Posts from the “sexism” Category

The glass ceiling: fact or fiction?

Cath Elliott

Posted on March 5th, 2012

This is the text of a speech I delivered today as part of Warwick University’s International Women’s Week. The event was also live blogged on the Student Journals site – here. Hello, and many thanks to the organisers for inviting me to speak at this event. I hope you have a really successful International Women’s Week. Okay, let’s have a look at some statistics. I’ll start with Westminster. According to the most recent figures from Fawcett, men now outnumber women 4 to 1 in Westminster. In fact only 22% of MPs are women, 22% of peers are women, and 17% (20 out of 119) of government ministers are women. In local politics, while 31% of elected councillors are women, only 13% of local authority…

Categories: campaigning, feminism, gender, sexism, the big P, the boy's club, the cuts, the meeja, trade unions

Rape survivors still being failed

Cath Elliott

Posted on February 28th, 2012

As if Brian Paddick’s revelation yesterday that he had been “asked to “water-down” a report critical of the Met’s handling of rape cases” wasn’t bad enough, now comes news that police forces up and down the country are still disproportionately no-criming rape cases in comparison to other crimes of violence: “The study discloses that 2,131 reported rape offences were officially logged as “no crimes” in 2010-11 in England and Wales – nearly 12% of all recorded rape cases. It also shows there is still a wide variation in “no crime” rates between police forces, from 30% in Kent to 2.4% in Gloucestershire. The inspectorates say that a rape that has been reported and then recorded as a crime should only be “no-crimed” if the…

Categories: angry? what me?, campaigning, crime, cynical? what me?, domestic violence, feminism, FFS!, misogyny, rape, sexism, the police, violence against women, you really couldn't make this shit up

“All the big guns”

Cath Elliott

Posted on January 31st, 2012

I know Bidisha’s already covered this, but I couldn’t let the all male line-up for Amnesty’s upcoming 50th anniversary Secret Policeman’s Ball pass without comment, especially in light of today’s report criticising the BBC’s Question Time and Mock the Week “for featuring “token women” on their panels.“ To grudgingly give them their due, at least Question Time and Mock the Week do feature some women, albeit women are grossly under-represented and tokenised on those and other panel shows. Amnesty on the other hand, “an international human rights organisation with more than three million supporters worldwide” (some of whom are no doubt women), doesn’t appear to have invited any women to take part in its “legendary” show.

Categories: angry? what me?, campaigning, cynical? what me?, feminism, FFS!, music, sexism, the boy's club, you couldn't make it up

Media sexism

Cath Elliott

Posted on January 25th, 2012

Not all media sexism is as overt and in your face as the examples given by women’s groups during their awesome testimony to the Leveson Inquiry yesterday. Media sexism, (or #mediasexism if you want to do a Twitter search for coverage of Tuesday’s morning’s hearing) isn’t always about Page 3 ‘girls’, victim blaming, sexual objectification or downright misogyny: often it’s a lot more subtle than that. Take the erasure of women from the MSM for example. The way women are ignored or marginalised, treated as though we don’t exist or as though our issues are unimportant in the grand scale of things, that’s also media sexism.

Categories: blogging, campaigning, churnalism, cynical? what me?, Daily Mail shite, feminism, FFS!, gender, misogyny, sexism, the Internet, the meeja

Women’s organisations get their say at Leveson

Cath Elliott

Posted on January 24th, 2012

For those of you who missed it here’s the link to this morning’s Leveson Inquiry hearing where representatives from women’s organisations finally got their say on sexism in the media. The relevant bit starts at around 105:00, and it’s well worth watching: Leveson Inquiry Tuesday am And here’s my Storify of some of the tweeting that went on during it: Women at Leveson In other news, I did the interview about lap dancing clubs on BBC Radio Norfolk’s breakfast show that I mentioned in my previous post – you can listen to the full thing here. And yes I know, I said Camden when I should have said Hackney, but never mind. Anyway, here’s the money quote from that interview: I’m still ridiculously chuffed…