Category: Feminism

Marshall Plan for Mums: the call for mothers to be paid.

This week, a full-page advertisement appeared in The New York Times. It was in the form of a letter addressed to the newly inaugurated President of the United States, Joe Biden.

“Dr President Biden,” it read. “You know this well: Mums are the bedrock of society. And we’re tired of working for free.”

The ad is part of a campaign called “The Marshall Plan for Mums” led by author, activist and founder of Girls Who Code, Reshma Saujani.

It’s backed by 50 high-profile women who co-signed the letter, including the founder of the #metoo movement Tarana Burke and actors Alyssa Milano, Connie Britton, Charlize Theron, Amy Schumer, Julianne Moore and Eva Longoria.

Together, they are calling for the US government to pay mothers for parental labour and to introduce a raft of family-friendly policies that could help rebuild the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Motherhood isn’t a favour, and it’s not a luxury. It’s a job,” the letter read.

Source: Marshall Plan for Mums: the call for mothers to be paid.

War of words risks wiping women from our language | Comment | The Times

A fortnight before President Biden took office, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that “mother”, “father”, “daughter”, “brother” and other gendered words to describe familial relationships would be removed from House rules. Henceforth in official documents they would be replaced by the gender-neutral terms “parent”, “child” or “sibling”. The purpose of this was to “honour all gender identities”.

Then, within hours of his inauguration, the president’s first executive order decreed that his administration would fully apply the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling that denying rights “‘because of … sex’ covers discrimination on the basis of gender identity” too.

But this order has far wider consequences. In a stroke of the pen, with zero debate or legislative scrutiny, biological sex as a discrete political and legal concept has gone. US women’s prisons, publicly funded domestic violence refuges and college sporting contests can no longer deny entry to any male-born person who identifies as a woman.

If sex and gender identity are the same, a male person does not just have the human right to live as a woman free from violence and discrimination, or be granted social and legal recognition as a woman. (Which most feminists wholeheartedly support.) What is now claimed is that such a male is biologically female. From this bizarre science-denial stem many absurdities: a penis is not necessarily a male organ, therefore a teenage male who identifies as a girl cannot be denied entry to female showers because, regardless of physical appearance, they are also “female”.

Source: War of words risks wiping women from our language | Comment | The Times

#120 Susan Hawthorne – Vortex: the Crisis of Patriarchy — FiLiA

Susan Hawthorne explains the key ideas in Vortex, the running theme in the book of the myth of Cassandra and Trojan horses, how growing up in Australia has affected her work and why she asks readers whether we care about the safety of lesbians.

Source: #120 Susan Hawthorne – Vortex: the Crisis of Patriarchy — FiLiA

This is Not a Drill: 2020 in Review | by Maya Forstater | Dec, 2020 | Medium

A year ago — on December 18 2019 — I learnt that I had lost at the employment tribunal.

Source: This is Not a Drill: 2020 in Review | by Maya Forstater | Dec, 2020 | Medium

Calls for countries like Australia to boycott Saudi Arabia’s G20 summit over the jailing of female political prisoners – ABC News

With Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman set to take centre stage, there are calls for the world’s major economic powers to boycott this weekend’s G20 summit over the jailing of female political prisoners who campaigned for the right to drive.

This month, a UN human rights committee expressed alarm at the worsening health of the 31-year-old, who is on a hunger strike, and urged the Saudis to immediately release her.

Up until June 2018, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world where women were banned from driving cars.

Just months before the restriction was lifted, the Saudi Royal Court issued a decree ordering a group of female activists who had been behind a Women2Drive campaign not speak to the media.

They were later arrested.

Source: Calls for countries like Australia to boycott Saudi Arabia’s G20 summit over the jailing of female political prisoners – ABC News

Láadan: A Feminist Language Designed to Convery Female Experiences | The Swaddle

In the fall of 1981, feminist, linguist and science-fiction author Suzette Haden Elgin was nursing a few questions.If existing human languages, by virtue of being historically built by men, are taken to be inadequate to express women’s perceptions and experiences, then, what mechanism do women have left at their disposal to even discuss their problems, if not for those very languages alleged to be inadequate?

Source: Láadan: A Feminist Language Designed to Convery Female Experiences | The Swaddle

Dick, Kerr Ladies attracted 53,000 fans on Boxing Day 100 years ago. A year later, they were banned – ABC News

The Dick, Kerr Ladies football team attracted 53,000 fans to Everton’s Goodison Park on Boxing Day 1920. But instead of being used as proof of women’s football’s popularity, it turned out to be the beginning of the end.

Throughout 1921, the matches came thick and fast for Dick, Kerr Ladies, but storm clouds were brewing for the women’s game.

League football had resumed in 1919 after the Great War, with men coming back from the front to resume their former lives.

However, in every aspect of life in 1920’s Britain, women were finding their voice in society. Suffrage had been granted to women over the age of 30 in 1918 — although genuine equality only came in 1928 with universal suffrage for those aged over 21.

However, in sport, patriarchy still ruled.

On December 5, 1921, just under a year after the spectacularly successful match at Goodison Park, the Football Association (FA) banned women from using its grounds, saying football was “quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”.

The FA did not recognise women’s football again in any form until 1969, almost 50 years later.

Source: Dick, Kerr Ladies attracted 53,000 fans on Boxing Day 100 years ago. A year later, they were banned – ABC News