* The Scandinavian states are often cited as paradises of gender relations. But it seems not all is right in the state of Sweden. A reminder, if one was needed, of the difficulties of changing deep-seated cultural patterns.

* The same might be said about this preview of a book about race in America which argues that the whites are the problem. Is it also true of Britain and Australia? I think you could make a reasonable case.

* Britain is sending homosexual men back to Iran, where they face persecution, maybe even execution. (Except in one case the victim committed suicide first.) Read this excellent post on Musings from Middle England and write to your MP; I have. (Found on Tim Worstall’s Britblog roundup.)

* But when it comes to pure barbarism, it is always hard to beat America. There’s an account on Women’s eNews of woman who had to go to court to enforce her right to an abortion, which of course she had to pay for, and made just in time. But what really struck me was the account further down the story of a woman who spent the last three weeks of her pregnancy chained to a hospital bed, having to call for assistance to have her chains moved when she even wanted to turn over. Now I’ve never been pregnant, and don’t expect to be, but when you see heavily pregnant women they usually look very uncomfortable and shift around regularly trying to find some relief. Just imagine!

Finally, very belatedly, I’ve done a quick update on my website, which has been hopelessly neglected for almost a year in favour of the blog. I guess in my new freelance writing life I’m going to have to do a major revamp soon, but in the meantime I’ve just put up a series of articles on “Thai women and work”, written for the Kitakyushu Forum on Asian Women’s foreign correspondent programme for 1995-6, that I stumbled across during my recent move.

There’s Breaking through the barriers, a general overview, Sex work – A Labour issue? and Unemployment, A Looming Danger.

The statistics are not the latest now, but probably as up-to-date as many to be found on the web, and the articles might still be of use to somebody. (I do hate to labour over something that then just sits on a shelf.)

I know a lot more about HTML now than I did when I set up the website in 2001, although I’m still far from expert. I wrote these using a programme called Hotdog, which I got off the front of a computer magazine(!) I’m wondering if anyone can recommend any free or cheap programmes to use, as this now looks awfully clunky?

I’ve explored before the early modern practice of charivaris, or rough music, but was surprised to read of a late 19th-century example, and in London.

It was Guy Fawkes Day, 1876, and small retailers were protesting about the practices of William Whiteley, a former draper who was developing what would be London’s first department store. About noon …

A grotesque and noisy cortege entered the thoroughfare [Westbourne Grove]. At its head was a vehicle, in which a gigantic Guy was propped up … vested in the conventional frock coat of a draper… Conspicuous on the figure was a label with the words ‘Live and Let Live’ … In one hand of the figure a piece of beef bore the label “5 1/2 d” and in the other was a handkerchief, with the ticket “2 1/2 d. all-linen”. (Quoted in Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End, Erika Diane Rappaport, Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 16)

So this might be the man you could ultimately blame for Wal-Mart. “He became known as the “Universal Provider” – a merchant who claimed to sell anything to anybody. By combining dissimilar goods in one business and offering cut-price goods for cash only.” (p. 17) He was consequently, local shopkeepers complained, putting them out of business.

Thus the debate over Wal-Mart, Tesco and their ilk of our time has echoes in late Victorian London. And there are others.

In 1872 Whiteley had applied for a liquor licence for wine in his new refreshment room. But this could mean LADIES drinking spirits in PUBLIC! The otherwise general liberal editor of the local paper complained: “… sherry and silks, or port and piques, need not of necessity go together when ladies go ‘shopping’.” (p. 30)

Today the debate in England and Wales is over the extension of liquor licence hours, which is producing a similar moralistic backlash.

Some complained that the provision of abundant goods in opulent settings encouraged consumption. Even the provision of “rest rooms” encouraged “excessive shopping” that produced a “wild and reckless period …. things are done in a financial way that would make the angels weep … The afternoon’s excitement has … all the attractions of a delightful dream, with the slight dash of an orgy, leaving a lingering pleasure even over repentance”. (p. 38) Today’s debate is over-consumption of credit, and also, of course, plain over-consumption.

And finally, for those who complain about the pavement jaywalkers of Oxford Street, there’s the consolation to know that once “two young servants were fined for driving their perambulators abreast… The magistrate asked them: ‘How are the people to pass if you girls are gaping after soldiers and policemen?’ (p. 44)

History

The man behind the mail-order bride slur, John Brogden, has been forced to resign. (And I was pleased to see that Anne Summers, one of the grandes dames of Australian feminism, agrees with me.)

On another subject altogether, has anyone else been having problems logging into Blogger? I keep having to have two or three goes at it, both at work and home, getting error messages indicating “cookies are not enabled”. Anyone know of a solution? And yes, my cookies are perfectly available and I believe tasty, thank you.

Light blogging today, due in part to inertia induced by horribly sore muscles. The message for next season is that I must do more preparation for wicketkeeping. But I have added a nice range of new bloggers to my blogroll: please check them out.

Two stories on opposite sides of the world are a reminder that an awful lot of stereotypes about women, and men, haven’t changed at all.

An Australian state Opposition leader has got into trouble for calling the premier’s wife a mail-order bride. (She happens to be from Malaysia – actually highly unlikely to be a source of women using paid online marriage arrangement services, since it is far too wealthy.) It left me wondering why “mail-order bride” should be considered, as it undoubtedly is, a nasty term of abuse?

Perhaps the suggestion is that anyone who is a “mail-order bride” is little better than a prostitute (an uncomfortably obvious exposure of the traditional economics of marriage) and anyone who marries them can’t get a “proper” woman – a slur on his manhood indeed. I wonder, if you called such women “economic refugees”, would they get better treated?

Then in France, that home of supposedly sophisticated relations between the sexes, the Interior Minister, and possible future President, Nicolas Sarkozy is, according to The Telegraph considering divorcing his wife Cécilia, since while the French public apparently has no problem with male politicians having several simultaneous relationships, one of their wives doing the same thing is considered a reflection on her husband’s virility.

Why even, if this were true, should virility have anything to do with political ability? Is there some hint here into the reasons why women candidates can find selection committees, if often not voters, so resistant to their campaigns?

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On another side of stereotypes, the Sydney Morning Herald’s Spike column reports that the second and fourth most common Australian web searches for men are Ned Kelly and Slim Dusty (an old-style country music singer, now dead). Funny how one of the most urbanised societies on earth clings to its foundation myths.

Shane Warne (cricketer) and John Howard (current, dreadful Prime Minister) were first and third, for the record.

Well the “sweat it out” theory seems to have made my cold neither better nor worse: thoroughly unscientific conclusion – it doesn’t work.