How to stop the sky falling down

I've just finished reading the powerful and persuasive book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn called Half the Sky. Before starting it, I had acquired the usual skepticism which develops after reading rave reviews about a book strongly enforced by queasy quotes from the likes of George Clooney and Angelina Jolie.

The book, however, managed at once to inspire and enrapture whilst at the same time being realistic and at times critical of many of the projects and movements it was espousing.

Half the Sky explores both sad tales of women and girls defeated by misogyny and awesome ones of how that hatred and destruction of half the human race has been challenged and overcome.

All in all the book reinforced in me why people are wrong to assume that gender equality has been achieved and powerfully demonstrates that, although it wouldn't solve all the world's problems, we will get nowhere until we've lifted up the other half of the sky.

The Iron Lady

Yesterday I successfully watched and enjoyed the new Margaret Thatcher biopic Iron Lady without compromising my fundamentally left-wing beliefs. While there was some frustratingly sentimental mush about the 'revolutionary' ideas of Britain's first and only female Prime Minister, for the most part the film was accurate in its account of Thatcher's life before and during her time at Number 10. How accurate it is about her life now I could not know.

One thing which did frustrate me was the pictures of her in parliament which made it look like she was the only female MP. In fact there were 25 (reduced to 18 by 1979) when she became an MP in 1959 including the formidable Barbara Castle who served in both of Harold Wilson's governments.

Women in the Global Arena

I recently played a board game (modelled on the game in Friends which causes Monica and Rachel to lose their apartment) during which I realised how much my friends subscribe to (what I had hoped were outdated) gendered stereotypes. Asked whether they agree with the statement 'Women talk too much', they all replied 'Yes'. They justified themselves by saying that they only meant 'some' women. This is clearly not what the statement implied: it implied that, in general, and compared to men, women talk too much.

Fundamentally, that statement is wrong. Firstly, because of all the men and women I personally know it is without a doubt the men who talk too much. It is without a doubt the men who naturally feel more confident and more comfortable being the dominant one in the conversation. That people feel women talk too much suggests that they feel that women should not talk as much as men do.

Secondly, and far more importantly, I object to the statement because we live in a world whose global political arena is dominated by men talking. The UK parliament is among the worst offenders in terms of the representation of women, with only 22% female representation. Compare this to 28% female representation in Afghanistan. (See http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm for more statistics about global representation of women)

Everywhere you look there are men talking too much and not doing enough. Take, for example, the Arab League calling another meeting to talk about Syria while thousands are slaughtered.

Three women won the Nobel Peace Prize this year "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work". It is time more women spoke up, entered the global political arena, and stopped being locked in the stereotypes and insecurities of the past, for the benefit of all of humankind, men and women alike.