By Dawna Perry “Human sperm cells were seen with the earliest microscopes in the seventeenth century. The human egg is several thousand times larger, but — despite earlier postulates — it was not visualized until 1827. […] For something to be found, it must first be imagined and sought.” (Duffin, Jacalyn. A History of Medicine, (Toronto,…
Category: Blogposts
Women in academia… it’s really all about how you dress
By Rachel Handforth This week has seen a particularly depressing image circulating on my Facebook news feed. For those of you fortunate enough to have missed it, here it is. As well as finding it offensive because of its blatant objectification, I find it personally incredibly disheartening. There’s so much written about women in the media that…
50 shades of sexism in the academy
By Dr Anna Notaro In a blog post entitled We have come a long way but…, Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University with an interest in matters of equality and diversity, while recognising the success of the Athena project launched back in 1999 and of the Athena Swan Charter, also acknowledges how too many departments still…
Let’s stand together, sisters
By Annabel Lenton “What are you laughing at?” my friend Dave asks as I put my phone back down on the table. “Oh, it's just some feminists trolling me on Twitter again,” I tell him. “Yesterday I was getting abuse for being too feminist, today it's that I'm not feminist enough”. I laugh, but in…
On Sex ‘Work’
By Basak Tanulku As a person who lives in Istanbul, Turkey, I am very familiar with news of violence on women, usually as a consequence of a male-dominated society. However, in this piece, I do not want to discuss the reasons behind violence towards women. Rather, I would like to discuss the reasons behind the…
UKIP uses women’s rights as a trojan horse to attack minorities
By Rainbow Murray UKIP has published a series of measures that it claims will help women, entitled Believing in Britain, Believing in Britain’s Women. On the face of it, the document is a pleasant surprise, given UKIP’s poor reputation when it comes to women’s rights. Its proposals look promising, such as a repeal of…
Taboo Subjects
By Robyn Nichol Women’s bodies have always been policed in society. Our bodies are always presented as something that needs to be refined and improved, whether that’s through beauty products, dieting or exercise, and social taboos act as another form of policing. The taboo subjects that I am discussing are primarily in relation to cis…
Femicide: men kill women
By Yagmur Arica Özgecan Aslan, 20 years old, was a psychology student in Mersin, in the south of Turkey. She died as she was heading back home in a minibus, a very popular means of transport. The driver, after an attempted rape, killed her by stabbing her and beating her with an iron bar. Then,…
Teaching “one-way love” and coercion in school: High Horse’s Courting
By Elin Weiss In this piece, I will focus on the corecion and portrayal of traditional gender stereotypes in the text High Horses Courting, that I encountered in a classroom as teaching material for eight graders. In doing so I will use extraxts from the story to make my points (full text can be found…
Are men a “disadvantaged group” emasculated by women?
By Beth Cortese To commemorate the centenary of World War One and the efforts of women who worked in munitions factories (known as munitionettes or canaries), I wrote a play entitled ‘Canary in a Coal Mine.’ The play is split between scenes set in World War One and scenes set in a dystopian matriarchal future…