The fact that “minister for women” is listed as the fourth of her responsibilities worres me, but Janice Turner has a spirited defence of the Labour Party’s new deputy leader. A sample:

The response to Harman’s election, the language used to describe her, the hydrochloric acid of hate that rained upon her, reveals – for all our incoming female Home Secretary or the outgoing Foreign one – how uneasy we remain about women participating in public life.
How retro, how Seventies sit-com for a woman politician to be judged as humourless! True, Harman is that dread thing that most women know only to whisper softly, a feminist. And a campaigning one at that, who even used the stuffy old job of Solicitor-General to get domestic abuse treated with more judicial severity and to stop the trafficking of women into prostitution. Yeah, more bloody wimmin’s issues. And it’s true, Harman is a serious person: doesn’t – on the couple of occasions I’ve met her – crack too many funnies.
Neither is she the type who flatters men by laughing at their jokes. She is a woman’s woman, not much fussed about male approval….

Egypt has _finally_ fully banned (it says anyway) female genital mutilation after a 12-year-old died during the operation.

In 2005, research by Unicef found that 96% of Egyptian women aged 15 to 49 who had ever been married reported they had been circumcised. The Egyptian government says a more recent study found 50.3% of girls aged 10 to 18 had been circumcised.

Even on the government’s figure there is still a very, very long way to go, but maybe the death of Budour Ahmad Shaker will help to educate parents.