Category: Herstory

Ruth Ellis – last woman to be hanged in UK – gets conditional posthumous pardon – BBC News

In a surprise announcement, Lammy said the King has granted a conditional pardon to Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the UK in 1955, after she was convicted of murdering her abusive lover.

Her sentence will be commuted from execution to life in prison. “While the pardon does not claim she was innocent of killing David Blakely,” Lammy said, the change in sentence recognises “a profound injustice in this exceptional case”.

“Justice has finally been done,” her granddaughter said afterwards.

Source: Ruth Ellis – last woman to be hanged in UK – gets conditional posthumous pardon – BBC News

This Renaissance queen helped build a nation. Her (male) critics called her dangerous | The Conversation

Bona Sforza was one of the most remarkable women of Renaissance Europe. Born into one of Italy’s leading ruling families and connected to figures such as Lucrezia Borgia through the tangled politics of Italian dynasties, she became queen consort of Poland and grand duchess of Lithuania.

More than a royal bride, she brought to Poland the administrative, financial and cultural ideas of Renaissance Italy. She understood how wealth, land and government could be used to strengthen a dynasty.

Although never a reigning monarch, Bona became one of the most politically influential women ever to sit on the Polish throne. Admirers praised her intelligence and determination. Critics condemned her as ambitious, overbearing and dangerously powerful. That tension lies at the heart of her story.

The debate over Bona’s legacy raises a question that still resonates today: why are women who wield power effectively so often judged differently from men who do the same?

.- ——

Like Bona, women leaders today are still often judged by standards that men rarely face.

A United Nations report on corporate leadership found that across 20 advanced economies, women held only 6% of chief executive officer roles, 7% of board chair roles, and 15% of chief financial officer roles.

Modern attitudes to women also matter. A Stanford University institute describes the “likeability penalty”: women leaders who appear competent and assertive can be judged as less likeable, while men often receive praise for similar behaviour.

Five centuries later, the pattern remains familiar. Bona’s wealth, discipline and confidence strengthened the monarchy. They also made her a target. They made her easier to attack.

Source: This Renaissance queen helped build a nation. Her (male) critics called her dangerous

Rebel Girls Uplifting Stories About Courageous Young Women — Spinifex Press

Rebel Girls is a powerful international collection of stories and essays about teenage girls confronting sexism, bullying, body image pressures, autism, ADHD and discrimination.

Fifty contributors from various countries including The Netherlands, USA, Taiwan, Denmark, China, Afghanistan and Spain pose important questions that you don’t often hear discussed about what it means to be a girl in the modern world. We hear from experts such as Finnish psychiatrist Riittakerttu Kaltiala and Holly Moreau from Fanfiction USA who share their work with girls and dissect the cultural forces at play. There are also the stories from girls and women themselves who explain how they are navigating the complex challenges faced by girls in the 21st century.

The future for girls is crucial for the future of everyone. This uplifting collection demonstrates how the next generation is continuing the radical feminist fight to expose misogyny and find autonomy, confidence, enjoyment and independence in their lives.

Source: Rebel Girls Uplifting Stories About Courageous Young Women — Spinifex Press

The Missing Plaque | Facebook

Honoring the women history forgot to name, but could never erase.

Women’s History Walking Tours | She Shapes History

Engaging, Educational and Transformative Walking Tours and Group Outings in Canberra, Sydney & Melbourne. Discover How Women Have Shaped History Where They’ve Shaped History.

Source: Women’s History Walking Tours | She Shapes History

Why Judith Butler Was Inevitable – by Matt Osborne

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

How did a philosophy that once sought liberation for women become about inclusion for men? This is the question Kate Phelan, a philosopher and lecturer of feminism at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, poses in her new book, Feminism Defeated.

The book presents her argument in two parts. The first half of the book shows how and why post-structural feminism, broadly known as ‘third wave’ feminism, displaced the political project of female emancipation that was central to second-wave feminism. The second half of the book explains the consequences of this self-defeat.

Academic feminism ceased to be grounded in women’s lives, merged with post-structuralism, and spawned Intersectionality. Intersectional feminism added layers of social categories, such as race and class, on top of the sex-based lens of feminism. By emphasizing social categories, the sex-based concern of women became just one concern among many. The coup de grâce came from the philosopher Judith Butler, who declared that gender was a social construct, an identity to be performed, rather than a natural condition of being.

By embracing the concept of ‘intersectionality’, academic feminists unwittingly created a new hierarchy of needs that ultimately defeated feminism. Every intersectional political turn will require some women to choose men over women until all women have eventually chosen men over women. So, for instance, solidarity with the ‘working man’ is an enemy relationship with the ‘capitalist oppressor’, a rich woman, imposing a hierarchy that derails the feminist project. Solidarity with the black man is an enemy relationship with a white woman, derailing the feminist project. This never, ever works out as liberation for women.

In the second half of her book, Phelan lays out the consequences of this self-defeat and explains why post-structural feminism would inevitably lead to the end of women’s rights by including men in the category of ‘women’ at the intersection of women’s liberation with transgender liberation.

If women struggle to envision themselves as a cohesive political class, perhaps the radical future envisioned by second-wave feminism remains unimaginable precisely because it is impossible: women cannot fully emancipate themselves from the men who built and sustain civilization while continuing to live within it. Kate Phelan suggests that Judith Butler was inevitable. She has written a convincing argument.

[Ed: Except civilisation was not built and sustained by men alone and it would quickly crumble without women. Indeed men are the destroyers of civilisation.]

Source: Why Judith Butler Was Inevitable – by Matt Osborne

Women used to dominate the beer industry – until the witch accusations started pouring in | The Conversation (from March 2021)

Today, beer is marketed to men and the industry is run by men. It wasn’t always that way.

Up until the 1500s, brewing was primarily women’s work – that is, until a smear campaign accused women brewers of being witches.

Humans have been drinking beer for almost 7,000 years, and the original brewers were women. From the Vikings to the Egyptians, women brewed beer both for religious ceremonies and to make a practical, calorie-rich beverage for the home.

In fact, the nun Hildegard von Bingen, who lived in modern-day Germany, famously wrote about hops in the 12th century and added the ingredient to her beer recipe.

So if you traveled back in time to the Middle Ages or the Renaissance and went to a market in England, you’d probably see an oddly familiar sight: women wearing tall, pointy hats. In many instances, they’d be standing in front of big cauldrons.

They wore the tall, pointy hats so that their customers could see them in the crowded marketplace. They transported their brew in cauldrons. And those who sold their beer out of stores had cats not as demon familiars, but to keep mice away from the grain. Some argue that iconography we associate with witches, from the pointy hat to the cauldron, originated from women working as master brewers.

Just as women were establishing their foothold in the beer markets of England, Ireland and the rest of Europe, the Reformation began. The religious movement, which originated in the early 16th century, preached stricter gender norms and condemned witchcraft.

Male brewers saw an opportunity. To reduce their competition in the beer trade, some accused female brewers of being witches and using their cauldrons to brew up magic potions instead of booze.

Unfortunately, the rumors took hold.

Over time, it became more dangerous for women to practice brewing and sell beer because they could be misidentified as witches. At the time, being accused of witchcraft wasn’t just a social faux pas; it could result in prosecution or a death sentence. Women accused of witchcraft were often ostracized in their communities, imprisoned or even killed.

Source: Women used to dominate the beer industry – until the witch accusations started pouring in

Women Write Wiki – The Women’s Library – Seeking new members!

The Women Write Wiki group started at The Women’s Library several years ago and one of its members was recently interviewed about her amazing work to redress the gender imbalance in Wikipedia. Read the article by Rayane Tamer from SBS Australia.

Photo from SBS article

Source: Women Write Wiki – The Women’s Library

Why Don’t We Have a Male Birth Control Pill Yet? | Science History Institute

The debut of the female birth control pill in 1960 was revolutionary. The combination of progesterone and estrogen allowed women to control their reproductive lives much more easily and effectively. But the pill had many unpleasant and even dangerous side effects. In fact, some doctors argue that it wouldn’t win government approval today. So why haven’t scientists tried to create a birth control pill for men? It turns out they have. In the 1950s scientists created a really good one. But it had one problem—you can’t drink alcohol when you take it.

As we now know, the science behind WIN-18446 was pretty straightforward. Inside our bodies, we all have an enzyme called ALDH. ALDH takes the vitamin A in food and converts it into a related compound called retinoic acid.

In men, retinoic acid helps sperm cells form. Specifically, it takes immature, preliminary sperm cells in the testes and helps them grow and change into mature sperm cells that can fertilize an egg. Without retinoic acid, mature sperm cells simply won’t form.

Overall, it really seemed as simple as that. On WIN-18446, men were shooting blanks. Off it, they were normal. It was a completely effective, completely benign, completely reversible male contraceptive.

Of course, things are never so simple.

Well, it turns out that our bodies have several different kinds of ALDH, each with a slightly different architecture. As we’ve heard, one form of ALDH is active in the testes and helps produce sperm. But another form is active in the liver, and this version of ALDH interacts with booze.

Unfortunately, the WIN-18446 drug gums up both versions of the ALDH enzyme—both the version that helps sperm production and the version that helps metabolize booze. As a result, if you take WIN-18446 and then drink alcohol, toxic acetaldehyde will start to accumulate in your body.

In fact, some modern forms of alcohol-abuse treatment involve giving people a drug that has the same effect as WIN-18446, in gumming up the ALDH enzyme. People who drink after taking it feel so sick that booze loses all appeal.

Now you might be asking yourself, what’s the big deal? Why can’t men still take WIN-18446 and just promise to lay off the sauce?

Well, as one cynic put it, If people couldn’t drink, then they wouldn’t need contraceptives. But the real answer is that male contraceptives are somewhat unusual in medicine. And to understand why they’re unusual, it helps to compare them to female contraceptives.

Through the 1950s, men generally took responsibility for contraceptives, usually condoms. But the debut of the female pill in 1960 changed everything. Since that time, the responsibility for contraceptives has shifted onto women, and many feminist critics have complained, not unfairly, about this burden.

It’s especially burdensome because many female contraceptives have unpleasant side effects. High blood pressure, mood swings, vaginal bleeding, even strokes. Some doctors, in fact, have argued that if the first female pill from 1960 was introduced today, it would never win government approval. The side effects were that harsh.

So why does the government approve these contraceptives, despite the side effects and potential health risks? Well, because the alternative is pregnancy—and pregnancy itself is a health risk.

For men, the calculus is different. Men don’t get pregnant, and therefore don’t suffer the health complications of pregnancy. So according to the cost-benefit analysis, male contraceptives aren’t really allowed to have side effects. Even a tiny increased risk of, say, blood clots or strokes will doom a male contraceptive—as did the harsh, potentially fatal interaction with booze.

Now, that double standard might or might not sound reasonable to you, but that’s the reality. Male contraceptives cannot have side effects.

Source: Why Don’t We Have a Male Birth Control Pill Yet? | Science History Institute

4 ways women are physically stronger than men | The Washington Post

Across a variety of sports, women are not just catching up after generations of exclusion from athletics — they’re setting the pace. In ultramarathons, women regularly outperform men, especially as distances stretch toward the extreme. Jasmin Paris in 2024 became one of only 20 people ever to finish the brutal 100-mile Barkley Marathons race in under 60 hours — while pumping breast milk.

In long-distance swimming, female athletes now so routinely excel that within the community, their records are just part of the sport. In climbing last year, Barbara “Babsi” Zangerl became the first person, man or woman, ever to “flash” — climb without prior practice and sans falls — the towering Yosemite rock formation El Capitan in under three days.

Generally, discussions of “strength” have meant brute force and speed over short distances — qualities historically associated with male physiology. But stamina, recovery, resilience and adaptability are as essential to athletic performance. And in those areas, female physiology holds real advantages, experts in sports science, human physiology, and biological anthropology have found.

The myth of female fragility is relatively modern. For most of human history, women were hauling gear, tracking prey, and walking eight to 10 miles a day — often while pregnant, menstruating, nursing or carrying children (one estimate found that hunter-gatherer women covered more than 3,000 miles in a child’s first four years of life).

That evolutionary foundation undergirds today’s feats, experts say. “Female bodies have superior fatigue resistance,” says Sophia Nimphius, pro-vice-chancellor of sport at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia.

Four things women’s bodies do exceptionally well

Pain tolerance

A 1981 study put it plainly: “Female athletes had the highest pain tolerance and threshold.”

Immunity

Among mammals, including humans, it is widely accepted that females have stronger immune systems than males. That’s due to the power of estrogen, and also of the XX chromosome carried by women but not men, which provides more variability in immune function.

(There is a downside though; the majority of autoimmune disease patients are female. It’s the cost that women bear for an aggressive immune system.)

Resilience

Women’s bodies seem better built for the long haul — less wear and tear, more staying power, according to the limited research.

Longevity

[W]ith rare exceptions, no matter the species or culture, women live longer. That’s partly behavioral — men tend to take more risks that can kill them — but it’s also biological. Women tend to survive disease, starvation and injury at higher rates than men do. Studies have shown that the Y chromosome, which is unique to men, can degrade over time — a phenomenon known as mosaic loss of Y. This degradation has been linked to a range of health issues in men, including increased risks of heart disease and cancer.

Source: 4 ways women are physically stronger than men