Louise Nousratpour, Equalities Reporter
Friday December 30, 2011
The Morning Star
Women's rights campaigners called on the Leveson inquiry today to widen its investigatory scope and include sexism and the sexual objectification of the female body in British media.
End Violence Against Women (EVAW), Equality Now, Object and rape charity Eaves said the inquiry would "not be doing its job properly" if it did not address these issues.
They said numerous government and independent reports into the nature and scale of the problem pointed to "considerable evidence" of the impact of the media on the sexualisation of women and girls.
The coalition highlighted the Sun's page 3, adverts for the porn and sex industries and other "innumerable ways" in which women - and even crimes against women including rape and murder - were "routinely trivialised and sexualised" within the press.
"Leveson is not just charged with looking at phone-hacking but for the entire relationship between the press and the public," said Equality Now director Jacqui Hunt.
"Women make up 50 per cent of that public but too often in the tabloid press are portrayed as sexualised objects or victims who are somehow to blame for the violence committed against them.
"When older women are pushed out of the media, when they are not used as expert commentators, when women are not seen as equal partners - this has a negative effect all the way through society."
The groups say the sexualisation of women is degrading and fosters negative attitudes.
They also argue that reporting of rape often focuses on the victims rather than the culprit.
The charities want compulsory training for journalists on the law over reporting violence against women and "clear sanctions" for journalists who break it.
They have also called for the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) to be replaced by an independent press complaints regulatory system.
"At the moment the PCC offers us no justice," said Sarah Green of EVAW.
"Women's organisations have no confidence in it and have stopped using it.
"We need a revamped PCC which has teeth and which women and women's organisations can use."
'Sexist' Ryanair ad angers cabin crew
Louise Nousratpour, Equalities Reporter
Tuesday December 13, 2011
The Morning Star
Over 8,000 people have demanded a ban on a "sexist" Ryanair advert which shows a scantly clad cabin crew member under the caption "Red Hot Fares & Crew."
Flight attendant Ghada led an online Cabin Crew Against Sexism campaign and created a petition after seeing the advertisement published in the Guardian.
She called on the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to ban the advert today and said: "I'm a member of cabin crew - I love my job and take it seriously. So I was disgusted to see this Ryanair ad which basically portrays cabin crew as glamour models.
"My work colleagues, many of whom are male, work hard with me to ensure the safety of our passengers. Safety is our number one priority - not the brand of our underwear."
Samantha Mangwana of Russell Jones & Walker law firm, which specialises in discrimination cases, said: "If any staff do suffer sexual harassment, Ryanair may well have made themselves vulnerable to a valid legal challenge with such an advert."
But a Ryanair spokesperson defended the advert, which is based on a calendar featuring stewardesses in their underwear.
"Our cabin crew calendar has raised €500,000 (£423,000) for charity in just five years and we will continue to support the right of our crew to take their clothes off to raise money for those who need it most," the spokesperson said.
The ASA is currently investigating the advert but has not given a deadline for the decision.
A spokesman added: "We have received complaints about a Ryanair advert that has appeared in a national newspaper. We have launched a full investigation."
Ryanair has attracted criticism over a number of years for sexist advertising.
Its advert of a young woman posing as a schoolgirl was banned by the ASA in 2008, which described it as "irresponsible" and appearing to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behaviour.
And Mary Honeyball MEP described Ryanair in 2010 as "still plane stupid" for publishing its fourth charity calendar featuring female staff posing in bikinis.
Tuesday December 13, 2011
The Morning Star
Over 8,000 people have demanded a ban on a "sexist" Ryanair advert which shows a scantly clad cabin crew member under the caption "Red Hot Fares & Crew."
Flight attendant Ghada led an online Cabin Crew Against Sexism campaign and created a petition after seeing the advertisement published in the Guardian.
She called on the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to ban the advert today and said: "I'm a member of cabin crew - I love my job and take it seriously. So I was disgusted to see this Ryanair ad which basically portrays cabin crew as glamour models.
"My work colleagues, many of whom are male, work hard with me to ensure the safety of our passengers. Safety is our number one priority - not the brand of our underwear."
Samantha Mangwana of Russell Jones & Walker law firm, which specialises in discrimination cases, said: "If any staff do suffer sexual harassment, Ryanair may well have made themselves vulnerable to a valid legal challenge with such an advert."
But a Ryanair spokesperson defended the advert, which is based on a calendar featuring stewardesses in their underwear.
"Our cabin crew calendar has raised €500,000 (£423,000) for charity in just five years and we will continue to support the right of our crew to take their clothes off to raise money for those who need it most," the spokesperson said.
The ASA is currently investigating the advert but has not given a deadline for the decision.
A spokesman added: "We have received complaints about a Ryanair advert that has appeared in a national newspaper. We have launched a full investigation."
Ryanair has attracted criticism over a number of years for sexist advertising.
Its advert of a young woman posing as a schoolgirl was banned by the ASA in 2008, which described it as "irresponsible" and appearing to link teenage girls with sexually provocative behaviour.
And Mary Honeyball MEP described Ryanair in 2010 as "still plane stupid" for publishing its fourth charity calendar featuring female staff posing in bikinis.
Lads' mags sound like rapists
Louise Nousratpour
Friday December 9, 2011
The Morning Star
Experts warned today that so-called lads' mags are legitimising hostile sexist attitudes among men.
Researchers found that when presented with descriptions of women taken from the publications and comments about women made by convicted rapists, most of those surveyed could not distinguish the source of the quotes.
The study of men aged between 18 and 46 showed that the majority identified themselves more with the language expressed by the convicted rapists when they did not know the source.
The psychologists from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey also polled a separate group of women and men aged between 19 and 30 to rank the quotes on how derogatory they were, without revealing the sources.
To their surprise, most of the participants in this experiment found the lads' mags quotes more offensive.
Dr Miranda Horvath and Dr Peter Hegarty, who led the research, warned that lads' mags contributed to the normalisation of hostile sexism by packaging their anti-women material as a bit of harmless fun.
Ms Horvath said: "Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on or want sex even when they say No.
"We are concerned that the legitimisation strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated."
From February, many major supermarket chains and petrol stations across Britain have agreed to place lads' mags on the top shelf - out of the eye line of children.
But Ms Horvath said that this was not enough to address "the influence they have on their intended audience of young men and the women with whom those men socialise."
Mr Hegarty warned: "There is a fundamental concern that the content of such magazines normalises the treatment of women as sexual objects."
And Anna van Heeswijk of the women's rights group Object said that if ministers are serious about tackling violence against women they must tackle the associated attitudes peddled in the media.
"The Leveson inquiry is currently looking into the culture and ethics of the press. These disturbing findings unequivocally demonstrate the need for the portrayal of women to be included in the remit of this inquiry," she said.
Friday December 9, 2011
The Morning Star
Experts warned today that so-called lads' mags are legitimising hostile sexist attitudes among men.
Researchers found that when presented with descriptions of women taken from the publications and comments about women made by convicted rapists, most of those surveyed could not distinguish the source of the quotes.
The study of men aged between 18 and 46 showed that the majority identified themselves more with the language expressed by the convicted rapists when they did not know the source.
The psychologists from Middlesex University and the University of Surrey also polled a separate group of women and men aged between 19 and 30 to rank the quotes on how derogatory they were, without revealing the sources.
To their surprise, most of the participants in this experiment found the lads' mags quotes more offensive.
Dr Miranda Horvath and Dr Peter Hegarty, who led the research, warned that lads' mags contributed to the normalisation of hostile sexism by packaging their anti-women material as a bit of harmless fun.
Ms Horvath said: "Rapists try to justify their actions, suggesting that women lead men on or want sex even when they say No.
"We are concerned that the legitimisation strategies that rapists deploy when they talk about women are more familiar to these young men than we had anticipated."
From February, many major supermarket chains and petrol stations across Britain have agreed to place lads' mags on the top shelf - out of the eye line of children.
But Ms Horvath said that this was not enough to address "the influence they have on their intended audience of young men and the women with whom those men socialise."
Mr Hegarty warned: "There is a fundamental concern that the content of such magazines normalises the treatment of women as sexual objects."
And Anna van Heeswijk of the women's rights group Object said that if ministers are serious about tackling violence against women they must tackle the associated attitudes peddled in the media.
"The Leveson inquiry is currently looking into the culture and ethics of the press. These disturbing findings unequivocally demonstrate the need for the portrayal of women to be included in the remit of this inquiry," she said.
Robbing the poor to protect the rich
Louise Nousratpour
Friday December 2, 2011
The Morning Star
More than a million women took part in last week's historic strike against the government's great pension robbery.
Virtually every cut that has been announced by the Con-Dem government has hit women hardest.
Labour says that more than 70 per cent of the latest £2.37billion cuts announced in the Chancellor's Autumn Statement last week will come from women workers, who form the majority of public sector workforce and are more likely to work in low-paid and part-time jobs.
The proposed public sector pension changes, which sparked Wednesday's biggest strike in a generation, will also discriminate against women.
"We are clearly being scapegoated," says civil servant Mandy who is minding a PCS picket line near London Bridge.
Reluctant to give her full name, she describes George Osborne's decision to cap her pay at 1 per cent as "a disgrace" and rejects claims that it is a necessary step to help mend the economy.
"How has our current two-year pay freeze helped the recovery when we are heading for another double-dip recession?" she asks.
Mandy says she decided to take action after realising that soon she could not only lose her pension but also her job, referring to the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) revised forecast that 710,000 public sector jobs will go by 2017.
"A friend of mine works in care. She doesn't earn much money at all but, like me, she decided to strike for the first time in her life because she was so outraged," Mandy says.
"I have been paying into my current pension for six years. I could lose a substantial amount of that money if the changes go through."
Around 3.7 million women like Mandy will be affected by the changes - a staggering one in four of all working women in Britain.
Even under the current scheme the average pension for a public sector male worker is just £4,000 a year after a lifetime of service. This is reduced to £2,500 for his female colleague.
"Hardly gold plated, is it?" says a Greater London Authority (GLA) worker who does not wish to give her name.
She has joined a well-attended and lively Unison picket outside mayor Boris Johnson's offices at City Hall.
Only 10 per cent of the workforce are crossing the picket. Many of them look visibly ashamed with some whispering "sorry" before slipping past well-mannered, smiling Unision members who urge them to join the action.
The GLA worker says government plans to make people like her pay hundreds of pounds more a year in contribution for lower pension is "nothing more than a stealth tax" to pay off the deficit.
"I will have to pay £600 more a year and not a penny of it will go towards my final pension," she says.
"Ministers say it's unfair for taxpayers to foot our pension bill but we are the taxpayer and we already pay a chunk of our income towards our own retirement. We are not asking for handouts - just what's owed to us."
Unison regional secretary Linda Perks, who is visiting the City Hall picket, is excited about how successful the day has turned out to be.
She says the union, which has more than a million women members, has been inundated with membership applications since the pensions dispute began.
"In the London region we recruited over 800 new members last week alone," Perks adds.
Unison has reported a 126 per cent jump in applications in recent weeks - around 80 per cent of them women.
"This means pensions are a burning issue for women in particular," Perks says. "It's not that long ago women didn't see themselves as full-time workers and didn't even consider joining the scheme.
"But many have now joined, which means their living standards are above the poverty line when they retire and they're not dependent upon their children or relatives to maintain a reasonable standard of living."
Perks is worried that the changes will plunge more women into pensions poverty and turn back the clock on their relative economic independence.
"We fear that proposals to increase contributions by up to 50 per cent will lead to many leaving the scheme and new starters won't join because the extra tax on their income is simply unaffordable," she warns.
"The scheme itself is in danger of collapsing altogether, which means people will have to rely on state pension and means-tested benefits, pushing their retirement pay below the poverty line again."
Perks warns that, if the scheme collapses, it will also be bad for the economy.
"The health pension scheme produces a profit of £2bn a year which goes straight back into the Treasury. The local government scheme, which is an invested scheme, produces between £4bn and £5bn a year in profits - that keeps the stock exchange going.
"So if that scheme goes, billions of pounds will just vanish from the money markets and affect the economy quite badly."
Perks believe that the success of the strike will strengthen workers in their resolve to fight the cuts and this government.
"For many today is the first time they've ever come out on strike. This is going to change and strengthen the trade union movement because the experience of going on strike and the sense of solidarity that is part of such action is very powerful, even life-changing.
"We obviously don't want to have to organise more strikes around this particular issue.
"But if the government won't move, we'll have to consider it."
Friday December 2, 2011
The Morning Star
More than a million women took part in last week's historic strike against the government's great pension robbery.
Virtually every cut that has been announced by the Con-Dem government has hit women hardest.
Labour says that more than 70 per cent of the latest £2.37billion cuts announced in the Chancellor's Autumn Statement last week will come from women workers, who form the majority of public sector workforce and are more likely to work in low-paid and part-time jobs.
The proposed public sector pension changes, which sparked Wednesday's biggest strike in a generation, will also discriminate against women.
"We are clearly being scapegoated," says civil servant Mandy who is minding a PCS picket line near London Bridge.
Reluctant to give her full name, she describes George Osborne's decision to cap her pay at 1 per cent as "a disgrace" and rejects claims that it is a necessary step to help mend the economy.
"How has our current two-year pay freeze helped the recovery when we are heading for another double-dip recession?" she asks.
Mandy says she decided to take action after realising that soon she could not only lose her pension but also her job, referring to the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) revised forecast that 710,000 public sector jobs will go by 2017.
"A friend of mine works in care. She doesn't earn much money at all but, like me, she decided to strike for the first time in her life because she was so outraged," Mandy says.
"I have been paying into my current pension for six years. I could lose a substantial amount of that money if the changes go through."
Around 3.7 million women like Mandy will be affected by the changes - a staggering one in four of all working women in Britain.
Even under the current scheme the average pension for a public sector male worker is just £4,000 a year after a lifetime of service. This is reduced to £2,500 for his female colleague.
"Hardly gold plated, is it?" says a Greater London Authority (GLA) worker who does not wish to give her name.
She has joined a well-attended and lively Unison picket outside mayor Boris Johnson's offices at City Hall.
Only 10 per cent of the workforce are crossing the picket. Many of them look visibly ashamed with some whispering "sorry" before slipping past well-mannered, smiling Unision members who urge them to join the action.
The GLA worker says government plans to make people like her pay hundreds of pounds more a year in contribution for lower pension is "nothing more than a stealth tax" to pay off the deficit.
"I will have to pay £600 more a year and not a penny of it will go towards my final pension," she says.
"Ministers say it's unfair for taxpayers to foot our pension bill but we are the taxpayer and we already pay a chunk of our income towards our own retirement. We are not asking for handouts - just what's owed to us."
Unison regional secretary Linda Perks, who is visiting the City Hall picket, is excited about how successful the day has turned out to be.
She says the union, which has more than a million women members, has been inundated with membership applications since the pensions dispute began.
"In the London region we recruited over 800 new members last week alone," Perks adds.
Unison has reported a 126 per cent jump in applications in recent weeks - around 80 per cent of them women.
"This means pensions are a burning issue for women in particular," Perks says. "It's not that long ago women didn't see themselves as full-time workers and didn't even consider joining the scheme.
"But many have now joined, which means their living standards are above the poverty line when they retire and they're not dependent upon their children or relatives to maintain a reasonable standard of living."
Perks is worried that the changes will plunge more women into pensions poverty and turn back the clock on their relative economic independence.
"We fear that proposals to increase contributions by up to 50 per cent will lead to many leaving the scheme and new starters won't join because the extra tax on their income is simply unaffordable," she warns.
"The scheme itself is in danger of collapsing altogether, which means people will have to rely on state pension and means-tested benefits, pushing their retirement pay below the poverty line again."
Perks warns that, if the scheme collapses, it will also be bad for the economy.
"The health pension scheme produces a profit of £2bn a year which goes straight back into the Treasury. The local government scheme, which is an invested scheme, produces between £4bn and £5bn a year in profits - that keeps the stock exchange going.
"So if that scheme goes, billions of pounds will just vanish from the money markets and affect the economy quite badly."
Perks believe that the success of the strike will strengthen workers in their resolve to fight the cuts and this government.
"For many today is the first time they've ever come out on strike. This is going to change and strengthen the trade union movement because the experience of going on strike and the sense of solidarity that is part of such action is very powerful, even life-changing.
"We obviously don't want to have to organise more strikes around this particular issue.
"But if the government won't move, we'll have to consider it."
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