Author Archives: Hilary
90 Years Of Women’s Emancipation – And Feminism
Just 90 years ago on this date was the first time any woman in the UK was ‘allowed’ to vote. Some people still alive now were born when women’s emancipation did not exist; and even in 1918 the Representation of the People Act permitted only specified women over 30 this privilege. It was to be another ten years before women gained equal voting rights with men.
From the time of the Representation of the People Act of 6 February 1918 until the Equal Franchise Act of 2 July 1928, despite this and other first and desperately hard-fought victories, democratic voting rights were still not equal between men and women.
But that was by no means the end of the fight for formal equality. It was, extraordinarily, not until 30 April 1958 – a date still easily within the memory of many people – that the Life Peerages Act enabled just four women gained entry to the House of Lords.
Not there yet
So progress has indeed been made towards women’s equality in the past century. No longer are women paid less in, or indeed debarred if they marry from, professions like teaching; no longer does the law formally and overtly permit differences in the way women and men stand before it.
But still much remains to be done. As Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society, says in her Guardian interview this week:
We have done as much as we can levering women into a system designed by men for men. Now we have to work for a society where the rules are fitted for everybody…. There has been a huge change in women’s lives, but very little in men’s. [To make further progress] we have got to look at what happens in men’s lives…..
Even now, these battles continue, worldwide….
Unapologetically feminist
So I make no apology for being a long-time committed feminist. Half a century after women’s first step towards full emancipation, the feminist agenda of 1968 was a turning point as I entered adulthood. But the year 2008 still sees a long road ahead.
In my lifetime much has changed; but not enough.
Whilst, for example, the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act brought about a fairer situation for women requiring maternity leave (and , thereby, their partners and families) – though it was too late for some of my friends and me.
Still unequal in work and in power
But gender equality in the workplace is even now nowhere near achieved. British women in full time work are still paid on average 17% less than men similarly employed; and when part-time the difference between men and women is 36%.
And in national politics, where the big decisions are made, women remain even now a minority. The 2005 General Election saw 128 women elected in an assembly of 644, most of them – as Theresa May, a leading Conservative, herself acknowledged, from the Labour Party. (As at the end of 2006, of 712 Lords, 139 were women.)
Gender fatigue there may well be; but this is no time for inaction.
A way to shape the future
There remain enormous gaps, for both men and women, in parts of our lives which, whatever the legal frameworks, still have to be addressed. Men and women remain unequal, for each of them in different ways. (And so as we know do people of different sexualities, of different colour or age, of different beliefs and with different abilities.)
You don’t, actually, need to be a woman to want to seek equality, to hold that feminism is a sensible and decent way to see the world. You just have to be a fair-minded person.
Read more about Gender & Women.
Monday Women ’08 Take The Next Step!
2008 sees a new location for Monday Women in Liverpool. For a few months we’ll be meeting in El Rincon Latino, by Roscoe Street and Oldham Street in the new City Gate development at the top of Renshaw Street. It’s free to come; all women most welcome, first Monday of every month, from about 5.45 to 7.30-ish p.m.
El Rincon Latino is located on the corner of Roscoe Street and Oldham Street just one block up the hill from Renshaw Street. It’s immediately across from the multi-storey car park behind Leece Street Post Office, on the town side of Leece Street but still near St Luke’s, the ‘Bombed Church’. You can also get there via a very short walk up the hill opposite the main entrance to Rapid Hardware on Renshaw Street.
The address and postcode are Roscoe Street, L1 2SU (map); tel: 0151- 324 0454.
All you pay for is your supper and drinks, ordered as you wish from the bar, if / when you’d like some – but no obligation. (There’s a photograph of a sample menu below, right…) Our Chilean host, Francisco Carrasco, is also Director of All Things Latin (ATL) and tell us the cafe aims to serve food from across Southern and Central America, as the head chef is from Ecuador. The venue has many cultural links with Latin America.
If you have ideas about anything you’d really like to discuss or do when everyone meets, you can of course join the Monday Women e-group (absolutely free, quite voluntary) and suggest things beforehand. Other than that, the format of each Monday Women event is decided by those who are there – drinks and chat, debate, even this year perhaps post-meeting salsa classes… It’s your choice! Dates for 2008 are below.
Monday Women meeting dates for 2008 (all first Mondays of the month, 5.45-ish to approx. 7.30, please just come and go as you wish) are:
February 4th
March 3rd
April 7th
May 5th
June 2nd
July 7th
August 4th
September 1st
October 6th
November 3rd
December 1st (special event, the annual Christmas Do!!)
To check any particular date please call the venue on 0151-324 0454.
Do join us. No need to book, just turn up whatever time you can; and bring your women friends as well…
We’d love to see you there.
Find out more here or visit the Monday Women message board.
Sefton Park Renovations Have Begun
Mid-winter, and the rawest, sorest part of the oh-so necessary works on Liverpool’s Sefton Park has begun. Here lies the pink ribbon of protest an anonymous tree-lover tied on this felled tree. And here (below) lies scattered the still fresh sawdust of the vigorous cull of trees around the upper lake. Soon, we are assured, these voids will be host to new and vibrant growth. Soon, our park will be even more lovely than before.
More information on Sefton Park is available here.
Photographs of Sefton Park on this website include:
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily? (Photo of the subsequently removed Willow tree in the Cherry Blossom / central lake)
and
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool.
For more photographs please see here.
Snowstorm And Magic In Prague At Night
The first months of the year offer a drama all of their own in great Central European cities such as Prague. But the people and the life of the city carry on, whatever. It took just one day for the snow in that enchanting city to transform Prague into the frozen wonderland seen here.
See also:
Camera And Calendar
Prague Old Town, Celetna Street
Impressions Of Prague
Carbon-Neutral Villages, British And Czech Alike
Woman Home Secretary Speaks Out On Street Fears At Night
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has told it as it is: many of us, men and especially women, are fearful of being out alone at night. Only really unimaginative or insensitive people – or perhaps some opportunist political opponents – would disagree with Ms Smith. This is not a new state of affairs. We have but to recall past feminist campaigns to ‘reclaim the night’ to know that.
So Jacqui Smith, the UK’s first woman Home Secretary, doesn’t enjoy being out alone at night.
This is surely not a new or startling revelation. The Home Secretary’s ‘admission’ – to me, a simple statement of a truth recognised by many – feels far more like reality than much of what we read in the papers.
Reclaim (‘retake’) the night
The idea that there is something to fear, out alone at night, is instilled in many girls (and some boys) from a very early age. In 1976 a movement began to recognise and act on this fear, by ‘reclaiming the night‘ from the men who were deemed to make it dangerous.
Women across Europe and the USA marched thirty years ago to demonstrate their belief that streets should be safe 24/7; but only more recently has this action begun again.
Telling it as it is
It feels very disingenuous that male politicians should denounce a woman in their midst who speaks candidly on a matter as fundamental as personal safety.
I hope these same men would not encourage their own female friends and family to walk the streets unaccompanied at night.
Making the streets safer
Sometimes people have to travel alone in the dark. To make their journeys safer, it is first necessary to speak the truth, to acknowledge realities, even when unpleasant.
Only after we know and understand problems can we ameliorate them.
Let’s start by thanking Jacqui Smith for being candid; and then let’s see how we can all, together, conscious femininists or not, reclaim those scary streets.
What’s Regeneration For?
The British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) annual conference is in Liverpool this year, on 30th and 31st January 2008. The conference, bringing together some 300 people, will see brisk debates between professionals and community leaders from across the U.K. One important focus may be the search for consensus on what regeneration is ‘about’.
BURA is an organisation moving forward with increasing momentum and confidence in both its own role and the direction and meaning of regeneration in Britain.
What is regeneration?
We, as members of the Board of BURA, are beginning to understand anew, or at least consciously to explore in a new way, what ‘regeneration’ means. The discussion will doubtless continue for a long time yet; but for me some clarity is emerging from many years in the business.
Regeneration is much more than ‘construction’, ‘development’ or even ‘capacity building’.
In the end, regeneration is about adding long-term shared value to all these activities.
A win-win
Regeneration’s a real win-win; it’s about creating a more equitable, more sustainable life-context for everyone.
The challenge is, how to do it.
The UK is often said to be at the forefront of regeneration. BURA’s annual conference discussions this week should prove interesting.
Liverpool 4, 11 & 12 January 2008: The Euro-Year Begins!
Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture Year is finally launched.
First, we went to the pre-launch of the Liverpool Echo Arena on Friday 4 January.
Then we went to St George’s Plateau for the ‘People’s Opening’ on Friday 11 January, where after much frenetic construction all day Ringo Starr sang from a box on the roof of the Hall and we saw some fireworks and lights.
And finally we found ourselves in the Echo Arena again on Saturday 12 January for the formal opening of that venue and Liverpool’s 2008 events. The Arena ceremony offered a colourful performance of Liverpool – The Musical by artists ranging from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with Vasily Petrenko (who all played valiantly throughout the show) to performers such as Gary Christian, The Farm, Sense of Sound, Ringo Starr, The Welsh Choral Union and The Wombats.
And so began our city’s European Year of Culture….
Everyone worked very hard to make it all happen. The preparations were no doubt complicated and frantic, the general mood was convivial and fun, and the outcome was by and large convincing and festive.
This was certainly not the weekend to be negative; though it has to be said that there is a lot still to do. Watch this space….
(But after this posting we shall, I promise, begin once again to acknowledge the world outside Liverpool 2008.)
For more photographs please see also Camera And Calendar.
How Many Science And Technology Graduates In Liverpool And Merseyside?
Summary: The Liverpool city region (Merseyside) looks on available evidence to have only about half the number of scientists which might be expected on the basis of the overall national statistics.
So by what indicators might Merseyside measure progress in the retention and development of graduate scientists and technologists?
Why do Liverpool and Merseyside stay so near the bottom of the national economic stakes?
A complete version of this article can be found on Hilary’s professional website, here.
Queen Victoria Celebrates Liverpool’s European Year
This is the Victoria Monument in the heart of Liverpool’s commercial quarter. However special the occasion, one can only imagine what Queen Victoria might have thought about being festooned by Christmas lights in preparation for the Liverpool European Capital of Culture in 2008; but for passers by on a very chilly evening this festive sight is one to raise a cheery little smile. Perhaps Queen Victoria would not have been amused, but in a different age we can surely innocently enjoy.
Liverpool At Christmas
The few weeks as 2007 ended and became 2008 saw much festive activity in Liverpool. Here, the set for the BBC’s special production of the ‘Liverpool Nativity’ was surrounded by excited onlookers well before the performance started, but alongside all the high technology Saint George’s Hall stood serene, just as it has for the past 150 years.
Dreaming Realist 