic societies – let alone women taking an active governance role in mosques.

Research by the Muslim Council of Wales concluded that 90% of UK mosques fall short of provisions for women and children. With unemployment rising faster among women than men and cuts to benefits that women depend on, this will affect Muslim women in particular where currently two-thirds of Muslim women are economically inactive, compared with a quarter of all women. Polly Toynbee recently wrote that “intentionally or not, a male breadwinner with a dependent woman carer at home is the model on which the cuts are crafted, removing the supports to independence and sending women home”. The government’s policies will lead to many British Muslim women being even further confined to the home and will have an influence on important decisions. Women have contacted my organisation saying these policies, for example, would make them think twice about leaving an abusive marriage.

It is not surprising, then, that Muslim women are actively beginning to challenge the inequalities that face them. Increasingly, Muslim women know they are able to exert their rights through the British equalities and legal framework. Despite differences in education, profession and income, what many of these Muslim women have in common is the belief that they cannot allow these barriers, which existed in the previous generation, to continue into the next generation. Although their mothers grew up in traditional patriarchal villages in south-Asian or Arab countries, these women ensured their daughters had opportunities that they themselves were not given.

Many Muslim women who previously would not have been so vocal are now openly speaking out at being told by sharia councils that in order to get a divorce they have to pay double the amount their husbands would if they had applied for a divorce. They have had enough of being told by the local imam that they’re “not allowed” in the mosque and are rejecting the impractical ideological narrative that removes them from contributing to public life.

Whether ensuring their vote is a decisive one or creating their own organisations, a new movement is being driven by passionate and fearless British Muslim women. Women’s organisations such as the An-Nisa Society have been doing fantastic work for years among Muslim communities, yet it is heartening to see a proliferation in Muslim women’s networks and forums right across the UK, such as Bristol Muslim Women’s Network, Barnet Muslim Women’s Network, Henna Foundation, Forward, Musawah, Somali Family Support Group and Inspire to name just a few. This new face of Muslim activism and leadership is taking shape in the form of women who emphatically believe that without women’s equal participation we, as a society and as a democracy, are weaker for it.

Related articles

• The British Muslim Women attacked for promoting women’s rights (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
• UK Poll: Two-thirds of young British Muslims believe families should live live by “honor” code (atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com)
• Poll finds widespread Muslim & Sikh support for gay rights (queeringthechurch.com)
• A prominent British Muslim finds the Catholic faith… (ncregister.com)

Syrian women risk lives to smuggle aid to dissidents

Asma al-Assad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

News for 27 April 2012 has been taken from Women News Network.

When the aspirin and alcohol swabs fell from under her clothes at a Syrian army checkpoint, Rania stood petrified, looking first down at her fallen contraband and then up at the soldier who stared straight back at her.

Rania knew that smuggling food and medicine to Syrian opposition activists was considered by security forces to be “aiding terrorists” and treated as severely as weapons smuggling.

“I thought to myself: I am dead,” said Rania, 27, recalling the incident on the outskirts of Damascus.

She was in luck. The soldier was a sympathizer.

“Quick,” she quoted him as saying. “Pick up your medicine and go, before my commanding officer comes back.”

And with that pardon, she fled.

President Bashar al-Assad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

During the 13-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, Syrian forces have killed more than 9,000 people in shootings and bombardment of rebel areas, the United Nations says. Thousands more have been arrested.

Syrian authorities, who say foreign-backed militants have killed more than 2,600 soldiers and police, have supplied aid to residents they say are fleeing “armed terrorists” but have repeatedly denied access to international aid organisations.

Activists say most people wounded in the unrest will not go to state hospitals for fear they will be considered enemies of Assad and arrested rather than treated.

Amateur video shows poorly stocked makeshift hospitals in opposition strongholds, many without electricity, with doctors pleading for help from the outside world.

In the absence of international support, dissidents have found informal ways to smuggle food and medicine to injured and famished people around the country.

Rania and her friends, a group of young, liberal women, pretend to be conservative Muslims, hiding the medicines, food and money they bring out of Damascus to Homs city under thick layers of clothing and headscarves.

How many others make similar smuggling trips around Syria, they have no way of knowing. They say this method of smuggling is an open secret, but authorities are unwilling to search women, especially those who appear pious, as it would cause an outcry.

Forming the team

Rania, a qualified lawyer, operates in a team of four, including two female friends who worked as supermarket checkout assistants. The fourth team member is a doctor.

She agreed to be interviewed via Skype, but would not give her last name for fear that it could compromise their operation. Another of the girls, Ola, agreed to answer questions through a friend who sometimes helps the team, who herself asked not to be named.

All of the group are from Homs, one of the worst hit areas in Syria, where forces have been shelling central districts for months.

“Me and the girls met the doctor, who is a childhood friend, and asked him how we could help people who were injured or in need of food,” Rania said.

The team rented a large apartment in a poor area of Damascus where prices are low. All quit their jobs, except the doctor who does four shifts a week; authorities suspect doctors who leave work, residents say, assuming they have joined the opposition.

“We sold everything we could, even our jewelry,” said Ola. “We filled the apartment with rice, sugar, spaghetti and vegetable oil. The doctor uses his sources to get anti-inflammatories, bandages and trauma kits.”

To save money, the team eats two meals a day. To keep a low profile, they rarely make phone calls and only leave the building when necessary. They work at night.

When other activists visit, they are asked to bring their own food to keep costs low.

“Smuggling is expensive,” said the friend who asked not to be named. “You need a taxi driver who will agree to go through the checkpoints out of Damascus and take the two-hour drive to Homs. It is dangerous for him, too”.

Gauze & bandages

Operations start at the apartment. The women change their jeans and tank tops for long-sleeved dresses and the conservative Muslim hijab head scarf.

“I am thin so we can fit lots of medical gauze under my clothes,” said the friend. “One of the girls stuffs cotton bandages in her bra.”

The women, often covered in a hidden layer of antibiotics, travel alone in a private taxi or a bus north out of the capital to Homs city.

“The government knows everything, but they don’t want extra trouble,” said the friend. “In (the Damascus suburb of) Douma, security members arrested some women and it caused a huge amount of civil disobedience.”

But not every checkpoint is safe and there are slip-ups that could land Rania and Ola in prison.

“Sometimes we are detained at checkpoints. We either pay a bribe or wait to see what will happen to us. Some of the checkpoints are manned by Assad loyalist gunmen who don’t work for the regular army,” says Ola. “We fear them the most.”

“But the worst time for me was when I was due to meet another activist to give him some blood bags, money and food,” said Ola. She waited in the rain but the man did not show.

“It was late at night, I was forced to leave the food on the side of the road as the risk of returning with it through checkpoints was too great,” she said.

“I walked home, crying. The trip had been for nothing.”

Related articles

• Syrian rebels strike in Damascus (independent.co.uk)
• Syria blames ‘terrorist’ bombs for deadly Hama blast (worldnews.msnbc.msn.com)
• Syrian Death Toll Climbs; Ships with Weapons Intercepted (voanews.com)

Female marines to be trained for combat roles

News for 26 April 2012 has been taken from Women’s Views on News.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The US Marine Corps school that trains infantry officers will enrol female students for the first time this year.

The move takes the Corps a step closer to allowing women to serve in combat roles.

The Marine Corps Times reported last week that volunteers will take part in the Infantry Officers Course (IOC) in Quantico, Virginia, which trains marines for direct combat.

The change follows a new policy announced by the Pentagon in February allowing women to serve closer to the front line, and is designed to study how women perform in units previously limited to men.

In line with Pentagon policy, women will continue to be barred from roles in the infantry, or when direct combat is the primary mission.

However, women graduating from the course will now be eligible for roles that were previously for men only such as artillery, tanks, assault amphibian, combat engineer, combat assault and low-altitude air defence.

The US army is also exploring how women could be integrated into combat units.

Women have until now been banned from combat roles in both the army and the marines due to concerns about their strength and stamina.

In annual fitness tests that marines undergo, men and women are judged on different, “gender-normed” standards. Unlike in other branches of the armed forces, the Marine Corps runs separate basic training for men and women.

However, women serving in non-combat roles have died alongside men in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 140 servicewomen have lost their lives in the two countries.

The move has been welcomed by many. Speaking to the BBC, former Marine Corps captain and executive director of the Service Women’s Action Network Anu Baghwati called it an exciting development.

“As proven by 10 years of leading troops in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are women that are physically and mentally qualified to succeed at IOC, and lead infantry platoons,” she said.

Related articles

• General Says USMC ‘Not Training Women To Be Infantry Officers’ (thinkprogress.org)
• Marine Corps Comes to Its Senses, Allows Women to Train for Combat [Women At War] (jezebel.com)
• USMC Finally Lets the Ladies into Officer Infantry School (vfwlady.com)

Crackdown on honour-based violence in Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

News for 25 April 2012 has been taken from BBC News.

Leaders within minority groups in Northamptonshire are to trained to assist in a crackdown on so-called honour-based violence. Police hope the influence of such individuals will help make the crime unacceptable within its communities.

“Honour” violence is defined as any attack on a person perceived to have brought shame on a family.

Women’s Aid said that it had helped dozens of women affected by the crime in the county this year alone.

‘Very very scared’

Chris Starmer, from the charity, said: “We had a young girl of 19 referred to us through her GP. Her father was trying to send her back to her country of origin to a forced marriage to a man that was old enough to be her father. Before that marriage took place she was to undergo female genital mutilation. She was very very scared.”

Mrs Starmer said that while the charity could support many of those who asked for help, there were many more who suffered in silence.

She added: “Raising awareness of honour violence is important so that victims of the crime know that support is available and so that professionals within the community know how they can help.”

Detective Inspector Andy Glenn, of Northamptonshire Police, said that while he wanted to raise awareness generally he believed the appointments within minority groups would be particularly effective.

He said: “We recognise that sometimes it’s difficult for the police to get those messages across so one of the things we are doing is working with community members. We have started to train key members of certain communities to get them to understand the impact of honour-based violence – how it can affect victims, how it can affect communities.”

These people will then be tasked with educating their communities about the crime.

Det Insp Glenn added: “What we really want to do is work closely with community to make honour-based violence unacceptable.”

Related articles

• Year after Wootton murders Northamptonshire Police is no nearer finding suspect Anxiang Du (northamptonchron.co.uk)
• BREAKING NEWS: Police release 11 people on bail following Northamptonshire drugs raids (northamptonchron.co.uk)
• Three arrests over 2011 deaths of Northamptonshire family (itv.com)

A small ray of light for family of brain-dead women

News for 24 April was taken from The Telegraph.

(Original headline: Brain-dead woman gives birth to twins)

A pregnant woman who was declared dead after suffering a brain aneurysm has given birth to twins after her body was kept alive for a month on a respirator.

Christine Bolden collapsed on March 1 while walking in Michigan, Detroit, with her boyfriend and three-year-old son. Five days later she was pronounced brain-dead by doctors and an obituary for the 26-year-old lists her date of death as March 6. But almost a month later she has given birth to twins after being kept on life support in order to save her unborn children.

Miss Bolden, who also has an 11-year-old son, gave birth to Nicholas and Alexander – names she had chosen before her collapse – on April 5 after a 25-week pregnancy. Her life support was turned off shortly afterwards.

Miss Bolden’s aunt, Danyell Bolden said that after learning of Christine’s condition, they prayed for the children to survive.

“We used to rub on her belly and talk to the babies,” she said. “It was an impossible mix of emotions. Knowing that once the babies were born that was the end of her. It was hard knowing that the babies would be born and she wasn’t coming home afterwards. God, he could have took her and the boys. But he left the boys. That’s a miracle.”

The children are being kept in isolation as they are premature. They weigh less than two pounds and are only about six inches long.

Dr Cosmas Vandeven, who specialises in high-risk pregnancies at University of Michigan hospital, said Bolden’s case is a “very exceptional scenario. Almost every parent would give their life for their child,” Dr Vandeven said. “But you need to get truly independent opinions: Are we sure we’re not causing harm to the mum?”

He said 70 per cent of babies born at 25 weeks survive, but the risk for long-term health problems is high. “We certainly hope they make it, but at this time they’re too young to make a confident prognosis,” he added.

There have been instances of women on life support giving birth to children previously. In 2007 Stacy Rojas, a 34-year-old teacher from Dallas gave birth to a healthy baby girl after falling into a coma after a brain aneurysm. Her life support machine was switched off two days after the birth, having kept her body alive for a month.

Foreign Policy: World’s Powerful Unheard-Of Women

News for 23 April has been taken from Women News Network.

1 HELEN CLARK

Administrator, U.N. Development Program - New Zealand
As New Zealand’s prime minister, Helen Clark oversaw a decade of economic growth and won three straight terms in her post after a long career as a Labour Party legislator and cabinet minister. Less than a year following her departure as Kiwi prime minister, however, Clark turned to a much larger — and more challenging — stage: Since 2009, she has led the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), the arm of the United Nations charged with confronting the world’s worst problems, from global poverty to corrupt governance to health and environmental crises. Clark, 62, now oversees the UNDP’s nearly $5 billion annual budget and more than 8,000 employees operating in 177 countries. Cholera in Haiti and famine in Somalia may be far from daily life for many New Zealanders, but Clark appears undaunted. Her top goal as administrator, she said last fall, is no less than to eradicate extreme poverty around the world.

2 LIU YANDONG

State councilor - China
Although they hold up “half the sky,” as Mao Zedong famously said, women make up just over 20 percent of the delegates in China’s national legislature. Former chemist Liu Yandong is the outlier: the only woman in the Politburo, the 25-member elite decision-making body at the top of the Communist Party pyramid. Considered a close ally of President Hu Jintao, she has a good chance of ascending this fall to become one of the small handful in the Politburo Standing Committee, the true ruling council at the center of the system. As with everyone in China’s opaque Politburo, little is known about how Liu’s politics differ from those of her colleagues, though some analysts think she favors increasing China’s contacts with the outside world; the 66-year-old Liu has an honorary Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and spoke at Yale University in 2009. She would be the first woman in Chinese history to make it to the Standing Committee.

3 LAEL BRAINARD

Treasury undersecretary for international affairs - United States
With Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s attention focused on the U.S. economy, tackling the brush fires of global economic calamity has often fallen to Lael Brainard. The even-tempered, Harvard-trained economist was born in 1962 and raised in communist Poland as the daughter of a U.S. foreign-service officer. She went on to serve on the National Economic Council during Bill Clinton’s administration, working on the U.S. response to the Mexican peso and Asian financial crises. During President Barack Obama’s administration, Brainard has been consumed with Europe’s financial contagion, shuttling back and forth between Washington and European capitals (while her husband, Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, travels to his portfolio in Asia) in an effort to convince leaders to prop up failing economies and prevent further spread. It’s not always the easiest task, given that many European leaders blame U.S. policies for starting the crisis in the first place, but Brainard has brought tireless diplomatic energy to the job.

4 NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALA

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Finance minister - Nigeria
In March, the governments of South Africa, Angola, and Nigeria nominated Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bank managing director, to succeed Robert Zoellick as president of the bank. By tradition, the position has been held by an American chosen by the U.S. government, but Okonjo-Iweala thinks it’s time for a change. “The balance of power in the world has shifted,” she said following her nomination, arguing that developing countries “need to be given a voice in running things.” For the time being, she is more or less running things in Nigeria, where she is in her second term as finance minister. In her first term, the Harvard- and MIT-educated economist received plaudits for negotiating billions of dollars in debt forgiveness with Nigeria’s international creditors and launching a high-profile campaign against corruption. This time her task is made all the more difficult by a campaign of terror by al Qaeda-affiliated Boko Haram militants. Nonetheless, the 57-year-old Okonjo-Iweala is determined to make Nigeria an attractive place for international companies, a big challenge of the kind she is known for tackling.

5 MARY SCHAPIRO

Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission - United States
As the first woman appointed permanent head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mary Schapiro was bound to attract attention when President Obama nominated her in late 2008. Timing alone dictated it: She came to the SEC in the immediate aftermath of the $50 billion Bernard Madoff scandal and a market crash largely blamed on questionable financial practices and lax regulation. But the 56-year-old Schapiro, who first held a seat on the SEC from 1988 to 1994, is no stranger to contentious politics. She left the SEC in the 1990s to run the largest nongovernmental regulator of securities firms and spent the next decade going after industry insiders and critiquing Wall Street excesses. Since returning to the SEC, she has fought to re-establish public confidence in the commission, overseeing an increase in the number of cases pursued by the SEC and arguing for the authority to impose higher financial penalties. She has pledged to push for structural changes this year to help prevent another Lehman Brothers-style collapse — a task that will surely be an “uphill battle,” as the Wall Street Journal put it.

Related articles

• The Most Powerful Women You’ve Never Heard Of (businesspundit.com)
• Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala : One side of her story (thenigerianoracle.com)
• Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Loses Top World Bank Seat To Opponent Jim Yong Kim. (ipublicizenaija.wordpress.com)

‘Mad Men’ inspires a secretarial revival – and PAs can be proud again

News for 22 April 2012 has been taken from The Independent.

(Original heading: ’Mad Men’ inspires a secretarial revival)

Joan Holloway (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

They are the gatekeepers. Frequently shrewder than those they serve and always more knowledgeable, office secretaries are back in vogue. New evidence suggests that, spurred by powerful role models in the US TV series Mad Men, an increasing number of personal assistants, executive assistants and office managers are reviving the traditional job title.

A survey of more than 3,000 office PAs worldwide by the International Association of Administrative Professionals found that the number of administration staff who consider themselves “secretaries” has nearly doubled over the past two years. It attributed part of the shift to screenwriter Matthew Weiner’s depiction of Mad Men’s secretarial staff as powerful, attractive and emotionally astute, with inner knowledge of the workings of an office and constant access to the boss. According to the study, the number of secretaries had risen from eight per cent to nearly 15. The show, the organisation said, appears to “stoke nostalgia for the classic image of the American corporate secretary”.

Despite working in an ego-fuelled office full of sexist pigs, Mad Men’s Peggy Olsen wins numerous promotions during the first series. Joan Holloway is the shrewd head secretary who wields more power and commands more respect than most of the executive board. And Megan Draper’s emotional intelligence in the current series has made compelling viewing. This Wednesday is the 60th anniversary of Administrative Professionals Day and comes amid new evidence that the skills of top-level secretaries are now in such demand that the cream can command more than £363,000 a year.

Despite staff cuts in the financial sector, secretaries are becoming more aware of their worth. Figures released this week by the Association of Personal Assistants (APA) next week will show that more than 60 per cent of those working in British companies believe the importance of their role has grown in the past five years.

Gareth Osbourne, director of the APA, said: “The role of secretaries is no longer just confined to filing and managing the diary. Nowadays they have to be responsive to everything, even more so in a recession, where their value has been recognised. And more often than not they are expected to have a microcosm of every single attribute of those that they serve.”

Geoff Sims, managing director of Hays PA and Secretarial, said: “Shows like Mad Men have helped office administration to grow in stature. The discipline has evolved from the typing pool to secretaries. An increasing number of staff now work alongside celebrities, managing their lives. And we’re seeing more people coming in from other professional careers.”

Related articles

• Should We Be Offended That The Term ‘Secretary’ Is Making A Comeback? (thegloss.com)
• How-To: The Look of Mad Men’s Joan Holloway (bellasugar.com)
• Behind-the-Scenes Beauty Secrets of Mad Men (bellasugar.com)

‘Pinkstinks’ makes retailers rethink gender bias of toys

News for 21 April 2012 has been taken from The Guardian.

(Original heading: Why girls aren’t pretty in pink)

Children can be comically fierce in their ideas of which toys are or aren’t appropriate: “It’s for babies!” or “It’s for girls!” they will insist. But when, on a recent visit to a toy shop, Emma Moore’s daughter announced that farm animals were for boys, Emma was disappointed.

“All the signage was blue and there was a boy playing there,” says Emma, 40, and the mother of two daughters.

Other parents might just roll their eyes and move on, but not Emma. “When I had a second girl, the onslaught of pink rubbish piling into my house, and all the slogans, ‘Daddy’s little princess’ and so on, became even more noticeable,” she says. She and her twin sister Abi, who has two boys, were so angry about the gender division of children’s toys promoted by retailers that they decided to act.

The result was Pinkstinks, a campaign they set up four years ago to raise awareness of what they say is damaging gender stereotyping of children, and which this week won a Mumsnet-sponsored award for promoting body confidence in children. The sisters say they are thrilled, partly because they thought they were too radical for Mumsnet, but also because the accolade coincides with the launch of Slap, their new campaign, which is aimed at challenging the increasing tendency to target makeup at little girls.

Emma and Abi grew up in south-east London, not far from where they live now, and although their mother was active in the women’s movement and their stepfather was a Labour parliamentary candidate, no one expected the sisters to become activists. When they started Pinkstinks, “It was really challenging within our own family as well as in the wider world,” says Emma, who jokes about mothers running away from her at the school gate, presumably because she makes them feel awkward.

“Some of the presents Mum had given my daughters, I was like, really? A pink, plastic Disney castle? Are you sure?” she says. Abi chips in: “Vast swathes of people have accepted all this stuff as normal, and when we started questioning it, we were questioning ourselves as well.”

As the mother of two girls myself, I find this reassuring. We have pink duvet covers, pink scooters and a pink plastic piano. And when Emma describes, in a voice filled with scorn, sequin-covered trainers that come with a wand you pass over them to make a “brrring!” sound, I catch myself thinking they sound fun. This may show a lack of taste on my part, but I have chosen to go with the flow because I think disdain for mass-marketed pink plastic and cheap fashion often comes with a whiff of snobbery.

“I think it crosses class. I’ve been to extremely middle-class birthday parties that have been as pink, fluffy and ridiculous as any,” says Emma.

Their first targeted campaign, in December 2009, attacked the pink/blue colour-coding system used by the Early Learning Centre. Their outrage struck a chord, and they quickly found themselves on breakfast television and in newspapers around the world. “Would you put your son in a fairy dress? Why not”? one radio host asked them, while broadcaster Nina Myskow squared up to them on TV dressed in pink. The sisters say neither could have done it on her own. “You’ve got to be so strong to use your voice,” says Abi.

The sisters run Pinkstinks alongside their day jobs: Emma works for a health research company and Abi is a film-maker, working mainly for charities. Two volunteers have been recruited to keep an eye on social media, but otherwise this is it: two working mothers talking in the evenings via Skype. But they are influential. They have followings on Facebook and Twitter, and John Lewis and Marks & Spencer have responded quickly to criticism, removing a “girls” label from a pink Playmobil set and a “boys” label from a science kit.

We meet in Abi’s terraced house, where the table is covered with catalogues of children’s toys and clothing they use as props, showing me their least favourite items. A pink globe is Abi’s “most hated thing. The sea and the land and the girl and absolutely everything is pink.”

When they started campaigning, they were concerned that brightly coloured “boys” toys tended to focus on work and outdoor activity, while pink “girls” things were domestic and homely. But about a year ago they noticed a change of emphasis. Emma’s daughter Rebecca, then four, was given a makeup compact in a party bag. Emma threw it in the bin, but soon they began to see makeup everywhere, some of it labelled for girls as young as two and three.

“Girls’ toys are now very much about being in front of a mirror. Beauty parlours, makeup, brushing your hair,” Abi says, pointing to a catalogue featuring toddlers in a pink bedroom scene, hair dryers and vanity cases on the dressing table. Emma says: “Think for one minute about sitting your three-year-old down at one of these beauty tables and giving her a makeup set. What is that telling her? By the time she’s 16 or 17 she wants a boob job, her bum done, her vagina vajazzled.”

Slap, Pinkstinks’ newest campaign, calls on retailers to move makeup out of the pre-school bracket and to stop giving it away free with other products. But the campaign also, and less comfortably, targets parents who, Emma says, “must start thinking more about this, because if this isn’t the sexualisation of children, I don’t know what is.”

Cheryl Cole (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is not just the mothers of girls who need to be aware of the trend, says Abi: “I don’t want my sons growing up in a world where they have a one-dimensional view of women, where Cheryl Cole, or whoever, is what we should all aspire to. No offence to Cheryl.”

Abi watches women’s football with her sons and makes a point of seeing films where the main characters are girls. The Golden Compass, an adaptation of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, is a favourite and she is looking forward to the forthcoming Brave – the first Pixar film with a female lead.

But while both women agree that boys, too, can be badly affected by the limited roles on offer, they see girls as the main victims. “We’re going backwards,” says Emma. “It’s all about looking hot,” says Abi, “there are teenage girls who will not leave the house without a full face of makeup on.”

Related articles

• Pinkstinks campaign calls for ban on sale of makeup toys to under eights (guardian.co.uk)
• We Like Pink (thebeverlyhillbabies.com)
• OMG! I’m Going to Be a Grandmother and I Hate Gender Marketing (blogher.com)
• 5 Reasons Not to Buy Your Daughter Pink Legos (money.usnews.com)

‘Revenge’ website IsAnyoneUp.com finally closes

News for 20 April 2012 was taken from BBC News.

(Original headline: ‘Revenge p*rn’ website IsAnyoneUp.com closed by owner)

The owner of a notorious “revenge p*rn” blog has closed the website, selling its domain to an anti-bullying group. IsAnyoneUp.com had been encouraging people to send in intimate pictures of ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends for more than a year. The site’s owner Hunter Moore said the decision to close was made to “to stand up for under-age bullying”.

New owner Bullyville.com said: “IsAnyoneUp.com served no public good. That is why it is offline.”

In an interview with ABC’s Nightline, Bullyville’s founder James McGibney added: “No doubt, [Moore] was the No.1 internet bully out there and we took him down… not a hostile takeover but in a politically correct way.”

It is unclear how much, if anything, the domain changed hands for.

The site, which featured pictures of men and women in many countries across the world, including the UK, would publish the unwilling subject’s full name and link to social networking profiles.

During its time online, Mr Moore’s site attracted more than 300,000 hits a day – earning him up to $20,000 every month from advertising revenues. Subjects, whose pictures were published without their permission, were often ridiculed, with many forced to shut down their various social networking profiles.

Facebook threat

Mr Moore, who is 26 and lives in Los Angeles, used the IsAnyoneUp brand to sell merchandise and promote club nights. Prior to the site’s closure, he had planned to launch a mobile app and accompanying social network.

Mr Moore, who employed four people to help him administer the site, would refuse to remove the pictures, even if threatened with legal action.

In September 2011, the site was served a cease and desist letter by Facebook, threatening Mr Moore with legal action over featuring screenshots from the networking site. Mr Moore published the letter on his blog, apparently ignoring the request. Mr Moore has claimed he sent Facebook’s lawyers a picture of his genitals in reply.

Facebook would not comment on the issue. However, users are prevented from sharing links to the website, in line, Facebook said, with its policy on p*rnography.

‘Burned out’

The IsAnyoneUp.com domain now redirects to a page on Bullyville.com featuring Mr Moore’s announcement and a statement from Bullyville’s Mr McGibney.

“There are millions of women and men who are thankful that Isanyoneup.com is no longer online,” Mr McGibney wrote. “Lawyers and massive companies have tried unsuccessfully to remove it from the internet. Bullyville was able to work with Hunter to get this done.”

Mr Moore blamed the “drama” of receiving submitted content involving under-age subjects as one of the key reasons for wanting to close down the site.

He said: “The site was a blessing for me and still is, but I am burned out and I honestly can’t take another under-age kid getting submitted and having to go through the process of reporting it and dealing with all the legal drama of that situation.”

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• Is Anyone Up? Is Down for Good: Hunter Moore Pulls Plug on Controversial Revenge P*rn Site [End Of An Error] (gawker.com)
• Pin Me Up, P*rnterest (readwriteweb.com)
• BullyVille.com Partners With GUNS N’ ROSES Guitarist DJ Ashba To Put An End To Bullying (bravewords.com)
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Scientists hail revolutionary breast cancer breakthrough

News for 19 April was taken from The Independent.

A dramatic breakthrough in breast cancer research will lead to a revolution in the way the disease will be diagnosed and treated in years to come, leading cancer specialists said yesterday.

Researchers have discovered that breast cancer patients can be subdivided into ten different groups each with a unique genetic fingerprint that will determine the type of drugs and treatment that could lead to a cure.

Instead of looking at breast cancer as a single disease with a limited number of treatments, the scientists believe that it is now more accurate to view it as a range of illnesses with a wide variety of potential therapies that can be tailored to individual patients.

The discovery was made by analysing the tumours of some 2,000 women with breast cancer in a large Anglo-Canadian research effort, the biggest so far into understanding the genetics of a disease that kills nearly 12,000 people a year in Britain alone.

The study has also identified several new genes that are implicated in triggering or controlling breast cancer, which the scientists believe will become valuable targets for the development of novel anti-cancer drugs.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of the charity Cancer Research UK, said that the landmark study will change the way clinical trials on new drugs and treatments are undertaken now that the complexities of the disease are more accurately understood.

“This in the years to come will have an enormous impact in the way we think about both diagnosing and treating women with breast cancer, and that should enable us to contine the progress we’ve made in breast cancer over the past 25 years,” Dr Kumar said.

The study, published in the journal Nature, involved more than a dozen research centres in Britain, Canada and Norway.

Related articles

• Breast Cancer May Actually Be 10 Completely Different Diseases [Breast Cancer] (jezebel.com)
• ‘Holy grail’ gene mapping gives hope to breast cancer victims (rawstory.com)