Monthly Archives: February 2011

Women’s History Month starts tomorrow – and we need it badly!

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Name a great leader.
I often sit in meeting rooms and training sessions and get asked this question. I reckon there’s an 80% chance the first one or two people who popped into your head when you read that were male. My own highly unscientific experiment on Twitter yielded seven men and three women – and my Twitter feed is full of feminists! I recently gave a training session on leadership, and when preparing my slides, it took some genuine effort to get to four male and four female examples.
To me, this is a perfect illustration of why we so desperately need Women’s History Month, which kicks off tomorrow. There is a strong tendency for women to get sidelined by history. In some ways this is understandable: Wikipedia lists over 70 Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, out of whom as you well know exactly one has been a woman; the United States is on its 44th President, and I’m sure you know the numbers there too.
There is one underlying reason for this: traditional, socially determined, restrictive gender roles – the kind of social norms which for centuries have dictated what it is acceptable for a woman to do as opposed to a man. A woman may bear and look after children, run a household, look after her husband. A man may work outside the home, he may engage in social, political and economic activities from which women are barred, he may own property! There are modifications of this to account for different periods in history and variations in social class, but you get the gist.
This then has two effects, both of which lead to women being erased from history. Firstly, very few women have access to the kinds of positions that men do. To succeed in a world from which she is traditionally barred, a woman must be truly exceptional. She must refuse to believe what she sees on a daily basis and what she is told over and over – that there is no place for her. She must create the path she walks, for there are no role models she can follow; she must create the yardstick against which she will be measured, which is invariably harsher than that against which men measure themselves. She must convince the men around her that, really, despite her unfortunate lack of a penis, she can perform well at the task in front of her – a task which in no way requires the possession of a penis.
Secondly, and to some extent more horrifically, the roles and work traditionally available to women – caring, nurturing, childrearing both at home and as the associated professions – are not seen by society as of equal value to the roles and work of men. What men do is worth noting, worth writing down, worth talking about. What women do, they do in secrecy and obscurity, and it is taken for granted. These are the twin mechanisms by which women’s history, female achievement, the lives of billions of women, are erased from our history.
Alan Bennett puts this better than me:

History is not such a frolic for women as it is for men. Why should it be? They never get round the conference table. In 1919, for instance, they just arranged the flowers then gracefully retired.
History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men.
What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
Mrs Lintott in The History Boys

Though sparse on detail, the indications Education Secretary Michael Gove has so far given on his view of what history is and how it should be taught don’t leave much room for hope. Children are to learn “facts” and a “narrative”. Historian Nigel Jones welcomes Gove’s Brave New History and lists ten things he believes children must learn at school:

  1. Which three kings fought for the English throne in 1066?
  2. Which was the longest, biggest, and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil, and in which conflict?
  3. Whose tomb were Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrimage going to see?
  4. Who said (according to Shakespeare) ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse?’
  5. Who brought the printing press to Britain?
  6. Who said she had the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of an English king?
  7. Who was the Lord Protector of England?
  8. How many lines in a sonnet?
  9. Who, according to Churchill, were ‘the Few’?
  10. Who wrote ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ ?

So, um, how many of these require you to even acknowledge the existence of women? Yep, one.
I, for one, am fed up with following behind with the bucket. I think it’s time for women to reclaim our history, so I am really excited about Women’s History Month. Over the course of March, this blog will feature a series of posts around women’s history. I am hoping to give you some food for thought – both by raising awareness of women who have succeeded in traditionally male-dominated environments, but also by shedding some light on the parts of history which are so easily overlooked by the likes of Michael Gove. What I choose to write about will invariably reflect my own interests, but suggestions and ideas are always welcome, and if anyone wants to guest blog, then drop me a line. I’m looking forward to it.

Writing for ORGZine – a trip down memory lane

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I’ve been writing for ORGZine for about three months now, and I can’t shake a certain feeling of deja-vu. I used to be, if not active then certainly extremely interested, in a few areas of Digital Rights back in the late 90s and early 2000s. My particular geekdoms were largely centred around the Open Source space and the music downloads space (Remember Napster?). I then graduated from University, got a real job in IT and promptly became much less of a geek in my spare time – until I came across the Open Rights Group a couple of years ago and was persuaded to become a supporter when they took on the BBC over a Dalek knitting pattern. So what had I missed in the intervening years? Not much, as it turns out.
For a start, we are still having the copyright debate, except that now the UK has followed in the footsteps of the US DMCA with our own Digital Economy Act. Okay, Creative Commons has expanded its reach, which is great news, but the mainstream content industries continue to stick their collective heads in the sand, sometimes in creative new ways. What’s a girl to do other than try to hit them where it hurts, and point out alternatives to the monumental stupidity that is DRM?
Things aren’t much better on the Open Source side. Writing this article on a possible security backdoor in OpenBSD and the advantages of Open Source security, I might as well have been back in the year 2000. When I mentioned it to a friend who shares some of my interests in the Digital Rights space he said, “But surely that debate has been had and concluded and the good guys won ten years ago?” To some extent that’s true: within certain communities – geeks and techies like my friend and me – that debate is well and truly dead. To the public at large, and more scarily to most of our leaders and policy makers, this is still new ground. What finally convinced me that I had really gotten into my time machine and headed back ten years was this wonderfully sarcastic Computer World article on the recent “cyber espionage” announcement by the Foreign Office. I looked at the name of the author and rather thought that sounded familiar. Eventually it clicked: back when we were still having the Open Source debate, Glyn Moody wrote Rebel Code, a wonderful little book on the history of Linux and the Open Source movement. And here he is, still preaching Open Source, and here I am, still doing the same.
What both the copyright and Open Source space have in common is that law-makers are easily influenced by powerful lobby groups in these areas – the content industry and technology vendors. There is currently one person in the House of Commons who has worked as a scientist (Julian Huppert, MP), and not that many more who have worked in technology. They are under a powerful onslaught of “education” by lobby groups. Those of us who settled these debates ten years ago amongst ourselves need to reach out to our MPs, our ministers, and where possible to key civil servants and try to reverse some of that brain washing they’ve undergone by lobbyists.
What you can do? You can join the Open Rights Group. And next time the UK government declares it doesn’t know how much it spends on IT but by golly, it’ll spend less!, you can write to your MP or the responsible minister and try to educate them. Be polite, be gentle – explain the issues, explain why they should care. One by one, sooner or later, we’ll get them.

Our children deserve better than this

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The following exchange in the House of Commons was last week publicised on Michael Gove – the Education Secretary’s – website:

Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): The previous Labour Government tried in their last Bill to bring in compulsory sex education. The Bill before us is an excellent Education Bill, which I fully support, because it is all about devolving power to schools. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that he will resist any amendments on Report that would bring in compulsory sex education for primary schools?
Michael Gove: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for, as ever, leaping straight on to sex-I know that it is a subject of great interest to him and to many in this House. I always feel that one should discuss money before discussing sex, because the one and the other are so intimately connected in the minds of so many Members. That is why I was so anxious to ascertain whether Opposition Members were proud of the economic record they bequeathed. I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that I will not accept amendments in Committee that seek to make the curriculum any more prescriptive or intrusive.

The utter inappropriateness of the Education Secretary’s comments about sex and money aside (in any other workplace, this would probably count as harassment), the attitude that both the Member for Gainsborough and the Secretary of State show towards Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) is appalling.
This country is in crisis when it comes to relationships, especially where young people are concerned. The Department of Education’s own advisory group on violence against women and girls reports that

  • 33% of girls and 16% of boys responding to the [NSPCC] survey reported some form of sexual partner violence.
  • 25% of girls (the same proportion as adult women) and 18% of boys reported some form of physical partner violence.
  • Around 75% of girls and 50% of boys reported some form of emotional partner violence.
  • Younger participants (aged 13 to 15 years old) were as likely as older adolescents (aged 16 and over) to experience some forms of violence.

This level of violence in teenage relationships then translates into similarly shocking rates of relationship violence against adult women and adult men, both in heterosexual and same-sex relationships.
Other commentators before me have pointed out that when it comes to SRE in primary schools we are not talking about teaching 4-year-olds about inserting tab A into slot B. We are, instead, talking about teaching children to understand and value their own bodies, be confident in themselves, and start thinking about what it means to be in a relationship with another person – emotionally, mentally, as well as physically. What exactly is so disgusting, or scary, or worrying about that? Do we really want to deny that to our children and expose them to the horrors of relationship violence? To me, that amounts to state-sanctioned child abuse.
Perhaps if Messrs Gove and Leigh had benefited from quality Sex and Relationships Education, they wouldn’t have to resort to the kind of undignified sniggering more commonly associated with 12-year-olds behind the bike sheds than the House of Commons. Perhaps then we would have an education system which is not afraid to tackle some of the key issues of our time head-on rather than running away and sticking our collective heads in the sand.

Some good news on Newcastle libraries

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After my two posts on Newcastle libraries last week and earlier this week, David Fay, the City Libraries Manager got in touch and put the information in context. Here is an extract from his note:

Newcastle’s draft budget proposals, published on January 26, highlight that some changes will be made to the way in which some library services are delivered. Newcastle is a high-performing library service that continues to be well-resourced and supported by the City Council. The idea of a ‘Library Express’ was first developed as part of a review of libraries in 2006 and our first Library Express opened in Fawdon in December 2008. A Library Express is a collocated service with a mixture of dedicated staffing hours, self service and support from partners in a shared building (which can be a library or other suitable location).

Fawdon has been a significant success with rising book issues and library visits since the library building closed and relocated to a nearby community centre (after years of falling library business levels). We are now looking at extending this model, to maintain a library presence in all locations and to make sure that no libraries are closed.

This obviously sounds pretty sensible and like good news. I did write back with a couple of questions. I asked whether there were any figures on lending or footfall from before and after the Fawdon pilot, and also what the impact of the plans would be on jobs. Here’s what David said:

The figures for Fawdon pre and post Library Express are:

Issues:
2007/08: 14,058
2009/10: 14,751

New Members:
2007/08: 8
2009/10: 141

Visits:
2007/08: 12,948
2009/10: 18,629

The book issue figures may not look dramatic but in the previous dedicated library they were falling year on year so any increase needs to be set against this loss. New members and visits are much improved though.
Implementing Library Expresses will reduce staffing (Fawdon currently has unstaffed periods) although we will be working to make sure busy periods are covered and that staff will organise special activities like class visits. We have not agreed a final number of libraries yet but the number of full-time equivalent posts transferring could be between 8 – 10 (but this could be less). No library will be entirely self service there will be staffed periods most days.The staffing reductions will be through the use of self-issue and partnership working (Fawdon is a self-issue library). There will also be freephone links to larger libraries so that if people want to join the library or have a problem with their ticket when someone will be on hand to help. In considering Library Express locations we will also consider proximity to other full-time libraries (which in some cases could be less than 1 mile away)
I should stress that we have been keeping vacant posts available for some time so no colleagues with a permanent contract will be at risk because of these proposals.

Personally, from the information I have I am satisfied that the proposed changes to Newcastle City Libraries are not exclusively cost-cutting measures. They seem well thought through, they have been successfully trialled, and from the numbers for the Fawdon pilot the Library Express scheme does actually appear to improve the library service for end users. If it increases footfall, new memberships and issues, that looks good to me. I would of course be keen to hear from anyone in Fawdon who uses their local library.
In the meantime, I would like to thank David Fay for taking the time to get in touch, explain the situation and answer my nosy questions.

The No to AV guide to having your cake and eating it

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Regular readers of this blog will know that I firmly believe in keeping my friends close and my enemies closer, so I’ve been browsing the No to AV campaign website (I trust you can google). What strikes me every time I attempt to engage with the No campaign are the persistent attempts to have their cake and eat it – which are clearly failing.
This week’s “weekly reason to vote no” is the classic Nick Clegg quote calling AV a “miserable little compromise”. It’s yet another demonstration of how the No campaign is having to do the splits to try to appeal to both supporters of First Past the Post and those of us who would love to see further electoral reform beyond AV and towards proportional representation.
AV, the No campaign’s literature says, is not a proportional system (this is true, by the way, and no one claims otherwise) – implying that it is not sufficient reform. In an attempt to gain credibility with supporters of proportional representation, the campaign claims that some of their supporters – Labour MP Margaret Hodge for instance – would like to see PR, but that AV is not the right kind of reform.
At the same time, the No campaign has a detailed list of what it sees as the benefits of First Past the Post. Strong governments (ahem); one person, one vote (ahem) – you know the deal.
So which is it? Do we like First Past the Post, or do we think AV is insufficient as reform goes? Or are we simply trying to scupper the only chance of electoral reform that this country has? For all of the No campaign’s assurances that it does not take an official position on PR and that that is a separate debate, let’s face the facts here. PR is not on the table. The ballot paper will ask you to choose between two options: First Past the Post, and the Alternative Vote. Personally, I struggle to believe that this government would take a No to AV vote as desire for further or different reform. If that is what we return, it will be spun as a victory for FPTP, we will be told how much the country loves its electoral system which has worked for generations, and we will not see reform in our or our children’s lifetimes. I have talked elsewhere about why I think AV is worth having in its own right, but over and above that, as someone who truly believes that a proportional system is the way forward, voting no to AV is not an option for me.
The other thing I struggle with, of course, is to believe anything from a campaign which claims that “AV ensures that the BNP will gain more votes and more legitimacy, while not giving any help to small parties like the Green Party.” That is one attempt to do the splits too far.

Newcastle libraries – where do we go from here?

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Recap for those who missed my last post: Newcastle City Council is planning to turn eight libraries into “Library Express” services, with limited facilities, no staff and possibly combined with other agencies like community centres. It is not clear yet which libraries, and the plans are supposed to be implemented between April and September.
If you want to help save our libraries, here are a couple of pointers:

  • The Council is looking for input on its 2011 budget, and the survey specifically contains a question about the library service. You can access the survey here. Deadline is February 11th, so please do fill it in and let them know what you think.
  • Go into your local library and talk to the staff and members of the public there to find out how much they know about the plans and how they feel about them. Comment here to let me know.
  • In the meantime, I’ll be looking to get in touch with the Coalition of Resistance (email me if you’re reading this), see how I can get some local media attention on this, and also look into other ways of contacting the council more directly, beyond the budget survey. I’ll keep you posted. Obviously, comment/email me if you have any thoughts on this.
  • I have also asked the guys who run the map of planned library closures to add the Newcastle data to the map.

Save Our Libraries!

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It is Save Our Libraries Day today, and I’m sitting in Newcastle City Library. It is a spacious, brightly lit building. At the same table as me are an elderly gentleman wearing a Newcastle United scarf and doing meticulous research on British royal families, and a skinny goth girl absorbed in a novel. There is WiFi here, though I haven’t bothered to ask about the access details. People are coming and going, browsing books, using computers, looking up local information and bus time tables. The staff are friendly and helpful.
The map of planned library closures doesn’t list anything for Newcastle, and there are no actions planned here today, but I thought it appropriate to wander up here, pay my fines (£2.82 – the price of being both selfish and forgetful about returning some books a couple of months ago) and talk to the staff to see if they knew anything about planned closures and changes to the library service in Newcastle.
The librarian who collected my fines (and very helpfully pointed out that I could renew books both by phone and online) says that eight libraries across the city are planned to be turned into “express libraries”: limited self-service sort of places with no staff, possibly combined with other agencies like community centres. It is not clear yet which eight, and the plans are supposed to be implemented some time between April and September. The librarian is clearly worried by this but tries to be as factual in her account as possible.
This kind of vandalism is going on all around the country: libraries planned to be closed, hours reduced, skilled and experienced staff cut to be replaced by volunteers. Now, perhaps our millionaire-riddled government can be forgiven for thinking that the library is where Papa smokes his cigars, but for the rest of us, libraries are a vital part of our community. They provide a place of learning, meeting spaces, access to important documents and information, access to the Internet, a way of participating in our society, a source of inspiration, cultural events and exhibitions, and a myriad other benefits and services to everyone in our community.
Libraries have been a second home for me for over two decades now. I actually still remember signing up for the library in my primary school. I had to get my parents to sign a form saying they would pay for any books I lost or damaged. My Dad sat me down and explained that, while he would sign the form, looking after the books I took out from the library was my responsibility and he did not expect me to lose or damage them. I was seven years old. I am 29 now, and I have yet to lose or damage a library book, late fines notwithstanding.
When we moved to Austria I was horrified to find that my new primary school didn’t have a library. I made extensive use of both our local city library and the libraries in all of my secondary schools, occasionally even skipping class to sit in the library and read instead. This was a time when most of my pocket money went on books, but there was so much more to the libraries than that. There were books I couldn’t buy because they weren’t available in Austria (pre-Amazon!) or because they were out of print; there was space to sit and think; I could take a risk and read a book I was unsure about spending money on. My school library was where I first got on the Internet – I would come in early and spend the hour before the first lesson on the Web, occasionally joined by my art teacher who was Canadian and used the computers to stay in touch with family and friends. I remember being taken by my IB German teacher to the National Library in Vienna – a vast building full of reading rooms, where most of the actual books were kept in underground archives, and you had to go through index card catalogues and request the book you wanted to be brought up for you.
The next library that truly became my home was at the University of Bath. A five-level, glass-fronted building, its front half houses computer terminals for student use, while the rear is full of books and journals. (Legend has it that the architects didn’t quite realise how heavy books were, and that if they filled the whole place with just books, it would collapse.) I practically lived in that place for four years. I roamed the compact shelving in the basement in search of old academic journals, I used the microfilm readers to look up obscure economic data, I spent my nights on the Internet, chatting to far-away friends and avoiding my coursework until 3 o’clock on the morning of the deadline, and when it came to writing up my dissertation, I banned my boyfriend from the building and camped out at a terminal with a sign next to me asking my friends to please go away until I was done.
Emotionally attached to Bath though I am, my favourite library in the world is Berlin State Library (the new building in Potsdammer Strasse). From the outside, the building is a 1970s concrete monstrosity. Once inside, though, you find yourself in a well-lit space, on multiple levels, with balconies connected by stairs and walkways. It is absolutely stunning. Unlike in the Viennese National Library, some of the books are directly accessible (though by far not the full 10 million). There are reading rooms, as well as smaller desks and reading areas hidden in between the book shelves. It is quiet and serene, a temple to learning. I did part of the research for my MA thesis there, and I wish I could have spent a lot more time there than I did.
To this day, I cannot enter a library without feeling a sense of awe as well as happiness. There is something about a building full of books, a space dedicated to human knowledge and achievement, that I find incredibly inspiring. It doesn’t matter if it is the small community library in Heaton or the State Library in Berlin – they both open windows to other worlds for all of us. Conversely, closing libraries is like closing minds, closing doors on opportunities.
I joined Newcastle City Libraries a few months ago when I needed to do some research for a piece of writing, after several years of not having a library card. Every time I’ve been to the City Library it’s been a delightful experience (even when I’ve had to pay fines), and I have found new and exciting books, or learned something new. Losing access to these spaces and resources would have a detrimental impact on me, and on the local community here in Newcastle. Don’t let it happen.