So the new buzz after flexible working is Slivers of Time the concept as covered by The Guardian reports that sections of society are unable to work because of time constraints.The argument is that  some work is better than no work, claimants are allowed to make a certain sum before it affects their benefits.  Tesco has announced ‘slivers of time’ as an alternative to eight hour shifts and a way to enable employees to book certain hours of overtime. Okay, so far so good. With previous columns I have called for the recognition of informal work performed by women to be recognised as economic activity and, according to the slivers of time model, it can be.

A look to the website of slivers of time ltd reveals that is a social enterprise company set up explore the notion of ‘markets for all’, in that socially disadvantaged people should be able to access markets and sell their labour at their discretion. In a paper (to download) from the website Whigham Rowan explains and illustrates the example of how the system works.Basically  you put yourself on the website, cite hours in which you are able to work and the rate per job.  The potential employer then looks over the website and picks out a candidate.The more jobs you do the higher rating you get (think the star rating on seller websites such as Amazon and e-bay).

The idea of slivers of time in a non corporate sense is an idea directly taken from the examination of informal micro-economics performed in low income areas such as council estates (I know I’m from one). I remember a down on his luck painter , painting my portrait for £30 , the girl over the road being paid a fiver for babysitting me, two pairs of tracksuit bottoms being traded for 3 hours of gardening etc…

This informal market is problematic, mainly because people who aren’t on benefits (if the Daily Fail be believed) and are comfortably well off believe that informal earning is lucrative, however,  for the babysitter it is not, for the person who does someone’s ironing it is not.  The informal market is only lucrative for individuals such as drug dealers and money lenders.The informal market also has the same problem as the legitimate labour market-  the markets flood and saturation of labour occurs, thus lack of employment , formal or informal.

Ok then, informal work is only lucrative for individuals who indulge in dealing narcotics and money lending, so this idea  for people on benefits to do legitimate jobs without the fear of prosecution for being being a benefit cheat and to improve their later employability chances when the market settles down  is no bad thing in theory. However, as I looked to affiliated partners to slivers of time I see that the TUC is cited. I went to the TUC website to search for a paper on their finding (usually very good) but find nothing but a press release, puzzling. More questions come to mind:-

1)If you transfer informal to formal work, where is the safety net such as the one provided for in the formal market sector? Sick pay, Maternity leave etc. As a person offering your labour on this kind of site are you, in the case of being ‘picked’ by a local business for say, three days work, entitled to the rights in place for contracted workers? Join a union you may say, but if you were on a base level of income (such as ‘benefits’) and have a fluctuating income based on your labour being picked by a user on this website, would you really have the money spare to pay subs to a union?

2) The demographic this scheme has been touted to help suffer from lack of self confidence. If someone who is fresh out of university can’t get a job and then advertise themselves on this site , what chance does a long term unemployed or incapacity benefit have? Is there going to be a certain criteria that has to be met by candidates selling labour?If so, is this another example of the ghetto-risation of the poor much like out of town council estates?

In theory, as with headline stories it sounds too good to be true , for me its no coincidence that the Con-Dems announced that they would be including the happiness index into configuring the nations GDP the same day as the slivers of time is approved by big business.What we can see clearly now is what the government plan to do about the shortfall in jobs in the public sector, some can volunteer to run services and the lucky ones , depending on their rating , may actually get paid for short contracts but without the long term benefits.

Last Friday the Oxford Reclaim the Night march took place….(told from my perspective)

After various incidents I manage to get to the March start point at the Sheldonian theatre (slap bang in the middle of Oxford academic institutions) with my two young daughters, ex-boyfriends mother and her ten year old daughter.  I see a few banners and secretly hope it’s going to be bigger than last year (about 40 women).  It turns out there is over a hundred women there.  I sift through the crowd and find some of the organising committee, namely the awesome Clare Cochrane (who campaigns on many issues) and the irrepressible (femacadem) Suzi stewarding, with baby in sling at the front. Suzi and I engage in banter which goes

Me: Look at me out and about of a Friday night, I’m a single mother what would the Daily Mail say?

Suzi (in big booming middle class voice): Yes , you should be at home , you may steal someone’s husband!

Some of the newbies stare not getting the joke.

Meanwhile , ex-boyfriends Mum starts to get bored but reiterates that she should be here because she was in a Women’s Refuge, my kids tire of standing up, someone passes a comment about me smoking a cigarette in front of the children ( I ain’t gonna hide it) and I get the disapproving vibe about bringing the children from others which makes me even more belligerent.  Then the mood changes…

The always excellent Louise Livesey starts up the chants and gets the march under way and we march towards the High Street.  The kids are on either side of me , the chanting starts whose streets?, our streets!.  Women come to talk to me; a woman named Kate who organises the new Oxford branch of Fawcett; Hannah, a co-ordinator at OSARCC introducing me to other volunteers. I spy a little boy in front of me wearing a ‘this is what a feminist looks like’ t-shirt and blowing bubbles and I recognise his mum from  the main Fawcett publicity.  I notice people on the street; the cheers, the jeers and the people who look look at us as if we belong to another era.  But mostly I see the people ahead of me, the chanting and chatting, the smiling  and the banners flapping in the wind.  We block the footpath as we walk down St Aldates, a council rubbish van beeps us again (for the third time), we stop taxis making their way down the small cobbled backlanes (we pull to the footpath to let them pass). We pass the lapdancing club chanting womens bodies should not be sold. We march down New Hall Inn Street chanting  Whatever we wear, wherever we go , yes means yes, no means no.

My youngest gets knackered by this point so I have to perch her on my shoulders as we get to the busy junction, someone presses the crossing button (we have no police escort) half the contingent gets across whilst the other stays on the other side of the road. We wait and chant some more .  We then make our way to the rally point at Ruskin college, a group of young men shout at us ‘we’re gonna chop you into pieces ‘ (apparently this happened on the march too but the stewards took care of it) I ignore them but ex-boyfriends mum chases them down (she knows their Mums).

I get into the familiar settings of Ruskin, sort the kids out with a drink and realise the actual scale of  the march, I hardly know anyone here, but it makes me glad, new people on the march is always a good thing.I have a quick chat with random people, ex-boyfriends Mum takes the kids home and I slip out front for a cigarette.

I’m chatting with the Warden and the awesome Debbie when the two police show up, they address the warden first (of course, he is a bloke) then they talk to me.

Bloke plod:Good evening Miss, what’s going on here then? Do you have a licence?

Me: We don’t need one – you were informed and we have insurance.

Bloke plod: So, any more marching tonight?

Me: No, but thanks so much for your help

Warden: Its a rally and the college is insured

Bloke plod: So whats this all about?

Me: Its called Reclaim the Night , where Women march to be seen and heard at a time when society tells us we should be indoors because of all the nasty things that may happen to us …

Bloke plod:  ohh…

Me: Which we wouldn’t have to do if your institution took women seriously.

Bloke plod: Well goodnight miss *jogs on*

I go in and relate the tale to the organisers and have a good laugh, chat to Suzi and then go home, sadly missing the rally speeches. Its only the second march I’ve been on, but this year was bigger and better all thanks to the women who organized and attended, love and thanks to the Oxford Collective.

I feel a bit like I’m stating the bleeding obvious here, but I think there are some quite misogynist elements about the way that the recent controversy surrounding Iris Robinson has been reported in the media.

Obviously, there are legitimate legal and political questions to be raised about Ms Robinson’s conduct in failing to disclose her financial dealings in the Members’ Register of Interests. Coverage of this aspect of the case is clearly in the public interest.

Many liberals will also feel that a hardline Christian fundamentalist, who has in the past issued the most intrusive and offensive attacks on other people’s sexuality, deserves to be publicly pilloried for having an extra-marital relationship, because she has broken the rules by which she has herself harshly judged others. I happen to disagree with this view – to misquote a phrase from an Ian McEwan novel, if it’s OK to have an extra-marital relationship, it’s OK for a homophobe to have an extra-marital relationship. What’s not OK is to be a homophobe – but I can understand the reasoning behind the alternate view.

But what flabbergasts me is that, to read many of the media reports on the subject, you’d think that the most morally questionable thing about Robinson’s conduct was the age of her lover. The words “her lover” rarely appear in reports on the case without being separated by “teenage” or “toyboy”, as if that were the most salient point about the controversy.

The media usually accepts men dating women decades their junior as natural and normal. These men are often depicted as objects of envy. Where they are viewed more critically, it is often in the “There’s no fool like an old fool” tradition, with the man viewed as a vain and credulous sap and the female lover cast in the role of manipulative golddigger.

Yet when a woman dates a much younger man, she is frequently accused of something morally reprehensible. The Daily Mail’s headline when artist and film-maker Sam Taylor-Wood began dating a 19-year-old actor was “A bit late for the school run, Sam?” Now that she has announced that she is pregnant by said 19-year-old, the tabloids and celebrity blogs are full of implications that she has done something weird and twisted, or that she has trapped a barely pubescent child into life-changing adult responsibilities for which he is patently not ready (despite the fact that the man concerned is a sentient adult who appears delighted with their joint decision to start a family).  And yet when Ms Taylor-Wood’s former husband recently dated a celebrity 22 years his junior (almost identical to the age gap between Taylor-Wood and Aaron Johnson), there was barely an eye batted in the media.  And when middle-aged male celebrities impregnate teenagers, there is rarely any moral indignation. There is certainly no sense that he has “stolen her youth”, although having a child is likely to have a far heavier impact on the woman’s life than on the man’s.

Admittedly, in cases of real child abuse, the double standard often operates in the opposite direction, with abuse committed by a woman portrayed in the media in a trivial, salacious way, as either comic or erotic or both, as long as the children involved are over the age of about eleven. But, nonetheless, sexual stories about women are treated very differently in the media from those about men.

The other thing which concerns me about the Robinson media coverage is the way that Iris Robinson’s behaviour is perceived to reflect on her husband. Again, I accept that the question of whether he knew about her financial dealings and failed to report them is salient (although I do find the assumption that a husband must have total knowledge of his wife’s business affairs somewhat archaic). But I am deeply disturbed by implications from some commentators that he should have had better control over his wife’s behaviour (as if she were some kind of unruly pet, rather than a autonomous human being with the right to make decisions on her own) or that her sexuality is some kind of conduit for the family honour and that he is thus somehow “tainted” by her having had an affair.

This puts me in mind of the Sachsgate controversy last year, when neither Russell Brand’s critics nor his supporters seemed to question that, by publicly bragging about having had sex with Sachs’s granddaughter, he was insulting and humiliating Sachs (rather than breaching the trust and privacy of the young woman concerned). One side seemed to think that Brand’s behaviour was vulgar and wrong, the other found it justifiable because it was “edgy” and amusing, but neither seemed to take issue with the basic premise that it was all about Sachs. Both sides seemed to take it for granted that Georgina Baillie had no importance as an autonomous human being – merely as some kind of Sachs family property, whose sexuality could be used to shame her menfolk.

Remind me what century we’re in again…

Here are (belated) introductions from Melaszka and Dorri!!

Melaszka is 41, based in the West Country and has identified as a feminist since the age of fourteen. She currently cares full-time for elderly parents, but has previously worked in education and the arts.

Dorri has been many things in her life so far; English, foreign, able-bodied, feminist, worker, disabled, student, activist, partner, and born-again singleton.
She attended her first peace protest on 1st April 1983 at the age of 10, a few years later she succeeded, although very briefly, in trespassing on RAF Greenham; that was the beginning of her life as a feminist.
When she was 18, just before he was planning to go to university she became ill. It was a very unremarkable event but it changed her life entirely. The illness quickly worsened and within weeks a single step defeated her. It took years but eventually she got to university but it was a very different experience as a disabled woman, despite this she has gone on post-graduate studies.
Today her passions included Taijiquan, disability rights, feminism, psychotherapy, writing, LARP, and the rather handsome cat with whom she shares her home.

I’m excessively pleased to welcome them both to the blog and they really are doing a sterling job so far!!

I’m passionate about music and waste away far too much of my time surfing internet music sites and I’m wondering if I’m the only one who regularly seethes at the way that female musicians and fans are often marginalised and humiliated in the fan community?

One expression that’s doing my head in at the moment is “girls’ band”, which seems to be routinely hurled as an insult by male fans of one group at a rival group. The principle seeming to be that if too many girls like a band, that automatically proves that it’s a rubbish band with no credibility, as girls don’t understand music and have no taste.

All too often, on music message boards and forums there appears to be a widespread assumption that if a woman keenly follows a male musician, it can’t possibly be because she understands or appreciates his music, it must be because she fancies him.

This is strange, given that most of the time women get told that only men are visually stimulated and that (if we’re heterosexual) it’s natural for us to choose a partner for his nice personality, not his looks, otherwise we’re “superficial” and “mean”. And yet, when it comes to pop musicians, we apparently become raging balls of hormones who fork out oodles of money for CDs and concert tickets, regardless of the musical content, merely because we can’t resist being swayed by a pretty face. Even if the musician concerned is the wrong side of 50 and looks like Mr Potato Head.

Of course, I’m exaggerating a bit, here. I have also interacted with male music fans on the internet who have been courteous, friendly and genuinely interested in what I and other female fans had to say. But all too often, as elsewhere on the internet, anything posted by a user with an obviously female-sounding user name gets ignored, while exactly the same point made by a male fan a few posts later gets rapturously applauded and fawned over for its wisdom and perceptiveness.

And it’s not just female fans that get patronised or ignored, it’s female artists, too. One male artist I particularly like recently collaborated with a female singer/songwriter. I wasn’t at that point familiar with her work, but I knew she was respected in the industry for her technical proficiency (she was classically trained) and had gained critical acclaim for her debut album, which had been considered daring and innovative. Which of these aspects of her work might have drawn my favourite musician to work with her? Intrigued, I logged onto a fan forum devoted to him, to see what other fans thought.

“Do you think he’s fucking her?” was one of the first suggestions posted by male fans pondering this question, followed by a lengthy discussion of her physical attributes and a debate about whether other male fans would do her, as well, had they the chance. That a male musician might wish to work with a female musician because he was genuinely excited about her work or looked up to her as a songwriter or instrumentalist apparently didn’t even occur to them.

You would think that female artists might at least be safe from sexism from their own fans. You know, fans? People that allegedly like the artist? Alas, no.

While visiting a blog devoted to a little-known, long-deleted female indie singer, I was surprised to see that one male fan had confidently, but completely wrongly, attributed the writing of all three of the artist’s (self-penned) albums to her male accompanist. The most worrying thing is that he seemed a pleasant chappy who was obviously devoted to the artist in question and clearly hadn’t meant it offensively – when corrected on his assumption by another fan, he apologised, explaining “I read somewhere that he played the keyboards on her albums and I was led to the wrong conclusion that he had written her songs”. Well, yes, easy mistake to make, he had a Y chromosome, he was somewhere on the record…a far more “obvious” conclusion, apparently, than that the woman with her name on the front of the sleeve might be capable of a little creative autonomy.

This widespread tendency of fans and journalists to underestimate the creative input of female artists to their own work has been remarked on by many well-known musicians, including Sharleen Spiteri:

“No one ever wants to give the credit. There has to be a man up there pulling the strings.”

and Bjork (thanks to my friend Yoana for pointing this quotation out to me):

“I have had this experience many, many times that the work I do on the computer gets credited to whatever male was in 10 meter radius during the job. People seem to accept that women can sing and play whatever instrument they are seen playing, but they cannot program, arrange, produce, edit or write electronic music.”

Still, if even the god-like genius that is Bjork gets subjected to this kind of crap, perhaps it’s some small comfort to the rest of us, next time our opinions and ideas are belittled because of our gender, to know we’re in such exalted company.

Friends sometimes tell me it’s pointless getting worked up over something so trivial, that there are bigger battles to be fought, that in the scheme of things it doesn’t really matter that much whether my opinion on electropop gets listened to or not. But, for me, this is symptomatic of attitudes elsewhere – just another part of the everyday process whereby women’s experience is marginalised and women’s intellect, expertise and creativity doubted in our so-called “post-feminist”, “gender-neutral” society. And that’s what makes me seethe.

I have to apologise that the blog has been quiet in the past few weeks. There are a number of reasons- two of the team have been on holiday, and I have been having some health problems which have caused me some fairly significant levels of pain and exhaustion. Hopefully things are now back under control, and the blog will be running more smoothly again.

Browsing the net tonight I found two articles that caught my eye , over on Feministing ,about a lesbian being chased off and effectively banned from x-box live and the other over on the F-word about female I.T workers quitting their jobs because of the industry’s sexism.

To be honest , at first, I thought the headline `Lesbian banned from X-box live!` was a headline straight out of  The Sun in the `Freddie Starr ate my hamster` mould. It was absolutely ridiculous and laughed until I checked  out the whole article. I started to think about the last x-box game I completed (Fable II ), its a role playing game with fighting,magic and relies on interpersonal responses with the game virtual characters in order to fully assess renown.

Did it matter if I was a male or female character? A main unlock achievement in the game is to get married and was it a problem if I chose a member of the same sex? No .So sexuality equality is creeping into some games these days ,so why does it matter if you express your sexuality or just simply experiment? Its the old chestnut `just think about the children!` panic , in other terms ‘I don’t want to explain why some people have different sexualities , it makes me uncomfortable’.

That comment pointed to me over to the furor over a disabled woman presenting kids TV. A women with one able arm is presenting toddler t.v . So what?  most of the rational thinking population may think,but no, during a Radio 2 talk show a listener rang in and complained that this woman would give his kids nightmares. Well Mr phone man ,my kids are 3 and 4 and they didn’t bat an eyelid or comment on it!

Back to the game…upon completing the game I was shown the credits.  How many female programmers were credited? Two ,that’s right two. Out of thirty five! WTF! Why is that I thought to myself? Maybe I’m being naive here but I thought we lived in 2009 , and that technology and jobs within the tech industry were  about merit and not about gender. I’m wrong according to the excellent article over on The F-word. Sexism is rife in the I.T industry , apparently us ‘girls’ should stick to low paying call center jobs and making the tea at gaming studios.

I have now made a conscious decision to learn programming , I’m kind of into finding out what my p.c can do and regular readers know that I’m an advocate of open source software, and I like messing around with Linux operating system.

I used to work in pubs , I know that most men are socialized in a sexist manner but I thought that on-line we as women could be what we wanted to be , be it androgynous, lesbian, bisexual or a spider plankton from Mars. Who cares as long as you find  liberty and kinship which under pins the whole ethic of the World Wide Web or even the supposed male dominated Hacker world :-

“Hackers should be judged by their hacking , not bogus criteria such as degrees,age,race or position”.(Levy,S.Hackers(1994)Penguin.New York.

This post is about a pivotal experience in my life-  a visit to Womynspace. I feel its relevant to write this because it changed my perceptions about my attitudes to other women, left wing politics, the legal system, the list could go on. The point is that nearly every week I find myself drawing on the experience.

To rewind…before I started at uni I never thought about feminism. Once or twice when I’d heard the word it was portrayed in a negative light. I myself come from a dysfunctional family and the women in the family had been subjected to cycles of abuse which in turn trickled down to me. I felt the only person I could trust was my father figure and therefore even though I did have female friends, I never really trusted them, they were all out to’ get’ me.

This visit also coincides with the beginnings of a great friendship with Suzi, my first interactions with another very intelligent role model who pointed me in the direction of Womynspace and myself for the first time in my life , truly being out of my comfort zone.

Necessary arrangements had been made, directions gathered, feminist peer grabbed in order to be my comfort blanket and off we went to London . I’d been to London only twice – once on a school trip and once on a jolly with an ex boyfriend. I took the car, I realise now that that was a comfort blanket too- I didn’t know my way around and the car was safe in the fact that I could get into it and drive away should anything untoward happen.

We drove into a rough looking area of London, a police car seemed to follow us in to a side street and observe where we were going. I parked up and we approached the metal  security gate. A woman  appeared unlocking the various padlocks in order for us to gain entry , she chatted whilst we went through the door and as she fortified the the door via a plank slatted against the door.The entry was dark damp and forbidding and the woman starting to show us around. The welding room,the smoking room and then up the stairs.

Once we got to the top of the stair case the atmosphere started to change ,there was some sunlight coming through the windows and I could see artwork on the walls. A photographer was taking pictures and two other women were chatting. We were shown around this tier of the house and the atmosphere was almost church- like, we were offered tea (thank you womynspace for introducing me to rooibos tea)and then sat down to chat.

I for once didn’t have anything to say for myself. Suzi on the other hand starting talking and drawing out the other women’s stories (usually my ‘job’). I felt for once that I really didn’t have anything to contribute and on reflection the way I looked didn’t matter this opportunity to just be `me` had never presented itself and therefore I was at a loss .

We left and got back into the car and Suzi and I didn’t say anything until ten minutes later when we both let out a collective sigh. We both felt peaceful and then talked about the experience.It wasn’t until much later that we realised we’d both had completely different experiences – Suzi had felt comfortable and confident, I felt the opposite.

I wrote the experience up as a feminist reflective essay and thought that would be the ‘end of it’….not so. As time went on and suggestions about space from tutors started to make sense to me I started to figure it out and de-construct what society had socialized me in to thinking. Feminists..bad, squats are only used by druggies and homeless people, the law is always right.

Womynspace taught me that its ok just to ‘be’ rather than ‘doing’, in the respect that we as women are always supposed to be pre-occupying ourselves with caring for other people, caring about what other people think of us and caring if  the sexually preferred gender finds us attractive.The one sentence that sticks in my mind from the experience was a woman saying ‘he doesn’t know anything about me’, that’s the best thing I ever heard in my life. Complete strangers don’t know anything about you. How dare they comment and judge someone they know nothing about?!

Another thing that struck me was the the premise of what space is – whats the difference between a woman’s group hiring a village hall or making use of a near derelict building in order to empower women? Money and the legal system that protects an investment. How much is a derelict building worth? Why shouldn’t it be put to use instead of being left to  crumble until the owner gets the ‘right’ price from a developer?

Womynspace changed and still is changing my perception of the world and society around me. Without it I wouldn`t be writing here, have the strength to show the world who I really am(ok, I’m your basic geek, but there you go) and that the ‘hidden’ shit’ – the issues that are swept under the carpet like the empowerment of women really does matter. Thank you Womynspace .

If I wasn’t already cheering loudly for our cousins across the pond after Obama pledged to close Guantanamo Bay within a year, and immediately banned ‘trials’ there, I’m now positively HOWLING for joy.

Obama has lifted the Global Gag rule, that prevents organisations providing services in foreign countries from receiving US aid if they so much as mention abortion. And he yesterday said that:

“On the 36th anniversary of Roe v Wade, we are reminded that this decision not only protects women’s health and reproductive freedom, but stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters,”

‘Nuff said really. Can we have an Obama now please??

Reading through the Sunday papers today two articles caught my eye.  The first one is an idiotic article regurgitating the same old nonsense about hetero women being attracted to rich men because its part of our genetic code. It was  “backed up” by a quote from a female Lawyer – well she’s a professional so it must be true! Apparently being a rich man gives you the capacity to deliver top notch orgasms which of course next to money are the only things we women require.

But wait… further on it stated that men can pick up how fertile a woman is , and this observation was concluded from watching men tip Lap Dancers. Apparently the more fertile you are the more you get tipped.

My question is do lesbians, transgender, infertile and women with poor partners therefore have really crap sex all the time? That’s what this *ahem* ‘scientific’ led piece suggests.

An excellent article over at  The Guardian points out that employers are more likely to dismiss women first because of the belief that there will be a man around to financially support her. Surely this a massive sign of sexism given that most households need two wages in order to survive? An adjoining article pointed out that just being financially secure does not eliminate the feeling of redundancy and social isolation. In short you can’t buy fulfillment.

The link in my mind is this – according to The Times article we hetero women can take the rough with smooth as long as we get a good orgasm out of it. According to The Guardian we can take the rough with the smooth as long as the goal of personal fulfillment is in sight. Sorry to be a spoilt brat but……….. I want both.