Back in the fifties, boys were boys and girls were girls, and that’s just the way things were.  Naturally.  Or so they’d have us believe.

This children’s book from the fifties gives a pretty clear example of how gender differences have been constructed through repeated narratives.  It’s pretty insidious, using this kind of thing to teach your children to read, even if the illustrations are nice (Whitney Darrow Jr. was the chief cartoonist for the New Yorker for over 50 years).  But at least, as feministing.com have pointed out, it lays its cards out on the table:

“I almost appreciate how blatantly obvious it is, since there is no question what it is trying to do. Gender-based messaging is much more subtle and nuanced these days.”

One thing I find interesting about it is the way a couple of the oppositions are just the grammatically gendered opposities of each other e.g. “Boys are heroes” / “Girls are heroines.”  Given the tone of the rest of the book I had expected to read “Boys are heroes” / “Girls are damsels in distress.”  Rather than signalling some kind of renegade progressivism bubbling over, though, I think they’re kind of sneaky in context.  It’s as though they lend a legitimacy to the other, more offensively sexist examples (I’m looking at you, “Boys can fix things”/”Girls need things fixed”).  It implies that they’re the logical and sanctioned antitheses of each other in just the same way.

Anyway, here is a choice page, but you can view the whole book here.  Recommended, if only for some of the moronic comments people have posted in reponse.

Vintage Sexism (Image: feministing.com)

Click on a pin to see how many services there are for women who have experienced violence in your area.

The Small f Map: Services for Women in London

London’s finest and the rotten boroughs: how many women live in the borough relative to how many women’s services are available:

The Worst:

1. Bromley - 153,747 women per service
   
2. Enfield - 142,853 women per service
3. Hillingdon - 125,545 women per service
4. Redbridge - 122,786 women per service
5. Havering - 116,291 women per service

The Best:

1. Hammersmith and Fulham - 9,583 women per service
2. Hackney - 11,757 women per service
3. Camden - 14,660
4. Waltham Forest - 18,682 women per service
5. Lambeth - 19,288 women per service

Here is single number two from your new favourite band, Grownups.  Like it?  Loathe it?  Let me know.  I can take it.

Grownups is a boy/girl duo based in London consisting of Lucy Jordan on keys and David Gooblar on guitar and bass.

Carol Ann Duffy: Making History

Today Carol Ann Duffy made history.  She has been appointed poet laureate, becoming the first woman to fill the prestigious post in its 341-year-long history.

Previous poet laureates include John Dryden, Alfred Tennyson, William Wordsworth, Ted Hughes and Andrew Motion.

In announcing the decision, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham called Duffy “a towering figure in English literature today and a superb poet” who has “achieved something that only the true greats of literature manage — to be regarded as both popular and profound.”

According to the Guardian, Duffy said that Britain had lately “grown up” in its attitude to sexuality. “It is fantastic that I am an openly gay writer [in this role],” she said. She hoped it would demonstrate that homosexuality is “a lovely, ordinary thing.”

Duffy added: “I hope after my 10 years are up, there will be another woman laureate, then another, for 300 years.”

Yesterday Jacob Zuma, leader of the African National Congress (ANC) party, became South Africa’s fourth post-apartheid president.  His was a quite extraordinary comeback, which saw him overcoming rape and corruption charges while re-energising voter turnout to over 70 percent.

But the challenges facing Zuma are formidable.  He inherits a country with an 18.8 percent HIV/AIDS rate in which 1,000 AIDS deaths occur every day.

The ANC’s record on AIDS thus far has been atrocious.  Zuma’s predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, famously disputed the science that HIV caused AIDS, declaring AIDS to be only “a disease of poverty”.  The scientific link between HIV and AIDS was, he claimed, a conspiracy of profit-driven Western drug companies.  A recent Harvard School of Public Health study has shown that this attitude, and the consequent cut in anti-retroviral treatment, cost 365,000 lives.

Zuma (right) succeeds Mbeki as President of South Africa

Absurdly short-sighted and politicised rhetoric from government officials hasn’t helped, and certainly socioeconomic factors contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS disproportionately impact on poorer countries - poverty, and its attendant malnutrition, parasitic infection, and limited access to medical care, is a key factor in the virulence and spread of any disease.  But HIV is a disease of society too, with transmission following relations of vulnerability and inequitable power relations.  According to UNIFEM, young women in Africa, for whom the issue is complicated by gender inequality and blatant violations of women’s rights, are three times more likely to be HIV-positive than young men.  Unless Zuma moves to tackle the issues facing women, overall efforts to address the epidemic will be futile.

Zuma himself has displayed even greater ignorance than Mbeki regarding AIDS.  He famously said in court that after having sex with a woman who he knew to be HIV-positive, he protected himself by having a shower.

But at least in his in personnel appointments, if not in his personal conduct, he is effecting change.  The appointment of Barbara Hogan as Health Minister, a well-respected AIDS activist, may represent a shift towards new, serious policy-making regarding the crisis.  She replaces Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who, as Health Minister under Mbeki, supported garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as remedies for AIDS.

Poverty forces many women in South Africa to turn to prostitution. YOAV LEMMER/AFP/Getty Images

Mbeki’s questioning of the international power relations which contextualise the epidemic may have been important, but the doubt he attached to a causal connection between HIV and AIDS made space for negligence and allowed the epidemic to grow.  If HIV does not cause AIDS and isn’t infectious, society does not need to change its behaviour.  Complex and controversial issues that impact upon HIV transmission – gender, culture, race, and sexual behaviour – need not be addressed.  If HIV infection is seen as a logical result of poverty and malnutrition alone then there is very little government can, or need do, to try and combat it.

But these issues do need to be addressed.  Where poverty meets gender inequality, there is an increased likelihood that poor women will be forced into commercial sex as a survival strategy.  An understanding of the risk of HIV transmission is often overpowered by a need for survival and to feed one’s family.  Added to this is the threat of violence that may make it extremely difficult for women to protect themselves through negotiating the use of condoms.  If Zuma does not take this into account the disease will continue to spread unchecked.

More on Shia Family Law.   President Obama and his administration have called this set of laws, that are said to “legalise” marital rape, a breach of human rights.  “I think this law is abhorrent,” U.S. President Obama said in Strasbourg, France. “We think that it is very important for us to be sensitive to local culture, but we also think that there are certain basic principles that all nations should uphold, and respect for women and respect for their freedom and integrity is an important principle.”

President Obama: Shia Family Law is "abhorrent". (Image: This Is London)

The condemnation expressed by Obama, other world leaders and human rights organisations has effected change: Karzai has been forced to order a judicial review.

With this in mind here is a (very) brief look at how the interventions of America’s past presidents have impacted on women’s rights violations in Afghanistan.

It was only when the Soviet Union got involved with Afghani politics in 1978, sparking America’s long-standing and profound fear of the spread of Communism, that the US began to pay any attention to Afghanistan.  The new regime, the Progressive Democratic Party of Afghanistan, had attempted reform that was often aimed at improving the position of women but had found fierce resistance amongst Islamic fundamentalists.  After the Soviet Union invaded to support the moderate ruling party, America gave its backing to the fundamentalist Afghan mujahideen, or holy warriors, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

“In Afghanistan, the freedom fighters are the key to peace. We support the Mujahadeen.” President Ronald Reagan, Seventh State of the Union Address, January 1988.

Ronald Reagan meets Afghan Mujahideen Commanders at the White House in 1983. (Image: Reagan Archives)

Assuming that communists were more dangerous than misogynists, the Reagan administration gave arms and vast financial support to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, funnelling billions of dollars through the Pakistani secret service.  Hekmatyar went on to conduct a regime of monumental cruelty, including mass rape, murder and torture, and is reported to have hurled acid in the faces of young women who dared to attend school unveiled.  The pro-women’s rights movement was overturned and further gains for women were swiftly curtailed.

George W. Bush had an amicable relationship with the Taliban prior to 9/11. (Image: The Independent)

From the chaos of the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 emerged the Taliban, and with them the institutionalised abuse of Afghani women.  Women were systematically driven from the public sphere - religious law forbade them from working, going to school or appearing in public without a male relative and completely veiled.

Taliban-ruled Afghanistan became the first target of George W. Bush’s war on terror after 9/11.  However in May 2001, only four months before terrorists attacked New York and Washington, President Bush congratulated the Taliban for cracking down on opium production and compensated them for their loss of revenue with $43,000,000.

President Obama’s condemnation of the Shia Family Law as “abhorrent” and a breach of “human rights” at least signals a willingness to consider the rights of women in tyrannical nations around the world.  It recognises that accepting rape does not fall within the remit of cultural diplomacy and that woman’s rights are human rights.  Any foreign policy that fails at this this effectively dehumanises half the human race.

Last week I wrote aout the Shia Family Law, legislation signed by President Karzai that restricts women’s right to leave the house, gives child custody only to fathers or grandfathers and, most shockingly, forbids women from refusing to have sex with their husbands.  The laws represent the biggest blow for women’s rights in that country since the Taliban ruled.

Yesterday President Karzai was interviewed for CNN with the United States Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke.  Asked about Article 132 of the Shia Family Law, the clause that obligates wives to submit to the man’s sexual desires unless she can provide a medical excuse, Karzai defended himself by saying: “This law was signed without the knowledge of the articles in it.”

Here’s the clip, courtesy of CNN via Youtube:

What?  What kind of world leader signs a law into effect without knowing what it’s for?  Or, more realistically, thinks that not having finished his homework assignment is a valid excuse for making it legal for men to rape women?   I mean sure, it’s not like it’s his job to know what laws he’s signing into effect, or anything.  Except that… oh yeah, it is.  Jeeze.  That’s almost as bad as using women’s autonomy over their own body as a quick fix to garner political capital.  Almost.

“This is a huge - you know, huge in terms of the many articles.”

Oh, I see.  It was too BIG to read.  You simply didn’t have the time!  Okay then.  I mean I know I felt that way about Middlemarch, so.  Yeah.

The first time Melissa’s father beat her up, she stayed.  He was ill, and needed her help.  The second time, after he attacked Melissa so badly that she needed stitches, she feared for the life of her baby boy. Her father had been angry that she hadn’t done the washing up.

I meet Melissa at the Crossroads women’s centre in Kentish Town.  She is articulate, with luminous eyes, but speaks very softly.  She came to the UK from Jamaica in 2001; an only child hoping to settle with her father, get a student visa and train as an architect.  She had never lived with him before.  When the abuse from her father became so bad that she knew she and her baby had to leave, she discovered that her probationary visa specified no recourse to public funds.

“He had been abusing me again so I went to a refuge.  They said they can’t assist me because of my status.  I said, but I need help, there is a child involved!  I’m going to be on the streets!”

They sent her back to her father’s house.  Within a fortnight, he had beaten her again.

Unfortunately, Melissa’s is not an isolated problem.  In most cases an NRPF immigrant who becomes a victim of domestic violence is here on a spousal visa and is beaten by her husband, although some – like Melissa – can be attacked by other members of their family.  Surveys carried out by Southall Black Sisters indicate that there are around 600 women per year who are victims of domestic violence and have no recourse to public funds.  And this number is a conservative estimate – for many of these women language, ignorance and the fear of reprisal from their partners and families are insurmountable barriers to finding the help they need.

Amnesty have launched a campaign that focuses on the failure of the UK government to protect these women’s basic human rights.  Truus Abbink, co-ordinator of the Stop Violence Against Women Amnesty campaign group for Cambridge, says: “Living free from violence is a human right and it is in the European Convention.  So by not doing that they are in breach of that legislation.  Amnesty is not campaigning against immigration law - it is campaigning for people who have immigrated already, who are in this country legally and that are the responsibility of the UK government.”

Melissa’s priorities, for the moment, are much simpler: “We just need to survive.”  She and her little boy, now nearly four, are still staying with friends and trying to get secure status, after her legal aid officer failed to pass on vital visa documents from the Home Office before they had expired.

She doesn’t seem angry, just sad, as she stares at her hands and says: “I think it’s so inhumane, … I think they think they’re helping, that they care, especially for women and children.  But it’s the opposite.  I can understand that maybe they think people will take advantage of the situation.  But there are ways to find out whether the person is genuine.  They haven’t explored those avenues.  And that’s why it’s so cruel.”

Ask the average Briton what “no recourse to public funds” means, and the chances are they won’t know.  But this abstruse phrase found stamped onto UK visas is leaving hundreds of women with the following choice: stay in an abusive situation, risking continued and possibly escalated violence, or become destitute.

NRPF means that women subject to immigration control have no recourse to public aid.  This means no benefits, no housing – and no access to refuges in the event of a violent attack at home.

Labour introduced the NRPF stipulation in 1997.  “The rule is absurd,” said David Howarth – Liberal Democrat justice spokesman and MP for Cambridge.  “Rape, murder, GBH, kidnapping – we’re talking about the most serious crimes you can think of.  And if a women can’t get away and into a refuge then that’s a very serious matter. The attitude of the government should be: how do we stop these crimes happening?”

In most cases an NRPF immigrant who becomes a victim of domestic violence is here on a spousal visa and is beaten by her husband, although some can be attacked by other members of their family.

Southall Black Sisters have been lobbying the government to help NRPF domestic violence victims

But despite sustained lobbying from Amnesty International and Southall Black Sisters, as well as smaller groups, it seems that the message still isn’t getting through to many politicians.  “I don’t know anything about that at all” said Glenda Jackson, Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, about the policy.  Frank Dobson, Labour MP for Holborn and St. Pancras, said: “I wasn’t quite sure how [the NRPF rule] tied in with domestic violence.  I’m surprised that that’s the case.”  But he conceded that: “Whatever the merits or otherwise of the no recourse rule it makes no sense to apply it in these particular circumstances.”

An Amnesty International spokesperson, Sarah Green, said publicity and prejudice are the main problems: “Women are marginalised and immigrants are marginalised so it’s a largely invisible and stigmatised problem.”

Others, like Mr. Howarth, blame the policies of New Labour.

“One of the fundamental rules of New Labour is never to allow the Tories any room on the right on crime and immigration. This is not an accident, some sort of minor deviation from a more generally humane party. Central to no recourse is that they’ve had to choose between immigration and crime and they’ve chosen immigration. Women will be losing their lives because of this policy.”