Category: Herstory

‘Pretty birds and silly moos’: the women behind the Sex Discrimination Act | Feminism | The Guardian | UK

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.

In the 50 years since equal rights for women were enshrined in UK law, the campaigners have been reduced to caricatures, or forgotten. But their struggle is worth remembering.

Along with Conran, Brayfield also joined Women in Media, a pressure group set up in 1970 to challenge sexism in the industry and beyond. Its activities have been largely forgotten, and many of those involved have died. But it played a key role in the campaign to outlaw sex discrimination and enforce equal pay – as well as lobbying bosses for equal opportunities at work. One policy that especially riled them, and became a focus, was the broadcasters’ refusal to let women read the news. The public would find this “unnatural”, the BBC executive Robin Scott told the Daily Mirror in 1972. “There’s always bad news about and it’s much easier for a man to deal with that.”

There had been a women’s movement pressing for employment rights since the 19th century, when pioneering female trade unionists campaigned for safer conditions and higher wages in shops and factories, and middle-class women fought for access to the professions. But even after the second world war, during which millions of women took on roles previously reserved for men, sexism was baked into workplaces. It was standard practice for women to be paid around four-fifths of what men earned for the same job, and sexist attitudes meant that women were routinely refused promotion. Senior and leadership positions were largely off-limits. Powerful politicians, employers and some trade unionists were determined that it should stay that way. When the House of Commons supported an amendment calling for equal pay for female teachers in 1944, Winston Churchill, the prime minister, was so determined to block it that he made the next vote on the issue a vote of confidence in the wartime government – effectively threatening to resign if it became law.

On 7 March 1968, the Labour backbencher Joyce Butler challenged the prime minister, Harold Wilson, directly in the House of Commons: “Is my right honourable friend aware that women are fed up with being exploited as pretty birds when they are young, and as silly moos when they get older?” She wanted to know if he planned to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1918 women’s suffrage bill with a law against sex discrimination.

Between 1968 and 1971, Butler tried four times to introduce an anti-discrimination bill that would make it illegal for employers to treat male and female workers differently.

But Women in Media – which drew in young journalists like Brayfield and Mary Kenny, as well as an older generation including Mary Stott, who was Guardian women’s editor from 1957-72 – was determined to push a bill through.

Not everyone was enamoured of Women in Media’s self-appointed role. There was a cross exchange of letters with WLM organisers, and in 1974 Dodie Wheppler wrote to the Guardian on behalf of the Socialist Woman journal to complain about “the Women in Media group going from bad to unbelievable.

In March 1974, Women in Media wrote to the prime minister, Harold Wilson, to say that a sex discrimination bill “must, in justice, be considered an urgent priority in any socialist programme”.

In the summer of 1974, Women in Media decided to increase the pressure on Wilson by putting up its own candidate in the next election – expected to be soon as Labour did not have a majority. The woman chosen was Una Kroll, a 48-year-old deaconess and GP in south London, with a remarkable family history which included growing up partly in the Soviet Union where both her parents were spies. A campaigner for the ordination of women, she described herself as having been radicalised by a patient who had died from cervical cancer, aged 29, after doctors refused to take her symptoms seriously.

Since Women in Media was not a suitable name for a political party, the Women’s Rights Campaign was established on 6 September. In a bizarre coincidence – or what some feminists hoped was a panicked reaction to their bold move – the Home Office launched a white paper, Equality for Women, on the same day.

Christabel Pankhurst had been the sole candidate for a Women’s party in 1918, and lost by 775 votes. But while this disappointing coda to the suffrage movement was forgotten, Kroll’s supporters decked themselves in the suffragette colours of purple, white and green, and celebrity supporters including the actor Glenda Jackson donned sashes for photos. The manifesto was a checklist of issues including contraception, childcare and pensions as well as pay.

In electoral terms, the Woman’s Rights Campaign was a flop. Kroll won just 298 votes. Records of the campaign in the Women’s Library suggest that its activists fell down on canvassing. Most volunteers worked full-time and evening door-knocking sessions turned into chaotic late nights. In obituaries of Kroll, who died in 2017, her candidacy is referred to only briefly.

But while the campaign did not succeed, it was an audacious stunt. It would be more than 40 years before the Women’s Equality party would try something similar on a larger scale. And in publicity terms, it had an effect. Newspapers reported on the Women’s Rights Campaign with interest and when Labour won a majority, it quickly announced that sex discrimination would be outlawed.

Feminists did not win all the arguments. The equal opportunities commission (as the board was named) gained the power to investigate but only “with the agreement of the secretary of state”. Women in Media described the bill as “timid tinkering with a problem that needs all-out assault” and criticised the exemption for small employers and partnerships including solicitors: “We notice that the law, as usual, has protected its own bastions.” But the inclusion of indirect as well as direct discrimination was a victory. And members were happy enough that when the bill passed one of its stages in October, they threw a party.

The Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts both came into force on 29 December 1975, on the same day that the equal opportunities commission (EOC) was established in Manchester.

In 2006, New Labour legislated to dissolve the EOC. Its replacement, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, came into existence the following year, fulfilling the ambition first voiced in the 1970s for one body monitoring discrimination across different characteristics. In 2010, earlier anti-discrimination laws were combined in the Equality Act.

“These things are always a compromise,” says Patricia Hewitt. “By 1980 we were saying ‘there’s not enough in this act’, but I think in 1975 we felt we’d done pretty well.”

Source: ‘Pretty birds and silly moos’: the women behind the Sex Discrimination Act | Feminism | The Guardian

Prehistoric women’s arms ‘stronger than those of today’s elite rowers’ | Archaeology | The Guardian (reported in Nov 2017)

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.

Prehistoric women had stronger arms than elite female rowing teams do today thanks to the daily grind of farming life, researchers have revealed, shedding light on their role in early communities.

The study of ancient bones suggests that manual agricultural work had a profound effect on the bodies of women living in central Europe between about the early neolithic and late iron age, from about 5,300BC to AD100.

The results, published in the journal Science Advances, reveal that while the arm bones of women from the neolithic to the late iron age showed variations in strength, they were stronger than those of rowers, football players, and non-athletic women for their left arm, and the latter two groups for their right. Indeed, the neolithic women had arm bones about 30% stronger than non-athletic living women.

“We really saw them standing out through that first 5,500 years of farming, just really consistently stronger arm bones than the majority of the living women, including the rowers,” said Macintosh. “Medieval women had much weaker arm bones than those previous prehistoric women; they looked a lot more like modern, recreationally active women.”

While grinding grain using stone tools was likely to be a key factor in boosting women’s bone strength, the researchers add that other strenuous occupations including pottery making, planting and harvesting crops, and tending livestock could also have contributed.

[Ed: Not to mention carrying babies before there were cribs and prams.]

Source: Prehistoric women’s arms ‘stronger than those of today’s elite rowers’ | Archaeology | The Guardian

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

Woman’s lawyer says $2 million compensation offer is ‘profoundly unfair’ | The Independent

  • Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian woman, has been offered A$2 million (£970,000) in compensation by the New South Wales government after being wrongfully jailed for two decades.
  • Folbigg was convicted in 2003 of murdering three of her children and manslaughter in the death of a fourth, who died between 1989 and 1999.
  • Her convictions were quashed, and she was pardoned and freed in 2023, following an independent inquiry that found new scientific evidence suggesting the children died from natural causes or a genetic mutation.
  • Despite the compensation, Folbigg’s lawyer, Rhanee Rego, criticised the payment as ‘profoundly unfair and unjust’ and ‘woefully inadequate’, stating the system has failed her client once again.
  • Folbigg, who was once labelled ‘the most hated woman in Australia‘ by tabloids, had her initial 40-year sentence reduced to 30 years before her eventual exoneration.

Source: Woman’s lawyer says $2 million compensation offer is ‘profoundly unfair’

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

The ‘dangerous’ Australian women whose art was dismissed, forgotten – and even set on fire

Dangerously Modern: Australian Women Artists in Europe 1890-1940, an expansive new exhibition co-presented by AGSA and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Some of the 50 featured artists are already well-known: the Archibald-winning face of Nora Heysen; the gentle cubism of Dorrit Black; Margaret Preston’s still life studies; and the vivid, stippled colours of Grace Cossington Smith.

But many, like Kong Sing, are being salvaged from obscurity. “That’s been the challenge of the whole project,” Freak says. “Especially these artists who were working internationally, trying to trace their movements, trying to find their works that sold overseas.

Dangerously Modern’s focus is deliberately blurry; Australian and New Zealand-born expatriates are placed alongside inbound migrants, reflecting a decoupling from a notion of national identity that resurgent – and male-led – art movements back home were trying to galvanise. Freak and her colleagues trace more subtle points of convergence and exchange: Kong Sing once shared a Sydney studio with Florence Rodway; oils by Hilda Rix Nicholas and Ethel Carrick respond to exoticised colours and markets of Tangier, Morocco and Kairouan, Tunisia; and Girl in the sunshine, by New Zealand-born Edith Collier, was painted in the Irish village of Bunmahon, as part of a 1915 summer class led by Margaret Preston.

For artists who bucked tradition, borders and convention, their often cool reception back home and subsequent omission from the Australian canon was structural, geographic and political.

The show’s title comes from Thea Proctor, who was amused to be regarded as “dangerously modern” upon her homecoming in 1926. Freak and her co-curators also point to the art historian Bernard Smith’s dismissive labelling of female expatriate artists as mere “messenger girls” in 1988.

Some works were literally too hot to handle; it’s hard to picture a stronger expression of patriarchal suppression than the day Collier arrived home to find her father had burned a series of her boundary-pushing nudes. (A rare survivor appears in Dangerously Modern, making its first Australian appearance.)

Source: The ‘dangerous’ Australian women whose art was dismissed, forgotten – and even set on fire

Lesbians: the canaries in the mine (Susan Hawthorne) – Verity La La

I would suggest that when lesbians become victims of attack, they are a signal. They are the canaries in the mine. And if the perpetrators get away with it, then other attacks will follow. So, we need to be protesting every attack on lesbians, because it is a sign of hatred in the social system. If lesbians are not protected, then people who don’t fit some other social dimension will not be safe from attack either. Keep your lesbian sister safe and watch the effect it has on society (Hawthorne 2020, pp. 171-172).

Source: Lesbians: the canaries in the mine (Susan Hawthorne) – Verity La La

1st Case of a Judicially-Alienated Mama: 1800’s

Frances Wright’s remarkable life was destroyed as a result of her not having the power to maintain custody, while her ex had the power to take and alienate her child from her.

Frances would often visit France and became friendly with the Marquis de LaFayette, hero of both the American and French Revolution. It was rumored that she had an affair with him.

When LaFayette later came to the U.S., he introduced her to the founding fathers. Still in her ‘20’s, she got Thomas Jefferson to agree with her plan to end slavery and soon founded her own utopian community, the Nashoba Commune, in Tennessee.

Frances was against organized religion. She believed in an education based on science, free from religious superstition. She supported the rights of working people and advocated for universal education, along with equal rights for women.

Frances was the foremother of the liberated woman and was the first to condemn marriage as a form of slavery. This threatened men’s control over women and earned her a lot of backlash. She was described as a “harlot of infidelity” and “bold blasphemer and voluptuous preacher of licentiousness” and a “female monster” who dared to take the public-lecture platform—unacceptable female behavior.

In 1830, she sailed to France and became pregnant by one of her lovers. This posed a problem because, although she openly believed in sex outside of marriage, she thought she would be ostracized from polite society and it would harm her activism. She was most concerned, though, that her child would bear the stigma of “illegitimacy”, quite damaging to the lives of illegitimate children in those days.

So she went into seclusion in Scotland to hide her pregnancy, and the French father went with her. In December of 1830, Frances gave birth to Sylva, but it was not until six months later that she married the father. She gave birth to another child in 1832, who died shortly after birth.

Problem solved. Frances gave Sylva her deceased child’s birthday so it would appear as if she had been married when she gave birth to Sylva. No issue of illegitimacy. It was a secret they would both keep until their death.

Unsurprisingly, Frances did not like being married. By 1836, when Sylva was just 4 (really 6), they had separated. Thus began a childhood-long battle for custody of Sylva and the father’s attempt to take all of Frances’ money.

The father was given temporary custody of Sylva and began his campaign to alienate her from Frances. Frances’ mental and physical health declined precipitously. She suffered “nervous breakdowns” (as they were called in the day).

Frances never regained custody, though she tried mightily throughout Sylva’s childhood. She had all the money necessary for the best representation in court, but it made no difference. He was the man/father with all the power, and she was the woman/mother with no power.

In 1838, Frances withdrew from public life and activism. She was never again able to be the powerhouse she had been, lecturing and fighting for equality. It is ironic that her own inequality and lack of power led to her inability to maintain custody and protect her own child from being alienated from her. Not to mention being financially devastated.

By her teenage years, Sylva was estranged completely from Frances. As a young adult, Sylva even started a campaign publicly opposing Frances’ work for for women’s equality. That’s how bad the brainwashing had been.

In 1850, after Sylva was an adult and aged out of the system, Frances was finally granted a divorce. Her ex-husband and Sylva were awarded her entire property, including all her earnings from lectures and royalties.

Towards the end of Sylva’s life, she apparently realized the truth—that she had been alienated from her mother by her father. She seemed to have even realized that her mother was right about women being equal to men.

Lest you think this is a rare phenomena, check out the results from one of our surveys. Nearly half of the mothers were completely alienated from their children, with nearly 40% experiencing hostility, after custody was switched to the father.

This power to take and alienate children goes back to the beginnings of Patriarchy circa 12K years ago. Despite women’s progress, women have no more power in the family than they did 200 years later. Only now, men have created a specialized “Family Court” system that makes it even easier for judges to lie about women and switch custody.

Source: 1st Case of a Judicially-Alienated Mama: 1800’s