Saturday 9 June 2012

Women in politics

In looking at the Arab Spring and articles discussing the involvement of women I came across a piece in the Guardian about the involvement of women in recent Egyptian elections. It painted a depressing image about the options open to women. With no female presidential candidates and representation in the newly elected house standing at only 2.4% where is the female voice?

The spokeswoman for one of the leading parties, Dr Hassan, said that she saw no problem with low female involvement. Arguing that it should be left to the men to protest for their rights on behalf of the women. How can Egyptian women and female bloggers there, hope to improve their position in society if one of their key representatives does not see a problem with low involvement from half of the population?

The article also states that the UN average for the percentage of women within political bodies (houses/senates etc) within countries stands at 19%. Considerably less than 50%.
This Unicef link provides a good point of comparison. The figures are based on data from 1994. The IPU (Inter-Parliamentary Union) link shows current 2012 figures. This shows that Rwanda is top of the 'league' table with women constituting over 50% of the seats in Parliament. There are however, several nations at the bottom of the table with 0% representation for women. These not surprisingly include nations where women can not currently vote such as Saudi Arabia. The UK shares joint 54th with Malawi with just over 22% of MPs being female. Again, still considerably under 50%.

How can we hope to improve women's lives and their position within society if they do not have close to equal representation within their political systems? The next question must surely be, how can we boost and encourage greater involvement from and for women?


*The IPU link is excellent for seeing exactly where and how much representation women have in politics across the world. It provides some shocking examples that can not be ignored.

Saturday 2 June 2012

Women in computer games

Women in computer games, that age old discussion. In fact there is so much it is hard to even know where to begin. Do we start with the lack of female programmers (despite female gamers being on the rise)? Do we start with the way in which women are portrayed in many games? Do we start with the way in which for many young women computers and computer programming is seen as a male activity?

Before I start with women in games I want to look at those within the industry. There is a brilliant piece from Dev8D, which is a developer event, that looked at sexism in gaming. It identifies many of the frustrations, barriers and attitudes that women come across both at school and in the workplace. It is well worth a read as a starting point.

From there perhaps it makes sense to think about the way women are portrayed in games. I'm sure anyone reading this has seen or played Tomb Raider. With the main character being female n.b people automatically jump on feminists who talk about women in games and say 'but you've got Lara Croft, what more do you want?' Well perhaps we would like a strong female character (which Lara is) who did not have to conform to 'jiggle physics'. The piece on wikipedia in the previous link explores some fantastic examples of where women have been hugely let down by the gaming industry. The following Wikipedia (trigger link) link mentions a game called 'RapeLay' and I would urge you not to click this link lightly as the content and game description is distressing, unsettling and unpleasant. It has since been banned in many countries and on-line stores removed links to buying it. The game centres around a character(s) with the only purpose, seeming to be to stalk/hurt and then rape young women. I have not linked to this lightly and questioned whether I should but I was horrified to come across this game having never heard of it. But, I felt that people should be aware that there are people producing/who have produced this violent and vile material. We need to look at how games like this were ever produced and then how we can stop this from happening again.

It is games and stories like this that only further serve to explain why women make up 12% of the game programmers, the Guardian piece explores different reasons for this as women now make up 49% of gamers. This article also highlights the controversial Feminist Whore skill that could be picked up in a game to make a female character stronger. When the errant piece of labelling in released code was noticed it was removed but this does not remove the fact that a programmer placed it there. Perhaps this helps explain why game programming is an environment where only 12% of women feel comfortable or able to work. We risk missing a huge skill set and alienating half the population if we do not look at redressing the balance.

The Jubilee

Today marks the start of the four day weekend celebrations of 60 years on the throne. The reason I am choosing to blog about this event is not just from a feminist point of view, it is also from a frustrated Republican point of view. Walking down our local high street for the last couple of weeks every shop window has been slowly taken over by flag/monarchy related items. Including some unusual choices such as an accountants!

From a frustrated Republican point of view it marks another barrier to true equality in Britain, it also marks the fact that the church will never be separate from power as our head of state is also the head of the church. How then can we work towards a true secular society in which all are free to practice what they believe? Republic put it so much better than I could ever hope to and their site is well worth a read. In particular the information about how schools should be expected to behave during this period. An article in The TES also points out that schools would be violating sections 406 and 407 of the Education act 1996 if they do not present a balanced view about the monarchy.

This is where it gets interesting as you could argue that language such as 'glorious 60 years' as seen in many news articles (and no doubt on tea-towels and heard in conversations across the country) such as this one in the Daily Mail is not presenting a balanced view. Why should they? Much in the same way that I blog from my point of view, they write from theirs. But, what schools and educationalists will need to have thought about is how they use language to present this event. If you delivered material about the 60 glorious years it could be argued that you were presenting only one way to view the reign of the queen. If you read the earlier TES linked article you will note that this is an issue that seems to divide teachers.

Finally, to get to the feminist point of view perhaps. It took until late 2011 to end primogeniture in Great Britain, see here for a piece about this, that is 59 years in which our monarch reigned under a system that discriminated against first-borns within the royal lineage if they were female. A bizarre rule that perhaps harks back to a period in which women could not inherit property or have power over divorce. As a Republican I find myself questioning whether our monarch could have done more to end this sooner.