Monthly Archives: May 2006

Feminism Women's history

Another academic age …

May 9, 2006 – 12:41 pm

I was just making some notes from The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age, from 1909 (it remained a standard text at least into the Sixties), and noticed the title of its author, Phoebe Sheavyn, D. Lit. – “Special Lecturer in English Literature and Tutor for Women Students; Warden of the Hall of Residence for Women Students”, at Ashburne Hall in Manchester. She had quite a life, this site indicates:

After studying for her first degree in Aberystwyth she had held posts as Reader, then Fellow, in Bryn Mawr, before returning to England as Tutor and Lecturer in English at Somerville. She had been much impressed by the contrast between the dignified and spacious arrangements she had seen enjoyed by women students in the USA, and the characteristically cramped and meagre accommodation made available to their British counterparts. The early Minute Books of the BFUW Executive indicate something of her determination to strengthen the position of women in academic life in Britain.

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Feminism Miscellaneous

Girls in religious schools

May 9, 2006 – 10:15 am

I went to what was at least nominally a church school, all-girl, headed by a pretty clueless male reverend. Most of the time his lack of worldliness and commonsense didn’t matter (although sometimes, as I think of the fate of a friend of mine who ended up in a psychiatric hospital, it did).

But he did do more general damage in some special “personal development” lessons that he took for sixth formers. Most of it was pretty inane stuff, but I can still clearly picture (probably because of the rage I felt at the time), his solemnly drawing graphs on the board to explain that men’s sexual arousal was a sharp curve, while women’s was much flatter, and therefore women shouldn’t wear low-cut blouse. He didn’t say the next sentence, but it hung in the air: “If women got raped, it was probably their own fault.”

I thought of this when I read an excellent piece in the Guardian today. The government is (in one of its more potentially long-term pieces of stupidity) encouraging the development of religious schools, and even the take-over of state schools by religious groups. It has also, commendably, introduced an gender equality duty on institutiions. But …

Much to the amazement and anger of gender equality campaigners, the government has not published any gender-specific statistics on faith schools and is not aware of any research in this area – on whether girls and boys in faith schools are taught a different curriculum, as was found to be the case in a now closed independent Muslim school in Scotland; on whether girls and boys in faith schools are achieving different grades or leaving school at different ages compared with each other and with their peers in non-faith schools.

A spokesperson for the DfES says undertaking such research would be a “massively disproportionate” use of taxpayer’s money. Yet under the gender equality duty that comes into force in April next year, there will be a legal requirement for all state schools to actively promote gender equality.

The article is promoting an Amnesty International debate tomorrow night in London on Women’s Human Rights and Fundamentalism. I won’t be able to go since I’ve already got two things booked, but it sounds good.

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Environmental politics

Why the voters are fed up…

May 9, 2006 – 10:02 am

Well at least one of the reasons. From the London Strategic Voter website I learn that in Camden it took “11,000 votes to elect each Green councillor, compared to 2,650 for each Labour councillor and 2,200 for each LibDem”.

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History

First catch your flying rhinoceros

May 9, 2006 – 12:20 am

That particular beast, of which I’d previously been unaware, was, I learnt this afternoon, one of the highlights of the cabinet of curiosities of Sir Walter Cope, an associate of William Cecil, who built Cope Castle, later Holland House Kensington. (Some taxidermist must really have been taxed to construct that one.)

He also boasted some fine porcelain, which was the subject of an IHR seminar this afternoon, by Susan Bracken (University of Sussex), “Collecting Chyna in Jacobean London”. She argued that while the traditional view is that interest in porcelain only grew with the spread of “hot liquors”, ie. coffee and chocolate, in fact interest started much earlier.

Indeed in Italy in the 16th-century there were widespread if unsuccessful attempts to imitate the imported Chinese product. The Medicis were the most successful, but the hard paste recipe was not understood in west; many believed you could just dig it up. They had a powerful incentive to try to make it – it was thought that it would break on contact with poison, so its use was particularly suited to court life.

The earliest evidence for its presence in Europe is records from Topkapi palace in 1331. It was traded through India, as well as via the silk route, but Hindus would not use it for eating and drinking. An inventory of Henry VIII’s possession has him in possession of four pieces, three of which had gold fittings around them, reflecting their rarity value.

The word porcelain first appears in English in this context in 1530, and in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure it is referred to without explanation, so must by then have been widely available. There are references in Ben Johnson’s Epicene, or the Silent Woman to “china houses” and a china woman (presumably a seller of such, and there are other reports of women being china merchants – be nice to know more!)

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Miscellaneous

Two views of global warming

May 8, 2006 – 9:56 am

The general acceptance that global warming is happening has certainly landed when wine columnists start writing about the effects on wine quality.

The distinguished line-up of academics, viticulturists and climatologists agreed that the effects of global warming could be profound. One speaker argued grape growing will be ‘unviable in most of the traditional Catalonian wine regions within the next 40 to 70 years’, which is worrying if you’re a Cava producer. Another warned of the problems that Atlantic regions, such as Bordeaux and Galicia, could face because of changes in the Gulf Stream and their effect on temperature and rainfall patterns.

Meanwhile, if you want to  find out if you should put you home on stilts, this Google Maps mashup (think I used that term correctly) shows what sea-rise levels will flood which bits of the UK.

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Politics

God is dead: break out the champagne

May 8, 2006 – 9:47 am

A Church of England study has found that the “yoof of today” don’t have a God-shaped hole in their lives, in fact they are perfectly comfortable without any transcendental framework at all.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu …  writes of a large “mismatch” between the Church and the views of those aged 15 to 25. He says: “The research suggests young people are happy with life as it is, that they have felt no need for a transcendent something else and regard the Church as boring and irrelevant.” …

Nevertheless, young people do not feel disenchanted, lost or alienated in a meaningless world. “Instead, the data indicated that they found meaning and significance in the reality of everyday life, which the popular arts helped them to understand and imbibe.”

Media reports often make much of the rise of fundamentalism in the world, but I suspect that in numerical terms the rise of genuine atheism (if of a not very reflective sort) is still the real modern story. Indeed that lack of reflection of probably a good thing. People aren’t wrestling with the idea of a god, they are simply finding it ridiculous. Which might just be a great step in human evolution.

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