Catching up on reading some book reviews and I've been reminded of an extraordinary book I read some years ago called The Natural Way Of Things by Charlotte Wood. It's bleak, terrifying but fiercely feminist, picking apart the brutality of patriarchy to examine externalised and internalised misogyny. If you choose to read it, the words "she's gone to the fence" will stay with you for a long time.
No country in the world affords women the same opportunities as men in the workforce. 😡
Childcare & safety issues particularly affected women’s ability to work. Violence could physically prevent them from going to work, and childcare costs could make it prohibitive.
Closing this gap could raise global gross domestic product by more than 20% – essentially doubling the global growth rate over the next decade.
Today in Labor History March 18, 1871: The Paris Commune began on this date. It started with resistance to occupying German troops and the power of the bourgeoisie. They governed from a feminist and anarcho-communist perspective, abolishing rent and child labor, and giving workers the right to take over workplaces abandoned by the owners. The revolutionaries took control of Paris and held on to it for two months, until it was brutally suppressed. During Semaine Sanglante, the nationalist forces slaughtered 15,000-20,000 Communards. Hundreds more were tried and executed or deported.
Coming out next month, "Constellations of Care: Anarcha-Feminism in Practice" is available for pre-order at a discount for the rest of March!
Edited by @cbmilstein, and to which I contributed a translation and an interview, the anthology is a heartfelt and powerful collection of texts and images examining forms of relations outside of the state, capitalism, and patriarchy. International in scope, it offers examples and insights of anarcha-feminist initiatives, theories, and practices that provide glimmers of hope during this horrific times.
Pilita Clark (FT) shares some depressing data on the global perception of the progress of equality for women... it seems that majority of the world's population think it has gone far enough.
As Clark concludes:
'The more evidence we see of hardening attitudes, the more work we need to do to understand why. Because one thing is certain: female inequality is still very real and the already long effort to overturn it still has much further to go'!
I've finished: A Spindle Splintered by Alex E. Harrow
A Spindle Splintered has all the right elements, examining the sleeping beauty archetype in folklore through a feminist lens. Connecting the dying princess story to that of a contemporary terminally ill girl.
So why didn't I enjoy it? The writing is clunky, there is hardly any challenge, Zinnia can just walls into a mediaeval castle and do as she pleases. All she needs is attitude. The opposition is ludicrously inept or turns out to be on her side.
I recommend reading: Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir instead.
Today in Labor History March 14, 1954: Salt of the Earth premiered. The film depicted the 1951 strike of Mexican-American workers at the Empire Zinc mine, in New Mexico. The film was one of the first to portray a feminist political point of view, particularly through Actress Rosaura Revueltas’s role as Esperanza Quintero. When the Company uses the new Taft-Hartley Act (which also bans General Strikes) to impose an injunction preventing the men from picketing, their wives go walk the picket line in their places. LGBTQ and labor activist Will Geer also played in the film. Writer Michael Wilson, director Herbert Biberman and producer Paul Jarrico had all been blacklisted for their alleged communist ties. Only 13 of the 13,000 theaters in the U.S. showed the film.
Building a #business solo is no easy feat, and doing it full-time successfully is even tougher. But Priyanca Rao not only immigrated to the U.S. from India but built a sustainable business that is thriving today – and now she’s focusing the lens on other #FemaleEntrepreneurs.
Cursed with clairvoyance, only Andra knows that the end is near for her employer and his traveling show. Can she save her costars? Can she even save herself?
Only if she can learn in time that not everything is what it seems.
Just finished reading the will to change by bell hooks as part of my long overdue introduction to #feminism.
Oh boy, if that book was written today I would regard it as an optimistic call to action. But is has been published 20 years ago, and with the manosphere in mind, and politics of strongmen ahead, it sure seems like we stagnated.
Women’s liberation mustn’t stop at either side of the Gaza fence
Feminist principles compel us to stand with both the Palestinian women being slaughtered in Gaza and the Israeli women testifying about sexual violence.
So, the Irish have rejected proposals to change the constitution to recognise a more pluralistic definition of marriage & shift the definition of caring to not include women's 'life within the home' opening up a better constitutional recognisant of gender equity.
So, looks like the Irish progressives have over-reached themselves thinking they would be able to shift the dial on Irish conservatism.