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Now, more than ever, we must push for women’s rights | Letters
Mar 14th
During a week with women’s issues unusually high up the agenda, the lack of progress for millions is frustrating
During a week when women’s issues have featured unusually high on the agenda, culminating in Mother’s Day and encompassing both International Women’s Day and the 54th UN Commission on the Status of Women, we feel compelled to point out the lack of progress for millions of our sisters across the developing world who are denied basic human rights.
Two-thirds of all children denied school are girls. Of the world’s 876 million illiterate adults, 75% are women. Women earn only 10% of the world’s income, yet work two-thirds of the world’s working hours.
Domestic violence is the biggest cause of injury and death to women worldwide. Women hold only 14% of the world’s parliamentary seats.
While we join in the celebrations for Mother’s Day today we can’t forget the women dying needlessly in childbirth, or as the first and last victims of conflict, watching their daughters grow up without hope of change and suffering unpunished abuse at the hands of men who are charged to protect them.
We urge men and women for whom such circumstances are unimaginable to challenge their governments to make a priority of the lives of these silent millions, by linking development money with gender empowerment and holding leaders to account for denying 50% of their populations the basic rights we take for granted. It’s to our communal shame that the Beijing Platform for Action, Millennium Development Goal No 3, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the African Union Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa all remain largely unfulfilled. The AU has declared 2010-2020 “the African women’s decade”. Join us in our fight to ensure that in 10 years these aren’t more redundant slogans that leave suffering women’s lives untouched.
Without the liberation of women in the developing world there can be no end to the cycle of violence and extreme poverty. The greatest asset of emerging nations is its female workforce. Our mission is to ensure they are given the tools with which to achieve their ambitions.
Colin and Livia Firth; Samantha Cameron; Sandra Kamen; Emma Freud; Esther Freud; Rupert Friend; Miriam Gonzalez; Noreena Hertz; Damon Albarn; Beverley Knight; Richard and Ruth Rogers; Keira Knightley; Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; Mishal Hussein; Henry Porter; Mirella Ricciardi; Lucy Siegle; Melanie Chisolm; Dr Scilla Elworthy; Jendaye Frazer; Kate Allen, Amnesty; Hadeel Ibrahim Mo Ibrahim Foundation; Brigid McConville White Ribbon Alliance UK; Marie Louise Baricako; Vanessa Branson; Pilar Brennan; Naomi Campbell; Marc Carter; Jo Cox; Nathalie Delapalme; Bineta Diop; Mariella Frostrup; Glenys Kinnock; Annie Lennox; Jason McCue; Elle MacPherson; Angelique Kidjo; Brigitte Lacombe; Karen ‘Duff’ Lambros; Ticky Monekosso; Thandi Orleyn; Karen Ruimy; Daphne Trimble; Shriti Vadera; Jasmine Whitbread – all Femme Africa Solidarité Trust (Fast)
No, affairs do not help marriage
How can it be “acceptable” for people to have affairs behind their partner’s backs? (‘Is anyone faithful any more?’ Magazine, ). Esther Perel believes it makes people happier and it causes them to act differently towards their partners. She hasn’t considered the repercussions of a cheating partner on the innocent party. I can tell you from experience, it hurts. If you’re unable to commit to one person, you shouldn’t be in a relationship. Those who think they are being “nicer” to their partners (and even their children) due to cheating are being deceitful. Say the other party in the affair brings the cheating into the open. They tear apart a family. It will ruin relationships once the cheated partner learns the truth – then nobody will be happy, and there will be nobody to blame but the cheater.
Sarah Harding-Roberts
Cardiff
So wrong about Paul Scott
Robert McCrum writes that “Paul Scott did not even bother to come back from America to collect his cheque” for the Booker prize in 1977 (“Last year was sheer hell for the novelist Paul Bailey. Better times may be here“, In Focus). In fact, my father would have loved to do just that – but he was undergoing major and extensive surgery for the cancer that was to kill him barely four months later.
Winning the Booker was a major event for him, and not only would he have leapt at the chance to attend in person, had he been able, but the prize money, too (£5,000 – the last year at that rate before it went up to £10,000), would have been a godsend had he lived to benefit from it. His dire financial situation during most of his writing life, and especially the last years, had been the main reason for accepting the teaching post in the US. He simply could not afford to turn down the dollars on offer for two semesters there.
Sally Scott
Eye, Suffolk
Take it in the right spirit
I must defend Arthur Koestler from the various charges of entertaining increasingly “crackpot theories” that have recently been quoted in the press with the release of his latest biography. He and his wife visited some relatives of my husband’s who were experiencing “paranormal” events. During their short visit Arthur and Cynthia, (with Prof Arthur Ellison from City university) soon put the family at their ease. Because he had enough intellectual curiosity to travel to a northern town to investigate these phenomena, and then to bequeath money for a chair in parapsychology at Edinburgh university, he is to be admired rather than insulted. A few eminent scientists are now working in the field and I hope such studies will uncover the laws of physics which give rise to such rare phenomena.
name and address supplied
Oh, what a tangled web
Britain is the target of 300 significant cyber-attacks on government computer systems annually according to Lord West of Spithead, who fears that hackers could disable our infrastructure (“Britain fends off flood of foreign cyber-attacks”, News). Our government responds by setting up the “Office of Cyber Security”. Wouldn’t it be better to admit: “Come back, Gary McKinnon, your country needs you!”
Lesley Kay
London NW1
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Liberal Democrats: Deal or no deal? | Editorial
Mar 13th
Nick Clegg may not like to talk of hung parliaments, but he must show voters how his party would operate in one
The Liberal Democrats are discovering the perks and perils of being of interest to others. A party with much to say, and normally no one to say it to, now has everyone’s attention, but no simple answer to the one question it keeps being asked. What, people want to know, would Nick Clegg do in a hung parliament? He can respond until he goes blue or red in the face that the question cannot be answered until the nation has voted, and add that all he wants to do is maximise Lib Dem support and the number of his party’s MPs, but that will not stop journalists badgering him for specifics.
The media’s quinquennial interest in the possibility of hung parliaments irritates Lib Dems. They want to talk about their policies and their liberal ideology, not post-election deal-making which may never take place. They do not – unlike many commentators and some voters – define their party in relation to its two rivals. “Neither left nor right but somewhere in between,” the Paddy Ashdown puppet on Spitting Image used to chant to mockery, but Lib Dems have always thought of themselves as somewhere out in front, away from both the other parties: speaking radical language on redistributive tax cuts, decentralised public services and a rebalanced economy.
Yet they will not escape easily from a trap: the more likely a hung parliament looks, the more voters will want to know what sort of government it might produce and the harder Lib Dems may find it to answer the question. In today’s Guardian interview, Mr Clegg says his party would want to be “a radicalising, rather than moderating force” – which he could do from outside government as well as inside it. He tries to tone down the Spectator magazine’s description of him (after another interview this week) as a fan of Margaret Thatcher by accusing her of “wreaking huge social destruction”. He attacks both bankers and unions. He has harsh words for the Conservatives. He distances his party from Tory education policy, which at first glance seems to be an adjusted version of plans also being put forward by the Lib Dems. But his toughest language is reserved for Gordon Brown. “This is the man who wrought the damage, he should not be the person to do the repair work,” he says. He does not sound like a man expecting – or even able – to work with the current prime minister after the election.
Up to a point, this is just necessary pre-election rhetoric. The Lib Dems did well in 1997 by associating themselves with Labour’s call for national renewal. Now they need to dissociate themselves from Labour to avoid being sucked down with what may prove to be a sinking ship. After the election things might be different. “Constitutional niceties will be swept aside if it’s obvious that there’s one party that enjoys a mandate if not an actual majority from the British people,” he says. “I don’t think there will be a photo finish.” But as Mr Clegg prepares to speak at his spring conference tomorrow it is not unreasonable to ask which way his thoughts are running, just as the same question should be put to Labour and the Conservatives.
Ahead of the election, he is right to leave his options open, and right to say that voters will shape the circumstances, not politicians. The party is an independent and strong force, and should be treated as such. Its manifesto will be in many ways the most attractive on offer. It would be a shame if the party found itself losing support during the campaign as voters come to fear the consequences of an inconclusive election. At the very least the Lib Dems need to say that they would respect the will of voters and put stability first. For all the excited talk of coalitions, it likely that a hung parliament would lead to minority government by the largest party with some degree of outside support from the Lib Dems. Mr Clegg has at times come close to saying as much. But for as long as he leaves more room to manoeuvre, people will keep asking him where it might lead him.
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How others see Mary Robinson – and how she sees herself
Mar 13th
New clothes, new hairdo – How others see Robinson
“She stood at the dangerous cross-roads of sex, politics and religion for two decades and emerged not merely unscathed but with the respect of even her most ferocious enemies.”
Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole, in 1996, when Robinson was briefly touted as a successor to Boutros Boutros-Ghali as UN secretary-general
“She has to have new clothes and her new look and her new hairdo, and she has the new interest in family, being a mother and all that kind of thing. But none of us, you know, none of us who knew Mary Robinson very well in previous incarnations, ever heard her claiming to be a great wife and mother.”
Pádraig Flynn, Fianna Fáil politician. He later apologised
“Robinson presided over little more than an intellectual pogrom against Jews and Israel.”
Academic Michael Rubin on the 2001 world conference against racism in South Africa, from which the US and Israel withdrew
I felt shamed, shamed, shamed’ – In her own words
“I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system.”
Inaugural address as president of Ireland, 1990
“As president directly elected by the people of Ireland, I will have the most democratic job in the country. I’ll be able to look [the PM] in the eye and tell him to back off.”
“I felt shamed by what I saw, shamed, shamed. I have such a sense of what the world must take responsibility for.”
On visiting Somalia in 1992, when, uncharacteristically, she broke down in tears
“In a society where the rights and potential of women are constrained, no man can be truly free. He may have power, but he will not have freedom.”
“Mrs Robinson means something private to Nick and I.”
On deciding to take her husband’s name not because it was traditional, but because she had to fight to marry him
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Keep porn out of politics?
Mar 12th
Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has defended Anna Arrowsmith, a parliamentary candidate who runs an “adult entertainment” company (she also has an MA in philosophy). Do you think the porn connection will harm her electoral prospects?
Live online: Michael Moore, Liberal Democrat spokesman on international development
Mar 12th
Michael Moore, Liberal Democrat spokesman on international development, will be live online on the Katine Chronicles blog at 11am (GMT) on Tuesday, 16 March, to answer your questions about aid and development. Post a question
Find out more about the Liberal Democrats’ policies
International development faces serious challenges, whoever wins the next election. With domestic spending cuts a real possibility, protest at continued historically high spending on aid is inevitable. It is likely the aid budget will face a very tough fight.
Last year, the Liberal Democrats set out their thoughts on international development in a policy paper, which outlined support for the aid target of 0.7% of GDP, a call for renewed efforts to reach the Millennium Development Goals and an acknowledgement that aid sometimes fails and that perhaps financial aid is not the most effective way of delivering support.
At 11am (GMT) on Tuesday, 16 March, the Lib Dems’ spokesman on international development, Michael Moore, will be live online for one hour to answer your questions about the party’s policies and the wider issues of aid and development.
Read the party’s policy paper and Anne Perkins’ report on the Lib Dems’ policies and then post a question. You can post a question now or come back on Tuesday.
If you have problems posting, email Katine.editor@guardian.co.uk.
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Letters: What about women?
Mar 12th
I’m heartened that Labour’s election strategy will target “middle-class mainstream mums”, although I hope they extend this to all women (Report, 11 March). Fawcett polling shows that 49% of women don’t think politicians are considering their view on key issues such as the economy, though they are more likely to vote for a party with a women’s equality plan. But tackling women’s equality is still too often seen as a fringe issue, even while the gender gap in voting intention is likely to be key to the election result. On the big issues like the economy and crime, policies can have a significantly different impact on women. If there are to be drastic cuts to the public sector, women are more likely to lose their jobs, as they make up 65% of the workforce and also make greater use of public services. This is why we’ve launched our What About Women? campaign, calling on politicians to explain what their policies would mean for women.
Ceri Goddard
Chief executive, Fawcett Society
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High-speed rail: All aboard! | Editorial
Mar 12th
There are two big decisions about high-speed rail. First, is it needed in Britain? And second, if it is, where should it go?
In many regards, yesterday was just another bad day for British transport. Rail maintenance workers decided to strike. Signallers may join them and shut the network over Easter. British Airways remained at loggerheads with its employees. The London tube network was digesting the news that it now has a £460m shortfall in its modernisation programme. Everyone expects cuts in transport spending, if not in the next budget then the one after that.
Faced with all this, only a visionary or a fool would stand up in parliament and announce plans for a £30bn, 330-mile, 225mph rail line, whose construction would not even begin until 2017, and whose completion will take much more than a decade. Yet that is what Andrew Adonis, the transport minister, did yesterday, and he deserves much congratulation for it. The case for high-speed rail is strong, but not so overwhelming that the line will be built without committed people arguing that it should happen, as Lord Adonis has done late in this Labour government and someone else will have to do if there is a Tory one. A thousand small cares could still knock the project off course, as well as one big one – paying for it, which is a subject all parties skirted around yesterday. But the principle of a new line has been established, and the government has set out detailed plans for its construction. This train, as British Rail used to boast, is getting there.
There are two big decisions about high-speed rail. First, is it needed in Britain? And second, if it is, where should it go? The answer to the first question produces remarkable consensus. High-speed rail is not just about travelling faster, and not just about links to London. It will join cities reliably and with much greater capacity than ever before, soaking up growth in transport demand while freeing up space on the existing network for commuters and freight. It is the alternative to more roads and planes, but it will also allow travel on routes badly served by existing transport lines – such as Leeds to Birmingham, or Nottingham to Scotland. That is why cities, political parties, environmental groups, unions and business are all in favour.
The subsequent question, about the route, is less easy to answer. Lord Adonis has been desperate to built a pre-election consensus around his particular plans, and the Conservative party, which backed high-speed rail before Labour, has been just as desperate to avoid joining it. This is a pity, since the detailed route published yesterday by the HS2 company makes sense, if the trains are to head west from London towards Heathrow before turning to the north. They include city centre terminals, proper interchange with the new Crossrail scheme and a reasonable compromise between environmental intrusion in the Chilterns and a direct line to the north. The Conservatives want a route from London that would come nearer Heathrow, which sounds attractive but would also be slower and more expensive to build. Nor – since the trains would run only near the airport, not under it – would it allow seamless travel to the air terminals. Under the HS2 scheme announced yesterday there will be easy connection to a 10-minute Crossrail shuttle to Heathrow; the Tory alternative is worse.
The next step will be to consult on the route, and changes will be made, although they cannot be large without simply directing the consequences of construction into someone else’s backyard. The route cannot be put underground without greatly adding to the cost. It will be narrower, less polluting and less noisy than the M40 and A413 roads which already cut through Buckinghamshire, but to the people most affected by the line that will not be much compensation. Nonetheless, the government must introduce a hybrid parliamentary bill and begin the debate on its financing. This line will make Britain a better place. No one will regret building it when it is open. The hard part will be getting from here to there.
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Mutualisation: The John Lewis state | Editorial
Mar 12th
One can see the politicians’ train of thought: John Lewis is popular; therefore this policy will be popular
The middle classes’ favourite shop, John Lewis, had a good day yesterday. Sales up. Market share up. Profits up. And a £151m bonus shared between 70,000 members of staff, or partners as they are known. Not bad during a recession. But a decent business performance is not the main reason that this retail group gets its own series on the BBC or a consistently good press (try to imagine the 10 o’clock news indulgently showing happy investment bankers jumping with joy over their bonuses; yet that is practically an annual event with John Lewis). Nor is it the company’s high-quality Waitrose food or extensive range of linen; no, it is its organisational makeup.
As a company owned by its workers, John Lewis has always been a curiosity in big business. Yet after a historic crisis in the business world, there is a distinct appetite for greater diversity in the ways companies are set up. Treasury ministers and officials have discussed fostering the creation of more building societies as a counterweight to a banking sector increasingly dominated by a handful of huge names. Vince Cable is now calling for Northern Rock to be turned into a mutual rather than flogged to investors. These interesting ideas reflect a realisation by politicians and civil servants that employee-owned firms are not the Soviet kolkhozes of lazy stereotype, but are valid forms of commercial enterprise. The problem comes when politicians talk about applying the John Lewis model to NHS hospitals or inner-city schools.
Both Conservative and Labour have been guilty of this over the past few months. In government, Tessa Jowell has commissioned research to explore the idea of workers and users part-owning public bodies. For the opposition, George Osborne has rolled out the policy of teachers and doctors running their schools and hospitals.
One can see the politicians’ train of thought: John Lewis is popular; therefore this policy will be popular. But even if we overlook the vague announcements (teachers having more say over their workplaces, which is what is sometimes talked about, is a great idea, but it is not mutualism), there are big problems with the very idea of a John Lewis state. Even nice bourgeois retail chains are in the business of making a profit; the NHS is not. Public sector organisations should be accountable to the taxpayer; an architects’ firm need not be. Turning public services into co-operatives opens them up to the risk of being run by profit-seeking companies. Having more mutuals in the private sector would be a fine thing, but before politicians import the John Lewis principle into the public sector they should probably shop around a bit more.
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Chile rocked by biggest aftershock
Mar 11th
Tremor of magnitude 7.2 strikes just minutes before inauguration of Sebastián Piñera as president
The largest aftershock since Chile’s devastating earthquake 12 days ago rocked the country today, minutes before the inauguration of Sebastián Piñera as president.
The 7.2-magnitude aftershock was stronger than the 12 January quake that devastated the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. It happened along the same fault zone as Chile’s 8.8-magnitude quake on 27 February, said geophysicist Don Blakeman of the US Geological Survey.
“When we get quakes in the 8 range, we would expect to see maybe a couple of aftershocks in the 7 range,” he said. Chile could now expect to feel “aftershocks of the aftershock”.
The tremor rocked buildings and shook windows in the capital, Santiago, and provoked nervous smiles among dignitaries arriving for the ceremony at the congressional building in coastal Valparaiso. The Bolivian president, Evo Morales, seemed briefly disoriented and Peru’s Alan Garcia joked that it gave them “a moment to dance”.
The outgoing president, Michelle Bachelet, arrived in an open limousine, followed by Piñera, who entered the hall of congress to loud applause and swore his oath as president.
As she prepared to hand over the government to the first rightwing president elected in 52 years, Bachelet said: “I’m leaving office with sadness for the suffering of our people, but also with my head held high, satisfied with what we have accomplished.”
Bachelet led a “Viva Chile” cheer and then delivered a long goodbye from the presidential palace, La Moneda, where she lingered with a passionate crowd in the plaza outside. Supporters waved socialist party flags and pressed forward to shake her hand, give her flowers and even caress her face.
Piñera, a billionaire investor, Harvard-trained economist and airline executive with little patience for bureaucracy, asked that pomp and circumstance be mostly set aside at his inauguration. Instead, he planned a brief lunch with foreign dignitaries, then a working visit to coastal Constitución, where the tsunami following the earthquake killed many people.
After meeting with survivors, he planned to fly back to the capital, address citizens from a balcony of the presidential palace and then hold a late-night strategy session with his cabinet.
Piñera had vowed on election night to make Chile “the best country in the world”, spending billions to accelerate economic growth, create a million jobs in four years and combat crime.
Now reconstruction is his top priority. Last month’s earthquake killed 500 identified victims and possibly hundreds of others, destroyed or heavily damaged at least 500,000 homes and broke apart highways and hospitals. Repairing infrastructure alone will cost $5bn and overall recovery costs could soar above $15bn.
Piñera’s victory ended a 20-year run for the leftist coalition that led Chile back to democracy after the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, and puts the country’s relatively small business elite in power.
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Why I’ve gone from porn to politics | Anna Arrowsmith
Mar 14th
Posted by Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk in Politics
No comments
I started making pornography for women because there was a need. And now I want to do something about the need for more female MPs
I’m Anna Arrowsmith, the Liberal Democrat PPC for Gravesend or, as many will know me, Anna Span, the UK’s first female porn director. Take your pick.
Since news of my selection broke on Thursday, many people have asked me why I want to be an MP. The answer is: for exactly the same reason I decided to start making pornography for women more than 12 years ago. Someone had to do it and it didn’t look like anyone else was going to – at least not with the drive, enthusiasm and determination that I could offer. The unfortunate truth is that there are far too few female MPs in this country compared to the rest of the world.
Did you know that Rwanda has the highest number of female MPs of all countries at 53%? Imagine living in a country with a female majority! Well, here I am again thinking that another male-dominated field needs challenging.
Back in 1998 I was in the final year of my degree, studying film at Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design. I had decided to write my dissertation on what fundamental changes would need to be made to mainstream pornography in order for it to be enjoyed by women. I called it Towards a New Pornography, intending it to sound like a manifesto, more for my own amusement than anything else. Then came lesson one in the British psyche. Even the so-called experimental filmmaker lecturers at this outstanding college were actually conservative with a small ‘c’.
My adverts for performers to appear in my graduation film were defaced and torn down by members of staff and my final film was refused a public airing “for fear of upsetting people’s grandparents”, according to the head of the department. All this for a film where the sex was actually simulated due to lead actor issues.
Twelve years later I have won many awards, including Indie Porn Pioneer at the international Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto and best director for two years in the UK.
I have fought long and hard for women’s right to sexual expression and consumption, as well as for freedom of speech. I have long since felt vindicated about my choices back at college and know my pro-sex feminist argument is based on sound principles and logic.
So why don’t I stay in my industry and continue to reap the rewards of my efforts? Because I am the type of person who needs a challenge. I achieved much in my last career and now I want to broaden my campaign to other pressing issues such as why this or previous governments don’t think they have a responsibility to give young people something productive and engaging to do with their spare time. I lived on a council estate in Bermondsey and saw first hand why the kids were taking drugs, fighting and committing crimes.
They are simply bored. I want to campaign to give young people in Gravesham the help they deserve.
To do this I have to fight yet another old man’s club – only this time without the dirty raincoats. Some won’t like it; they’ll assume that my selection means the world is going to hell. I’ve been here before; last time I changed my industry for ever.
That, among other issues, is why I am making the transition from porn to Parliament.
Watch this space; I’ve got a lot of – for want of a better word – balls.