Philobiblon

I’ve just been reading something so horrible (I’ll blog it when I can get my head around it) that I need to collect some good news. So a short selection:

1. The British Army is finally abolishing a gross discrimination that has continued since 1816 – female Gurkhas are to be recruited alongside the men. You might think that getting into the army and being sent to Afghanistan or similar is hardly a privilege, but if this is the way for you to escape being a house/field near-slave, win tremendous respect and the opportunity to get your family out of abject poverty, the opportunity can only be a good thing for the women. (As evidenced by the fact they’ve started queueing already, even based on a rumour.)

And hopefully someone will also re-educate the colonel who calls them “girl gurkhas”…. (Somehow I doubt they’ll be recruiting under 18s.)

2. Two books find women are finding new ways in and around relationships. One finds that in the US if you have a PhD or Master’s, despite all the stereotypes you are more likely to be married than your less-educated sisters. (Not that I think marriage is necessarily a good thing, but I fear these stereotypes stop some women continuing their education.) The other finding is that many women who want a child are finding ways to have them, sucessfully, even if there’s no bloke around.

3. Hummer sales have fallen from 34,000 in 2003 to 17,000 this year. Yes, I feel slightly sorry for the people losing their jobs as a result, but a lot more sorry for the Nepalese farmers I was reading about today who are losing all of their land to climate change.