WomenBeing: International Feminist Perspectives Magazine (Issue 1)

International Feminist Perspectives

Twice vulnerable: disability discrimination Disobeying borders: Mexican mothers resist Cultural crucibles: education as equaliser

ISSUE 1

November 2019

WOMEN WORK AND ACTIVISM

Dear Reader

illustration by Marta Nunes

This project was born from a period of difficulties in my life. After experiencing harassment at work and years of abuse in a relationship, my confidence and self-esteem were damaged. I couldn’t see a way forward apart from leaving where I was born, changing the country where I lived to find a place I could feel safe and reset. I arrived in Scotland in the spring of 2014. After just a couple of months, I began to settle, to feel connected. So many of the people I’ve met here have helped me to recover and realign with myself, they’ve helped me believe in my potential and my passionate ability to create. And even when I’ve met people who’ve represented affirmation in less easy terms, they too have fuelled my aim to help others with what I know how to do.

It took longer to find where to fit WomenBeing with my relocation and to understand how I could apply my knowledge and skills to help women in need. Then, the first edition of the WomenBeing Conference took place in Edinburgh at the end of 2017, and I understood our work had arrived at an important waypoint. Delegates attended from 33 countries and more than 1,000 people watched talks from the conference online.

After the event, participants went back to their homes and work, keeping in touch, pushing forward again in everyday life. For me, that brought new awareness – outside of the wonder of the conference something was now missing. We couldn’t spend two days immersed in what people all over the world

were doing to improve women’s lives, to promote equality where they live, then park it till next time.

There were so many inspiring women at the conference, speaking, listening, or both, all held in each other’s light. We needed something else to share what we were living and learning.

And now here is that something - the first WomenBeing, a magazine of international feminist perspectives.

Our magazine and conference have contributors across six continents in the world and people from 55 countries read our blog. Apart from being an alternative to mainstream women’s magazines and a connection to lived change in intersectional equalities between conferences, we aim to support women from developing countries researching or working in fields related to women’s rights, struggling to make their voices heard internationally. This is why 50% of the profits of WomenBeing will fund the creation of fellowships for these women.

By subscribing to WomenBeing, you will be tangibly strengthening the knowledge, education, and capacitybuilding of people doing work which deals with issues affecting the lives of women everywhere.

This first issue of WomenBeing includes research, stories, interviews and poetry by worldwide change-makers. It’ll introduce you to people in small ethical businesses, artists from the other side of the pond, social workers, researchers, activists. A variety of people we know will inspire you because in seeing others we see ourselves and our unique mission more clearly too.

Without the support of the people who’ve helped the growth of WomenBeing, this new waypoint couldn’t be a reality.

Here I must deeply credit my sister, who was one of the inspirations for this social mission of understanding and creating collaboration between women’s lives.

Susana lives in my hometown and has struggled with chronic depression since her teens, dropping out of school when it became too much to bear. She has five children, my adorable nephews, and huge challenges with staying in work. This year she and I invested some time in her education and wellbeing, making interventions for the short and long term. She is now certified in nail art, and is embarking on the first year of undergraduate study in Social Work, in Portugal. She too is WomenBeing.

So here’s to a next step, taken together by all of us in sisterhood. Thank you for reading WomenBeing.

Together, we will create the WomenBeing fellowships.

We will promote international collaboration between researchers and workers from developing countries and Scotland by providing opportunities to publish with us, build skills and expertise, and create a network for research collaborations.

MÓnica Martins

Editor-in-Chief and Managing Director

Editor-in-Chief Monica Martins Editorial Directors Belen Gonzalez Leggire Mairead Gardner Sub Editor Mairead Gardner Heather Pearson

Artists and Photographers Kat Dlugosz www.katdlugosz.com Camila Cavalcante www.camilacavalcante.com Marta Nunes www.cargocollective.com/mnarq Chris Relvas Ida Henrich www.idahenrich.com

Creative Director Narcisa Gambier www.narcisagambier.com

Narcisa Gambier www.narcisagambier.com

Associate Editors Claire Seaman

Camille Vincent

Chantal Mrimi

Lorena Sequeyro www.lsmm-blog.tumblr.co Ânia Ferreira

Kat Dlugosz www.katdlugosz.com

Special Thanks to Maria Garcia Tena

Heather Pearson

Aneshka Pelowska

Cover illustration Narcisa Gambier www.narcisagambier.com Contributors Anne Meilke Binita Behera Clarissa Motter Florance Dravet

Katerina Koukousianou Heather Pearson Maria João Medeiros Aoife Lane Nuria Pampin David Tynan Paolo Drusi Antero Duarte

Luana Rosback

Xabi Villares Camille Vincent

Camila Cavalcante www.camilacavalcante.com

Ânia Ferreira

Cassandra Harrison www.cassandraharrison.co.uk

Ellen Desmond

Chantal Mrimi Federica Bressan Lily Settari

Gloria Rodriguez Gonzalez Baby Arlo Gardner All the contributors, and everyone who supports WomenBeing.

Lisa Buchanan Lorena Sequeyro www.lsmm-blog.tumblr.com M.W. Kurchik Mar Felices www.iberodocs.org Belen Gonzalez Leggire Morag Smith Marie-Anne Marten www.beetrootsauvage.co.uk Sonali Mohapatra www.sonalimohapatra.in Mussenge Musomali www.lihef.org Regine Graml Lorraine Weston www.simplyenglishedinburgh.com Trishna Singh OBE Yvette Basson Vicki White Anna Christopherson

The opinion and views expressed in each article are the opinions of its authors and interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of WomenBeing Magazine and its editorial members. Therefore, WomenBeing Magazine carries no responsibility for the opinions expressed thereon.

You may not publish, display, disclose, lease, modify, loan, distribute, or create derivative works based on the magazine contents or any part thereof, whether by yourself or as a consultant, employee, partner or in any other role without the written permission of the publisher.

WomenBeing is a trademarked company; all rights reserved by the publisher.

illustration by Marta Nunes

International Feminist Perspectives www.womenbeing.co.uk

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womenbeingmag

Chantal Mrimi interview

My Silence

Sonali Mohapatra

17

08

From helping hand to leading light Trishna Singh OBE

History

Morag Smith

21

18

Abortion legislation in Latin America Belen Gonzalez Leggire

26 30 32

What's

Nothing happens in one day

22

Telling their stories Camila Cavalcante

A closet slut

Sonali Mohapatra

Lunchtime Activism Lily Settari

Art as a service, as a way to process life and feelings Cassandra Harrison

Screen dreams Mar Felices

44 48

38

The Puppet Master Sonali Mohapatra

Speaking out and being seen: Stories of fertility treatment from professional women Lisa Buchanan Disobeying Borders: Central American mothers looking for their lost children Belen Gonzalez Leggire

50 56 60

Business the natural way: Nourishing the community Marie-Anne Marten

Taking on Taboos Musenge Musomali

66

Inside

72

Sonali Mohapatra

Twice vulnerable: how women with disabilities face double discrimination Yvette Basson

76

94 103

71

Oh darling! What did they tell you

86

75

A Woman Remembered

Morag Smith

Supporting women’s enterprise in Scotland Anne Meikle

80

Conversation starters Lorraine Weston

85

Disobedience

Morag Smith

Life patterns of female and male executives with children Prof. Dr. Regine Graml

Sempreviva Coletivo Feminista: The collective brilliance of women’s wisdom in Brazilian entrepreneurship Clarissa Motter, Florance Dravet and Luana Rosback

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Women in the cultural crucible of India Dr Binita Behera

The integration of gender analysis in interdisciplinary research: Challenges and solutions of a project on multimedia heritage Federica Bressan

122

112

When tomboys grow up: women working in the technology sector M.W. Kurchik

116

Transforming realities Lorena Sequero

Statues and why unicorns on girls’ clothing is no joke: Are we blind to urban messages that still inhibit female empowerment? Vicki White

127 128

Human Gravid Uterus Speaks

Morag Smith

When Edinburgh met Sweden Anna Christopherson

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TRIGGER WARNING VIOLENCE, WAR, RAPE

photography by Carolyn Scott

As if Chantal Mrimi wasn’t busy enough working and looking after her two children, she also found time to lead community projects supporting women and girls in Rwanda. Chantal sits down with Belen Gonzalez Leggire to talk about her life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Scotland, her charity work and her views on Rwanda past and present.

Nothing happens in one day Chantal, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Although I’m from Rwanda, I was actually born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and I’ve now been living here in Scotland for 20 years.

My parents are Rwandan and they’d travelled to DRC (which was Zaire at the time) as refugees because of the Rwandan massacre that took place between 1959 and 1961. So I was born to refugee parents in refugee conditions. We were brought up as Rwandan but I also picked up a lot of the Congolese language. People often ask me how I can speak five languages, but I grew up around many languages, it was so normal. There were a lot of Rwandan refugees in the DRC, Uganda and other countries surrounding Rwanda as a result of the 1959 massacre, which led to the war in 1994.

So I could say I am originally from Rwanda because I feel Rwandan, I carry the Rwandan genes and the Rwandan culture because my parents made sure that we understood who we were - but also the Congolese made sure that we understood who we were, because we were considered refugees and stateless. I’d say I come from both countries.

Your family is Tutsi and according to what I’ve been reading, Hutus burned your family residence and killed many of your friends and relatives back in the 50s.

That’s right. My father was born in 1939 so he would’ve been around 20 when the 1959 conflict erupted. He’d just finished his teaching qualifications so he was teaching in the primary school in eastern Rwanda. He had to run for his life because they were after Tutsi men, especially educated men as they considered them more of a threat in terms of ideas. They lost everything.

So did my mom’s family as well. However, there’s an18 year age difference between

my mom and my dad, so my mom was a toddler and doesn’t remember much of the 1959 conflict. She grew up in a refugee camp in the Congolese forest, that’s how they survived. My mom told me that her parents lost everything they had, including some of their family - my grandad lost some of his brothers during those massacres. They went to DRC with nothing and were just given part of the jungle, and told: “Here are some seeds, here’s some food to keep you for a month and that’s it, you’re on your own”. That lack of food also killed a lot of Tutsi people - the UN food supplies ran out and those who survived went on to become the generation, like myself, who wanted to go back to Rwanda because we were stateless for over 30 years.

We didn’t have our own territory, and also don’t forget that the refugees numbers grew as Tutsis ran away to DRC, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya - basically any country surrounding Rwanda had refugees and their children. Our president today, Paul Kagame, ran away as a toddler. He grew up asking, as we were all asking our parents, why couldn’t we go back, why are the people where we’re living not accepting us and always treating us like people from outside, why don’t we have the same rights and the same access to services? Basically we were second-rate citizens because we had no nationality, no rights. Our parents would explain that we couldn’t go back because the Hutus were in power and they didn’t want us back.

But the thing is not every Tutsi ran away.

Some stayed in Rwanda and survived - they also grew in number. So you had this dynamic where you have the Tutsis in Rwanda who were taken hostage during the genocide and killed, because the Hutu government said that if the Tutsis from outside were to force their way into Rwanda, they were just going to kill the Tutsis inside the country. That created a very complex dynamic, a very hostile environment.

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The Hutu, Twa and Tutsi are commonly called ethnic groups, but is this misleading?

I grew up thinking they were ethnic groups, but there’s evidence now that if you had up to ten cows, you were considered Tutsi and were considered a chief, and if you had one cow, you were Hutu and you worked the land. Rwanda was a more agricultural society.

However it does seem like it was ethnographic at the beginning - there’s also lots of evidence by anthropologists and historians who are really putting Rwandan history under the spotlight, saying that the Tutsis are believed to have descended from the Nilotic people who come from the areas around Ethiopia, Somalia. So the Tutsis were nomadic people who travelled with their cattle hundreds of years ago. The Hutus were the original settlers, after the Pigmeos. They were an agricultural people, they knew the land well and grew food from the land.

Perhaps in those days you could say they were ethnic groups because the Tutsis found the Hutus when they settled in Rwanda many many hundreds of years ago, seeking grass for their cattle - but as time went by they all became so mixed that it evolved into a ‘caste system’, as you call it, which became a social and political classification. There were systems of checks and balances, where you had Hutus who were chiefs and were respected for that, and then you had the overall royal family that came from the Tutsis. So Tutsis who were poor without cattle were just the same as Hutus.

The system worked perfectly well.

It’s when the colonisers - the Belgians -came, it became all about ethnicity. They planted seeds of division, dismantling the existing system with a system based on a western simplification of society which was defined by racial characteristics. At that time the idea of eugenics was rife in Europe, they believed that some races are superior than others, and they brought this idea to Rwanda.

They said because Tutsis look a certain way, because their noses are a certain shape... they measured people’s noses and if your nose was a certain length, they considered you Tutsi and superior. If your nose was maybe flat, or you look a little like African Bantu peoples, you were Hutu. And based on this unfounded way of dividing people, they provided identity cards. What kind of crazy ideas are these?

It really gets to me, the way the Belgians did things, this boxing of features, human characteristics - the idea that a certain person when they looked in a certain way they belonged to a superior class.

Before that, there was more of a group 10

mentality and an understanding that people need to work together. For example, if there was a group of farmers, they could share their produce, or could exchange crops for a cow so the children had milk. This interdependence between groups was really profound in Rwandan society, nobody believed that they could live without the other. Only the king and the royal family were considered divine creatures. Everyone came together if there was an outside enemy, like if another kingdom like Tanganyika or Tanzania attacked Rwanda.

Hutus and Tutsis had lived together for centuries, which meant that they’ve even intermarried, even today you can’t really tell who is Hutu or Tutsi. It’s like asking a Scottish person who’s the Highlander and who’s the Fifer, based on what they look like. Or can you tell someone who’s from Edinburgh from someone who’s from Inverness? It was crazy, but that’s what the colonisers did.

Can you briefly explain the origins of the Rwandan genocide?

Nothing happens in one day - there are always historic contexts that lead to a genocide like we experienced in Rwanda.

I want to be clear that this is my personal experience and point of view. This is from my personal story, a story that my ancestors passed to my parents, my grandparents, and it’s what I’ve heard from our elders. I’ve also grown and developed a certain way of understanding history.

The truth is we need to take ownership of what happened in Rwanda - I’m one of the people who advocates for the idea of owning the conflict and saying “at the end of the day, we picked up the machetes, we took those guns and shot those people, we made those choices for what happened to my people”.

The Tutsi people aren’t exactly innocent in all of this - they were considered the ruling class when they were removed from power by the Hutu uprising in the 50s. The more you begin to read and understand history you begin to realise that it’s all interlinked. The massacres in the 50s and in 1994 were horrendous but I advocate for the idea of taking responsibility, of looking inside and asking what role the Tutsi played and what role the Hutus played.

However, you cannot look at the conflict between Hutus and Tutsis without talking about colonisation.

Those seeds of division that the colonisers planted were very detrimental because they made the Tutsis think - and act - like they were superior. The previous systems of checks and

balances said that if you’d acquired a certain wealth, you had a certain level of responsibility.

It really should be like that - the more wealth you acquire the more responsibilities you have towards society, so that you can make society better. But the colonisers came and said no, Tutsis have better genes because they look this way, so even a Tutsi without wealth thought they were superior than a Hutu who had wealth. Those are the dangers when people use classification without responsibility, and that’s what led to the genocide in 1994.

Were you living in Rwanda during the genocide in 1994?

No, I lived in DRC. On 6 April 1994, President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, and on 7 April they put soldiers on every block and started the killing of Tutsis, and moderate Hutus.

The Tutsis that belonged to the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had been planning to attack Rwanda from Uganda so that we could all go back. I was 15 in the 90s when the RPF decided to attack. The RPF are Tutsi refugees who decided that if they couldn’t go back in peace, they would attack and return by force.

There were almost hundreds of thousands refugees and our conditions in the DRC and Uganda were horrendous. Not only did we not have a sense of where we belonged, but we weren’t entitled to basic things like food, access to healthcare and education. We had extended family in Rwanda, especially on my father’s side, but sadly I never got to meet them. We weren’t even allowed to go back to Rwanda on holiday - as soon as you landed or you got to the border, you could get arrested.

These are some of the reasons why the Tutsis wanted to come back home.

So when the Tutsis came together in Uganda and said “we need to have a home”, they mobilised all of us. I was young, but I remember my parents telling us “this is our chance to go back to Rwanda” so I became a bit involved in terms of fundraising. We were all quite involved. I remember when they shot the plane - my father was listening to the news, and the celebration among the Tutsis in the DRC was because “yes, we get to go back...” We didn’t realise they’d been planning this...

We went back to Rwanda after the genocide because the Hutus who killed Tutsis in Rwanda came to the DRC and began to kill more Tutsis, so the conflict extended to the DRC. I lost a couple of friends who were from a Tutsi background, we grew up together. For us, it was a question of where we choose to die

- so let’s go and die in Rwanda, where we’ve been longing to be for 30 years at least, that’s what we all said.That’s when we chose to set our foot in the country. That’s the complexity of that region.

Apart from the conflict, how would you describe the life of a young woman in that context?

Oh wow, where do I start!

I’ll start with the positive: my father was a teacher, he planted the seeds of education. He did so at a time when girls were not a priority to receive any kind of education - if you had the possibility, people chose to pay school fees for boys, rather than girls. My father refused that. My father must have been a visionary, because he realised that if you educate women or girls, it can actually be far better for the community. Sometimes I think he told himself to go against society and norms in the DRC. He thought that as long as the child is bright, it doesn’t matter their gender. So I was lucky I had a dad like that.

I was also lucky in the sense that I’m a quick learner, I pick up complex concepts quickly and my father saw than in me at a young age, so he encouraged me. I first learned to read and write because my father was in love with French concepts and French philosophers. He taught me the French alphabet when I was a child, using a piece of stone on the ground because we couldn’t afford a dictionary, but he was determined.

Then I was picked up by scholarships, and I went from this slum area we lived in to a good school with people from privileged backgrounds. Life was ok until the 80s, I would’ve been maybe ten when things began to get tough. The DRC was badly run - my dad would work, but now it could be 14 months without his salary, and they wouldn’t even give him and allotment to grow his own food because he was a Rwandan refugee so wasn’t entitled to this.

So from a young age, and as the firstborn in my family, I took it upon myself to help my mom and dad to help to feed my siblings (and feed myself). I did what most girls do in Africa who are in a similar situation - you use your body. From a young age you’re introduced to horrendous things when men in power, men with money, will say “before you get food, I want you to do this,” and you think “well... I’m going to die of starvation or illness anyway, or I’ll have to watch my young brother or sister die because my mom and dad can’t provide for them”.

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What do you do? You are only 15, you don’t even know what the world is, and someone like that offers you a sack of money, or a sack of rice to feed my family, but with a condition...

I did what most young girls do at that time purely to survive, I took those offers. That’s the reality of sexual abuse - women’s bodies being used as a commodity to trade, as a weapon, you name it. In a nutshell, that’s how I survived.

I’m living with the consequences, and some of them I’ll take it to my grave. These are the sacrifices we have to make.

But as much as the damage and the sacrifice is all still there, I’m grateful for one thing along the path of my life I also met incredible men.

That’s why I want to balance my views. One of the incredible men is my father. Another example was an English man who gave me an invitation letter to help me come to Scotland.

He didn’t want anything in return, he just wanted to help someone. And when I came here I applied for asylum but my refugee status took a long time to come through. I went to see an MP, Henry McLeish [former First Minister of Scotland], and I told him I was waiting for my papers and wasn’t yet allowed to work or learn in this country. I asked him if he could write a letter to the Home Office, and he did it and didn’t want anything in return.

I’ve met incredible men, and if I have a voice today, is because there’s been men like that as well. I focus on not letting the abuse get to me, because if I keep going, I’ll meet good people.

That’s the balance I try to keep.

nine months which is something we should all revere. Some men feel that this threatens their position in society and they feel that you are competing with them, but in actual fact women want just to nurture them to be the best they can be.

Secondly, men who are fighting other men, consider that the worst sinful thing you can do to paralyse or destabilise your opponent is to rape their women. Because a man who kills a man on the battlefield, that’s just between them, so to get to their enemy and claim a victory, the man would ‘use’ the woman.

I believe that they use raping women as a weapon to dishonour the men.

But what they don’t realise is that in the act of raping a woman, they are destroying the their own fabric as a human being, not just dishonouring their opponent. I tell you, people who do commit those terrible crimes, they end up paying the highest price. Of course they destroy women, of course they destroy society, but you can’t have done that to a woman who could’ve been your mom, your sister, your grandmother, you can’t do that and be the same person. So I just don’t know why men in conflict just don’tkeep it between themselves, I’ll never understand that.

Today, places like Goma in North Kivu are some of the most dangerous places to be as woman. As we speak, women are being raped by the men belonging to various militia groups every second.

How do you rebuild your life after that?

The genocide in Rwanda and the Kosovo war were the precedent for international legislation regarding rape and sexual assault as a weapon of war. Why do you think rape played such a key role in the Rwandan genocide?

That’s a very profound question. I can only give you my personal opinion, which isn’t based on any research or anything, but is based on being an African woman who has lived through all sorts of situations. In fact I know a woman who was raped by several men during the genocide, and when her child was born they couldn’t tell them who the father was.

In my personal opinion, two things come to mind. Firstly, women throughout history have been in some civilizations and should be in all civilisations - revered, sacred creatures, because we carry humanity in our wombs for nine months. When a woman is pregnant, they no longer think about themselves, our hearts can pump and make this life survive for 12

I went through a different type of sexual abuse by men in power, but at least in most cases I chose to do it to survive, so there is a difference. But women who are raped during the war, they don’t have any choice. I met some of them, and as much as I felt sorry for myself, when I listen to their stories, when I spoke to women in villages - women who had survived the genocide, women that had mothered children out of rape - I understood that the consequences are horrible not just for the women you rape, but also for those children being born out of rape. Can you imagine the stigma around those precious little lives?

When did you decide to move and settle in Scotland?

In 1995, close to my 20th birthday, I got a job with a British Charity that helped to supply clean water. The person I reported to and

his wife, who was from Leven, Fife, they took care of the water distribution. Rwanda had a big problem with water after the genocide, because a million people were killed in 100 days - there was no time to bury the bodies, so we ended up with bodies in the water supply, in rivers, in reservoirs, everywhere. We had people dying of cholera, of contamination, because people were drinking contaminated water.

Some people call it the universe, some people call it God, but someone up there was looking after me and made the connection, so when the contract ended after two years, my boss and his wife said they wanted to take me to Scotland with them. The funny thing is that any young person growing up in my circumstances wanted to come to Europe, so much that they might take incredible risks. And although it was my dream, I never thought it would become true. Or even if I were to make it to Europe, I always thought that it would be Belgium or France, because that’s my background in terms of colonisation.

I knew nothing about the UK except London, because London is such a global city. I’d never heard of Scotland in my life - in fact when my boss’s wife began to tell me a little bit about Scotland (she spoke some French, that’s how we communicated) I even thought it was a small province. I used to think that!

When they explained more, I ended up coming here for a visit, back in 1997. I stayed for three months and I loved it, oh my god! It feels like yesterday! We went via Heathrow, and to put this in context, I’ve never been in a proper plane, I was so scared to even go to the toilet on the plane, thinking me and my weight would bring the plane down, and thinking I might die, it was just bizarre. And when we landed in Heathrow, I thought it was like a Hollywood movie. I didn’t think it was real, because I’ve never ever seen anything like it, except occasionally on TV. It was magical, and that feeling has never left me.

future, I should go back to Scotland, so I came back in 1999 and I’ve never looked back. I’m here, happy, settled, content, ready to give back to the world that has given me so much since then.

I try to go back and visit Rwanda every other year. The first time I came to the UK it took me about six years to go back to visit which was hard. In 2010 I took my boys there to live for six months, because they are both born here in Scotland and I wanted them to know their roots.

That’s when I set up the Rwanda Outreach Project, which is made up of several projects.

I worked with rural women to create these projects for them. I did a lot in six months and I’m really proud because some of the beneficiaries are doing extremely well. And Rwanda as a country is doing well.

What was the Rwanda Outreach Project about?

I brought a group of women together and we were able to access money in my community.

We travelled across Rwanda because I wanted to find a community that would respond positively to our investment, because at the end of the day, you can pump money and energy into projects but if you don’t have a receptive community then it’s useless.

On my first visit, my boss’s wife took me to the supermarkets. I remember seeing row upon row with bread, and food. Do you know the film “Alice in Wonderland”? It was a bit like that, and 20 years later it still is.

Unfortunately I had to go back after three months, because I didn’t have the right visa.

Then when I arrived in Africa, the embassy refused to grant me a visa, so I had to stay. Two years later, when I got pregnant with my first child, Rwanda was still in conflict - we were still being attacked by Hutus from the DRC. I said to myself that for my child to have a better 13

So I visited around 40 communities and finally I came across one that was a collection of about 20 villages. I listened to people, asked them questions, and it was clear that I could help the community realise their vision for the future.

One thing they desperately needed was family planning, which at that time it was a real problem. But while the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was building some incredible centers in Rwanda to encourage people to do some family planning and learn basic health and nutrition, I realised that while they were keen to use the centres, there were also mindset issues in terms of not fully understanding the family planning measures.

So I conducted a couple of sessions about family planning. They’d say that they didn’t believe in family planning because it was a white people’s issue, and there were a lot of conspiracy theories. I remember telling them that I’d been using family planning (an implant) for over 10 years and haven’t developed AIDS, or any cancer or illness as a result. I said to them that I have two children and that I’m able to do what I did with them because of contraception - imagine if I had nine or ten children...

I found that they look up to me, because when you’re a local person who speaks the local language and who’s come from there but now lives in the west, it adds value - you’re not just a white person. They were confident that

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they could trust me, so when I showed them my implant and some of them felt it, more of them now use contraception because they met someone who had used it.

They were mostly agricultural women who were subsistence farmers, so most of them had grown up as survivors, but weren’t accessing services that could open doors in terms of their long term growth as people, and could also open doors for their children.

So another project was about finding a way for them to bring in extra income on top of the farming. We used the funds raised in Scotland to buy sewing machines and get a place. We liaised with a local retired teacher and people came to teach them how to use the sewing machines. They made handcrafts which I still bring back to sell here in Scotland and send the money back to the community - and the money is then used to send their children to school.

The other project was a sponsorship programme. I introduced this because education is provided free of charge until third year secondary school - after that you have to pay, so there were lots of bright young people who had to leave school because their family couldn’t afford to pay. This project links families in Scotland with those children to sponsor their education. Today we’ve educated about just over 30 in high school, and six at university level, two of them graduating this year. Four of them have already graduated and they have magnificent jobs!

The community has really taken on these projects. The community is thriving and women are empowered - of course it’s a process, but I’m proud to say things have changed for the better since the projects were set up.

In a previous interview you said: “Settling here (in Scotland) made me realise that even though I’m a woman, I have rights. In Africa, women are not taught about their rights”.

What does this mean nowadays for Rwanda and for Africa?

Firstly, I’d like to clarify one thing: Africa is a big continent. We tend to see Africa as a whole country but Africa has over 50 states, it’s very diverse in culture, in languages, in political systems and in religion. In some places, women have their own place and rights in society, but in other places, women’s rights are completely disregarded.

Secondly, when I was growing up in the DRC sadly I witnessed a lot of violence towards women, often by their partners, and enabled by the religious system that taught that women are created to serve the man, or by society in general which looks down on women.

So when I say that women weren’t taught about their rights, I really mean it - when children go to church, the church teaches them that women are there to serve men, that men are the head of the family, it automatically gives children the idea that they’re not capable of their own agency if they’re female, because agency belongs to men. Every individual has different capabilities to offer, but at the same time we need to base this on merit and capability.

Another example is with education - when families have limited funds, they just teach the boys. As a result, many of the girls I grew up with were only taught to do housework - ‘proper’ education belong to the boys, because they’ll be the ones that will sit in boardrooms and discuss ideas. So girls are never encouraged to believe that they have their own agency and have rights in their own society.

That’s what I grew up with, however I’m proud to report that Rwandan society in general is a bit different from many parts of Africa because it has always respected women. It’s ingrained in the genes of Rwandan people, which explains why my father was very happy to have girls as well as boys in his classes.

Even looking back to when we were a kingdom the king couldn’t make a single decision without consulting the queen mother, and if the mother had died, he couldn’t make decisions without consulting his wife or the women in the council, so women are visible in our society.

Thirdly, having women in positions that men traditionally occupied is common after big wars. One could argue that’s when women become much more empowered, so it was the case that in the Rwandan genocide we lost a lot of men, most of them very well educated.

We had to start from zero, so women had to take ownership and do something about it. Our President Paul Kagame is someone that advocates the rights of women - I’m really proud that he does that - and 56% of lawmakers in the Rwandan parliament are women, so the direction of the entire nation is being shaped by women. We’re the first country in the world with more women in parliament than men.

The beauty of this fact is that Rwanda’s progress is partly as a result of that - because when you put women in power, in a position of leadership, she doesn’t think about herself, she doesn’t even think about what the world thinks of her - she thinks about her children, her family, her community. Rwanda was destroyed 25 years ago… but Rwanda today is an example not only of reconciliation and peace, but also it’s economy is growing fast, it’s the safest country in Africa, the mortality rate for mothers has dropped. Things are happening in Rwanda and I believe women are playing a huge role in all aspects, not just in parliament. In rural areas they have cooperatives where they’re working together - a lot of development work is being done by women in Africa.

According to the World Economic Forum, “Rwanda boasts by far the best record for female representation in parliament, with nearly two thirds of its seats currently held by women”. This is an encouraging fact, but sad that it’s partly due to the genocide 25 years ago, but still...

Absolutely. I believe the most important lesson the world can draw is that if you meet with such tragedy, as we did, the key is not to become paralysed by the grief inside. I learned from this as well. We have been grieving, trust me, I can’t imagine anyone grieving more than the Rwandans themselves, so the lesson is what you do with that grief. Get up and build a future that your children deserve.

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Even if you may not have that future because it was destroyed by the people who did what they did, they would do it twice if you let them kill your ideals.

So out of the dust the phoenix is rising and Rwanda is an example in the world of how you can come back, how you can face tragedy and build something for the next generation.

An example of resilience.

Exactly, and I think the world needs these lessons today, more than ever, because we are beginning to see the unstable rise of populism.

People are losing what connects us as humans, people losing their ideals of humans rights, people losing the idea that we are one, and let’s work together to build a better world.

The incredible values and lessons that Rwanda left us, we need them more than ever. It took 25 years to acknowledge that the genocide actually happened for some people.

You can fool some people all the time, you can fool all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time, so the truth is coming out about western behaviour and western attitudes towards African people - not just in Rwanda, this is in general across Africa.

For example, the western media have done their best to paint Africa as the dark continent, whatever is black is bad for you.

Even the black people ourselves, we believe that black is bad, our parents would beat the hell out of us if we didn’t speak in French at home, we’d get punished for wearing traditional clothes. Anything white, anything French, Belgian or American was good for you and for your survival... but that’s not right at all. What has happened to Africans, to Rwandans, if that happened to another continent nobody would still be standing and smiling and laughing. Africa is a vibrant, incredible continent - in fact those who go to Africa never come back the same, because the people are resilient.

All the African republics and nations are comparatively young, gaining independence 60 or 70 years ago. What impact do you think that has had?

I think that’s why the world looks up to Africa now. Not only are we young in terms of independence, but we’re also young in terms of demographics. In a lot of other countries, their populations are getting older, but Africa is the only continent where the average age is between 18 and 35.

The world is slowly turning its lenses towards us, and I’m watching with delight, because it about time the world painted a different type of picture.

My

Today I realised I owe some silence onto my becoming As much as speaking out It’s a knife edge in the quivering balance Pushed to the side, Marginalised Browned and chargrilled?

One learns faster While being caught between Being delicious or exotic Owning up our own shame Or (trying so hard to) decolonize!

Silence poem by Sonali Mohapatra illustration by Narcisa Gambier

I owe myself some silence Distance is hard to realise For loved ones Who tell me In hushed whispers And narrowed eyed-acts who I am supposed to be: A square peg in a round whole Fitting in Really well So much so that I am called The best “conventional” (act) Even when I do not On the inside

But silence is a hard earned name In the world of the extremes game You can only be yourself Either hidden or exiled Or Silence is a privilege Maybe my friends with abundance Can spare me some Even though I would rather die than beg For your easy to shrug Leftovers Even pity would be more of a reckoning It would mean that you finally listened!

My silence Nowadays Is deafening!

Its a shutting out Its a pushing out Rather than Shutting down, Its napping And shimmering With barely restrained Breaths Not apologetic About your “discomfort” Cz that is just a teeny tiny slice Of the beginning Of being whatever is called today As “Woke” But what I know as Living.

From helping hand to leading light Thirty years is a significant milestone for any organisation but for Sikh Sanjog, a community project which addresses the needs of minority ethnic girls and women in Edinburgh, growing so substantially from humble beginnings is a remarkable accomplishment. Trishna Singh OBE looks back at how it all began and what they’ve achieved.

Starting out As a Bhatra Sikh woman, it’s been my lifelong ambition to create and develop a project that would uplift the women of my community.

I was born into a community living in a culture time warp.

Unfortunately for the women of the Bhatra Sikh community, our elders chose to observe outdated customs. Other Sikh and ethnic communities moved forward but our elders made excuses not to change.

Prospects for Bhatra Sikh women were limited.

We set up Leith Sikh Community Groups (LSCG) to provide a secure environment where women from the Bhatra Sikh community could meet and take part in educational and recreational activities. It would offer a place to gain new experiences and foster a positive sense of racial and cultural

identity, involving members in planning and organising the groups to promote confidence in their own abilities.

In 1989 this vision belonged to a core group of women who came to those first meetings myself, Ashan Devi, Rani Kaur Landa, Kulwinder Kaur Kasbia and Jagdish Kaur Landa. Others have come and gone but some members of this group are still active on the board today.

Setting up LSCG was a huge learning curve for me.

I had left school at 13 and had no confidence in myself. I’d never worked anywhere in my life. I chose to stay in the background, taking the role of Community Development Worker. The role of community development is vital to ensuring that all organisations provide a service which reflects their service users, or at least that they are aware of cultural sensitivities.

The early years We spent the first few years at Smith’s Place in Leith, having coffee mornings which doubled as management meetings. The first steppingstone of help, advice and support came from Home-Start.

In the early years, funding was easier to access as we were amongst a very small number of ethnic projects. Our core funding came from Edinburgh City Council and the council still forms a part of our funding. If we could go back in time, we would have made sure we were given more status within Edinburgh City Council as service providers rather than a grant-funded black and minority ethnic (BAME) organisation. At the time, we were just glad that somebody was actually helping us.

Over the past 30 years our projects have been very varied. The core work (youth work and community development) has council funding, however to keep going and provide our services and activities we’ve fundraised thousands of pounds over the years from trusts, foundations and the Big Lottery Community Fund. We’ll need to continue fundraising unless we become service providers, directly linked to the council.

Breaking down barriers, making a change In 1999, we changed our name from LSCG to Sikh Sanjog. ‘Sanjog’ means ‘linking’ in Punjabi. Looking back on our first ten years, my colleague Ashan Devi remarked that “It’s been a magnificent achievement for all the community. Now we have working mothers, and younger girls know they stand a chance in higher education and maybe even [in] work when they leave school, whereas before it was ‘finish school and wait for marriage’ to gain their freedom, if any.”

It took a long time for Bhatra Sikh women to actually see us as independent from HomeStart. We spent years were making contact with - and gaining the confidence of - the women and the community as a whole. We were trying to persuade them not to see us as a threat but as a helping hand.

In addition to helping the women of the community achieve their potential, we’ve worked hard over the years to gain the trust and respect of the men in our community.

Along the way we’ve suffered considerable personal hurt at the disrespect and gender attitudes of some, but we’ve persevered.

Now more and more men are accepting that equality for their daughters is important in their family life.

They are realising that education is important not only for the boys of the community but also for the girls - and through our achievements as women within the community we have served as role models for the younger generation to aspire to.

The struggle was not only to educate our community but also the wider Leith community about the real Sikh philosophy of equality for all including women. This philosophy has been embedded in our religion since the fifteenth century.

We took hold of our equality and our strength and the courage that was our birthright. We decided to stand up for our rights and make a change, for future generations of Sikh women and girls living under invisible oppression. We believe equality for all is a basic human right.

Successes and challenges Sikh Sanjog is the only organisation in the UK developed to meet the needs of the Bhatra Sikhs, running activities that encourage and promote a positive sense of black, and more specifically, Sikh identity. Since the project’s inception, it’s evident that the existing funding and resources aren’t enough to fully meet the needs recreationally, educationally or socially. The workload is demanding. This is compounded by the fact that we are working in a specialised way with a specific culture that brings with it necessary demands like single sex groups.

And the project is still changing. We’re addressing the needs of second, third and fourth generation of Bhatra Sikh women, girls and other ethnic minority women from around the world including white Scottish women. The project continues to break down barriers and create a safe place for women to work together, enjoy each other’s culture and learn about values that are similar for all women irrespective of race, colour and creed.

It wasn’t until 2009 that I became aware of the meaning of ‘covert discrimination’ and patronising behaviour. It shook me to my foundations.

This was the biggest learning curve for me. It made me look at what racism, discrimination, bullying and harassment can mean to an individual or a community. I had always assumed that I was Scottish Sikh but I realised that others did not see me like that - they saw me as the Sikh woman from a ‘backward community’.

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If I could turn the clock back I’d take my title and be proud of who I am. I’d allow myself the pleasure of knowing that I was fundamental to creating a project that was - and is - providing a great service to the whole community.

My strength came from my faith and the teachings of Sikhism, which promotes the equality of women in all walks of life.

What kept me and the others going was the fact that there was no other provision for our girls and women. If we had visitors from any public bodies to our temple, our community hub, they only ever met the men and never even glanced our way. Which in some ways was not their fault as even now they’re being culturally sensitive and don’t want to offend.

It was almost as if we were invisible - but we were determined that people should acknowledge our community and ‘see us’. So there was no option for us to ever even think of giving up.

applied in the workplace.

An additional benefit is that the women are interacting with people from all cultures.

With over 230 social enterprises successfully operating, Edinburgh is becoming Scotland’s leading centre for growing ethical trading and the Junction is now a cornerstone of our city’s social enterprise landscape.

Over the past 10 years, at least 100 women from ethnic minorities but mainly from the Sikh community have either worked or volunteered in the café to gain skills and experience. Our social enterprise has created employment opportunities for women who previously were ‘invisible’, it empowers and inspires women of all ages and races to rise above internal and external discrimination that hinders their progress.

Recognition and change We have received many awards over the years for volunteers and individuals for youth work and community development.

In 2014 I received an OBE for my services to Edinburgh’s Sikh community.

Sikh Sanjog and its enterprises are a blueprint for how community spirit and determination can grow from a seedling to stand tall and proud - and how that community spirit and determination can make a tangible difference to the lives of the most vulnerable in our diverse society.

All those involved, past and present, should be proud.

Punjabi Junction A major accomplishment for Sikh Sanjog was the launch of our social enterprise community café Punjabi Junction in 2010. It was and still is the only social enterprise in Scotland which was created and run by Sikh women a groundbreaking achievement, unheard of across Scotland.

The café has provided traditional Punjabi home-cooked cuisine to the people of Edinburgh, although it has recently had to close its doors due to the renovation of the building it’s housed in. However, we’re still trading, providing outside catering for weddings, private events, markets and more.

It continues to give minority ethnic women training and employment opportunities, while learning valuable social and practical skills, improving their literacy, numeracy and communication and customer care skills.

These skills are transferable and can readily be 20

No-one can be part of an organisation for 30 years without a great deal of help and support.

In our case that help has come from a wide range of people - community workers, practice teachers, politicians, businesspeople, council workers and our extraordinary colleagues and mentors.

Over the past 30 years, the history of Sikh Sanjog has been one of change and often difficult change. However, without change there cannot be growth and development and we believe that Sikh Sanjog is now considering some of the difficult issues in a constructive way. We hope that progress towards a secure future for the organisation is underway.

I know we have a very long road ahead of us but I am sure that if we continue to show the same commitment that has been shown in the past we can only go forward.

Trishna Singh OBE

H I S TO RY

Gran McNaught had a waist cinched by a black leather belt, wore high-heeled lace-up boots Pond’s cream on her snowy skin, a flame-orange plait like a tail down her back.

She bought a ticket for the M.V. Newfoundland stood at the quay with her new trunk packed but as the ship dropped anchor, a summons came from her dying mother, who lived for another twenty years.

Gran McNaught married a soldier, had children and three part-time jobs, pressed ox-tongue in a jar, braised cheap cuts, boiled clothes, read futures in her tea leaves and saw the way history went.

She dreamt of a council house, grew wide as she was tall, her wedding band sank into her flesh. When she baked it sat upon the kitchen table as she kneaded, slapped and punched the dough.

While Helen Crawford wrote ‘The world is ours’ Gran McNaught scratched notes in capital letters to doctors, teachers, factors, the rent man, carried her load as though it was a stately message bag, a pound of tea, a pat of butter, a bag of sweeties for reading the Sunday Post while the fire in her hair turned white.

When she took to her bed, Gran McNaught’s face was alabaster, the trace of her life chantilly lace, her eyes a clear and distant arctic blue as she tugged off her gold ring and dropped it into my palm. Her hand lay in mine as I gazed upon her beauty, saw the deep red welt round her finger, the messenger at the quay, the old trunk used for storing blankets and took my inheritance.

Morag Smith

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TRIGGER WARNING ABORTION

Abortion legislation in Latin America In Latin America, women can be sent to prison for illegally terminating a pregnancy or even for suffering a miscarriage.

Belen Gonzalez Leggire explores the effect that abortion legislation has on women’s health and on their life chances throughout the region.

2018 was yet another year with much to think about for the feminist. In May, Ireland finally repealed the Eighth Amendment, a subsection of their Constitution added in 1983 that gave the pregnant woman and the fetus an equal right to life. This cruel law has made terminating a pregnancy illegal in the country for the last 35 years. Simultaneously, in South America, Argentina had a chance to join the small group of countries in the region which have legalised abortion. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. And in Brazil, despite the “#EleNão” (#NotHim) campaign - a social media movement of women rallying against inequality and the election of a far-right presidential candidate - Jair Bolsonaro won the elections, giving the far-right more power in the region as a whole.

If we want to talk about the status of women in one of the most unequal parts of the world, we need only review the different abortion legislation that exists there. Uruguay, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guyana and Mexico City have the most progressive legislation - in these cases, terminations are permitted (with parental authorisation if needed and a gestational age limit in some cases). However, 90% of women live with no legislation in this matter. This results in women being forced to seek illegal and dangerous abortions.

A few years ago, The Guardian reviewed the case of a 10-year-old girl in Paraguay who was raped and became pregnant. The news that despite the circumstances, this young girl was not able to get an abortion highlighted the problem of abortion legislation in Paraguay, and shocked people across the world. American feminist author and journalist Jessica Valenti asked herself; “Who in their right mind would think it reasonable that a 10-year-old child who became pregnant after being raped carry a pregnancy to term?” Many of us asked ourselves the same question - and yet the country’s health minister and the rest of their administration thought this was reasonable and so the girl became a very young mother.

Feminist sociologist and psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow1 (1978) offers an explanation as to why this barbaric legislation still exists. She claims that motherhood is the last excuse the patriarchy has in terms of perpetuating the sexual division of labour. When we combine patriarchy and capitalism, the melting point is the need to continually produce a cheap workforce. That is why capitalism needs us to be mothers, no matter under what circumstances - even if you are a 10-year-old girl raped by your stepfather and pregnant - patriarchy and capitalism need the newborn.

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But what patriarchal and capitalist countries fail to consider is that their ignorance has a counter effect on working population figures. According to the UN, 24 million Latin American women of reproductive age have no access to contraceptive methods. As a result, almost 56% of pregnancies are unplanned, forcing hundreds of thousands of women to find a way to terminate their pregnancies and often in the most unsafe ways. It is estimated that every year, 760, 000 women need medical treatment because of problems brought about by illegal abortion methods.

Furthermore, these ‘back-alley abortions’ are one of the main causes of a maternal mortality rate of 68deaths per 100,000 live births and results show that at least 10% of the maternal mortality ratio in Latin America can be attributed to these unsafe practices.

Many women make the life-threatening decision to seek an illegal abortion because there is no alternative in their country.

Argentina’s abortion legislation is regressive with exceptions granted only in instances of rape, or where termination is necessary in order to preserve the physical health of the woman. Until recently (2017), abortions in Chile were not permitted under any circumstances.

Now however, they are willing to make exceptions in cases of rape, foetal anomaly and to save the life of the pregnant woman.

Exceptions within legislation in the remaining countries of Latin America are also minimal, lacking in detail and often unclear. Permission for abortion is only granted where it preserves the life of the woman, their physical or mental health, for socio-economic reasons and in cases of rape, incest or fetal anomaly in Brazil, Panama, Paraguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Perú, Colombia, Antigua and Barbuda, Guatemala, Dominica, México, Bahamas, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Belize, St. Vincent and Grenadines. Realistically however, the percentage of women who are actually granted access to safe abortion procedures on the basis of these claims is highly debatable. Furthermore, the fact that a majority of women reporting to be victims of rape and sexual abuse are not believed by the system makes this particular exception in the legislation seem mere lip service. And abortion is still illegal under any circumstances in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and Suriname.

Women are suffering inequality due to inconsistent abortion legislation across Latin America. In a few countries, marginal numbers of women may be given access to a safe procedure, ending an unplanned pregnancy with all the required guarantees and due care.

Yet the majority have very few options and are often subject to terrifying outcomes. Many women end up being forced to give birth to a child they are unable or unfit to care for.

Many others suffer even more gravely. They face being sent to jail for seeking an illegal abortion or even if they suffer a miscarriage.

Even more tragically, far too many women are dying, either as a result of complications during childbirth or as they attempt to end their pregnancies any way they can.

Quoting Chodorow again, motherhood is the last way the patriarchy has to maintain the status quo, to keep women in the domestic sphere and perpetuate the gender inequalities that feminist have been fighting for decades.

When I look at reproductive rights from this perspective, I can see why the majority of countries in the region (and beyond) aren’t interested in changing abortion laws, when it’s clear they believe it’s a woman’s duty to become a mother and feed the system, no matter what the circumstances.

With this previous statement, I don’t want to sound like I despise motherhood - I don’t, and nor do I believe that the ultimate feminist revolution against the patriarchy and capitalism is not having kids at all. I just want every woman - not only in Latin America but across the world - to decide whatever they want to be and do, without being condemned to a life of shame and stigmatization, without facing jail or even death, and without having to enter into forced motherhood. If a woman wants to become a mother, she should do it in a way that supports her own circumstances and choices - as a single mother, with a female or a male partner or in a co-parenting project. But whatever she decides, she needs a state that legislates with empathy in terms of health, care, education and companion.

I’m done seeing women going through pregnancy (and everything that comes after giving birth) in complete loneliness.

Belén González Leggire

This article was originally written and published for the Engender blog.

Chodorow, Nancy. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender 1

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photography by Kat Dlugosz

Telling their stories !

TRIGGER WARNING ABORTION, NUDITY

Camila Cavalcante is a UK-based Brazilian visual artist who spent over two years photographing women across Brazil who had illegal abortions.

Camila talks to Maria João Medeiros about the ‘Us for All Women’ project and how she found a way to stand in solidarity with the brave women who took part.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m from a city called Maceió in the north-east coast of Brazil, and I come from a family where no-one is involved with the arts whatsoever.

At university I studied journalism, and in my second year I started to take pictures. I felt that for the very first time in my life I had a tool to explore my creativity. It was love at first sight and I haven’t stopped since then.

I worked as a photojournalist for a while, but I always thought I was going to be a visual artist - it just took me time to admit it to myself as I didn’t think I could make it. I was a bit lost because I didn’t want to go forward with photojournalism - I thought it was too obvious and not challenging enough for me. Of course, there are lots of different ways of doing photojournalism, it can be absolutely amazing.

But for me, I needed to go a little bit deeper.

That’s why I became interested in conceptual art and how I could use my photography to push forward my ideas rather than news.

When did the idea for ‘Us For All Women’ strike you?

It was in December 2015 and abortion laws were being challenged in Brazil. Right now, terminating a pregnancy in Brazil is very restricted. It’s only legal in cases of rape, in cases when the foetus has developed without a brain and in cases when it endangers the mother’s life. They’d started to question this law to make it worse for women - even more conservative and restrictive. They wanted to change the constitution so that the word ‘life’ meant that life started at conception, which would make all types of abortions illegal. When that became a possibility, I was absolutely outraged and knew I had to do something about it.

I think that all my projects are political in a way, but I wanted to do one that was more obviously political, more obviously feminist. I feel very strongly about this subject. Women around me had gone through illegal abortions or had seen other women go through this experience. I always felt that they could never really talk about it because it hurts them too much, but I could talk about it and try to make people empathise.

Can you tell us about the project? How you reached out to these women, how they felt open up to you?

When I had the idea, I composed a message, a call for women to come forward and help me

to do this. This call explained a little bit about myself, my background, and why they could trust me. I asked them to come forward with their identities protected, or if they didn’t feel that they could help me with that, I asked them to send the call to other women.

Before making this call public, I wrote to two women I know who have had this experience and I told them what I was going to do. I had opposite responses. One of them was happy and proud to have triggered that on me and I photographed her for the project. She also helped me to find other people to collaborate with. The other woman never responded to my email. Afterwards I wrote to her again saying that I was not judging her silence. I hope she has found peace in her life.

For me, the response I received just showed how this subject isn’t really talked about. Even for women who are 100% sure of what they are doing, abortion is such a big taboo that a lot of them don’t ever want to talk about it.

It’s still a huge stigma and they don’t want to remember that.

So, on International Women’s Day 2016 I sent my call to 60 women and the call had an amazing level of engagement. Women who had never had an abortion wanted to help somehow, so they shared my call with other women who they thought would come forward or help. This is how I created a network of women and it’s how everything started.

In the pictures you’re facing forward and the other person is facing back - why is that?

When I had the idea for the project, my biggest concern was to protect the identities of those women. I knew I couldn’t photograph their faces. In my practice as a visual artist, I also tend to put myself in the position of the subject or try to experience the issue that I want to talk about. With ‘Us for all Women’ it was tricky because I haven’t gone through an abortion myself.

The women I collaborated with went through a lot and they were sharing their biggest secret with me. If they get prosecuted, they could get up to three years in prison in Brazil.

I realised that I had to give something back and what I could do was to expose myself in their names. I needed to be naked because it was a way for them to trust me as well. To expose one’s body is not an easy thing for anyone. I felt that by doing that, I would create a connection with them.

As their identities have to be protected, having their backs to the camera would work.

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Also, if I was facing the camera and we were in contact with each other somehow (hugging, holding hands or other forms of contact), metaphorically they would be passing that story to me. I could voice it - I could face people in their names as well.

Some people who feel strongly about this subject would politely disagree, others would send hate-filled messages. But if it was me, my face, my identity, I would be able to fight back, because it is not painful for me like it is for the women I collaborated. I can take it. Some of those women would be able to take it too, but many others wouldn’t. Ultimately what I want is to open up a debate about this. If I don’t help to create this conversation and end such taboo, who will?

What kind of feedback are you getting for ‘Us for all Women’?

People like the pictures and feel very struck by them. Some people relate to them because they went through something similar. They feel very strongly about it. Making people aware of this subject makes it all worth it for me.

I’ve also travelled to Brazil a couple of times since I started this project and it was great to see that I’ve opened up a conversation there as well.

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People asked me about my project and when I talked about it with an open heart, I got an open heart in return - even from people I never thought I could have this type of discussion with. They’d listen and even if they didn’t agree, they acknowledged that illegal abortion is an issue and that we should at least decriminalise it so that women who need to have an abortion wouldn’t go to prison.

What do you love most about this project?

Definitely the connection that I created with these women. I feel that being able to talk to them, cry and share with them and listen to their stories is a privilege. Taking my clothes off and having our pictures taken, making sure that I will be able to share their stories with other women and create that network, that is the most incredible thing.

It has also deeply changed my perception as an artist, because it’s given me the freedom not to be worried about what I’m going to get out of this project from the art establishment.

I’m doing this because it’s more important to share these experiences, to listen to these women, to create a debate around it. Even if it was on a small scale, just between those women and me, one by one, even if I didn’t create a book or if no one else had seen the images.

Just finding those women, listening to their stories and being able to talk about them afterwards would have been very important.

These women won’t share their experiences even with their partners, their parents or their families. I feel very honoured to have received such trust, and at the same time, I am making sure that I will give that honour back - I will tell their story to others and pass their story along. Whatever comes out of this project after that is a blessing, as I don’t have any further expectations of it.

Do you think you’re getting the awareness you want with this project?

That’s a hard one, because I live in the UK. Here, I do feel that lots of people are welcoming the project and trusting it. The crowdfunding campaigns were made here and they were both successful - most of the supporters were in the UK. That was very special for me, because I felt that it legitimised what I’m doing. So in that sense yes, I am getting the awareness I want.

But on the other hand, no, because there’s a lot of taboos here in the UK too. People, magazines, galleries and institutions are very prudish about abortion and about nudity.

They feel very uncomfortable.

Also, many people take this subject for granted in the UK so they don’t want to talk about it, even though abortion is an enormous problem in Northern Ireland. I know that there’s still a lot to be done.

Do you see a way of changing these abortion laws in Brazil or do you feel like there’s no hope?

I have to be hopeful, because otherwise it would be harder to keep fighting. However, Brazil is going through some terrible times.

We have an extreme conservative government that is deeply connected to the Catholic Church and evangelical churches. They’re trying to push their agenda and they’re cutting down women’s rights.

The Supreme Court gives us hope that we may be able to change the laws without having to go through our conservative Congress though.

The court has been quite liberal when it came to other controversial cases in our recent past - they’ve made homophobia illegal for example. But a decision about illegal abortion, at least about decriminalising it, is not on the table for the moment. Right now, I just hope that Congress doesn’t legislate in the next few years because if they do, it would get worse for women.

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A closet slut. poem by Sonali Mohapatra artwork by Lorena Sequeyro

I am a slut who goes around the world trying to prove that she is not when I am at home I wear a vest but when I open my room to someone’s knock i waste 5 minutes looking for a sweater that covers me up and a minute looking in the mirror to see that the fact that I am not wearing a bra, does not show.

I am slut in comfortable nightclothes all day long the gap between my breasts showing and my navel exposed But as soon as I wake up, and i cannot sleep I pull on a pair of slacks unless I am wearing sleeveless and a long sleeved top tops that is a little too thin Put on my bra and a short shorts, before I go use the communal spaces which gives me enough for people might stare air if my nipples show and keeps me not too hot And when I am getting ready for work, or to go out somewhere I make sure my necklines not too low and my skirt wont fly in the wind my top is not translucent my short’s are not too short, my top is not too thin my earrings are not slutty my eyeliner does not scream prostitute and my lipstick does not shout “red light district” My boots or heels must not look sexy enough to warrant a rape and my purse must not be too glittery I also think about how my shrieks must not be too girly, my smile not too suggestive my laughter not too masculine and my walk not too feminine Everything I say should start with I have a boyfriend not to draw you in If my legs are showing they must not be Oh so leggingly long! which could go round your chest.

So I wonder, what am I? A closet slut?

A female in denial?

A cacophony of wrongness?

Lunchtime Activism Lily Settari meets Hannah, whose encounter with a pro-life vigil would spark her pro-choice activism and inspire others in Edinburgh to join her.

One Monday in 2017, Hannah was on the way home from her lunchbreak. She walked past a small group of men and women with rosaries in their hands, murmuring prayers outside the Chalmers Sexual Health Centre in Edinburgh.

A member of the group handed her a leaflet as she was passing by, and Hannah realised that this was a vigil ‘to pray for the end of abortion’, as stated on the leaflet.

It made her angry that such a gathering took place regularly, right outside a medical establishment where medical abortions are performed. But the anger rising in her was of the best kind – the kind that makes you want to act, to stand up for your beliefs and everyone’s rights.

Later at home, Hannah googled the group and up came the jam-packed website of the ‘Helpers of God’s Precious Infants’. The website details the story of this Catholic antiabortion organisation. While their British headquarters are in St Albans, Hertfordshire, the organisation was founded in the 1990s in 32

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TRIGGER WARNING ABORTION

the US by Philip Reilly, a Brooklyn priest.

Vigils outside abortion clinics are the core of the ‘Helpers’’ activism. They take place weekly or monthly in more than a dozen cities across the UK. Their goal is to prevent abortions by offering spiritual and material support to women who consider terminating a pregnancy. Both the website and the leaflet in Hannah’s hands promised support through counselling and help with childcare or baby clothes to women who “deserve better than abortion”.

For according to the ‘Helpers’, abortion is never a well-informed and reasonable choice – it is only considered because women feel like because it’s legal, they can do it at their leisure, or because they are faced with a ‘crisis pregnancy’, meaning that they don’t feel strong or supported enough to have a baby.

Presumably to appeal to as many people as possible, the ‘Helpers’ pursue different antiabortion narratives.

There’s the emotional narrative, aimed mostly at women and targeting what they suppose are women’s motherly instincts, for instance through a letter written from the perspective of a foetus which was addressed ‘Dear Mummy’, which appeared on the flyer Hannah was given. Similarly, on their website, the ‘Helpers’ call abortion an “injustice being performed on their [the foetuses’] tiny bodies” and mentions that “babies joyfully leap in their mothers’ wombs when they hear the voices of the Prayers [sic]”.

Another approach is a pseudo-scientific one, stressing a supposed link between abortion and infertility, breast cancer or suicide.

The third narrative paints a picture of a lucrative “abortion industry” encouraged by doctors and nurses, of clinics operating like “abortion mills”, because health services profit from selling the body parts of aborted foetuses.

Now that she knew about the theories, motivations and activism of these ‘Helpers’, Hannah decided to do something. “I said, ‘I’m going to make a sign and sit outside Chalmers next week, to show that I support the right of every woman to have an abortion.’”

Hannah created a Facebook event to increase awareness of her counter-vigil and invited some friends to join her. Soon, 500 people had hit the ‘Interested’ button, which was way beyond her expectations and made her quite nervous. The very last thing she wanted was to cause noise and chaos outside a medical establishment. In the end, about twenty people showed up on the day. The first prochoice vigil outside the Chalmers Sexual Health Centre was successful and discreet, just as intended.

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Soon afterwards, in November 2017, she created the Facebook group ‘Organising for pro-choice vigils in Edinburgh’. The group now has more than 330 members and has had an almost weekly presence outside the Chalmers Sexual Health Centre. On average, there are three or four people present on the pro-choice side, slightly less than up the road where the ‘Helpers’ gather.

The group remains a grassroots initiative, a network of people with shared values and an interest in peaceful activism. Perhaps its main ‘policy’ is that the pro-choice vigils take place to mirror the ‘Helpers’’ presence, and to show support and solidarity to everyone accessing services at the Chalmers Sexual Health Centre.

It is not about staging any confrontation with the ‘Helpers’. “I’ve never initiated interaction with the other side, I simply don’t think there’s any point in that,” explains Hannah. “They’re so entrenched in their views and think they have God on their side, so arguing with them just wouldn’t lead anywhere.” The pro-choice group also does not approach members of the public, unlike some in the pro-life group.

Demographically, the pro-choice group is diverse. “We have more women than men in the group, but many regulars are men. I’d say the majority of members are young, in their twenties and thirties, but we also have some older women who have been involved with pro-choice activism for so many years and can’t believe that they still have to do this”, says Hannah.

Lorna is one of them. She began her studies at the University of Edinburgh in 1976, when second-wave feminism, with its focus on reproductive rights, was current affairs. She’s been involved in women’s rights campaigns since her student days and has attended a few pro-choice vigils outside Chalmers.

To her, they’re a good space to meet likeminded people, to exchange information and experiences and to show her determination to stand up for a right she used to think women had acquired for good. “It’s really scary how you always have to look over your shoulder, we just can’t take any right for granted. And as soon as we see a threat, we need to make sure we’re there, present and defensive. What really worries me is when I see young, trendy women walking past both vigils who don’t seem interested in engaging with the issue.”

As one of the male members of the group and a regular vigil attendee, George says that while he doesn’t “have a dog in the fight for reproductive rights”, he still wants to support the pro-choice side from the second row.

Like Hannah and Lorna, he finds the public’s 34

response to their vigils encouraging, as the feedback they get is overwhelmingly positive - much more so than the feedback the ‘Helpers’ get.

Reactions from the public range from friendly honking horns to thumbs up of passers-by (sometimes very discreetly even from nurses) to brief chats with people on their way to or from somewhere, all the way to people who join the Facebook group on the spot and promise to come to the next vigil. Hannah remembers one particularly memorable interaction with a Catholic priest, who approached her to say that he did not approve of the hardline views and methods of the ‘Helpers’. ‘When they [the ‘Helpers’] started to sing a hymn he almost rolled his eyes. I think that just shows how fringe they are even within the Catholic Church in this country,’ she says.

While that may be true, there’s still an undeniable and considerable stigma attached to abortion, even in a predominantly secular and supposedly liberal, progressive country like the UK. Grace’s story illustrates this well.

Grace had an abortion when she was sixteen, after she had become pregnant due to ‘stealthing’ by her then-boyfriend. ‘Stealthing’ is where a man deliberately removes a condom during sex without the consent of his sexual partner. The relationship was abusive, and Grace knew that keeping the baby would have meant signing up to be a single mum.

When she realised she was pregnant, she had also just started college and moved into student accommodation. After conversations with health professionals, social workers and her parents, and after a painful decisionmaking process, she decided that having an abortion was the right thing to do for her.

In the lead-up to her surgical abortion at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, Grace says she tortured herself by googling the topic and reading about it on social media. What she found online, and the general social perception of abortion she sensed, was quite enough to crush Grace’s self-esteem and her belief in her ability of judgement concerning her own body, life and future. “The night before my appointment, I went to sleep hugging my stomach, saying ‘I’m so sorry that I’m doing this to you,’” she recalls. Even though she felt well-supported by health and social care services and her parents, and despite not being confronted with anti-abortion views in her personal environment, she felt guilty and “like a horrible person” for years. Now, ten years later, after being in therapy and partly thanks to her own counselling diploma training, Grace has come to terms with her decision.

Had there been a pro-choice vigil outside the Royal Infirmary that October morning in 2008, Grace says she “would now either be a mum or dead” – because the combination of factors at the time did make her feel suicidal – and because she would have been too intimidated to walk past a gathering of people opposing her choice. As a young woman who became pregnant unintentionally and felt like it was a desperate situation, Grace’s younger self is exactly the kind of person the ‘Helpers’ target with their narrative of a better alternative to abortion and offers of support.

According to Grace, a counsellor in training who is used to looking at any situation from all sides, the ’Helpers’ are wrong in assuming that there is a universally right solution to such ‘crisis pregnancies’, however. She herself is now able to accept the complexity of her own feelings about her abortion. “Thinking about it now, I think I would have been fine. I could‘ve been a good single mum. But I did what I had to do at the time, and what was right then”, she says. She also allows herself to grieve for the baby she never gave birth to, after feeling that she did not deserve such sentiments for a long time. Speaking about this “complicated kind of grief”, she adds that she will probably always regret the abortion a little bit, but she no longer doubts that she had the best reasons and was in the best position to decide to have an abortion at the time.

George summed up the same point in slightly more academic terms, saying that the woman in question simply has direct access to her own mental state, and thus is the only person who can be ‘trusted’ with the decision whether to have an abortion.

Grace heard about the counter-vigils a while ago and wants to attend one soon.

An end to the counter-vigils is not in sight – simply because it looks like the ‘Helpers’ will continue to spend their Monday lunchtimes outside the Chalmers Sexual Health Centre.

The debate over how to balance the right to access abortions and the right to freedom of expression and assembly is a recurrent one.

In the past two years, Ealing and Richmond Councils in London have issued bans on prolife gatherings outside abortion clinics, which has stirred up controversy. In September 2018, then-home secretary Sajid Javid stated that there was no evidence that such gatherings caused too much distress and that he therefore did not envisage a nationwide blanket ban. “No overwhelming evidence” that the vigils caused “unnecessary distress” was also the reason why City of Edinburgh

Council rejected the plans to create buffer zones outside abortion clinics last spring, which were proposed by Claire Miller, Scottish Greens Councillor. Her colleague from the Scottish Conservatives, Jo Mowat, said that the pro-life vigils cannot currently be prevented, but that the council had “sought to manage it within current legislation so that it does not become intimidating”, and that “should those protesting be intimidating those using the clinic, action will be taken.”

Members of the Edinburgh pro-choice group have mixed feelings about the potential consequences of banning gatherings in general - such regulations might be able to justify preventing other meetings, like clinic staff strikes. However, they’re united in thinking that freedom of expression is not a sufficient justification for pro-life vigils outside abortion clinics. “If they were on Princes Street, I’d still get angry and it would bother me, but I could accept it. I don’t think it would have the same direct impact on service users as it does outside Chalmers,” says Hannah.

Lorna and Grace think that the presence of pro-life supporters – or as Lorna calls them, anti-choice supporters – is unnecessarily confrontational and unfair towards women who might have gone through a painful decision-making process. George agrees with them, but also remarks that intimidating service users is not the only threat posed by pro-life vigils. “This specific group spreads false information about an ‘abortion industry’ which defies reason in the most obvious way, and I find that despicable. It’s one thing to have a particular view on a moral issue, but if you’re deliberately undermining facts and arguments and encouraging lies, that’s really bad for society in the long run.” If they held their vigils away from the Chalmers Sexual Health Centre, and “stuck to the facts”, he says he would still disagree with them, but he would also be prepared to engage in a proper debate.

Moving the location of the pro-choice vigil would also mean that pro-choice supporters would no longer have to contribute to the crowd outside a medical establishment, which they know isn’t an ideal scenario. That’s why, when asked about her plans for the future of the vigils she initiated, Hannah soberly remarks “I wish we won’t have to be there at all for much longer.”

Some names in this article were changed for reasons of anonymity.

Lily Settari

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photography by Chris Relvas Dancer: Sara Afonso Portalegre (Portugal), 2018

photography by Kat Dlugosz

Cassandra Harrison is an Edinburgh-based artist from Nebraska. With an ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’ attitude, Cassandra’s words could be a motivational speech for anyone having doubts about pursuing a career in the arts. Cassandra talks to Belen Gonzalez Leggire about how she balances her multiple roles as mother, artist and teacher and her views on female representation in the art scene today.

Would you describe your current professional occupation as artist?

Definitely yes, without a doubt.

What have been the highs and lows of your career journey?

Whenever I get accepted to show my work in an exhibition, that’s such an adrenaline high for me. It’s exciting good validation and it makes me feel like I’m on the right track. I love going to exhibition openings, but if I’m part of the exhibition it’s even more exciting as I get to meet other artists. Maybe I’ve not met them before, but I’ve admired their work and been inspired by them. And in all of the exhibitions, there’s usually a party with some wine and a good atmosphere, so that’s always a little bit of happiness.

First of all, tell us a little about yourself.

I’m originally from Nebraska in the United States and I’ve been living in the UK for 16 years. I ended up here because I fell in love with somebody when I was on holiday (laughter)... so it was a holiday romance! I was visiting a friend in Switzerland, and I met a guy from England, we hit it off and a year later I moved to the UK. One of those stories!

We moved around quite a bit in the UK and ended up in Edinburgh. I love it here. It’s an easy place to live, it’s very creative, the arts world here is fantastic and there’s lots of people to meet.

I started working as an artist properly 10 years ago after doing a degree in fine art and art education in the United States.

I did some art teaching in the US then moved here, and because we moved around a lot I kept having this start and stop thing, so I didn’t really start to establish myself until I got to Edinburgh.

The extreme low is the Royal Academy opening exhibition every summer - the wait to find out whether or not you got in is so excruciatingly long. You enter your work mid-February and sometimes you don’t find out until mid-May if you’re in or not. This year I’ve entered again - this is the fourth year in a row I’ve entered and the second time I’ve been shortlisted. So, you find out that you’ve been shortlisted and it’s amazing, really exciting, and then you have to wait again... Then you find out you didn’t make the final cut, it’s so hard to just go “well, it’s not for me this time, it doesn’t mean I’m crap, it doesn’t mean what I’m making is useless...”

You just have to keep going and keep making. I took it much better this time.

I’m sure I’ll try every year because it would be phenomenal to get in. Even if that never happens... you just don’t know if you never try, that’s my motto.

I think you do open yourself up to rejection when you put yourself out there, every time you exhibit your art, or share an image on instagram, or you present your work to a shop or a gallery.

But I’m trying not to see it as a personal rejection. Sometimes the work may not be a good fit or sometimes when you’re putting shows together, a theme starts to develop and my work might not fit into the theme.

I’ve also been in an exhibition where one of my artworks had this central position on the wall, they kind of fitted everything around it. So that was lovely, very exciting!

How would you describe female representation in the art world?

In the art world in general, major exhibitions still seems to be very male-centered. The reason we know about male artists is because they’ve been noted down more in history than female artists.

I know in my own art teaching, (I teach occasional workshops and teach art parttime in primary school) I focus on not just teaching my pupils about female artists but teaching them that we need to balance out exhibitions - and the history books - more.

So we’d talk about Georgia O’ Keeffe, or Anni Albers with her recent TATE exhibition and say let’s see if we can do something to address the imbalance.

I’m also part of an artist network called Spilt Milk which is for artists who are mothers. We had a group exhibition last year and it was such a fantastic thing to be involved with - we were given a proper gallery space in Customs House in Leith and our opening night was well-attended.

Being able to talk to other artist mothers was amazing because I often felt kind of isolated, especially when my daughter was a lot younger. Inside you just you really want to make something, but your pockets are full of baby paraphernalia and you have no time to create.You might feel inspired to draw something, but you can’t because you’re running after a toddler - you’re living a life that feels like there’s no room for you in it.

I think that other artists who are mothers feel this as well, this feeling that you’re almost in conflict with yourself - you really want to do the best for your child, but you feel like you are neglecting yourself as well.

What would you recommend to young girls and boys who want to pursue a career in the arts?

I really enjoy teaching art at primary schools - I prefer teaching that age group because I wish I’d known what was available to me at that age. For instance, with my older primary school pupils (9, 10 and 11 years old), we’ve been talking about visual arts careers. We did a project about surfaces, patterns and design and I said to them “look at the world around you. Look at your backpack, look at your pencils, look at your pencil cases, look at your t-shirts - somebody designed that.” I showed them a website where artists can upload their designs onto things and we talked about trends, helping them to get to know the world

around them and showing them everything that artists do. People aren’t always aware that there are all these careers out there for artists so it’s good to point it out to them.

I’d also say to the young girls and boys, draw a lot! As much as you can! Have your sketchbook with you, have your pens with you, look at the world around you and draw what you see because the more you do it, the more comfortable you will be drawing. And the more you do it, the more you’ll get used to people looking over your shoulder when you’re trying to sketch which is something that I struggle with.

The final thing I’d say is - and this is what I tell myself too - you won’t get any better if you don’t put the hours in. Sometimes it might seem like you’re endlessly sketching and things are going nowhere, but you might develop something from your sketches. If you’re not doing the work, how are you going to improve, how are you going to have the life that you want?

What would you say to the 16-year-old Cassandra?

The 16-year-old Cassandra was drawing all over her trainers (laughter) and sewing buttons all over her jacket, I remember my younger self being incredibly creative. I was president of the art club, all these things. I grew up in rural Nebraska and the closest major city was a five hour drive away, so I hadn’t been to art galleries or museums - I only started to find my way to these things because of the art clubs. When we started to go to the cities my mind was like “Oh my god, look at this big gigantic world of opportunities”, and then I was really depressed when we were driving back from the city, so I figured that I’d found where I belonged. So I think I would tell my 16-year-old self that I’d eventually find my way to where I belong, because I kind of did it. I love my family and there are certain things that I love about where I’m from, but I never really felt like I fitted in there, which I think a lot of people experience.

Going into your personal life, I know you have a daughter. As a mother and a professional artist, how do balance your life?

I know balance is a beautiful thing and I can tell when I’m getting off balance because I start feeling pretty low...

My daughter is five and she needs me, as any five-year-old needs their mother.

I love spending time with her. She loves drawing and we do a lot of art together. When she’s with me I try to just not think about work - we do lots of drawing but I don’t feel like that’s work, these drawings are for fun. We watch movies and when she sees something she likes, she wants to draw it, and that gives me an opportunity to do some drawing as well. Getting to draw with her, taps into my creativity, so it’s really lovely that my daughter is interested in the same things that I am.

However, on the days when she’s at school and I’m not teaching art, I’m incredibly organised with my time because I know it’s very limited. I’ll schedule things ahead of time, so that when those days come round, I know exactly what I’m going to do. I supply prints to local shops, I take on commissions, and I’m trying to put together my own exhibition, which will take a few months but it won’t happen if I don’t schedule my time.

But sometimes things get too wonky, sometimes you have days where you just have to throw everything out the window and say to yourself “You know what, I need some me time, because if I continue like this I’ll run myself into the ground, and it’s not worth it.”

In your blog, you talk about your art during your pregnancy. To quote something you wrote that sounded really interesting to me: “An artist said that the bursts of creativity she had whilst she was a new mum took her art in an entirely new direction...

She said it was because you get these small bites of time and what you create is very spontaneous. I have to say, I like the sound of that as I feel my own works are heavy with planning, work and re-working”. Do you think your work and inspiration have changed since you became a mother?

I did a lot more spontaneous drawings and little paintings when she was really little. I don’t think they’re my greatest pieces, but it helped. I did lots of little sketches of her. I couldn’t plan anything out, I just had to grab little moments when I could, just sort of playing and staying sane.

I think the biggest change was actually when she was old enough to go to school - that gave me a couple of hours to start to plan those bigger works again.

In your blog you also asked yourself “I’m just wondering, though, what kind of parents are we going to be?” Do you know the answer to that question now?

You know, I think I’m a lot more chilled now that she’s getting older. But I do think gosh, with your first one (and she’s going to be my only one) it’s hard to not feel anxious all the time and feel like “Oh no, I’m ruining her for life” by forgetting to pack her snack or something ridiculous. After a while I just relaxed and thought being anxious isn’t going to help her or me. As a calm mother I can create a better atmosphere. She’s my little pal, we hang out and we do fun things - she’s one of my favourite people to be with and she’s just really lovely. I was really looking forward to parenthood, but I have to say that the highs and the lows are bigger than I’d imagined. It’s been a pretty good experience.

You also work in education. How do you combine art and education?

Part of my degree was teaching art to kids between five and 18 and I’ve gone back to it on and off over the past 20 years. It sort of depends where I’m living, or what’s going on with my life. When I got pregnant I stopped

teaching, but now I teach two days a week and work on my art three days a week. It’s taken me years to get to this point, but I really like my schedule now.

Art is my favourite thing to talk about. I love showing people how to do stuff - how to use different materials, how to make something look 3D, or how to make a pattern out of information. Unfortunately, art is almost nonexistent in the curriculum and I see that as a huge disservice to kids. They’re taking away something that I consider will help them to process life, to process their feelings and what’s going on around them. They’re taking away the ability to possibly shine in an area that maybe they didn’t realize they could shine in. It’s good to be able to do maths and to write, but you want your children to be wellrounded so they have choices in life.

My daughter Lottie tells me she wants to be an artist and a vet. My advice to her if she comes to me when she’s in high school and she’s interested in the arts, I’d say that whatever she’s interested in is fine, but alongside the arts, try to take some business classes because what they won’t teach you is how can you monetise your art - because you do need somehow to make a living. I’m a bit envious of friends who did fine arts degrees with a business minor. I don’t know how they’re doing now but it makes so much sense. I think you’d be more aware of your options, more aware of how the world works, so that would be a real-life education.

n e e r Sc s m a e r d

photography by Kat Dlugosz

Mar Felices is the co-creator of the first Ibero-American Documentary Film Festival in Scotland.

Monica Martins meets Mar to hear about how IberoDocs showcases Ibero-American culture in Scotland and her experience moving to Edinburgh and launching a film festival from scratch.

Mar, can you tell us a bit about your background?

After school I wasn’t sure about what to study.

I had a passion for movies but wasn’t sure that it would lead to a career. According to my teachers, working in cinema was never an option in Andalusia. I decided to study Production of Audiovisual Programmes and Shows but after a few months working in TV, I decided to expand my options and go for a degree. I graduated from the University of Seville in Audiovisual Communication in 2007.

At university I got the same message about how difficult it was to find a job in the cinema industry. Nevertheless, my interest in independent cinema just kept growing. I felt a strong connection to Abbas Kiarostami’s style, and during my Erasmus exchange in Paris I discovered the films of Tony Gatlif. I realised my attention was moving from fiction towards documentary and I wanted to explore the space between these two genres.

In 2008 I moved to Barcelona where I specialised in Creative Documentary and directed my first feature ‘The Shepherd’s Oasis.

After five years of intense work with a lot of ups and downs, we finished it. The film was well received and won Best Foreign Documentary Film at FIC·PUEBLA International Film Festival.

It also featured as part of the Official Selection at Alcances Atlantic Film Festival and was broadcast by TV3 in Spain.

During this time I also worked as an assistant director and film researcher in a well-known production company called Bausan Films. I couldn’t have felt happier and more satisfied about how my professional career was developing.

But then the recession hit.

What brought you to Scotland?

The Spanish financial crisis led to a severe increase in unemployment. If getting a job in cinema had always been challenging (as my teachers insistently warned), during the recession there was no hope of finding any kind of job - no matter what qualifications or experience you had. I remember not getting a film festivals job because the other candidate spoke English and I didn’t. I realised it was time for me to broaden my horizons.

Out of the English-speaking countries around, Scotland was my favourite due to the Edinburgh festival scene. I also had a friend who spoke very highly of the city.

How did it progress during these six years? Did you always feel motivated to keep going? What did you find most difficult?

I remember the first two or three years being very difficult. Starting a project from nothing while being an immigrant who doesn’t even speak the language is not an easy task.

What motivated you to start IberoDocs?

I’d been searching for people involved in documentary filmmaking since I arrived in Edinburgh in 2012, as I was working on a documentary about my grandfather.

My search opened my eyes to the diverse and inspiring range of cultural events in Edinburgh, yet I noticed that Hispanic culture and documentaries weren’t as wellrepresented as they could be.

I approached film festivals with a programme of Hispanic documentaries and had no responses - but the Spanish Consul in Edinburgh believed I could develop the idea into my own film festival. So I did.

Then, during the Edinburgh International Film Festival, I met Xosé-Ramón ‘Mon’ Rivas, an event manager who shared my passion for Hispanic documentaries. His expertise in the logistical side of festival management perfectly complimented my skills on the artistic side, so we combined our talents and started IberoDocs together.

As a documentary filmmaker I feel the need to express the reality in front of me. That’s why the films I tend to select explore themes such as integration, boundaries, empowerment, memory and identity. These topics explore the ‘immigrant journey’, they represent steps towards starting a new life in a different culture. I believe the festival helps to integrate the Ibero-American community in Scotland.

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On top of that, I had experience in the documentary industry but not in event management, so I trusted the skills of the rest of the team, and they had to trust my skills and expertise as well. There were many situations where I felt vulnerable or uncertain, but I found the courage and confidence I needed. You need to believe in yourself. Be conscious of your strengths and weaknesses. For instance, in my fight to overcome my fear of public speaking, I joined workshops and read several books and after six years, it got a bit better - but I still can feel my body shaking every time!

My real motivation comes when audience and artists connect with each other during the festival. When the film or the event moves them and they go home inspired. Sometimes there’s no need for words, just a look is enough.

I’m a visual person, I can’t help it!

But there have been times where I’ve lost motivation, especially when I was working 40 hours a week, with 60 hours of voluntary work for the festival on top. After the fifth edition of IberoDocs I was exhausted, and I had my doubts about whether IberoDocs was just a hobby or a profession.

Thankfully, at that point we received support from Creative Scotland and IberoDocs become my full-time job (at least for half a year for now).

What do you think has been most important to IberoDocs’ success?

IberoDocs is the only documentary film festival in Edinburgh and the only platform for Ibero-American culture in Scotland. Our idea is unique but consistency is key. The team has proven its commitment to year-on-year growth and has developed a genuinely innovative programme and a distinct approach.

Did you feel your idea was welcomed in Scotland? Who do you feel supports it the most?

Yes, Scottish society is inclusive and welcoming, and audiences in Edinburgh and Glasgow are truly interested in other cultures.

We screened a film called Katchkanirachmi in our first year, and discovered through our feedback forms that many audience members were travelling through to Edinburgh from Glasgow to attend our festival. They had requested that we run the festival in Glasgow, so we knew they supported us!

Obviously Filmhouse has been key to our success.

It was impressive to witness the biggest room of the Filmhouse almost full during our first festival, with a documentary about Perú! The Spanish Consulate in Edinburgh, the Spanish Embassy in London and Instituto Camões have also supported us from the very beginning.

Did you search for support from any organisations that support entrepreneurs in Scotland? If you did, do you feel that there was enough support for you?

I feel very supported by many organisations and institutions that are keen to collaborate with us.

However, the majority of them do through in-kind support, so it’s difficult to find funds to cover our costs. Especially because the funding usually comes afterwards but many of the costs need to be covered in the early stages.

Where would you like Iberodocs to be in five years?

It’s always been my dream to see IberoDocs in other countries. We’d love to deliver cross-programmes between Scotland and Brazil for example.

Do you have any advice for women, particularly women from the EU who are currently in Scotland, who are thinking about starting their own business?

In general terms, I tend to be quite spontaneous and intuitive, but despite the following advice seeming very obvious, it would have helped if I’d remembered it when I started my journey!

So here it is: culture can affect negotiation. Learn about communication styles and patterns in the UK and find a balance between their ways of communicating and your own style. They’ll appreciate that you’re bringing uniqueness, but present it in their way.

I’d also recommend that before you share your idea, register it before somebody else sees the potential and does it! And collaborate with other organisations that inspire you, especially the ones run by women.

I always thought of my body as a box, tightly closed, always in place, designed by someone invisible (read: society) controlled by a puppet master who tightens the leashes periodically.

It has happened many times, that time I fell asleep in a public train and my head and arms were coming loose and the side view of my open body would be visible to predator-like men all sitting there waiting to grab a handfulbecause my breasts seemed to say they exist, yes, the puppet master tightened his leash and made me jerk awake placing my limbs back in place.

I have always wondered how men found park benches relaxing, every time I tried to rest, my body would expand to take a little more space and the uncle next to me will man-spread to feel a little more of that body-fat that is my lucrative identity to him.

Relaxation be damned, I tighten into a coil, checking to see my dupatta doesn’t spill into a millimetre more that it needs till I leave, deciding that people must be daft for trying to relax on a park bench (read: sarcastic laughter) Newspapers and articles I read, told me false things, they made me want to run, to exercise, to try to be fit.

But my body has a puppet master who cares for me in weird ways!

It appeared again agitated with his invisible leash,

when I was trying to make my body run without making my breasts move and without my thighs jiggling and trying to compress my bum into the flattest shape possible through the sheer power of my will since the open mouthed leer of the naked workers with their loin-clothes and the heaviness of their gaze waiting for the next little jiggle of my breasts must mean I had listened to nonsense again!

The whip cracked down, I slowed down to a walk, and went home to shower off the cringe and never went back to the park again.

Shouldn’t media not try to lure people with false stories of being fit??!

It happened again on that auto rickshaw when the guy next to me was trying hard to get some space for his body.

He was trying really really hard

terrorist since his body parts were clearly in trouble of being suffocated!

But then, once or twice I suddenly found myself in a female-only space, like in my hostel room, or that all-female train compartment, I was pleasantly surprised, my body had relaxed, it opened up, tentatively spreading out from its box.

Slowly, shyly at first, seeking space, seeking solace.

to fit his elbow under my arms, I understood!

I tried to give him space, Really, I did!

But this time, all the whip cracking by the master could not defy the laws of physics, I would have to get surgery to make my body any less!!

Oh, yes. It happened again! in that airplane when the guy next to me was having trouble with his man-things.

He needed his legs to spread wide to give his privates loads of space.

I tried and tried to fit into my corner, limbs tucked into place, my arms tucked inside my contours, efficiently packed!

But when that wasn’t enough, maybe I should have just broken that window to throw myself out and risk being called a suicide bomber or a

It was afraid of the puppet master’s leash.

But as seconds passed and the whip did not crack and my body was just my body, my breasts were just my breasts, my hands were not shields and my lips, not a red light district, my box lost its rigidity and slowly dispersed into space and I ate my popcorn sitting there in my ratty shirt, my bra strap popping out and me, for once not caring that it was a missile sent out to forage for prey, I was free!

Free from doing the puppet master’s will.

poem by Sonali Mohapatra artwork by Lorena Sequeyro

Speaking out and being seen: Stories of fertility treatment from professional women

Lisa Buchanan explores how for some women, the feminist ideal of workplace equality has been shattered by their experiences of undergoing fertility treatment.

Fertility treatment is the women’s issue of our time. Get an education, build a career, bolt on motherhood. Simple, or so they’d have us believe. ‘They’ those who control our workplaces and institutions, those who set and influence the social scripts of our lives, our parents, our peers, the media, the mental constraints of living life according to the rules of some imagined other group. But what to do when your career starts to run down the biological clock?

Uptake of fertility treatment has been increasing year on year since data gathering began in 1992. Single women, same-sex couples and heterosexual couples alike are accessing treatment in ever increasing numbers. In 2017/18 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority recorded 84,055 cases of in vitro fertilisation and donor insemination. However, as a form of conception it’s in its relative infancy, with the first IVF baby born just over 40 years in 1978. Just as science has moved on significantly, so too has the position and status of women in the workplace where we occupy more positions of power and influence.

Generation X-ers and millennials alike have grown up believing in a mantra of having it all - a career, a family, a social life and much more besides. Yet for some women, the feminist ideal of workplace equality has been shattered by the impact of undergoing fertility treatment. Not only does it impact one’s sense of control over life, but it seems, it has the effect of silencing us in the workplace and keeping us hidden from view.

Two researchers have contributed significantly to this area of work.

Professor Ruth Simpson and Dr Patricia Lewis have co-authored work on how women use voice and visibility in the workplace and what impact gender has in the workplace. Using their framework of voice and visibility, this study applied these concepts to professional women and their experience of fertility treatment.

These women’s stories talk about the spaces where their deep-seated desire for motherhood clashes with the male rules of the workplace, and in others, where they have been met with sympathy and understanding. Newsflash - we’re not overwhelmed by the latter.

What does the research tell us?

Much has been written about women in management, gender equality and the law at work. Each of these topics point to imbalance, lack or absence in some way or another. Other fields such as medical science illustrate an overly medicalised approach to fertility treatment without the development of social scripts needed to give voice to women’s experiences. By using Simpson and Lewis’ research on voice and visibility the goal was to uncover what professional women thought and felt about navigating treatment and how they responded to their working environment.

Broadly speaking, the stories women told were mapped against the framework and illustrated themes of silence or speaking out (voice), being seen or remaining hidden ((in)visibility).

The study also looks at whether these events took place on the surface of experience or at a deeper level.

Being heard Some women reported positive experiences about telling their employer they were undergoing fertility treatment. Conditions that made this possible included having a mostly female workplace (in occupations like nursing) and having an informed line manager who was supportive of family life.

It [disclosure] was practical really.

I mean, my line manager was very, very supportive of anything to do with family life with all my colleagues... I didn’t have any difficulty going to her and letting her know. And also, it was practical because…. [my employer] doesn’t give any sort of leave for IVF treatment or for fertility treatment, so I would have had to apply to her for some sort of leave anyway, for the time off I’d need for going through to [another city] for treatment.

Education Manager, 35 This woman’s story pointed to links between a positive experience of disclosing her treatment status in the sense that it gave her time off, but it also pointed to deeper issues of policy and the lottery of having a good line manager.

This hints at a level of difference, which is supported by other women’s experiences.

The very absence of any legislation protecting a woman’s position, specifically as a result of

fertility treatment, suggests a deeper silencing of women’s issues where family and career aspirations collide. While legislation can often be a blunt instrument for change, it can have the effect of forcing employers to introduce workplace protections. However, there were few organisations that mentioned fertility treatment in any staff policy (one out of the 19 organisations represented in this study).

Although formal policies are not a cure-all for every workplace issue, they do at least offer an opportunity to develop procedures and practices that reflect the needs of women undergoing treatment and therefore give voice to the issues at work. Some can even change the course of women’s experiences at work. In other words, no policy on fertility leave meant that no-one asked about that experience - and not asking means that noone is listening at any level.

Women told me: It’s just a feeling you get because you work in a very male-dominated environment and I did feel that if I did speak about it and I got emotional that people would look on that negatively in terms of, well, is she really able to cope with work, is she really able to cope with promotion and is she going to cope with the demands, when in reality what you’re not coping with is something completely different [ie fertility treatment].

Commercial Director, 32 I think in a professional situation, you don’t want people, especially your male colleagues, assuming that you’re on hormones and therefore that’s why you’re being a bit bitchy that day. I mean, my male colleagues are lovely, but you just don’t know who’s talking.

We get enough of that nonsense about being on our periods every month so add adding hormones to that, no thanks.

Communications Consultant, 37 Disguising emotions and removing discussions of issues such as menstruation or fertility treatment from the workplace stems from what Lewis and Simpson describe as “marginalising certain areas of concern” (p1262, Simpson and Lewis, 2005).

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It follows that omitting certain topics from workplace discussions creates an unspoken understanding about what topics are acceptable - and this unspoken understanding privileges male norms over female. It also suggests that to be professional, a woman cannot show emotion or talk about the impact of fertility hormones if she wants to be taken seriously and not belittled.

If disclosure of fertility treatment is a barometer of an inclusive workplace, then the experiences described above illustrate that poor responses to disclosure and the rational workplace which hides emotion are what allow the male norm to continue to thrive as the universal workplace standard. Womenand employers - need to use these experiences to challenge the male privilege that keeps women quiet about fertility treatment.

On a more upbeat note, there were also examples of where women were able to use their voice to challenge the sound of silence deafening their workplaces.

I went to her [manager] really quite prepared. Rather than going as an inferior asking someone more superior to tell me what the process was, I had already gone to HR to find out what there was. I’d also spoken to some of the medics, so I knew what it [the process] was about. I told her I’d already been to HR to find out what support is there for people so we didn’t have to have that discussion of me not feeling sure of what she would come back with… I probably led the whole thing, despite the fact that she was the manager... but that’s probably because of who I am because I’d done some management myself so I wasn’t going to be passive in the whole situation.

Allied Healthcare Professional, 36 Another woman used her voice strategically to get the time off she needed without going into much detail. She was able to do this because the norm in her workplace was not to talk about any female issues so the mere mention of a scan and a request to change the rota was enough to silence her colleagues.

Being seen An overwhelming majority of the women interviewed appeared to go to great lengths to avoid standing out as a woman undergoing 52

fertility treatment and to compensate for any time off by making up their hours.

Being present at work and not taking time off are acts that Simpson and Lewis would describe as “disciplined, disengaged from reproduction and emotionally under control” (p 1264, Simpson and Lewis, 2005). In the main, women seemed to be pleased that they were managing to cope with the demands of the job alongside the emotional and practical challenges of fertility treatment. But under the surface, their confident assurances that everything was manageable were not always supported by subsequent disclosures about advice they would give to other women going through treatment or in the questions that they asked themselves during treatment.

I had been going for blood tests at 6.30 in the morning to avoid taking time off work, I’d carefully choreographed every holiday around a doctor’s appointment so that nobody could ever get suspicious about what I was doing.

Third Sector Manager, 30 In almost every case, women cited extensive activity outside work that focused on fertility treatment. This indicates a strong separation of work and home life. For example, in every case, women described significant efforts outside the workplace to help them reach their goal of falling pregnant and having a child. These efforts included changing routines wherever possible to make sure they could attend the necessary appointments out of office hours, changing their diets for optimum nutrition, undertaking exercise and relaxation activities suggested by experts, following medical advice about reducing alcohol, eating healthily, cutting out caffeine and other nonmedical advice as well. Descriptions of the level of activity and changes in routine outside work seemed at odds with how quiet women appeared to be about their treatment in the workplace.

Many of the women interviewed felt that they didn’t want their performance at work to be affected at all during treatment - placing even greater burdens on them to maintain their high standards and cope with the challenges of treatment.

I’m glad that I’ve been here for seven years now, so people know me, they know that I do good work, that I don’t screw around and try to get out of

things. I have built up a reservoir of goodwill that I can now draw on a little bit and be less than totally my best and it will probably be ok.

Lecturer, 39 I kept a log of all my fertility appointments and matched them against any extra hours that I did so that if anyone asked me, then I could show that my absences had been accommodated by other work I was doing. Of course, silly me, no-one ever asked and it’s only as treatment continued unsuccessfully that I started to realise I was stupid not to ask for time off and for working twice as hard.

Who was I trying to impress by being at work all the time? I was wasting precious fertile years being at work, running around after everyone else but myself. More fool me.

Chief Executive, 32 These concepts of the male standard were plentiful in almost all the data. Fitting in with male norms of high performance, check. Not complaining, check. An ever-present work culture, check. Not showing emotion at work and being very critical of herself if she did, check. Feeling like she is letting womankind down by not trying to have it all, check.

Getting on with giving excellence even during times of personal turbulence, check.

Exhausting isn’t it? So why don’t women ask for their needs to be met at work during their time of treatment?

Blending in To act in any other way felt as if it would expose women to the effects of being different from men and once they’d gained promotions by adhering to the standards above, it seemed difficult for women to identify, act upon and reconcile their new needs in the workplace once treatment was underway. Those who have subsequently become mothers find it easier to express their wish to work less often, with less responsibility or to give up work altogether, however those who are and will remain childless face the double burden of having to form new identities beyond motherhood and beyond the workplace, to give meaning and purpose to their lives.

Although I told my employer about fertility treatment, I never did or said anything that let them know I couldn’t cope. I had this kind of double standard for myself. Anyone was welcome in my office to tell me about their problems and I would never judge them for showing emotion or needing to take time out for personal reasons. But for me there was no way I was going to give them the satisfaction of gossiping about my ability to cope. I knew that my boss would run a mile if I got upset so it was easier just to keep up appearances and pretend that it was business as usual.

Accountant, 33 This example illustrates how common it is for the workplace and workplace culture to be designed around a male standard. This woman did not feel able to speak up and or explain any problems she was having and so she opted to blend in with the regular working culture. This acted as a barrier to speaking out and creating a culture that welcomes challenges to the prevailing attitudes of what’s acceptable in the workplace.

A challenge to the norm The most significant action that a woman took to effect change at the institutional level with her employer was to join a family and work committee that had the ear of her university’s chancellor. Although she did not hold out much hope that her voice would make a huge difference to the organisation’s policy, she had nonetheless decided to make a stand and speak out at the highest level of the organisation.

For us, that policy [fertility treatment] is set at the organisational level which is [more than one campus with thousands of staff] so you can’t change benefits that easily. I did join a committee on campus based on my experience, the committee for work and families and it puts forward policy suggestions but because it’s such a huge bureaucracy, doing it by yourself kinda feels like pissing into the wind... well, that was a lovely waste of my time.

Lecturer, 39

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This action is different to the others previously mentioned because it goes beyond the level of the individual and seeks to influence wider policy decisions in the organisation. On the one hand, it’s noteworthy that only one woman felt able to make herself visible in this way, but on the other hand, given the weight of judgement and pressure women face to be ever-present, high-performing and completely rational at work, it’s doubtful that many people would want to single themselves out for such attention.

What next?

Firstly, judging by the response to the call for participants and the range and volume of data collected, there is a large appetite among professional and managerial women to talk about their experiences of fertility treatment.

It’s also clear that there’s a need to create more space for this to happen in academia, in our institutions and our workplaces.

Secondly, positive experiences of disclosing and managing ongoing commitments to fertility treatment while holding down a demanding role are scarce. This is reinforced by women’s over-reliance on patchy, subjective responses from their individual line managers and the overwhelming organisational silence at the policy level. Thirdly, there is great pressure on individual women to manage their schedules to blend into the workplace and a strong feeling that women must avoid drawing too much attention to themselves for fear of standing out and challenging traditional views of the workplace.

Fortunately, history teaches us that women’s positions at work can change over time. What is less certain is how to navigate new, nontraditional ways of starting a family with the demands of a career. What we need now is a mandate for change that will create less burden for career-minded, future fertility seekers.

Lisa Buchanan

References www.hfea.gov.uk/media/2716/the-state-of-the-fertilitysector-2017-2018-final-accessibility-checked.pdf Simpson, R. and Lewis, P (2005) An investigation of silence and a scrutiny of transparency: Re-examining gender in organization literature through the concepts of voice and visibility. Human Relations, 58 (10), pp.1253– 1275.

photography by Camille Vincent

Disobeying Borders: Central American mothers looking for their lost children

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TRIGGER WARNING VIOLENCE, WAR

“Daughter, if you are listening, please contact me.�

Belen Gonzalez Leggire looks at the impact of migration, the drug war and violence on families in Central America.

She discovers how a group of women in Mexico have found their own way of resisting and fighting for their children.

Migration in Central America is a major issue.

Combined with the drug war and the violence, the social problems caused by migration expand and the solutions are nowhere close to being found.

violence against violence - to fight the drug cartels, he sent military forces out onto the streets. This only led to more violence, more death and more insecurity and social inequality, especially for women and children.

Immigrants leave home for several reasons - work, violence in their own countries, or to reunite with other family members. In Mexico, the Central American country which has been battling a drug war for decades, migration goes along with the increase in violence.

A group of mothers in Central America have developed their own way of resistance. They decided to disobey international borders, the law and the authorities and went to look for their daughters and sons who had disappeared - kidnapped by the drug cartels and local mafias.

The strategy employed by Mexican former president Felipe Calderon (2006-2012) was 56

It’s worth remembering that the border between Mexico and the United States is considered to be one of the most dangerous in the world. But Mexico itself has become a vertical border that discriminates between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ migrants, with a model that criminalises the citizens that cross the borders, and generates this kind of violence and insecurity.

So, like their children had done before, the Central American mothers decided to go beyond borders to look for their missing children - boys and girls who left home and lost contact with their families. Their main suspicion is that they became embroiled in the drug war.

Their name is ‘Caravanas de madres centroamericanas’. It could be explained as a group of women from Central America joining together and following the same path, looking for their kids and for justice and defying the status quo.

Neither the state authorities nor the police are interested in finding these sons and daughters, or even clarifying what may have happened to them, so the role these mothers play in this conflict is essential.

“Daughter, if you are listening, please contact me.”

Radio Progreso station in Honduras was the first step for these mothers. What initially appeared to be just a radio broadcast which connected Central American migrants suddenly became a searching mechanism.

The name of the radio broadcast was ‘Sin fronteras’ (‘Without borders’) and it became the meeting point for all the mothers. In 1993, the first mother to go on the radio to broadcast her suffering and her quest was Doña Emérita Martínez. She told her story and found out that a lot of people had seen her daughter, but they didn’t know that she was looking for her. They didn’t even consider her daughter as a missing person. It took 17 years for Martínez to finally find her beloved child after she’d gone missing.

The week after Martínez told her story to the entire continent, a lot of women showed up in the same radio station to tell their story of exactly the same tragedy - they had all lost their children to the drug war and the violence and they were desperate for news. Suddenly, the radio station became their tool, their support, the hope they needed to keep going with the search. When nobody was listening to them or giving them any answers, they still found the strength to go on.

As painful as it must have been, they organised themselves and started looking for their children all over the continent. They looked for them in mass graves, hospitals, morgues, prisons, shelters, brothels – every place they thought they could be, either of their own free will or under threat.

This group of mothers became a very important part of Central American politics, as well as crucial members of the search for their missing children. They also started to perform motherhood as a community – they were looking not only for their own kids, they were looking for everyone else’s children too. In doing so, they redefined the concept and role of motherhood and womanhood.

And their case is not isolated. Latin America has a long-standing tradition of mothers and grandmothers looking for their missing kids women and mothers who take to the streets and public places in search of answers.

One example is the human rights organisation Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, which was formed to reunite biological parents with hundreds of children born in prisons and torture centres. Another example is all the women that are telling their stories of rape and torture under the many military dictatorships around the continent during the 1970s and the 1980s. Yet another is the National Commission of Guatemalan Widows which called for the dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to be prosecuted years after the genocide against indigenous peoples. Today, twenty or thirty years later, their voices are going beyond any borders, just like the Central American mothers.

Neither the hostile environment in the region and the violence perpetuated by ineffective governments, nor the machismo that characterises Latin American culture could stop these women from seeking out their children. Doña Emérita Martínez found her girl and kept looking for the rest of them and helping others in their search. She died in 2013 and hopefully she is resting in peace.

Belén González Leggire

This essay was originally written and submitted in Spanish as a college paper. The authors are Liliana Aragón, Ivonne Millán and Belén González Leggire.

González Leggire was in charge of summarising and translating for WomenBeing.

photography by Kat Dlugosz

Chef and entrepreneur Marie-Anne Marten co-founded Beetroot Sauvage, a vegan cafe and wellness centre in Edinburgh that nourishes body and mind alike.

Monica Martins meets Marie-Anne to learn more about her approach to plant-based cooking and how she ensured her ethical stance was reflected throughout her business.

photography by Kat Dlugosz

Business the natural way Nourishing the community Can you tell us a bit about your background?

I was born in south-west France and moved around a lot as a child. I lived in Germany for five years, Paris for six years and Edinburgh for 21 years now.

As a child I always wanted to help animals, to help relieve suffering in general. I felt very close to animals so I studied veterinary medicine and became a small animal vet. I moved to Scotland and worked as a vet for six years in Edinburgh.

I came to realise that I needed to break away from this job, because I felt there was a conflict between the love people had for their animals, the suffering that the animals went through (that I saw on a daily basis) and the financial aspect of taking care of pets. People had to pay so much money to help their animals and often they couldn’t afford it. I found this clashed so much with my values - I wanted to use my knowledge to help.

I then got the opportunity to train as a veterinary pathologist so I worked in a lab, looking at cells under the microscope, but seven years later, after having had two children, I hit another hurdle. While I felt the work I was doing was interesting and worthwhile, there were a lot of people who thought we knew everything and in fact we know very little. We’re looking at things in a way we weren’t 100 years ago, and I’m sure that in another 100 years we’ll look at things completely differently again.

Also, since having my second child, I was attracted to a more peaceful way of living. I started doing yoga and meditating, and my way of looking at the way we eat shifted. I felt that what I was putting in my body was becoming me, so I needed to feed myself

things that are closer to the earth and are not full of suffering. I became vegan and found myself very interested in making vegan food.

My background has had this natural curve - I realised that I’ve been trying to relieve animal suffering all my life and now I’m actually contributing to this by no longer consuming animals and helping others to do the same through our cafe.

Tell us a bit more about the concept of Beetroot Sauvage.

Basically, when my husband Alex and I had our second child, we went to visit Alex’s greataunt in Inverness. She had a cafe there - a very small cafe, with vegan and vegetarian food downstairs, a yoga space upstairs and space for therapies. I walked in there and immediately thought “This is where I want to be. This place is what I want to do. I’ve never ever seen a place like this before, but this is exactly what I want to create.”

That really inspired me, at exactly the right time in my life. I was vegan, I was really into yoga, I was a young mum, and I felt this sort of lifestyle - embracing things that are close to nature and close our own nature - is the way to cope with bringing up a child which takes a lot of energy, and a way to connect with other people and to connect with oneself.

This is really where the concept was born I really wanted to emulate that initial spark of inspiration, recreate it in my own way.

What activities do you offer to your clients?

There are two elements to our business. We have a cafe downstairs and my approach is to offer tasty food that people want to eat and 61

just happens to be free of animal products.

The focus is really on the tastiness! We also offer cookery classes downstairs.

Upstairs we have the holistic centre, with a range of classes - yoga mostly, but also meditation classes and other activities like Nia Dance, a kind of barefoot dance which is very freeing. We have things for children too, including kids yoga and music for tiny babies.

During the week we provide free coffee and tea after the morning yoga classes so people can connect after the class instead of just coming and going. We don’t want it to feel like a gym here, it’s basically activities where people can connect.

What about the food? Where do you source the ingredients, and do you have any special products or dishes from your menu that you’d like to talk about?

Most of our dry goods come from a place called Green City Cooperative, a cooperative in Glasgow which does a lot of organic and vegan food. For our coffee we use Steampunk who are based in North Berwick and have become really good friends. Our tea is blended in Midlothian by John who runs a company called Shibui. The bread comes from an Edinburgh company. We like to source locally as much as we can.

Thinking about products or dishes I’d like to talk about, Iit would be our cakes. We make two types of cake. Initially, I wanted to completely get rid of refined sugar, so we make a lot of refined sugar-free cakes. We make the raw cheesecakes and they’re also vegan - they’re made with nuts mostly and sweetened with dates and either maple or agave syrup.

A lot of people say ”Ooh, but that’s still sugar!”

Yes, it is, but because it isn’t refined sugar, it also contains all the other things that are in the natural product. There’s fibre, there’s other elements that your body is quite happy with, that help you process the sugar properly. I can hand on my heart say “I feel different after eating a raw cheesecake, compared to eating a cake with refined sugar in it”. The cakes are definitely worth coming for - the taste and the experience!

I must say I have an absolute favourite product - your vegan cheese. When and where did you learn to make it?

When I became vegan, I couldn’t find cheese that I liked in the shops. There’s a lot more 62

varieties now, but at the time the few I tried just tasted very wrong to me. They didn’t have the right texture, they didn’t spread nicely so, I decided to learn how to make the cheese.

The internet is the most wonderful resource for learning anything. I tried a lot of other people’s recipes, I adapted my own, I came across a book called ‘The Non-Dairy Evolution’ that has lots of different techniques. I just kept doing it and repeating it. When I was making the cheese, I was just eating all and I thought “Well maybe I should give it to other people” so now we make it and sell it on Sundays.

Did you find it difficult to start? Did you search for any type of support?

For me the first thing was to find a location.

It had to be the right place. I needed enough space, a big bright studio for the yoga - I didn’t want to be underground with no windows. I didn’t want it to be somewhere too noisy or too central. I wanted people to come here and come back, because they felt at home. It was quite difficult finding a place.

I did it all by myself for a year. During that time I found support from Firstport (Scotland’s development agency for start-up social entrepreneurs and social enterprises) because I thought “Well this is not for profit, this is going to be sustainable and any profit that is made will go back into helping people, maybe having programmes to get people struggling, especially mothers”. So I got this support, and I got support from Entrepreneurial Spark for six months. I also asked my family for money, because you need a lot of money to start a business like this. That’s probably the biggest thing I needed help with - tax bills, wages and other expenses.

We were lucky because this place was already set up for catering, we had all the tables and fridges. We had to buy a few things but it’s nothing compared to kitting out a place for catering from scratch.

We got help from Business Gateway (a Scottish Government resource which offers business support services) as well. They helped with the business plan, and when money was really tight I went there and it was helpful to have a chat with one of the business advisers - she was reassuring and came up with ideas. I think when you’re panicked, it’s quite difficult to step out of it and look at things in a more rational way, so she was very helpful. I did courses at Business Gateway as well - the start-up one, and accounting courses. It’s well worth getting help and there’s a lot of help out there.

I’ve also noticed that every time I come here there’s always people, especially women, working in the cafe. They have their laptops, as well as coming for the food and drink. How does it make you feel, knowing that these women feel that Beetroot Sauvage is a welcoming space for them to work from?

I love it. I think it’s brilliant that they come here and use it as a workspace. We have some people coming all the time - they have their tea and they sit there for hours. I really like them being here people working, people having business meetings, people doing life-coaching sessions or tarot readings and they just come and use the space. We have a lot of space outside as well.

There’s a lady upstairs who runs classes for autistic children twice a week in the therapy room, she runs social skills clubs. On Thursday there’s all the mums with their tiny babies, they go to the ‘Music Bugs - Baby Bugs’ sessions and afterwards they stay and they have drinks and talk about their struggles. I think it’s really nice that people are working and exchanging and getting stuff done here.

For you, what’s the most difficult aspect of running an independent business?

There’s just so much to do, there’s always something. Especially running this business because as I mentioned, it’s two businesses in one. I’m a little bit short of staff so I do a lot myself. I still have my hand in all sides of the business - answering queries from people wanting to hire the space for example, or doing all the marketing - and that’s difficult.

The issue is that I could employ staff to do it for me, but that costs money. I did start off having people doing that, but it was too expensive, I can’t afford it yet.

That leads to the other difficulty which is lifework balance, being able to be with my family as well as running a business. The business is like another child, one that needs you all the time, just like a baby. You can’t really go on holiday and relax. It still needs your input.

There could be problems, something could break... I think work-life balance is something that I’m still getting my head around. Basically I have no social life because I’m in the cafe all the time, so it’s difficult to maintain good relationships with your family and friends when you’re not there. For me that’s the biggest difficulty.

What would you say to women who want to start their own business?

If you’re like me and have a tendency to obsess about work, just watch yourself every step of the way. There are going to be highs and lows - a lot of lows where you’re struggling. It’s not easy. I’ve found in my life that I always make things more difficult for myself but in the end, the result is better. And whatever the result is, you’ll know that at least you tried your hardest.

Ideally I’d love to have a mentor that I could speak to. I haven’t found one yet, but I think it will come in time.

I’d also tell women who want to start their own business just to keep at it, seek support from other women or organisations, watch your work-life balance and use it as an opportunity to grow.

When it’s hard, that’s when you learn - try to bear that in mind. And obviously the panic and anxiety wind down after a while, so try not to worry too much.

Stay happy.

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photography by Ă‚nia Ferreira Edinburgh, 2018

!

TRIGGER WARNING VIOLENCE, WAR, INCEST, RAPE

Musenge Musomali talks to Monica Martins about how she turned her own deeply personal trauma into a charity that gives hope and support to women and girls across Zambia. the case of a three-day-old baby who died after being sexually defiled by her own biological father. This case is one of many reported almost every week in different parts of the country. Typically, such cases are rarely reported or under-reported because family members conceal information from the relevant authorities, due to the shame they feel and their fear that perpetrators who are family members will be prosecuted.

Since families conceal vital information from relevant authorities, children who are survivors of incest and child sexual abuse don’t receive any form of psychological or medical intervention. They’re left to deal with the effects of abuse in silence, which can be a difficult and painful process in the absence of a proper support system. Without any form of medical intervention, the chances of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases are high.

Furthermore, women who are victims of sexual violence often choose to remain silent because they’re afraid of being called names or simply not willing to go through the processes involved.

You’ve been an advocate and activist for the rights of girls and women who have been victims of incest and sexual abuse in Zambia. What’s the reality for women and girls right now in Zambia?

In recent years, Zambia has witnessed an increase in the number of sexual and genderbased violence (SGBV) cases against women and girls. Survivors have very traumatic recollections of their experiences, with some being mentally, physically, emotionally and psychologically scarred for life.

Cases of incest and child sexual abuse have been increasing in Zambia - the latest being 66

My view is that women who are sexually assaulted by their boyfriends or men they know are unlikely to report the assault because it’s difficult to prove that they didn’t consent. It becomes a ‘he said she said’ situation and most women prefer not to report the incident to the police in those circumstances. Other times, women blame themselves because they are led to believe it was their fault - because of the way they were dressed or whether they’d been drinking.

For married women, it’s difficult to prove they’ve been raped in marriage because our culture demands that a woman should be submissive to her husband. Most men believe

Taking on Taboos that they’re entitled to sex especially when they pay ‘bride price’ (a payment by the groom or his family to the bride’s family). A woman is also taught that she should submit to her husband regardless of the situation - that’s why claims of marital rape are not taken seriously.

The overall situation for women and girls in Zambia is one that needs more interventions.

To curb these crimes, the Zambian government, together with various nongovernmental organisations, interest groups and individuals are speaking out against sexual and gender-based violence through online and community awareness campaigns, radio and television adverts, creation of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence survivors support groups/networks and other initiatives aimed at promoting women and children’s rights.

What made you start campaigning?

Since I was a little girl, I’ve always been interested in my late mother’s work as a nurse.

I wanted to become a nurse like her and help people. I’ve always been passionate about women’s and children’s issues.

I’m also a woman who has experienced immense pain and suffering from the time I was a little girl. I was subjected to all forms of abuse - sexual, mental, physical, psychological and emotional abuse. I was broken, bruised and wounded for over three decades. I struggled to deal with the effects of the traumatic events in my life and when I finally connected with people who were able to help me, I realised that I needed to do the same for other people who survived similar traumatic experiences.

I started helping other people because I understood that to make this world a better

place, we should be willing to stand up and speak out for those who are not able to speak out. We all need that extra help and a shoulder to lean on as we take the long and painful journey of healing and restoration. Without a proper support system, it’s difficult to recover from any traumatic experience and so I decided to create a platform where survivors of sexual and gender-based violence can freely express themselves without being judged, labelled or called names. A platform that helps them to deal with the pain as well as cope with the effects of the abuse they were subjected to.

Your social media campaign ‘Tough It Out’ refers to your struggles as a survivor and was an important way to raise awareness about incest, child sexual abuse and genderbased violence. Did you feel that other women felt inspired by you, and spoke out after you launched this campaign?

When I shared my story in 2017, it went viral on social media. I was overwhelmed by the number of messages I got from both men and women who shared their own traumatic childhood sexual abuse experiences with me.

I didn’t know that so many people had been subjected to abuse, for a long time I thought I was alone.

It was at that moment that I realised the true extent of the problem of sexual and genderbased violence in Zambia at household level. A lot more people were and continue to be subjected to sexual and gender-based violence in their homes and family members had opted to conceal the acts. Many people were inspired by my courage because incest is considered a taboo in many cultures, as it’s a shameful and embarrassing topic to talk about.

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Can you tell us more about the work you’ve been doing with the Liberated Hearts Foundation?

The Liberated Hearts Foundation (LIHEF) was founded in December, 2017 to provide support and assistance to survivors of incest and child sexual abuse. LIHEF advocates for the rights of women and children in Zambia.

We’re an organisation that reaches out to survivors of sexual and genderbased violence through social media and community awareness campaigns.

We believe survivors of sexual violence need support and assistance to help them deal with their past and cope with the effects of the abuse. We provide counselling and link them up with empowerment initiatives with the hope of reintegrating them into society so that they can become productive members of their communities.

LIHEF also sends out messages on child protection and this year we launched our child protection campaign. It will be an ongoing campaign focusing on schools, communities, workplaces and social media.

So your campaign helped you realise that there were many women and girls who needed help in Zambia. Was this what motivated you to start your own charity?

Yes, I was motivated to create a bigger platform that will help many more women and children in Zambia. Working as an individual has many disadvantages. A registered charity has the potential to make a greater impact because many people come on board to help with the hope of making a difference.

I was also motivated to start a charity because there’s a need for more organisations dealing with sexual and gender-based violence in Zambia - and particularly household-level sexual violence like incest and marital rape.

The Liberated Hearts Foundation has a specific goal and that is to help survivors of incest and child sexual abuse - acts that are considered shameful and embarrassing. There’s a need to raise more awareness because these acts of sexual violence are robbing children of their childhood and robbing them a chance to live a full and happy life.

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Our other strategy to raise awareness has been sharing survivor stories and bringing knowledge of this hidden sexual act to the public to motivate them to take action in their respective communities - and be vigilant in their homes.

How did the general population of Zambia, or the areas of the country you work in - or even the government - respond to your message? Was it difficult to get the support you needed?

The topic of sexual and gender-based violence always carries with it mixed emotions. The general population of Zambia is appalled by the increasing number of cases of sexual and genderbased violence and they’re starting to respond to the call to action. Many people have understood the seriousness of this issue and have joined the fight against sexual and gender-based violence.

The Zambian government has been supportive and has always been available to give guidance, enact policies and put measures in place to curb

sexual and gender-based violence in Zambia.

They’ve introduced ‘one-stop centres’ where victims of sexual violence and gender-based violence receive all the support services they need. This has been done with support from various stakeholders.

Other government interventions include introducing fast track courts to ensure that cases of sexual and gender-based violence are prosecuted quickly to stop further damage to victims. It makes our work easier and creates a greater impact when we have the full support of the government.

my book helped me to deal with all the things that I didn’t want to confront.

It was a difficult time for me. I remember when I’d stop writing because I was overwhelmed by the memories that I had awakened. I can confidently say that writing this book helped me to deal with the pain I had experienced. I came to terms with what happened to me and dealing with the pain became a lot easier.

As a new organisation, it’s difficult to get funding to run our activities but through the help of various stakeholders, we are able to do some of the activities. To raise funds for the organisation, part of the proceeds from my book ‘Glow after Pain’ will go towards the women’s empowerment programme for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.

It’s not much, but it will certainly help a number of women and children.

How do you reach the women and girls who need your help?

After I shared my story on social media, television, radio, newspaper, community dialogues and school awareness programs, a lot of women and girls reached out to me as well as LIHEF. Many of these women and girls have been through similar traumatic situations - some need counselling and others need educational and financial support. We help them according to their needs. As a new organisation, we sometimes have limited resources, so we’re able to refer them to other stakeholders who have the capacity to help.

Tell us a bit more about your book, which you launched recently. Did it help you with the process of dealing with the pain of your own experience?

My book ‘Glow after Pain’ is about my journey as a survivor of incest and child sexual abuse.

I talk about the abuse I was subjected to as a child in my own home, which should have been a safe place but clearly wasn’t. It’s also an account of the destructive path I took after years of sexual, physical, psychological, mental and emotional abuse.

When I was writing the book, I had to relive my childhood experiences. The flashbacks and memories were painful but the more I wrote, the more I began to heal and confront my past. So many things were buried, but writing

How will you be promoting and talking about your book?

My book was officially launched in Zambia on 1 August 2019. It’s been available on Amazon since 2018 but I know people prefer to buy copies from a local bookshop. This convinced me to plan for an official book launch. Before the book launch, government officials, nonprofit organisation leaders, women’s rights activists and other stakeholders participated in an interactive and informative sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) discussion.

I have a schedule of book readings and discussions in schools, local libraries, churches and communities. I’ve also been conducting online campaigns to raise awareness on sexual and gender-based violence by giving away copies of my book.

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How can people who read this interview support the Liberated Hearts Foundation, wherever they’re based in the world?

As a new organisation, we’re in constant need of technical support. We need help to build new systems. We need more workable strategies on how to mobilise resources for our project. We need as many people as possible on board, each one contributing his or her expertise, skills and knowledge to create a greater impact.

Do you have a message for women and girls who’ve lived through painful experiences like yours? What would you like to say to them?

For a long time, many of us thought we were alone and we dealt with the pain of the abuse

in silence. Now that we know that there are many others who have been through this kind of traumatic experience, there is no need to suffer in silence.

There are so many organisations now offering support and assistance to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence - look out for one and get the help that you need. I was once in a dark and scary place, but I was fortunate enough to connect with an organisation that supported me as I took the journey of healing and restoration.

More importantly, talking to other survivors is extremely helpful because they understand our pain. Together we are stronger. It’s never too late to seek help. You need to confide in someone, talk about it and be on your way to recovery from a painful and traumatic situation.

Oh darling!

What did they tell you

Oh darling! What did they tell you that your eyes, so beautiful are as if touching the hem of your floor length gown?

That your legs are always crossed and you are sitting prim as a rose looking so like a blooming lily unless one looks deep into your soul where tears brim like an ocean and rage is tumbling around your spirit that they caged along with the hole that everyone seems to make such a hell of a fuss!

Oh darling! what did they tell you to make you put up your odhna every time your in-laws come over you put up a show to prove that “you” have paid good price for what they bought? and you cook and cook to find a way to your man’s heart only to have him force you over and over again in the dead of the dark?

Oh darling! What did they tell you to make you quietly listen when your children start to talk back to you and echo their ancestors caring nothing for your career and demand that you be at home every time they are back, in the guise of motherly love??

Oh darling! What did they tell you to make you count to ten and rein in your temper and not disrespect your elders when they are the very ones leading you to your living grave (with bells and a veil and a glittery bridegroom who is probably not gold) whilst holding your hand and blackening your face and crying as if it’s the work of someone else!

poem by Sonali Mohapatra artwork by Lorena Sequeyro

Oh darling! Why oh! why do you act so helpless when you can bear the pain that can push out a thousand babies from between your thighs from a one inch hole?

When the epics were made due to the designs of woman, and you are the culprit they say who brought down the world, why don’t you finally do what you were blamed for?

Twice vulnerable: how women with disabilities face double discrimination Yvette Basson questions why legal frameworks haven’t made a real difference in the lives of women with disabilities and explains what needs to change.

In the last decade, the rights of people with disabilities have received increased attention on a global scale. The United Nations released its ‘Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’ in 2006, which sparked a worldwide discussion on these rights and the continued challenges faced by people with disabilities. So far, most attention has been paid to the rights of people with disabilities in general, although some sections of the Convention relate to women and girls with disabilities. Many international legal documents deal with the rights of women and children. These laws combined with the 2006 Convention mentioned above, represent a positive step towards recognising the rights of women with disabilities - but they’re not yet making a real difference in women’s daily lives.

Many societies, particularly in developing and poorer countries, still hold outdated beliefs about the role of women in society and similarly outdated beliefs about people with disabilities. Women are often held to traditional roles such as being stay-athome mothers, not working and not having leadership roles in communities. When these two sets of attitudes are combined, we can see that women with disabilities experience two sets of obstacles to participation in society.

History has taught us that women are often left behind in movements to improve living conditions. Women are also more likely to experience lower levels of literacy, higher levels of violence and are often left out of political decisions and policymaking. For women with disabilities, these challenges are made worse by the fact that they have a disability. If we consider reported statistics, we can see that women with disabilities are being treated in a way that prevents them from enjoying the freedoms that people with no disabilities have.

Judy Heumann 72

There are some basic skills that women with disabilities can lack because of lack of

access. The literacy rate amongst people with disabilities globally is 3%, but for women with disabilities it is 1%. This lower rate of literacy stems from the idea in some societies that women can contribute less to society and don’t need to learn these skills.

In my opinion, the biggest problem women with disabilities face relates to violence.

Women with disabilities are three times more likely to be raped than non-disabled women.

This information doesn’t consider that women with disabilities sometimes don’t report sexual violence they have suffered, because of factors like intimidation, physical limitations and not being taken seriously by the authorities.

The source of this violence is often from family members who take advantage of the vulnerability of the woman in question.

Women with disabilities are most at risk from violence from their intimate partners, which means that their home lives can consist of almost constant abuse, including emotional, physical and sexual abuse. It’s been found that women with disabilities have less access to police services, legal protection or preventative measures against abuse.

There are other ways in which women with disabilities are discriminated against as well. In 2018, a wheelchair tennis player named Kgothatso Montjane was forced to rely on the generosity of fellow sportspeople in order to participate in the Wimbledon Tennis Championship. She’s the first African wheelchair tennis player to qualify for Wimbledon but received virtually no funding to participate in the competition. She had to travel without her coach, she had to assemble her wheelchair on her own and she also lacked practice partners. Traditionally, men’s sporting codes receive not only more attention, but also more funds are allocated to support these athletes than their female counterparts. Ms Montjane also has no sponsors for her rackets or attire and has to fund these herself.

Another example of a woman being further marginalised as a result of her disability and her gender is Judy Heumann, the first wheelchair user to be a teacher in New York.

As a child with a disability, she was sent home from school since she was considered a fire hazard. Her teaching licence was originally denied on the basis that she could not use the bathroom independently or assist her students in the case of an emergency. She challenged this finding and was awarded a teaching licence and is now the Special Advisor for International Disability Rights at the US State Department. Her story is a clear example of the obstacles faced by women

with disabilities in the employment sphere.

While these women demonstrate extraordinary resilience and determination, it must be noted that not all women with disabilities overcome adversity as Ms Montjane and Senator Heumann have. These two success stories are inspirational, but the broader problems faced by women with disabilities remain. One can only hope that success stories such as these become the norm, rather than the exception.

Essentially, women with disabilities have to work at least twice as hard as their nondisabled male counterparts to ensure that their rights and freedoms are recognised and respected.

As a lawyer, my first instinct would be to introduce laws that prevent discrimination, but these already exist and haven’t made much difference to the daily lives of these women.

One can consider the numerous international law treaties that aim to improve the daily lives of women with disabilities. Since the living conditions of women with disabilities have not improved across the world, these treaties cannot be said to be effective.

Laws affirm that certain rights exist, but it’s individual people who need to respect the rights of women with disabilities. This is a societal problem. Until society’s attitudes and prejudices about women with disabilities improve, there can be little progress in the fight for equal participation in society for women with disabilities. We all have a responsibility to recognise the inherent dignity of women with disabilities and do our part to ensure that they’re not further marginalised.

They deserve our respect and support so that we can address their needs and prevent them being twice vulnerable.

Yvette Basson

Kgothatso Montjane 73

photography by Camille Vincent

A Woman Remembered (for L)

The paper shredder sleeps your absent smile drifts above the chair where by the table corner the rustle of a blouse sighs L’Air du Temps teaspoons ping against china cups (coffee, two sugars, Greggs soup, a biscuit, every Thursday) Who will rid us now of our sack of secrets?

Who will ask through the clamour after our sons and mothers while hands stronger than they looked dutifully gripped and pushed the quivering sheets, sent them to annihilation?

Steel teeth tear and grind we stand, think fondly of dentist’s drills, rattling bones sing all things bright and picture you running beautiful through Kilmartin Glen Morag Smith

Supporting wome n’s

Women’s enterprise is critically important for business prosperity and economic growth in the UK and in Scotland. Women-owned businesses make a valuable contribution to the Scottish economy. However, with just 20% of Scottish small to medium-sized enterprises (known as SMEs) majority owned by women, we must do more to tackle this gender gap in enterprise.

Women’s Enterprise Scotland (WES) and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) published research in 2018 on the economic contribution of women-owned businesses to the UK economy1: •

Women-owned businesses contribute £105 billion gross value added (GVA) to the UK economy, an increase of 40% since 2012.

•

Employment in women-owned businesses has increased by 26% to 2.9 million. The employment contribution from womenowned businesses represents 11.3% of total private sector employment, up from 9.8% in 2012.

•

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The increase in employment is much greater in Northern Ireland (54%) and Scotland (51%) than in England (22.6%) and Wales (13.27%).

The research highlighted that women entrepreneurs make an important contribution to economic development both at a national and local level, representing a significant share of employment generation and economic growth potential. However, evidence from this research and from research conducted by WES in 20172 showed that businesses owned by women can often be disadvantaged at the early stages of development due to issues such as access to finance.

Women-owned business may also be disadvantaged when using enterprise and business support services by policies that can be gender-blind - policies which don’t take into account the different gender roles, needs and responsibilities of women and men. This can result in programmes or projects failing due to misunderstanding the different impact of such policies on women and men.

The Scottish Government Framework for Women’s Enterprise3 highlights key areas where action is needed to help reduce the gender gap in enterprise:

• Measurement: While there are some

figures like the ones mentioned above, research shows that compared to overall

enterprise in Scotland Women’s entrepreneurship makes a significant contribution to both the Scottish and UK economies, yet research shows that women can face disadvantage when starting a business.

Anne Meikle from Women’s Enterprise Scotland sets out a clear vision of how governments can support women at all stages of developing their business to tackle the gender gap in enterprise.

business data, there’s a current lack of data on women-owned businesses and their economic impact. This presents a significant barrier to forming policy and identifying best practice.

• Mentoring and networking: As the

Scottish Government-funded WES Ambassadors programme has proven4, it’s important to develop appropriate mentoring and networking opportunities for women to help build social capital and combat isolation among business owners.

Role models: Women are seeking relevant and appropriate role models in business and these role models need to be made visible across the media. It is important to identify, support and promote more ‘Womenablers’ and encourage and support more women into leadership roles.

• Growth and finance: Specific support is

required to assist women entrepreneurs at relevant points in their business development, like preparing for investment and going for growth. Work is needed with financial institutions and lending initiatives to explore options, including providing microcredit for women at the early stage of creating their business

• Gender aware support and best

practice: Gender aware support is valued by women owned businesses as a safe environment where issues can be shared more openly, creating a more comfortable and supportive environment in which businesses can develop and grow.

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Many of the women who responded to the WES surveys over the last few years have commented that they felt there was almost a ‘hierarchy’ of business advice and that if their business was not in a particular sector, they received what they considered to be a reduced service.

There was concern that business advice agencies didn’t offer services of equal quality and status to small companies being run by women - especially companies not in what are currently defined as the potentially high growth sectors.

Adopting a mainstream gender aware approach is essential to ensure business support and advice services are meeting the needs of all entrepreneurs.

All government-supported enterprise development and business support programmes should also be equality impact assessed, to review the impact on women at all stages budgeting, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Women’s entrepreneurship is critical to the future prosperity of the economy and Scotland’s innovation, productivity and competitiveness.

Anne Meikle ‘Supporting Women’s Enterprise in the UK: the economic case’ Federation of Small Businesses (2018) 1

‘Women’s Enterprise in Scotland’ Women’s Enterprise Scotland (2017) www.wescotland.co.uk 2

‘Scottish Framework and Action Plan for Women in Enterprise’ Scottish Government (2017) www.wescotland.co.uk 3

www.wescotland.co.uk/ ambassadors-role-models 4

About Women’s Enterprise Scotland WES seeks to ensure that ‘Women in Enterprise’ is fully understood as an area of economic priority and engages across relevant Scottish and UK government departments to promote an improved policy and legislative framework for women’s enterprise. ‘Policy in action’ is needed for women’s enterprise, and monitoring the effectiveness of policy is essential in order to collect systematic evidence on business advice and support methods.

WES supports calls for more research in Scotland on the contribution of women’s enterprise to the Scottish economy. We continue to call for longitudinal studies to be conducted in Scotland (both qualitative and quantitative) so as to best understand the impact of policy on the experiences of women owned businesses.

‘Longitudinal studies’ involve following the same subjects over a period of time - we believe this will provide a more evidence-based approach to policy making for the future of business support services across the country.

illustration by Marta Nunes

With a lifelong love of languages, starting her own language school was a natural career choice for Lorraine Weston.

Lorraine talks to Monica Martins about what led her to set up her own business, Simply English, and the importance of community and culture to learning a language.

photography by Kat Dlugosz Lorraine, can you tell us about your background?

I was born and grew up on the south coast of Ireland, in a small town called Dungarvan.

I studied Applied Languages in Limerick. I’ve always had an interest in language and culture so when my degree was finished, I moved to Spain with a friend. We lived in Valencia for a year and taught English there. Then I came to Edinburgh to do my Masters degree, and fell in love with everything that’s on offer here - I’m really happy in this city.

Why did you decide to become an English teacher?

My lifelong interest in languages stems from growing up in Ireland - my family were a ‘host family’, so students used to come from other countries, particularly Seville in Spain.

We always had students living with us for an academic year, or during the summer.

I was always interested in learning a bit of their language and their culture, so that was definitely one reason.

I was lucky in school too. I had an excellent German teacher who was extremely passionate about teaching us. She used to go to Germany to do ‘refresher’ courses, and there was always an emphasis in culture in our 80

classes as well. We used to go to the kitchen and make lebkuchen, or learn about different festivals. Language was always made exciting for us, and my secondary school in particular were really good for language learning.

I remember when it was time to choose what to study at university - or if I was even going to go. We lived quite close to Cork so for most people Cork would be the natural choice. But my German teacher spoke to me and said that there’s a really good language course in Limerick. I said ”Limerick? Nobody goes there, why would I go there?” but she replied: “Look, they’re having an open evening, so if there’s a couple of people interested or even just you, I can drive up for the evening”. Three of us went in the car to Limerick - I saw what was on offer and I decided to go for it. My parents were really supportive as well. Back then it was kind of a strange thing to do. A lot of people asked if I was going to study in Limerick because I wasn’t accepted for a course in Cork, so I had to explain “No, no, I’m really excited about what I’m doing, but I just have to go a bit further away to do it”.

Of course, my own interest in languages and getting to know other cultures made me interested in teaching and helping other people with language. It’s what got me into this.

Conversation starters ! o l l He What brought you to Scotland, and why did you decide to open your English school here?

I arrived in Edinburgh to study. But I found that it was a multicultural, vibrant, open city and I really enjoyed that. It had a very international focus, with a lot of different cultures and communities in close proximity to each other.

And when I was coming close to finishing my studies, I started to think “Oh wow I’m almost finished. I need to start looking for another job.” I was really lucky, I sent my CV to a school and they wrote back asking if I could go in and cover for a week and see how it goes. It went really well, so I worked there for a while and built my reputation as a teacher, before I broke away and went out on my own. It was a bit scary in the beginning, but definitely worthwhile. I’m so glad that I made that move.

I probably started the language school earlier than I had anticipated - it was always in the back of my mind to have a language school, but I thought it would be more of a long-term plan. I feel extremely lucky that I’m already doing it.

Did you find it difficult to establish your school here in Edinburgh?

When I started, it was more one-to-one lessons. I was working from home in my flat.

That’s not as scary because you’re not paying rent on separate business premises and the students were coming to me.

But it got to the point where my husband said that he couldn’t get into the kitchen, he couldn’t cook because I was always there with somebody. He was like: “You have to find an office”. It was the push that I needed.

I looked at a couple of different options and

I couldn’t believe my luck when I found the place where I am now. It’s actually a multiuse space - the top two levels of the building are a mosque, and the ground floor is rented out as office space that we share with other communities and charities. I started by just renting one little office, but I could see that there were a couple of other ones free so I knew I could expand if necessary. And that’s what happened, it’s brilliant.

It was challenging to start but little by little the business has grown, the name as gotten out there, and people have gotten to know us.

When people arrive here, they notice there’s a community feel. We’re like a little family, and the fact that we’re sharing the space with other people as well, I think it makes it interesting and exciting for the students.

Who makes up your team? What roles do they play in the school?

I would start by talking about my sister. She was in a job that she wasn’t too keen on and she needed a change, so she came down to Edinburgh and started working with me. To be honest, it’s been a dream come true to have the opportunity to work alongside my sister. We have different strengths. She is an extremely organised practical person, and I’m more involved in the practical application of things.

We also have Jack, who’s a teacher and a core member of our team. Jack is from Limerick and a mutual friend put us in touch. When I called Jack for an interview, I assumed that he was already living in Edinburgh, but he wasn’t. He was so keen that he actually flew over from Ireland to meet me. It all worked out fantastically well! We have a couple of other teachers and the business is growing so we’re really happy.

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What do you like most about teaching English?

It’s definitely meeting people from other countries and cultures. Every day is different depending on who you have in your classroom. We keep our classes small, a maximum of six students, and we provide a helping hand with day-to-day things like getting a National Insurance number, building their CV in English and getting a job or voluntary experience. When I’m able to help people to feel like they can fit in and become part of the community here in Edinburgh, I think that’s fantastic, I really enjoy that.

What teaching programmes do you offer at Simply English?

We have general English classes that run every morning. A lot of people who have just arrived in the city choose that option, because they want to build their vocabulary and work on speaking and pronunciation skills. During the summer, we also get a lot of people who use some of their holiday time to book courses, that’s a popular option. We prepare people for exams as well - all of the Cambridge qualifications from first certificate through to the proficiency courses, and we offer International English Language Testing System (known as IELTS) preparation as well.

The exams are definitely something we are doing more and more.

What age groups do you like teaching the most?

We market ourselves as an adult-only language school so, at the moment most of our students are in their twenties - they’ve finished their studies in their home countries and then they come for a gap year to improve their English before starting a masters or starting a job.

But I wouldn’t say I have a favourite because it’s nice when you mix different ages in a class together, they can learn so much from each other. I know there are other schools who offer things like courses for over 50s but I think: everyone can just get involved together and that’s a really positive experience.

Have you travelled to other countries to establish contacts and encourage groups to come to Scotland and learn English with you?

I was lucky enough that as a part of my 82

degree programme in Limerick, I had the chance to do both a work placement and an Erasmus exchange abroad. My work placement was in Argentina, at a school in the North of Patagonia where I established fantastic connections - and we do take groups from Argentina. They study with us here in Edinburgh and we do tourist activities with them here, so they learn English in the classroom and outside, in a practical way.

After Argentina, I was in Germany for my Erasmus exchange at the University of Bochum, which was really interesting. I actually took some Portuguese classes there, with a Portuguese tutor. I also spent some time living in Valencia in Spain.

I have some great contacts through the students I’ve met here. As I said, we’re a small friendly school so a lot of the students become quite good friends of ours. It’s always nice to keep up the contact, and you also always have really nice places to visit when you go on holiday - the locals always have the best tips!

Were there any experiences that you particularly enjoyed?

As a language teacher, I always think of the awkward moments with a language and how I was able to overcome them. I hear my students talking about difficult and awkward situations - I’m able to share my experience with them and we can have a laugh over it.

I had a really funny experience in Argentina, when I was at a supermarket. When I went through the cash register a red light flashed.

The cashier stood up and shouted something, then a lot of people came over to the till. I didn’t know what was happening because I didn’t understand what she said so, I just quickly left the money and went running out of the shop.

When I went home to my host family, I told them that something strange happened to me in the supermarket and I said roughly what I thought the cashier had said. They laughed and laughed, then they asked if I paid and I said: “Yes, I left the money and ran away”. And my host family explained that the cashier had said that I’d won my shopping!

Every hundredth person who goes to this supermarket wins their shopping, but I got such a fright, I didn’t understand and just ran away!

It’s something that really stands out for me, and I laugh about it with my students when they tell me about strange things that happen to them here. I have a lot of memorable things

like that which are nice - things that in the moment you think are difficult about living in another country, but you can later laugh about them and see that it’s all ok. Things just work differently in different places. For example, my students often tell me that someone shouted at them because they walked straight up to the counter and I say: “Oh it’s ok, you need to stand in line”. It’s funny, and it’s all part of the learning process I think.

Do you speak any other languages apart from English, or would you like to learn more than the ones you already know?

As well as German at school, then I did Applied Languages at university - so I had German and (Irish) Gaelic and I took up Spanish as a new language.

I improved my Spanish when I went to Argentina with my work placement and I improved my German when I was on my Erasmus exchange. In Edinburgh there’s a huge Spanish population so I’ve had the chance to practice Spanish quite a lot. My German right now is a little bit rustier, but I have a really good basis from a fantastic teacher I had in the past.

What advice would you give to young people who are willing to learn other languages, whether they are in Scotland, the UK or in other countries?

Take risks with the language. When I first arrived in Argentina I was embarrassed by my low level of Spanish, but I think if you’re trying to make an effort to speak and to communicate, your grammar might be all over the place but people will still make the effort to understand you. Obviously it’s so cliche, but practice does make perfect.

Language learning is all about risk-taking.

Make mistakes. People might laugh at some of them, and maybe you’ll say something that means something completely different and you can laugh over it - then you’ll never make that mistake again.

If you have the chance to go to the countries where the languages are spoken, then go.

Obviously not everyone is lucky to have that, but if you do, then definitely take the chance.

Language cannot be taught in isolation from culture, so if you do have the chance to experience the culture firsthand it makes language learning even more worthwhile.

If I were to learn another language it would be Portuguese. That or maybe Basque, because I have some students from the Basque Country and they taught me a couple of expressions - it’s such a different language. I’d like to be able to go there and order a coffee or a glass of wine in Basque.

What do you find most beautiful in the English language?

Idioms definitely. Being Irish, we have different idioms and expressions, that have been translated to English directly from Gaelic. Jack and I are both Irish but Ludo, one of our other teachers is English, and sometimes when Jack and I are talking to each other, Ludo says: “that’s an interesting turn of phrase, I wouldn’t say it like that”.

It’s always funny teaching them to the students as well, they definitely enjoy them. I had a student that once made a cake for us, we were in the kitchen having it and I thanked her for bringing it - she said: “Oh I don’t know, it’s nothing to write home about.’’ It was just such a natural way to respond to flattery that we laughed quite a lot over it - and it’s always nice to hear students trying to use them as well. I think they make the language really colourful.

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illustration by Marta Nunes

Rebellion hurts, still she commits thought crime, sleep simmers dreams of her grandmother who baked salt instead of sugar into her Grandad’s scones, told him to fetch his own bloody slippers.

In the slow dawn, insurgent mice scratch, locks unpick themselves, she shapes her face to the dripping of the bathroom tap and at Sunday morning’s Full English, takes special care don’t burn the toast switch on the TV British Sporting Legends turn it up loud so he doesn’t hear pavements crack, sparrows sing or notice you remembering your list of things to pack

poem by Morag Smith photography by Narcisa Gambier

Disobedience

She has forgotten herself in the house that listens, whose windows stare then blink as she sets the table for dinner, whose knives and spoons wink knowingly; make sure wear nice dress mince is Mondays foreign muck, plates white her face f ish is Fridays don’t forget fucking lucky

Life patterns of female and male executives with children Prof. Dr. Regine Graml studies how senior managers with children distribute their time and explores what factors may influence their decisions.

How do senior managers with children handle their job and parenthood?

This is one of the questions addressed in the current study. Managers tend to work long hours and being a parent, they have to allocate their time and attention between work and family, among other aspects of life. This study of life patterns of female and male executives examines how top executives with children and their partners distribute their time and tasks between work and family. Moreover, the study explores to what extent patterns become apparent.

While the gender pay gap and the underrepresentation of women in management positions have predominantly been objects of research, the life patterns of managers with children (especially executives at senior management level) hasn’t been sufficiently investigated until now.

The target group of the survey was senior managers from German-speaking countries - Germany, Switzerland and Austria with children living in their household. The study analyses how much time senior managers spend with their children and verifies what factors influence that time.

This study also evaluates to what extent managers are content with their work-family balance and investigates the new construct of the ‘family time gap’.

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Spillover effects between work and family Current studies on the compatibility of family and work, as well as studies on the division of work between couples, have very specific focal points. The topic of compatibility of family and work is a recurring subject of numerous investigations, which are examining potential influencing factors.

Research shows that a satisfying private life will lead to a satisfying work life and vice versa.

Negative reactions like stress in either domain can also affect the other domain negatively.

Consequently, both areas of life can mutually influence each other positively or negatively.

These spillover effects help to explain the relationship between work and family1.

Moreover, the connection between the work and family domains depends on the strength of the borders that separate them. Depending on the flexibility and permeability of such borders, a mix of work and family demands arises. The compatibility of the work and family domains will be positively affected by identifying all involved parties and their specific influence2.

Examining the sources of work-family conflict it’s possible to distinguish between three forms of conflict.

The time-based conflict implies multiple roles that compete for a person’s time. The workfamily conflict is positively correlated with

the number of working hours per week. Also, spending a lot of time participating in family activities can produce work-family conflict.

and Switzerland currently perceive the compatibility between work and family. It deals with the following questions:

The second form of work-family conflict is the strain-based conflict, where strain in one role affects performance in another role. Any work or family role characteristic that produces strain can add to the work-family conflict.

•

The third form of conflict, the behaviourbased conflict, indicates that if a person isn’t able to adapt their behaviour to comply with the expectations of different roles, conflicts between the roles can occur3.

Sudies show that both work and family are of high importance for people in Germany - so working is important to parents as well.

Work-orientation and family-orientation don’t contradict one another4. However, academic investigations on how tasks are divided in the domestic environment show a genderspecific distribution within partnerships5.

Women usually show a larger proportion of time for household and childcare. In addition, the dynamic of a process of ‘traditionalisation’ in West-Germany has been observed6, where men continuously reduce their contribution to female-typical activities over time, meaning traditional patterns are developed in the course of a partnership.

This study deals particularly with top executives with children, and examines how senior managers from Germany, Austria

• •

•

• •

How much time do senior managers spend with their children?

Which factors influence the amount of time spent?

Which decisions regarding the allocation of time, tasks and responsibilities are made by senior managers and their partners?

How satisfied are senior managers with their personal situation regarding work and family?

Which factors influence the personal contentedness of senior managers?

How do senior managers with children perceive working mothers?

The Thomas phenomenon Thomas is the most common name in corporate boards. Germany faces what’s called a ‘Thomas cycle’ in recruiting members for the executive boards, meaning people protect - and promote - people similar to them.

In September 2018, Thomas was the most common first name in corporate boards and there are more board members with the name Thomas or Michael (60) than female board members in total (56). Thomas is also the most popular name of the chairman of the board

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- seven chairmen are called Thomas, while only four chairmen are women7. The underrepresentation of women is also obvious in our sample of senior managers with children.

According to the sample, the typical executive is male (91%) and has two children living in his own household (52%). They work 50-59 hours per week (48%) and 96% have a first university degree or a postgraduate degree. Moreover, 64% of the respondents are 40-49 years old and 93% are married or live in a relationship and of these, 73% live with a working partner.

A high percentage (71%) of the participants belong to the executive management (37%) or division management (34%) levels.

The survey targeted executives with children, who belong to the company’s top management, division management or department management. It was conducted in conjunction with the executive panel of Odgers Berndtson, which surveys senior managers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland8. Out of the 1323 panel participants with children, 177 managers with children participated in the present survey.

Survey findings: traditional patterns appear Little time with children from Monday to Friday The majority of executives indicated that they spend up to ten hours with their children during the week (Monday to Friday), with: •

• • • •

42% spending less than five hours with their children on weekdays, corresponding to a daily average of less than one hour nearly half (47%) spending five to ten hours with their children 8% spending between more than ten to 15 hours 3% spending more than 15 hours to 20 hours none of the executives spending more than 20 hours

• A different picture emerges with the mentioned time the partner spends with children on weekdays, as: • • •

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44% of the partners spend more than 20 hours with their children 21% spend between more than 15 to 20 hours only 7% of managers’ partners spend less than five hours with the children

50%

47%

42%

44%

40% Teilnehm Manager er/in (n = 146)

30% 21%

20% 10%

16% 7%

11%

8% 3%

0% less than 5 hours

5 - 10 hours

more than 10 hours to 15 hours

more than 15 hours to 20 hours

0%

Partner Partner/in (n = 141)

more than 20 hours

Fig. 1: Time the manager and the partner spend with children on weekdays (Monday to Friday)

Fig. 1: Time the manager and the partner

Age and position have no significant influence on the time spent with children spend with children on weekdays (Monday to Regression analysis was used to identify variables that might have an influence on the time executives spend with their children on weekdays. Analyses show that the age of executives, Friday) their qualifications, current position, number of children, age of the youngest child and the partner’s occupation and qualification have no significant influence on the time the managers spend with their children.

Female executives more time with their children than male executives Age andspend position have no significant Gender seems to reveal a significant influence on the time executives spend with their children. influence on the time spent with children Female executives indicated that they spend almost three hours more with their children on weekdays (Monday to Friday) than male executives with the same characteristics (age, qualification and position).

The estimated was effect is used significantto at the 5% level. However, due to Regression analysis identify the low representation of female executives several limitations occur.

variables that might have an influence on

In the comparison: more time spent with children on thewith weekendtheir children time executives spend Most respondents spend more time with their children from Saturday to Sunday than during the on weekdays.

Analyses show that the age weekdays from Monday to Friday.

of executives, their qualifications, current

Most partners work part-time With 93% of participants in a relationship (married or livingage with their position, number of children, ofpartner thein a household), 73% of these participants are working (31% full-time, 69% part-time).

youngest child and the partner’s occupation

Overall, than a quarter of the executives’ (24%) work in a full-time job. At the andlessqualification havepartners no significant influence same time, the qualification level of the partners is high, with 72% having a university degree or postgraduate degree such asthe a PhDmanagers or MBA and 28% having a vocational education.

Division of on the time spend with their responsibilities between the executives and his/her partner regarding personal child care, family children. organisation, housekeeping, gardening and parenting must be considered against this background.

Partners predominantly attend to personal child care When it comes to looking after the children, 80% of themore executives indicated their partner Female executives spend time that with exclusively or predominantly takes over, while 15% reported sharing personal child care equally andtheir 5% claimchildren to exclusively or predominantly care for their children. than male executives

Gender seems to reveal a significant influence on the time executives spend with their children. Female executives indicated that they spend almost three hours more with their children on weekdays (Monday to Friday) than male executives with the same characteristics (age, qualification and position). The estimated effect is significant at the 5% level. However, due to the low representation of female executives several limitations occur.

In comparison: more time spent with children on the weekend Most respondents spend more time with their children from Saturday to Sunday than during the weekdays from Monday to Friday.

Most partners work part-time With 93% of participants in a relationship (married or living with their partner in a household), 73% of these participants are working (31% full-time, 69% part-time).

Overall, less than a quarter of the executives’ partners (24%) work in a full-time job. At the same time, the qualification level of the partners is high, with 72% having a university

4

degree or postgraduate degree such as a PhD or MBA and 28% having a vocational education. Division of responsibilities between the executives and his or her partner regarding personal child care, family organisation, housekeeping, gardening and parenting must be considered against this background.

Partners predominantly attend to personal child care When it comes to looking after the children, 80% of the executives indicated that their partner exclusively or predominantly takes over, while 15% reported sharing personal child care equally and 5% claim to exclusively or Division of personal care predominantly care for child their children.

5%

Gardening and repairs are mostly done by the executives Nevertheless, gardening and repair duties are predominantly or only done by the executives, with 64% of respondents indicating that they take over these duties. We can see a traditional role allocation with respect to repairs, gardening and family organisation, where the (male) executives are mostly responsible for repairs and gardening, whereas their partners are mostly responsible for family organisation.

Responsibility for parenting is perceived to be equally distributed

Conversely, the majority (59%) of managers state that they equally share parenting responsibilities with their partner, while Division of personal child care 40% claim their partner is predominantly 5% responsible and 1% indicate they’re 15% predominantly responsible for parenting.

15% only nur/überwiegend ich Remarkably the majority of the executives only/predominantly or me predominantly me perceive their influence on parenting to be only /predominantly nur/überwiegend ich me just as strong as their partner’s, although the equal parts with equal parts zuiningleichen Teilen executives spend less time with the children. with partner partner equal partsTeilen with zuingleichen partner

80% 80%

only predominantly or only/ nur/überwiegend predominantly partner only/ predominantly nur/überwiegend Partner/in partner Executives are predominantly content with partner Partner/in

their work-life balance

Nearly two-thirds (66%) of the executives are 2: Division of responsibilities between the executive and the partner: Personal child care satisfied or very satisfied with their work-life Fig.2: Division of responsibilities between the executive and the partner: Personal child care

Fig.2: Division of are responsibilities between thechild care. cutives with a partner working full-time more likely to take over the personal balance. Consequently, 34% are less satisfied executive and the partner: personal child care us, 38% of respondents works full-time state that they equally the care of Executives with a whose partnerpartner working full-time are more likely to take overshare the personal care. orchild dissatisfied. children and38% 15%ofclaim that they exclusively predominantly takethat overthey personal child Thus, respondents whose partneror works full-time state equally share the care of content with Executives Executives are predominantly are predominantly content their with work-life theirbalance work-life balance e. However, 44% of executives with a full-time working partner report that personal child Nearly two-thirds Nearly two-thirds (66%) (66%) executives of the executives arethat satisfied are orsatisfied very satisfied or very with satisfied their work-life withthe their work-life the children andthe 15% claim that they exclusively or predominantly take over personal child of the Important factors positively influence balance.

Consequently, balance.

Consequently, 34% are less 34% satisfied are less orsatisfied dissatisfied. or dissatisfied. e is mainly or only done by the partner. care. However, 44% of the executives with a full-time working partner report that personal child work-life-balance are self-determination of Executives with a partner working full-time care is mainly or only done by the partner. their business schedule the flexibility ofof their of their Important thatfactors positively that influence positively the influence work-life-balance theand work-life-balance are self-determination are self-determination are more islikely to take over the personal Important factors ision of family organisation quite traditional business schedule business and schedule the flexibility and the of flexibility their partner. of their partner. their partner.

38% of respondents ior managers askedcare.

"How Thus, do youisand your partner distribute thewhose responsibilities Divisionwere ofchild family organisation quite traditional ardingSenior the organisation of family responsibilities like important forequally thethe children, partner works full-time state thatdates they managers were asked "How do you and your partner distribute responsibilities hday regarding presents…?"

In response, 17% state that family organisation is shared equally. the organisation of family responsibilities like important dates for the Control overchildren, own Control business over own schedule business schedule share the care of the children and 15% claim 7% 7% 93% 93% Selbstbestimmung Selbstbestimmung bei… bei… wever,birthday only 4%presents…?" say that they exclusively or predominantly take over the responsibilities by In response, 17% state that family organisation is shared that they exclusively or predominantly takeFlexibility ofequally. my Flexibility partner of my partner 12% 12% 88% Flexibilität meines… meines… 88% mselves.

However, only 4% say that they exclusively or predominantly take over the Flexibilität over personal child care. However, 44% of theresponsibilities by themselves. to set My priorities ability to set priorities 13% 13% 87% Fähigkeit…

Meine Fähigkeit… 87% executives a full-time working partnerMy abilityMeine rdening and repairs are mostlywith done by the executives vertheless, gardening repair duties are done predominantly or only done by the executives, is ensured Child-care is ensured report that personal child is mainly orChild-care 16% 16% 84% Gardening andand repairs are mostly by thecare executives Kinderbetreuung Kinderbetreuung ist… ist… 84% Applies Applies trifft zu trifft zu Applies h 64%Nevertheless, of respondents indicating that theyduties take over these duties. We can see a traditional gardening repair are predominantly or only done by the executives, only doneand by the partner.

My ability to delegate My ability to delegate 19% 19% 81% 81% Meine Fähigkeit Meine Fähigkeit zu… zu… apply Does not Does not apply trifft nicht zu trifft nicht zu allocation withofrespect to repairs, gardening organisation, where Does not with 64% respondents indicating that and theyfamily take over these duties.

We the can(male) see a traditional apply apply apply cutives areallocation mostly responsible fortorepairs gardening, their partners are mostly role with respect repairs,and gardening andwhereas family organisation, where the (male) MyMeine serenity My serenity Gelassenheit 23% 23% 77% 77% Gelassenheit Meine ponsible for family executives areorganisation. mostly responsible for repairs and gardening, whereas their partners are mostly of family organisation is quite Support by superior Support by durch… superior 33% 33% 67% Unterstützung Unterstützung durch… 67% responsible Division for family organisation. traditional ponsibility for parenting is perceived to be equally distributed Company support for families Company support for families 43% 43% 57% 57% Familienbezogene…

Familienbezogene… nversely, the majorityfor (59%) of managers state that equallydistributed share parenting Responsibility parenting is perceived to they be equally Senior managers were asked “How do you ponsibilities with their partner, (59%) while 40% claim their partner is predominantly responsible 0% 20% 0% 40%20%60%40%80%60%100%80%120% 100% 120% Conversely, the majority of managers state that they equally share parenting and your distribute the 1% indicate they’re predominantly responsible forclaim parenting.

Remarkably the of responsibilities with theirpartner partner, while 40% their responsibilities partner is predominantly responsible Fig. majority 3: Factors Fig.promoting 3: Factorswork-life promoting balance work-life balance executives perceive their influence parenting to be just strong as their partner’s, regarding theonorganisation of Fig. 3: of Factors promoting work-life balance and 1% indicate they’re predominantly responsible forasfamily parenting.

Remarkably the majority Executives experienceexperience spillover effects spillover between effectsfamily between andfamily work and work oughthe theexecutives executives spend less time with theon children. perceive their influence parenting to be just asfor strong as their Executives partner’s, responsibilities like important dates the Most executives Most executives experience experience positive effects positive between effects family between and family work, with and work, 73% of with the73% of the although thechildren, executives spend less time with the children. birthday presents…?” In response, 17% respondentsrespondents stating "Mystating family"My life family inspireslife meinspires in my work". me in my Only work".

19% agree Only 19% with agree the with the

statement: statement: "Family life"Family impairslife myimpairs work." my work." state that family organisation is shared equally.

However, only 4% say that they exclusively or the However, However, effect ofthe work effect onof family worklife on family results life in anresults ambivalent in an ambivalent picture. Justpicture. under half Just under half (46%) by of the (46%) executives of the executives experience experience their work their as enriching work asfor enriching their family for their life.family Nevertheless, life. Nevertheless, predominantly take over the responsibilities the majority theofmajority executives of executives (76%) agree (76%) with agree the statement: with the "Work statement: impairs "Work myimpairs private my life." private life." themselves.

When we consider When wecontentedness consider contentedness in relation to in the relation position to the theposition executives the executives hold, data shows hold, data that shows that at least halfatofleast the participants half of the participants are contented areor contented very contented or verywith contented their balance with their between balance work between work and family.and family.

89

5 5

Executives experience spillover effects between family and work Most executives experience positive effects between family and work, with 73% of the respondents stating “My family life inspires me in my work”. Only 19% agree with the statement: “Family life impairs my work.”

However, the effect of work on family life results in an ambivalent picture. Just under half (46%) of the executives experience their work as enriching for their family life.

Nevertheless, the majority of executives (76%) agree with the statement: “Work impairs my private life.”

Strong attributions to working mothers Within the framework of the survey, senior managers with children were also asked about their perception of their female subordinates with children. In particular, they were asked about their impressions of the female subordinates’ performance, commitment, reliability, resilience, sick days, career ambition and flexibility.

They were asked: “Among my female subordinates with children I observe: Performance / commitment / career ambition of mothers compared to other staff members is higher / as high / lower.”

When we consider contentedness in relation to the position the executives hold, data shows that at least half of the participants are contented or very contented with their Noticeably, executives of top management levelsand (74%) and executives on departmental level balance between work family.

(76%) are generally satisfied or very satisfied. However, only 50% of the managers on a divisional management level satisfied tolevels very satisfied. balance oflevel work Noticeably, executives of topare management (74%) andContentedness executives onwith departmental and family life variessatisfied with theorposition the executives hold.

(76%) are generally very satisfied.

However, only 50% of the managers on a divisional management level satisfied tolevels very satisfied. balance oflevel work Noticeably, executives of topare management (74%) andContentedness executives onwith departmental and family life variessatisfied with theorposition the executives hold.

(76%) are generally very satisfied.

However, only 50% of the managers on a divisional management level are satisfied to very satisfied. Contentedness with balance of work and family life varies with the position the executives hold.

Noticeably, executives of top management levels (74%) and executives on departmental level (76%) are generally satisfied or very satisfied. However, only 50% of the managers on a divisional management level are satisfied to very satisfied.

Contentedness with balance Noticeably, executives of top management levels (74%) and executives on departmental level (76%) are generally satisfied or very satisfied.

50% ofthe the managers on a of work and family life However, variesonly with position divisional management level are satisfied to very satisfied. Contentedness with balance of work the hold. and familyexecutives life varies with the position the executives hold.

Fig. 5: Less career ambition is attributed to working mothers

less contented

discontented

contented less contented very contentedwith balance Fig. 4: Contentedness of work and family life

discontented

very contented

contented

Top Management

contented less contented Regression analysis (a statistical method thatfamily allows the influence of one or more discontented Division very contentedwith Fig. 4: Contentedness balance of work and lifeus to examine independent variables on a dependent variable) was used to explain contentedness with further Management variables.

Regression analysis with (a statistical method thatfamily allows Fig. 4: Contentedness balance of work and lifeus to examine the influence of one or more independent variables on a dependent variable) was used to explain contentedness with further Department Professional position(aturns out tomethod be the only variable.

‘Middle variables. analysis Regression statistical that statistically allows us tosignificant examine the influence of one or more Management management’ executives area management) significantly less satisfied than independent variables on (divisional a dependentorvariable) was used toare explain contentedness with further executives the otherturns two out levels (top and department No influence Professional to be themanagement only statistically significant management). variable. ‘Middle variables. ofposition on contentedness was obvious for theorother like qualification, gender, company contented less contented discontented age,less management’ executives (divisional area variables management) are significantly satisfied than very contented size and number children. executives ofposition the of other two out levels (top and department No influence Professional turns to be themanagement only statistically significant management). variable. ‘Middle on contentedness was obvious for the other variables like qualification, age, gender, company management’ executives (divisional or area management) are significantly less satisfied than Fig. 4: Contentedness with balance of work and family life Strong to two working size andattributions number children. executives of the of other levelsmothers (top management and department management). No influence Within the framework of the survey, managers with childrenthe were alsogender, asked about their on contentedness was formethod thesenior other like age, company Regression analysis (aobvious statistical thatvariables allows us to qualification, examine influence of one or more perception ofvariables their with children.

In particular, were asked about their Strong toonworking mothers size andattributions number offemale children. independent asubordinates dependent variable) was used to explain they contentedness with further impressions of the female subordinates’ performance, commitment, reliability, resilience, sick Within the framework of the survey, senior managers with children were also asked about their variables. days, career ambition and flexibility. perception of their female subordinates with children.

In particular, they were asked about their Strong attributions to working mothers impressions of the female subordinates’ performance, commitment, reliability, resilience, Within the framework of the senior managers with children were also ‘Middle asked about sick their Professional position turns outsurvey, to be the only statistically significant variable.

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They were asked: “Among my female subordinates with children I observe: Performance / commitment / career to ambition of mothers mothers compared to other staff members is higher / as high / Strong attributions working lower.”the framework of the survey, senior managers with children were also asked about their Within perception of their female subordinates with children. In particular, they were asked about their impressions of the female subordinates’ performance, commitment, reliability, resilience, sick days, career ambition and flexibility.

Fig. 4: Contentedness with balance of work and family life

Regression analysis (a statistical method that allows us to examine the influence of one or more independent variables on a dependent variable) was used to explain contentedness with further variables.

Professional position turns out to be the only statistically significant variable. ‘Middle management’ executives (divisional or area management) are significantly less satisfied than executives of the other two levels (top management and department management).

No influence on contentedness was obvious for the other variables like qualification, age, gender, company size and number of children.

They were asked: “Among my female subordinates with children I observe: Performance / commitment / career ambition of mothers compared to other staff members is higher / as high / lower.”

Fig. 5: Less career ambition is attributed to show that the performance of mothers is perceived to be as high as the performa workingResults mothers other staff members (72%). Ten percent of the respondents consider the performance of to be even higher. Also, the reliability of mothers (81%), their commitment (79%) and resilience (78%) are considered to be at least as high as those of other staff members.

Results show performance of mothers However, that 46% of the the respondents indicate that mothers have less career ambition than o staff members. of mothers perceived by 42% of the respondents and 3 is perceived to beLess asflexibility high as the isperformance more sick days are taken. of other staff members (72%). Ten percent of the respondents consider the performance of Sick days of mothers are …

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Fig. 6: Attributions to working mothers into comparison to other employees Fig. 6: Attributions working mothers in 7 comparison to other employees

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Traditional life patterns become apparent In summary, this study provides interesting insights about top executives with children.

Senior managers with children and their qualified partner mostly follow traditional patterns.

The question of how much time executives spend with their children and how they distribute their time leads to the following outcome. Around half of the executives spend 5-10 hours with their children from Monday till Friday, with around two-fifths spending less than 5 hours with their children. However, their partners spend comparatively more time with their children.

The difference in the amount of time spent with children is referred to as the ‘family time gap’. Potentially the amount of family-time of the manager and that of the partner is allocated complementary. There’s more time for children on weekends when three-quarters of the executives spend more than 10 hours with their children.

However, gender seems to reveal a significant influence on the time executives spend with their children. Thus, female executives spend almost three hours more with their children on weekdays than male executives with the same characteristics (age, qualification and position). But the time spent with children is not influenced by other variables such as age of executives, qualification, current position, number of children, age of the youngest child and the partner’s occupation and qualification.

The distribution of tasks follows traditional patterns, as the partner takes over the organisation of family and personal child care while repairs and gardening are done by the executive.

Personal child care is split more equally if the partner works full-time. Parenting responsibilities are mostly indicated to be distributed equally. Although senior managers spend less time with the children than their partner, they perceive their influence on parenting as equally strong. Family constellation is characterised by the fact that the partner is usually very qualified and working - most of them work part-time.

The majority of senior managers with children are contented with their work-life balance.

They claim family life is a booster and source of inspiration for work.

The impact of work on family life is perceived ambivalently. On the one hand, the majority indicates that work impairs their private life,

but also many senior managers perceive work to be enriching for the family life. In addition it was found that personal contentedness depends on the executive’s level of seniority - 50% of the managers on a divisional management level are less contented or discontented with their balance of work and family.

When considering their female subordinates with children, managers largely perceive the mothers who work for them to have less career ambitions than other staff members. Although the responding managers have both children and career, they don’t ascribe career ambition to mothers working for them. Mothers are perceived to perform at least as well as other employees, but they’re not connoted with career ambition. This could be one of the reasons why mothers are less considered as candidates for next level positions.

Prof. Dr. Regine Graml References 1.

S.J. Lambert, Processes Linking Work and Family: A Critical Review and Research Agenda, Human Relations Volume 43 (3), (1990) p. 239-257.

2.

S.C. Clark, Work/Family Border Theory: A New Theory of Work/Family Balance, Human Relations, Volume 53 (6), (2000) p. 747-770.

3.

J.H. Greenhaus, N.J. Beutell, Sources of Conflict Between Work and Family Roles, Academy of Management Review, Volume 10 (1), (1985) p. 76-88.

4.

Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, Weichenstellungen für die Aufgabenteilung in Familie und Beruf – Untersuchungsbericht zu einer repräsentativen Befragung von Elterpaaren im Auftrag des BMFSFJ, IfD-Archivnr. 7208, 2014.

Y. Ziegler, R. Graml, C. Weissenrieder, Karriereperspektiven berufstätiger Mütter, 1.

Frankfurter Karrierestudie, Göttingen, 2015.

5.

L.C. Sayer, Gender, Time and Inequality: Trends in Women`s and Men`s Unpaid Work and Free Time, Social Forces, Volume 84 (1), (2005) p. 285–303.

G.M. Dotti Sani, Men`s Employment Hours and Time on Domestic Chores in European Countries, Journal of Family Issues, Volume 35 (8), (2014) p. 1023–1047.

E. Holst, A. Busch-Heizmann, A. Wieber, Führungskräfte-Monitor 2015, Update 2001-2013, Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Berlin, 2015.

6.

D. Grunow, F. Schulz, H.-P. Blossfeld, Was erklärt die Traditionalisierungsprozesse häuslicher Arbeitsteilung im Eheverlauf: Soziale Normen oder ökonomische Ressourcen? Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 36 (3), June (2007) p. 162-18.

7.

AllBright Stiftung, Bericht 2018, Die Macht der Monokultur, September (2018).

8.

Odgers Berndtson, Manager-Barometer 2015/2016, 5. jährliche Befragung des Odgers Berndtson Executive Panels in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, 2015.

artwork by Kat Dlugosz

Inspired by the beauty, strength and ‘live forever’ spirit of the Sempreviva flower with its resilient blooms and tolerance of challenging conditions, the Sempreviva Collective is growing itself to generate, expand and disseminate women’s knowledge and practices in Brazil. By encouraging empowerment through the exchange of information and dialogue around women’s entrepreneurship, Sempreviva conceives and develops proposals to change the reality of women living in the outskirts of the Federal District of Brazil, as well as the nation’s cities and, given the context they operate in, the organisation’s feminist aims are necessarily bold. Clarissa Motter, Florance Dravet and Luana Rosback explains more of Brazil’s culture context for WomenBeing, and how we might continue to ignite change through the power of collective interventions.

Sempreviva Coletivo Feminista: The The collective collective brilliance brilliance of of women’s women’s wisdom wisdom in in Brazilian Brazilian entrepreneurship entrepreneurship

Tracing the historical profile of labour issues in Brazil, it’s easy to perceive the deletion and erasure of the leadership and knowledge of women. The depreciation of women’s wisdom, the roles played by women and of the female universe, including the condition of women as rational beings, is a structured status quo that’s been in place since patriarchy took on the role as humanity’s vision through which to understand the world. Working to awaken and promote the socio-economic autonomy of women by disseminating their knowledge and practice in the light of an economy which is creative and collaborative, Sempreviva dare to manifest a different future.

Sempreviva’s work originally came to life in partnership with the Universidade Catolica de Brasilia and now includes The Associação Imaginario Cultural - a space for artistic diversity located in Samambaia, and a milestone in its existence as a creative space lead by women coming together to problem solve and inspire. By working collaboratively with a spirit of openness and inclusion, credibility and substance are immediately drawn to the concept that a fair market for women can be built. Additionally, academic impact is carefully factored in to ensure the university performs its nurturing roles not only inside its walls, but also among surrounding 96

communities, actively participating in city dynamics, escaping the patriarchal hegemony of knowledge and its accessibility by aligning traditional and technical scientific knowledge with wider, more organic sharing.

As well as taking on the economy via women’s empowerment, Sempreviva’s mission pays equal attention to fostering debate and awareness around comparing differences and disparities between male and female work paradigms, considering several intersectional gender-related issues. Sempreviva promotes lectures, audio-visual sessions, workshops, courses and events, all centering women’s experiences, perspectives and challenges while building a complementary modern archive and online resource hub, further democratising trading and interaction among creative and entrepreneurial women, activists and academics.

Historically, the gender-based division of work has been extremely binary in Brazil and caregiving has been understood and experienced as an exclusively female task with breathtaking omissions of acknowledgement recognising the immense labour of care-givers within the economy. These crucial tasks, without which society would cease, have been depreciated in Brazil for centuries and it’s this reality

that’s one of the main obstacles for women’s success. Brazilian women today have more access to formal work yet still lack policies enabling conciliations between different types of labour, so invariably end up overloaded, trying to service a set of demands uniquely placed on them which are unachievable and incompatible with good health. In a setting of women’s devaluation, labour erasure and oppression, much of the initiation of Sempreviva involved identifying sympathetic movements, seeking initiatives to collaborate with to create change. In the Federal District, the capital of Brazil, a wave of female entrepreneurs has increased and a wide range of businesses have developed, from manufacturing products through to massage, photography and more. In recognition and celebration for the buds of empowerment, Sempreviva pioneers a management model to support women’s knowledge and practices, engaging technology for collaboration and connection. In so doing, the social impact of incorporating women into the cultural and economic heartbeats of the cities is accelerated. Individual small initiatives, knowledge holders, artists and craftswomen are then part of a network that validates them and recognises their competencies, including them in the ecosystem to bypass previous obstacles. However, as well as focusing on productivity, Sempreviva activities also prioritise developing wellbeing, preventing and reducing often economically-driven phenomena such as depression, violence and intolerance and instead integrating women’s contributions as a vector of family, health and jobs.

Though women’s presence in the formal labour market has notably increased, the reality within the numbers is the market

remains chauvinist; women are perceived as less competent and undeserving of promotions while the issue of maternity is never welcome or adopted appropriately as an essential cornerstone of society.

Women usually earn 30% less than men in the same posts, a prejudice often justified by the argument that pregnancy causes losses to companies for which women must compensate. It’s also common practice for women to be screened about their parenting responsibilities and plans during job interviews while men are not. Where employment is secured it commonly results in a double work shift since women have not become any less responsible for homes and families.

Then there’s harassment at work to contend with too, an extremely common factor in the Brazilian working woman’s reality.

Encouragingly, however, Brazilian women are increasingly betting on entrepreneurship and in doing so they are increasingly betting on themselves. Exame magazine in December 2017 reflected on female entrepreneurship in Brazil noting, “Women have increased their representativeness and innovated in the way of working. These new ways also bring about new challenges and opportunities to be explored in businesses. To the same extent that female entrepreneurs contribute to the development of the country, they also invest in the education of their families, thus enabling the growth of more people”. According to a global survey, 2017 Global Entrepreneurship Monitoring, developed in Brazil in partnership with Sebrae, half of all new businesses started in 2016 in Brazil were founded by women who are better educated than male entrepreneurs and work mainly in the services sector.

Further, “In 2016, Brazilian women accounted for 51.5% of the new undertakings.”

Many women deciding on entrepreneurship do so trying to reach a balance between professional and family demands, an objective that becomes more feasible when work and family mutually benefit one another. Sempreviva envisions a society that comprises work and, where desired, motherhood, providing satisfaction and fulfilment to women. To this end and others, the elimination of the harmful myth of the ‘superwoman’ who multi-tasks effortlessly day and night is furthered so less women feel incompetent, suffering undue strain from shame, guilt and exhaustion.

For women living outside Brazilian cities, a lack of widening participation policy and visibility brings even more significant impact, worsening the gender bias of poverty, forcing women into part-time or temporary jobs with fewer protections and smaller wages.

This situation particularly penalises Brazil’s black women who are already profoundly disadvantaged by racism. The serious role intersectional phenomena play in fostering women’s societal submission, making them more susceptible to high-risk relationship scenarios, placing women in danger of femicide and myriad life-changing violence is a reality we must constantly acknowledge and resist.

Since colonisation, single women in Brazil frequently face situations where they alone must find ways to raise and support their families with scarce resources. Since slavery, Brazilian culture has failed to significantly address the racism weaponised against our black women. This cycle, very well depicted in the Brazilian movie Que horas ela Volta, directed by Anna Muylaert, is one of the main factors of the feminisation of poverty and perpetuation of racial inequality Sempreviva seeks to resist.

In entrepreneurship, we find an extremely rich way of engaging women which attunes the urgent needs for socioeconomic autonomy and a realisation of gradual changes capable of shaking the deep structures of oppression.

What Sempreviva seek to change across the board is the reality built from the male vision of world, where work is only that which is correlated with financial worth, excluding women from the experiences of full humanity and community. Perpetual notions of absolutes around domination of the weaker by the stronger, and of those with lower purchase power by those with higher purchase power traps women in a poverty of choices, with the intensity of how much they are oppressed being the only changing metric.

…in entrepreneurship we find an extremely rich way of engaging women which attunes the urgent needs for socioeconomic autonomy and a realisation of gradual changes capable of shaking the deep structures of oppressioion…

Sempreviva lectures, courses and workshops aim at expanding knowledge and inspiring women to keep on investing in themselves. Through storytelling, knowledge sharing and building networks Sempreviva are empowering women to grow entrepreneurship by liberating previously complex or impossible processes wherever possible with technologies and greater collaboration.

Changing the reality of Brazil’s labour-related mindset since colonisation is a slow, troubled process demanding great power. To run the path towards a new objective, we must have clear in our hearts and minds that we can only succeed if we gather forces and inspire women to keep investing in themselves. We must embrace our differences and know how to work on disagreements to deconstruct the male logic of domination and power, where oppressed and oppressors will always exist.

The female logic we want to build demands sorority, empathy, communion and collective thinking.

Clarissa Motter, Florance Dravet and Luana Rosback

Find out more about Sempreviva on Facebook @coletivosempreviva and on Twitter @SOFsempreviva

illustration by Marta Nunes

Women in the cultural crucible of India Dr Binita Behera examines the progress India is making towards gender equality, looking at the huge strides forward and the work still to be done.

When we talk about women in any country, we see that intersections exist. Women inevitably belong to a certain class, they have a certain occupation, their own religious affiliation, their own political affiliation and indeed racial background. It’s wrong to speak about women in India as if they’re one homogeneous group. In India, women belong to different religious or political groups, we have different educational backgrounds, different social classes and more.

India is a true ‘melting pot’, a cultural mosaic, with more identities now coming into the open thanks to the global gender discourse.

Slowly but surely, our laws are awakening to these realities - and so is mainstream society.

While it’s still a conservative country holding on to traditional stereotypes, these stereotypes are getting weaker and weaker with the changes taking place in society.

The state is not oblivious to the winds of change blowing all over the world. Gender equality is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and this is recognised by the Indian government too. The government has come up with various new schemes that align with the global goals - but now what’s needed is social engineering and actual implementation of these schemes.

Caste is a peculiar characteristic of the

Indian cultural mosaic. It’s still a monolithic structure that resists change and is the basis for human rights violations that continue undeterred, especially in India’s villages. That’s why education is a significant equaliser in Indian society and people who pursue education open themselves up to many new opportunities. Due to affirmative action, those in the lower echelons of society can also enjoy the benefits of school and university-level education, but they still face prejudice - especially at work and even in their neighbourhoods. It is not commonplace yet that individuals from these castes are able to pursue basic education and gain qualifications. It’s women who particularly face prejudice and there’s much still to be done to change this.

As I mentioned, education has become a real leveller. Often when they are studying, young people find a like-minded person from another caste, fall in love and hope to marry.

However, if two people want to marry but belong to castes groups that are far apart, they’re restricted by social sanctions put in place by their families, caste leaders or even politicians. It can also result in violence from relatives of the person belonging to the higher caste. Many incidences of violence have already taken place, resulting in mass carnage - especially towards the lower caste.

wages so they at least cover the basic requirements of a family - adequate food, shelter, clothing, education, health care and entertainment. But there are many industries whose workers are outside the purview of this legislation. Furthermore, regional differences in consumption patterns and standard of living have made calculating a national minimum wage overly complex - there’s no single minimum wage across the country.

Where they exist, minimum wages in the regions of India are not adjusted and renewed in line with inflation and GDP. This particularly affects professions where the majority of workers are women.

Agriculture is another sector where interesting issues come up. First of all, the majority of farmers till their own small stretch of land.

In India they are termed ‘small and marginal farmers’, subsistence farmers who are able to grow food for their own household. Since the land they own is so small, it’s not economically viable for them to earn money from the sale of crops they grow. When India became a sovereign state, free from colonial rule, land redistribution to all was a key part of the government’s agenda. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen due to vested interests. Most importantly, land ownership is tied to the caste that you belong to. The distribution of land is unequal even today, with land increasing being used for the wants of a growing urban populace.

Women play an important role in agriculture.

However, the government’s new schemes continue to demonstrate gender bias. Land in India traditionally passes through the male lineage. The government’s inertia in dealing with this gender bias is another impediment to women - they can’t access credit and other facilities because mostly it’s the man’s name on the land deeds. Land is important collateral when landowners want to build a house or procure loans or other finance to pursue higher education.

When it comes to wages, there’s an obvious and very visible bias against women, especially those working in the ‘unorganised sector’ (smaller, unincorporated private enterprises owned by individuals or households) such as daily labourers, domestic workers and sex workers. India’s Minimum Wages Act was enacted in 1948 and while it’s not legally binding, it is statutory - paying wages below the minimum wage rate according to the Act amounts to ‘forced labour’. Wage boards have been set up across the country to review the industry’s capacity to pay and fix minimum

The Domestic Workers (Registration, Social Security and Welfare) Act 2008 was introduced to regulate payment and working conditions for domestic workers, as well as checks to prevent the exploitation and trafficking of women and other young household workers.

Domestic workers are in the unorganised sector which means there are practical difficulties in ensuring this legislation effectively supports them. Though the Act applies to both men and women, it assumes significance for women particularly due to their large numbers in this sector.

One irony about empowering women dawned on me recently - here in India many of us women are working in different sectors now but we need the help of our domestic workers (who in most cases are women) to help us out with daily chores like washing and cleaning.

There is tremendous pressure on women to excel in both work and home spheres.

Across these intersections of women in India, I’d say that we’re moving forward - and we’ve come quite a distance. We’re now working in many more fields than before, and these days people don’t look at us oddly when we talk about empowerment.

My take on how we can continue to move forward together and improve life for all women in India is to have empathy for other women and help them in whatever way we can, however small our support or our contribution may feel. We also need to empower men in sectors which are still considered a ‘no-no’ for them - especially helping at home. Men struggle with multiple images of masculine identities - they need help too and India needs to make significant strides in this area to create a good balance in society. It will help to empower women too.

Every society needs this and Indian society is no different.

Dr Binita Behera 101

illustration by Marta Nunes

The integration of gender analysis in interdisciplinary research: Challenges and solutions of a project on multimedia heritage

As a recipient of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship, Federica Bressan shares her experiences of incorporating gender analysis and gender aware activities into the field of multimedia cultural heritage.

Picture books for women. Sacred books for men.

Yentl (movie), 1983

1

Introduction

The promotion of gender equality has been at the heart of European social and economic policies since 1957, when the principle of equal pay for equal work became part of the Treaty of Rome. During the past few decades the status of women in our society has improved significantly. For example today women are present at every level of the academic hierarchy – although gender gaps still exist and the number of women tends to decrease along the career path, in the so-called leaky pipe [1]. The value of their contribution has been recognised to the point that the absence or the exclusion of women is now regarded as an impoverishment of the research itself.

Yet the scenario remains complex and raising concerns around ‘gender issues’ often receives mixed reactions from both men and women in the day-to-day personal and professional life.

Horizon 2020 (H2020) structurally encourages the inclusion of gender equality in project applications. For projects where it seems completely irrelevant or impossible to relate the research interests to gender, applicants are asked to include a statement justifying the exclusion of gender. Attention to gender can be interpreted as having different levels of impact: (1) gender equality in scientific careers;

(2) gender balance in decision making; and (3) integration of the gender dimension into the content of research and innovation. Yet translating these guidelines into a concrete action plan for project applications that deal with topics not related to gender is not easy.

How do we make the commitment to gender credible? What activities can actually have an impact on gender research or society at large?

In this article, I present my experience of thinking, structuring and implementing a successful Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship proposal which includes gender mainstreaming in a gender non-related field of research, namely that of multimedia cultural heritage. The project runs for two years (2017-2019) and implements gender aware activities in the research process and in the research content.

The article is structured as follows: section 2 summarises the starting point of my experience, section 3 presents the main challenges posed by the implementation of gender analysis in gender non-related research, and section 4 goes into the details of the steps and actions I took before, during and after the project proposal submission and evaluation.

2

State of the art

Including gender at micro and macro level throughout the project cycle has required a systematic reflection and an effort to learn about the methods and the indicators of the gender research field. My case study is relevant in that the reflections I carried out during the preparation of the application touch upon the critical obstacles that normally prevent other researchers from including gender in their work.

Despite my efforts to consider the gender dimension at micro and macro level throughout the project cycle, as required by the H2020 calls (see Subsection 4.1), I have found some resistance in the implementation phase. One of the crucial problem lies in ‘arbitrariness’ of the gender dimension in gender non-related studies, so I have often been asked: “Couldn’t you carry out your research without considering gender?” The correct answer is yes, I could: gender in my research is not the focus, but it is arbitrary in the sense that the well-known 40% quota of female members on public committees and boards proposed at institutional level in Europe is arbitrary.

It’s like asking General Motors, who has been receiving media attention for their active policy of including women at every level of company hierarchy1, also partnering with the initiative Gifs Who Code2: “Couldn’t you put together a board without women?” Of course, they could. The point is to give women a chance and facilitate their access to positions that were traditionally filled by men, as the only strategy to divert the inertia of the status quo. The same rationale can be found in training programs like Cyberwayfinder3, targeted at women in their mid-careers and helping them become fully-certified cybersecurity professionals.

The gender dimension is integrated within Horizon 2020, at two levels: (1) gender balance within the research teams; and (2) gender dimensions within the content of research (source: ESOF Conference4, also mentioned in Subsection 4.2). The inclusion of women on committees and boards is comparable to their inclusion in research teams in science.

The concept can be extended to other collaborators, mentors, and also subjects involved in the research, unless their gender needs to be determined by the nature of the research. But how to integrate gender in the content of research?

Some research may reveal a more meaningful connection, like those explained in the 104

examples provided in the video mentioned in Subsection 4.2. For other types of research, the connection may seem non-existent. In how it was structured, my research seemed to belong to this category. However, I kept reflecting on the real impact of gender on my research, and also on the impact of my “gendered” research on other projects and areas. I came to the conclusion that most research is currently gender blind, and basic statistical data on the representation and behaviour of each gender group is simply missing. Therefore a systematic and structural monitoring of gender representation and typification is highly desirable in every field, compatible with most research fields, and virtually cost-free.

At present, an organic debate on the challenges of integrating gender analysis in gender non-related research does not exist. There is no platform dedicated to researchers in gender non-related studies that wish to come together, get organised and actively contribute to the cause of gender in its broad sense and in its concrete societal embodiment. Most importantly, they cannot connect to the experts in the field, who are ultimately responsible for (1) providing us with methods and tools that we can borrow (or develop together with them); (2) supervising and assessing the results of our collection and analysis; and (3) integrating these results into the research field where they ought to be best exploited and repurposed in the future.

3

Main challenges

The challenges that researchers today have to face to successfully implement attention to gender in their research are manifold - but some are subtler than others, and also harder to overcome because they are systemic, and therefore beyond the possibilities of a single individual’s power to change.

One has been addressed in the previous section: acceptance. While we are encouraged to make our research gender aware, and it seems a given fact that the inclusion of gender in our research automatically increases the quality of our research and its usefulness to society (see video mentioned in Subsection 4.2). At the same time, we are questioned when we do, and our methods and intentions are put under the microscope.

Checking genuine intentions is necessary to avoid attention to gender spreading as a trend to gain easy recognition, but an inquisitive tone may be discouraging. It would be nice to receive an offer of guidance and collaboration

by researchers in gender studies, more often than a hostile look as if we were trying to intrude into their sacred space. Only by partnering up with experts, can we familiarise ourselves with methods and tools to carry out our research in a way that meets adequate scientific standards.

From which follows the second challenge: credibility. You can’t improvise gender research. Just like you shouldn’t improvise any type of research outside your domain of expertise. And in my estimation, there is a risk that the implementation of gender-focus will be inappropriately carried out due to lack of expert validation. Not only do we need methods and tools, but specific indicators, ways to handle ethical issues, and ultimately the knowledge to reintegrate of all the data into the discourse of gender studies, where it can be appropriately framed into the big narratives.

And speaking of experts, another challenge is precisely that of educating oneself on gender, from policies to definitions to the reality of gender groups in different parts of the world. For one, it is not always clear what people mean by ‘gender’. Is it just women? Transgender people? Others? The paragraph in the guide for applicants of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie reads “gender issues” without disambiguating the expression (see Fig. 1). By extending my domain-specific literature and by connecting with new people involved in gender studies and gender policies, I came to the realisation that the concept of gender inherently includes every ‘colour’ on

the ‘spectrum’, and that everyone struggling to some degree with acceptance, personal fulfilment, career advancement, due to issues related to gender should be considered. Just like so should men – it is very important not to fall into the opposite extreme, and exclude or penalise men. And this despite the fact that, especially at a first glance, the literature appears so compartmentalised that one can gather a large collection of works on “gender” by only focussing on women.

The literature that focuses on ‘everyone else’ is not obvious to find at first. Evidence of this trend is everywhere. For example let’s take a quick look at the binary definition of ‘gender balance’ of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)5: “Human resources and equal participation of women and men in all areas of work, projects or programmes.” Only after reading [2], it became clear to me that the correct way to frame the whole matter is in terms of “gender and human rights”.

What I will not consider as challenges in this specific context are (1) the resistance by peers whose personal opinion happens to be that gender doesn’t matter, even if their comments may in fact be an obstacle to our work in day-to-day research; I go by the directions of the EU where the fact that gender matters is a well documented fact; and (2) the fact that adding the concern of gender to our research is time consuming, especially considering that it is strictly not necessary. The same has been said about Open Science and the resistance from researchers to document and package their data for sharing [12]. The social usefulness

Fig. 1. Excerpt from page 18 of the Guide for applicants of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships 2014.

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of both gender-focus and Open Science and the added value that they bring to our research should be understood, and therefore the effort required to achieve it justified and worth it.

4

The DaphNet project

DaphNet is a research project focused on interactive art. More specifically, it is concerned with the preservation and the documentation of interactive installation art, where digital technology plays an important role. Both digital technology and interaction challenge the current archiving practices, normally based on homogeneous categories of documents with limited capacity to represent complex relations among documents across different categories [3].

One of the steps needed to properly describe and store the information about the artwork is the definition of an ‘ontology for interaction’, i.e. a formal representation of the entities involved in the interaction as well as of the modes in which the interaction happens.

DaphNet is a two year project (2017- 2019) and received funding from the EC through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (H2020MSCA-IF-2015). It is individual funding, so I am both the coordinator and the Principal Investigator of the action; I conduct my research at IPEM (Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music) at the Department of Art History, Musicology and Theatre Studies, of Ghent University in Belgium.

1). A couple of minutes were also reserved for gender issues in every info session I had participated in. I decided to fully embrace the challenge, and I started to: (1) educate myself with domain-specific literature; (2) reach out to experts; (3) build the research topic for my application around the concept of gender. I was moving from the assumption that the implementation of gender related concepts and activities shouldn’t be improvised – and I had little experience on the subject then – and on the contrary it should be informed by existing policies and case studies, and always be monitored by experts.

Before proceeding, it may be noted that in the guide for applicants in 2017 this paragraph in Fig. 1 was moved to page five of the H2020 WP 2016-2017 Part 3, and replaced with a very short note directly in the application template.

Gender keeps being mentioned on page 14 of the H2020 WP 2016-2017 Part 1 (bold in the text): All applicants are invited to explore whether and how the gender dimension in research content is relevant to their research, including where appropriate specific studies and training. In addition, gender equality is promoted in all parts of Horizon 2020 including gender balance at all levels of personnel involved in projects.

Gender equality issues are also reinforced in the Excellent Science parts of the Horizon 2020 Work Programme dedicated to the ERC and MSCA.

4.1 During the preparation of the project I started writing this project in May 2014. I had developed an awareness about gender issues in the years prior, but it is only with this application that I decided to be active about it in my research. I did so mainly because the guidelines for applicants were explicitly encouraging the implementation of gender balance and training on gender (Fig.

In order to acquire the domain specific vocabulary, in preparation for the project application I collected and processed a number of official reports linked in the documentation accompanying the Marie Skłodowska-Curie call [4,2,5,1,6] (Fig. 2), and I have participated in the annual conference organised by the Italian Association Women

Fig. 2. Official reports used in the preparation of the H2020-MSCA-IF-2015 application.

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and Science on 12 to 14 November 2014 in Trento, Italy. My attention was attracted by the definition of gender mainstreaming, “an innovative concept, encompassing much more than ‘traditional’ equal opportunities policy”: according to the Council of Europe, gender mainstreaming may be described as “the (re) organization, improvement, development and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies, at all levels and at all stages by the actors normally involved in policy making” [4, p.10].

What was appealing to me, was the deep and systemic understanding of the gender problem. However, the level of abstraction of this concept was too much for my circumstance: my goal was to implement specific activities in the project application, I couldn’t attack the problem directly at the policy level. Fortunately, the report breaks down gender mainstreaming in four steps [4, p.12]: 1. Getting organized. The central focus in this first step is on implementation and organization, on building awareness and ownership.

2. Learning about gender differences.

The aim of the second step is to describe gender inequality with regard to participation, resources, norms and values and rights, and to evaluate trends without policy intervention.

3. Assessing the policy impact. The third step is to analyse the potential gender impact of the policy with reference to participation, resources, norms and values and rights.

4. Redesigning policy. The fourth step is to identify ways in which the policy could be redesigned to promote gender equality.

It appeared clear that my research could be useful within the second step: monitoring, observation, data collection, “without policy intervention” but preliminary and preparatory to it. At this stage, I was still trying to build the research topic around gender. The project was taking shape around interactive installation art, and I wished to limit my attention to art works produced by women artists. The words “women artists” (so not “gender”) featured in the title and was prominent in the abstract.

This was also the time when I reached out to experts in person. I wanted to meet with them and discuss the ideas that I had developed while reading the literature and receive feedback on the project topic. I contacted several people both at the institution where I

was then affiliated (University of Padua, Italy) and the institution with which I was applying for the funding (Ghent University, Belgium).

These experts were all women. My experience with them is that I have received strong support and positive feedback from those who were members of University boards for gender balance and equal opportunities – mainly bodies that monitor the situation within the institution and produce periodic reports – but who were otherwise researchers in other domains. From those who were actually professors in Departments of Gender Studies, I have perceived more resistance and a harsher criticism. I was disappointed at first, because I thought that they would welcome an outsider trying to connect with their research field.

In retrospect, I think their resistance was a useful lesson for me, because it stimulated me to analyse the reasons and the ways in which I was approaching gender. By attaching gender to basically every aspect of my research, I was amplifying the arbitrariness of this choice too much. The introduction of attention to gender can often be accused of arbitrariness, but sometimes it is defendable and sometimes less so. In my case I was standing in a weak position. So, I found myself reducing the presence of gender throughout my application and limited it to very concrete actions like: •

making sure that at least 40% of the participants involved in the experiments are women;

•

assigning a priority to women’s works in the selection of art works for the experiments.

These actions were the direct reflection of existing policies, there was nothing new and nothing specific to my project. I asked myself what else I could do while conducting my research, and I was able to add these two points: •

collecting quantitative data and statistics from the cultural institutions involved in my project and the members of the project network;

•

monitoring significant indicators with focused questions in interviews, life stories and questionnaires.

The definitive title for the project turned out to be “Dynamic preservation of interactive art: The next frontier of multimedia cultural heritage” (acronym DaphNet) and the paragraph that was mainly addressing gender in the application read:

According to the definition of gender mainstreaming [4], gender analysis is cross-integrated at macro, meso and micro levels throughout this project cycle. An extensive study on the representation of women in the world of the arts (as artists, curators, promoters, etc.) is currently missing. By carrying out my research on interactive installations, I intend to address the problem by: (1) collecting quantitative data and statistics from the cultural institutions involved in my project and the members of the project network; (2) monitoring significant indicators with focused questions in interviews, life stories and questionnaires. In addition, (3) I will make sure that at least 40% of the participants involved in the experiments are women; and (4) in the selection of artworks, I will assign a priority to women’s works – granted that the characteristics of the installations meet the requirements of the study. In all these activities, I will be aided by experts in the field, whom I have already contacted personally and whom have agreed to give their contribution (names and affiliations on the project website).6 In addition, I embraced the call’s invitation to pursue formal training on gender: Training on gender issues. In order to build the background functional to my own gender-related activities, I will take at least one of the courses offered by the Centre for Gender Studies at Ghent University (in English)7.

4.2 Between the evaluation and the start date of the project The notification of the proposal evaluation was delivered in January 2016. My project started in February 2017. So, I almost had a full year during which I knew that I would go on and be a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow but wasn’t one yet. During this transition time, where I was in-between jobs and I relocated to a new country, I felt motivated to keep being open to opportunities to learn more and engage with gender related activities. In particular, I was very happy when I was contacted by the EC about being interviewed in a video that was being produced precisely on how to implement gender related activities in project applications. I felt it would be interesting to share my experience because I had actually done systematic work and was aware of what I had learnt as well as of what the limits of the situation were. It struck me that my contact person motivated the choice of my profile 108

Fig. 3. Screenshot from the video Understanding gender dimension for MSCA projects. because I was one of the very few, if not the only one, to my understanding, to implement gender in her proposal, and of course to be successful in the evaluation that year. That was proof to me that implementing gender was not so straightforward, and at the same time I felt proud of having attacked the matter with method and determination. What struck me next is that in the phone calls that preceded the interview, I was asked direct questions such as “how does implementing gender contributes to the results of your own research”. And while I was trying to explain that the core problem precisely lies in the difficulty to justify and implement gender in gender non-related research, I had the impression that even my solution was being questioned. I found this approach both alarming and confusing: were we on the same team, standing for the same cause, or were they trying to find a weak spot in how I dealt with gender in my project?

The interview was taped during the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions satellite event “Research and Society”, at the University of Manchester on July 29th, 2016 (Fig. 3). The video features experts from several European universities.

It was published on the channel of the EU Science & Innovation8 on November 10th, 2016, with the title “Understanding gender dimension for MSCA projects”. It has been viewed 5,046 times as of April 11th, 2019. The video description reads: Are you an MSCA fellow or considering applying to an MSCA grant? Then check if the gender dimension is applicable to your research field! Gender dimension is not about the ratio of women and men in your research project, it’s about your research content. This video will explain you what gender dimension in research is about and give you examples of how it can be integrated within your research project and improve the quality of your research.

Interestingly, this description focuses on the implementation of gender in the research content, leaving it out for the members of the research team which are included in the H2020 definition provided in Sec. 1. The video reports a few interesting research cases where the relevance of gender was not obvious in the beginning but tired out to be key once framed in a different perspective. As for my contribution, I think I stayed on the safe side without going into the details of my project and my implementation, advising aspirant applicants to read the literature and learn and think for themselves how they can make a useful contribution to the cause. The underlying message is that gender should not be seen as a momentary trend that needs to be forced into project applications to gain more points in the evaluation, because this would ultimately do more damage than good to the cause. It’s really important to learn to think differently and strip back the reality we’re used to of the gender neutral (which mostly means male oriented) veil that stands between us and a more liveable place for all people.

The video has only received one comment: “A video plagued with gender stereotypes and generalizations, encouraging gender perspectives before even asking the question ‘Is gender the most relevant variable?’ What about the ‘sleep perspective’? How are night owls affected by different projects?”. The “most relevant variable” in what context? But what strikes the most is again the attack on the arbitrariness of gender: why gender and not sleep patterns? It is a legitimate question in a way. Thinking of gender as “gender and human rights” (Sec. 3) would points us, in my opinion, to the correct answer. But the comment has received no answers (two years later).

The ESOF Conference featured a session where experts explained “why integrating gender (within your team or your research project) can make a difference to the quality of your research” (quoted from the conference program). During the Q&A of that session, I asked a question echoed by another member in the audience: we were both turning to the experts (i.e. professors in gender studies departments) to receive guidance and tools on how to include gender in gender nonrelated research. Our rationale was that nobody was better than them could develop tools for researchers in other disciplines to use and would be happy to start collaborations.

We can educate ourselves to the best of our capabilities, but the experts should remain

the authority for the assessment of our results.

I found the answers not very informative, if not disappointing to my scientist ears (“be creative” was one I won’t forget). Sadly, the discussion was feeding the impression that all this attention to gender was just an intrusion of feminism in academia: why promote such an important topic in all research areas if no methods, rigorous approaches or shared goals can be outlined? I believe that it was under the same impression that another young woman conducting research in physics or engineering asked if her application would be penalised for not including gender. Of course, this shouldn’t be the case, but her concern reflected where the conversation in the room was going: unclear goals, absence of methods, but a fierce support of the ideology. Ultimately, without a credible approach, all the talk about gender in science will backfire and nullify even the valuable advancements made so far.

4.3 After the start date of the project During the project, I actively tried to find opportunities to keep educating myself and staying up to date on the topic. For example, I followed the webinar “Collecting Data About Gender Identity: Importance, Current Practices, and Exploring International Best Practices” organised by the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, and found it very informative. It clarified some ideas, such as the identification of transgender and gender minority people in large surveys; the “science of measurement”; guidance for researchers and advocates. The webinar was streamed on June 22nd, 2017 and I learnt about it through the Center for Sexology and Gender at the University Hospital in Ghent with whom I had established a connection during the first months of my project. They pointed me to more literature that might help me structure the questionnaires delivered during my experiments better, for example [7,8]. “Media and gender” and “Seminary Gender History” are some of the other seminars organised by the Doctoral School at Ghent University 9. I have learnt that the “Beleidscel Diversiteit en Gender” (Policy center for diversity and gender) at Ghent University10 offers a remarkable variety of services, information and is very sensitive to the well-being of students. I sensed a general trend in European universities to be very open to new policies that would increase the well-being of gender minorities and the spirit of acceptance behind this trend is uplifting. However, they were not aware of the controversy on gender neutral pronouns that

has received sensational mediatic attention in Canada since late 2016 and ended with an amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code in 2017.

The awareness of gender minority identities, rights and needs is so young in the Old World that there is little question about inclusive policies. However, Canada and the Unites States of America could be an eye opener for potential controversies that lie ahead: it is to the benefit of everyone that such tensions should be avoided in the future. Hence a cautious approach to the subject matter seems desirable, and from my perspective this calls even more for scientific methods in gender non-related studies at every level of data design, collection and analysis. Some of those who opposed the bill in Canada partially backed up their position by claiming that several statements in the legislative text were in open contrast with well-established scientific literature. Solid knowledge must be at the core of policy design and decision making, and without a scientific approach to gendered analysis in non-gender related field there is a high risk of polluting the waters and ultimately damaging those who would benefit the most from these studies in the first place. I keep myself up to date on the social and political discourse around this complex matter in order to maximise my ability to reflect and respect gender minorities in my future experiments (on interactive art) and at the same time to minimise the chance that I distort or misrepresent them. I am trying to express this intention to expand the womanonly perspective into an all-encompassing idea of gender in a new grant application (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019, submission deadline September 11th, 2019). The awareness that makes many researchers and groups embrace all the colours on the gender spectrum from a starting position mainly focussed on women is not only characteristic of my personal path but for example is reflected by the Working Group for Gender Equality for Mobile Researchers in Science (GEMS) of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), which I have joined in 2017, that has recently changed its name in Working Group for Gender Equality and Diversity for Mobile Researchers in Science (keeping the same acronym GEMS). Needs and requests from the people included in this now larger pool may vary, but the bottom line is that all of them are people and, as I mentioned in Sec. 3, the right way to frame the issue is by associating gender and human rights.

During the first months of the project, I have worked on the data collected during an exploratory study on interactive art involving

a sound installation for collaborative music making called “BilliArT” by artist Tim Vets [9]. In line with the ideas I have expressed so far, I have tried to identify useful ways to implement gender in the experiment, discarding those possibilities that were not backed up by the literature I had come across in my training. The options were eventually reduced to two: (1) respect of gender nonbinary self-identification in the section for personal information in the questionnaire, and (2) observation of eventual relevant patterns across the rest of the data collected, without a theory a priori and without looking for something specific. Point 1 relates to the policies for inclusion and well-being of all the gender minorities. Once the (legitimate) existence of these groups is recognised, forcing a binary choice for gender is a conceptual contradiction and a practical act of disrespect, just as it would be for a choice regarding the race limited to two races, or not allowing interracial identities, or going about the matter hypocritically with “Caucasian” and “other”. The webinar mentioned above and [8] have been precious sources to develop my awareness on how to formulate the choices in the questionnaire. Point 2 does not require much effort at design time, but can take up as much time as one is willing to give at analysis time, depending on how far and how deep the search is pushed. The fact that this data collection can be performed at a virtual zero cost goes to its advantage. It is hard to make a case on why it should not be performed. The researcher can then proceed to only analyse the data of their interest, or try to see if there are noticeable differences between sexes or genders – and also if there are no differences between them, which might be just as interesting depending on the context. This type of action qualifies as “monitoring”, and it is desirable as expressed in Sec. 2. In my case, the data were collected via questionnaire, oral interview, audio and video recordings, and the data log of the tracking system involved in the installation setup. The questions that the users were asked addressed different aspect of the installation likability, usability and design, besides general background information including their familiarity with the technology involved and their degree of formal musical training. The video recording and the log data were quantitative references for the duration of the game and complex parameters like the Quantity of Motion (QoM, see [10]). Every single data set can be measured or compared in function of gender.

For example word clouds were built with the description of the participants mood before and after the experiment [11]. The lessons

learnt from this exploratory study include the fact that (1) a great number of interesting questions about gender can be asked once clean data have been collected, and this is a much unexplored trend in gender non-related fields; and (2) that the step of analysis would benefit from, if not require, the supervision and collaboration of an expert in gender studies, for the assessment of the results and ultimately for their integration in the research field where they ought to be best exploited and repurposed in the future.

5

Conclusions

In this article, I have presented my experience and the problems I encountered in trying to implement gender analysis in gender nonrelated research. In particular, I explained my motivation and the steps I have taken from the beginning to educate myself, connect with experts, and achieve a degree of competence that would allow me to carry out this task in a credible way with useful results. With this account I wish to contribute to the conversation in a field where I have received no formal academic training, and I encourage the experts to collect contributions like mine and [help us] develop flexible tools to borrow and use in our research fields. I see my commitment to the gender dimension as an organic effort to bring back the human factor in research as well as in every other aspect of life, in the belief that in the long term it will bring a revolutionary positive change in society, and that in the short term it can accelerate the healing process that many women and gender minorities are still going through and that holds them back from developing a full personal and professional life.

6

Acknowledgement

This study was partially supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 703937.

Federica Bressan

Dept. of Art History, Musicology and Theatre Studies IPEM – Ghent University, Belgium

General Motors in the media this year: www.fortune. com/2017/01/10/barra-gwc-detroit (last visited 2019-04-11).

1

Girls Who Code project: www.girlswhocode.com (last visited 2019-04-11).

2

Cyberwayfinder: www.cyberwayfinder.com (last visited 2019-04-11).

3

ESOF Conference: www.manchester2016.esof.eu/en/theprogramme/event-information/quotas-the-right-answer.

4

html (last visited on 2019-04-11).

European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE): www.eige. europa.eu/thesaurus/terms/1148 (last visited on 2019-04-11) 5

Project website: www.daphnet.federicabressan.com/ (page last visited on 2017- 09-30).

6

Centre for Gender Studies at UGent: www.cgs.ugent.be/ en/courses (page last visited on 2017-09-30).

7

Understanding gender dimension for MSCA projects: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq4eWo30RfY (last visited on 2019- 04-11) 8

Doctoral Schools at Ghent University: www.ugent.be/ doctoralschools/en (last visited on 2019-04-11).

9

BeleidscelDiversiteitenGender: www.ugent.be/nl/ univgent/waarvoor-staat-ugent/diversiteit-en-gender (last visited on on 2019-04-11) 10

References European Commission: Structural change in research institutions: Enhancing excellence, gender equality and efficiency in research and innovation. Report of the expert group on structural change, European Commission (2012) Faúndez, A., Weinstein, M.: Guide for the evaluation of the programmes and projects with a gender, human rights and intercultural perspective. UN Women. (March 2014) Bressan, F., Canazza, S.: The challenge of preserving Interactive Sound Art: A multi-level approach.

International Journal of Arts and Technology 7(4) (December 2014) 294–315 European Commission: Manual for gender mainstreaming. Employment, social inclusion and social protection policies. Technical report, European Commission (2008) European Commission: She figures 2012. Gender in research and innovation. Statistics and indicators.

Technical report, European Commission (2013) UN Women: UN Women annual report 2013-2014.

Technical report, UN Women (The UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.) (2014) Brown, T.N.T., Herman, J.L., Park, A.S.: Exploring international priorities and best practices for the collection of data about gender minorities. Report of meeting, The WIlliam Institute - UCLA School of Law, Los Angeles (CA) (June 17 2016) Balarajan, M., Gray, M., Mitchell, M.: Monitoring equality: Developing a gender identity question. Research report 75, National Centre for Social Research - Equality and Human Rights Commission (2011) Vets, T., Nijs, L., Lesaffre, M., Moens, B., Bressan, F., Colpaert, P., Lambert, P., de Walle, R.V., Leman, M.: Gamified music improvisation with billiart: a multimodal installation with balls. Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces 11(1) (2017) 25–38 Bressan, F., Finbow, A., Vets, T., Lesaffre, M., Leman, M.: Between artistic creativity and documentation: An experiment on interaction with an installation for musicmaking. In: Proceedings of the 6th EAI International Conference: ArtsIT, Interactivity & Game Creation, Heraklion (Greece), Springer (October 30-31 2017) accepted for publication.

Bressan, F., Vets, T., Leman, M.: A multimodal interactive installation for collaborative music making: From preservation to enhanced user design. In: Proceedings of the European Society for Cognitive Sciences Of Music (ESCOM) Conference, Ghent University (2017), 23–26 Levin, N., Leonelli, S., Weckowska, D., Castle, D., Dupré, J.: How do scientists define openness? Exploring the relationship between open science policies and research practice. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 36(2) (2016) 128–141

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In her research, M.W. Kurchik examines how women who grew up as tomboys navigate the workplace in the male-dominated technology sector.

She asks how gender a ffects their self-perception - and how it affects the way they’re perceived by others.

Kiera, a 30 year-old engineer at a multinational technology company, refuses to identify as a ‘woman in tech’. As a kid, she was a tomboy: “My sister and I were definitely tree climbing.

We were big Lego kids,” she says. “Nobody ever explained to me that computers and maths were a boy’s thing”. Now she resists identifying as anything but a software engineer. Her advice to new starters in the industry: “Don’t let your gender be an intimidating factor”.

And Kiera isn’t the only one. As a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh Business School, I’ve interviewed nearly thirty women who work in the technology sector. Kiera’s story - the tomboy childhood, the reticence toward being identified as a woman in tech - is by now familiar to me.

In childhood, gender roles are closely tied to modes of play: girls play with dolls and boys with trucks. These strict categories of gendered play align with the overarching gender binary (the concept that there are only two genders, male and female) whereby girls and women are feminine, and boys and men are masculine. For my interviewees, the tomboy identity isn’t a rejection of traditional femininity, but rather an acknowledgement that femininity can include elements of masculinity. “My sister and I were both tomboys, but also wore dresses,” Kiera says.

Similarly, Tina, 44, the head of spam operations at a multinational tech firm, described herself as a “big nerd” who “grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars”, and “had a dirtbike”, but was also painfully shy. Clearly, the tomboy inhabits an in-between space within the gender binary system.

The tomboy is well known from her depictions in popular fiction. Think of Harper 112

Actress Mary Badham as Scout Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird Lee’s beloved character Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, Peppermint Patty of Peanuts fame, Pippi Longstocking and Joey Potter of Dawson’s Creek. All of these girls are explicitly described as ‘bossy’ as part of their tomboy identity. In 2014, the chief operating officer at Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, launched the #BanBossy campaign encouraging girls to embrace “being a tomboy” instead of

When tomboys grow up: women working in the technology sector suppressing any masculine traits (Filipovic, 2014). Sandberg co-authored the 2013 self-help book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, arguing that women should be more assertive in the workplace. In a sense, Sandberg’s advice to women was for them to try to maintain a tomboy-ish persona in their grown-up professional lives.

This access may be formal, like membership on a boys sports team. In day-to-day life, tomboys often experience unique opportunities. Marnie, a 33-year-old senior growth manager at a UK-based tech company, explains, “I never thought of myself as a girl and no one ever held my bags or did anything like that. My dad had me mowing the lawn and I was playing football”. Through her athletic ability, Marnie was allowed on boys’ teams, participating in their training, games and team socials.

Academic literature on the tomboy identity is careful to point out its limitations, especially the fleeting and fragile nature of its benefits (Carr, 1998; Halberstam and Halberstam, 1998).

Unlike tomboy children, grown-up tomboys (women) are not afforded the privileges that grown-up boys (men) enjoy. The women I spoke to shared a consistent story - when they entered the labour market, especially in male-dominated sectors like technology, the privileges they once enjoyed seemed to slip away. They are not necessarily welcome in ‘men only’ spaces like the pub (or even strip-club) the way they once were in ‘boys only’ spaces.

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook Tomboy status is not without benefits. As a ‘pseudo-boy’, tomboys gain access to spaces otherwise deemed ‘boys only’.

“When I was in my thirties I was earning half the salary of my [male] colleague,” says Gillean, a 43-year-old enterprise operations international manager. “The company redressed it and paid me double my salary overnight, but it broke [my] trust [in them]”.

Her tomboy identity may have gifted her with the very confidence and enthusiasm that made her successful in technology to begin with. However, Gillean’s experience points towards a tension between her self-perception and the way institutions categorise and treat her.

1 13

Women are still vastly outnumbered in the technology sector Despite Kiera’s decision to ‘ignore’ her gender, it seems her colleagues are not always on the same page. She explains that “they would say very sexist things”. She describes one particular instance while attending a conference where a colleague went on a sexist diatribe: “He was telling this story about how when women walk through doors they deliberately let the door hit them, so that they can blame the men… he was going on and on about how women set themselves up for things so they can blame men… if you couch this in today’s terms, this guy would be like a men’s rights activist”. She also described less overt instances where sexism is ingrained in the practices of her organisation. For example, “You notice in meetings and stuff like that, when they talk about peoples’ contributions on projects... they’re leaving off the women on the team… I think to some extent they just haven’t taken us [women] as seriously”.

Similarly, Tina’s tendency to get along better with men doesn’t protect her from what she perceives as an unfair double standard when it comes to leadership. “Sometimes I have to be firm and make my voice heard,” she says, but at the same time, “it’s more acceptable when a male would do it. When a female would do it, it just comes across as, ‘Oh, what’s your problem? Is something wrong?’ or, ‘She’s being bitchy’”.

Even though Marnie sees herself “as one of the guys” she is still cognisant that she’s often excluded from the ‘boys’ club’ in tech and that as a woman she has to “be double - doubly good, doubly smart” because otherwise her skills and achievements are unlikely to be recognised. Lastly, despite Gillean being “very 1 14

comfortable around men, very comfortable in male-dominated spaces and an aggressive and assertive person” she was still paid less than her male counterparts.

These women suggest that their tomboy identity legitimises their presence in the maledominated technology sector. They make references that align themselves with familiar masculine archetypes, like geek. They describe themselves in non-gendered ways (“software engineer”) or with masculinised terms (“one of the guys”). However, despite how they identify, they all describe a time when their gender dictated their treatment. Because their gender is understood by others first and foremost as a physical expression (in that it can be seen on their bodies, in what they wear, their hair-style and so on) these women’s grown-up tomboy behaviour only gets them so far.

Subjects’ identities have been pseudonymised.

M.W. Kurchik References Carr, C. L. (1998). Tomboy resistance and conformity: Agency in social psychological gender theory. Gender & Society, 12(5), 528-553.

Carr, C. L. (2005). Tomboyism or lesbianism? Beyond sex/ gender/sexual conflation. Sex Roles, 53(1-2), 119-131.

Craig, T., & LaCroix, J. (2011). Tomboy as protective identity.

Journal of Lesbian Studies, 15(4), 450-465.

Filipovic, J. (2014). Let’s ban ‘bossy’- and not just because Sheryl Sandberg and Beyonce said so. The Guardian.

Halberstam, J., & Halberstam, J. (1998). Female masculinity.

Duke University Press.

Photo 1: Scout Finch www.fergusontkam.weebly.com/jemfinch.html Photo 2: Sheryl Sandberg www.standard.co.uk/news/ world/sheryl-sandberg-calls-for-new-policies-to-close-thegender-pay-gap-a3599606.html Photo 3: Women in tech www.standard.co.uk/news/world/ sheryl-sandberg-calls-for-new-policies-to-close-thegender-pay-gap-a3599606.html

Hug more often. illustration by Narcisa Gambier

Transforming realities

gnimrofsnarT seitilaer

Mexican artist Lorena Sequero chats to Monica Martins about the inspiration she finds in music and cinema, making connections as a woman in the arts, and the role memory plays in her work.

artwork by Lorena Sequero

Lorena, tell us a bit about your background and the inspiration behind your art.

I was born in Leon Guanajuato, Mexico. I started taking photos with a digital camera when I was 17. I studied photography in my city, but the course was too theoretical, so I learned some basics and left. I then started studying plastic arts in the National Center of the Arts in Mexico City.

Since I started doing photography, I’ve tried to narrate experiences and subjects related to memory. My memory and collective memory.

But I didn’t want to show memory as it is, I wanted to distort it. I also explore my own image - the self-portrait, the female figure, this character.

I find great inspiration and motivation in music and cinema, so the most important part of my work (and the part I like the most) is making covers for music albums, like the one I did for The Underground Youth. The inspiration I find in cinema comes from the films of directors like Wong Kar-Wai, Chris Marker, Victor Moscoso, Carlos Saura, and Pedro Almodóvar. And finally any place where you can find diffuse scenarios inspires me.

The most important part of my motivation is not simply about absorbing images (whether films or still images) all the time - it’s about the possibility of an image to formulate a dreamlike hypothesis, as if our minds could dream or imagine beyond an image.

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Mexico has an incredible artistic scene.

What do you think is the most powerful element?

The women! And the artistic movements shaped by those women. Beyond this, I think the solidarity and freedom that’s been generated within Mexico’s artistic community is a powerful force.

There’s been a lot of empathy in this community, especially from younger people.

In a way, art was a bit more personal, more inward-looking before. It was a more selfish and competitive art. Now I see people with similar interests and perspectives come together to form collectives and exploit all their potential to the maximum. Some of these collectives are composed only of women, others of illustrators, or transgender people, or any gender. But there is a lot of freedom to get together with other people with similar interests and make exhibitions or any type of event. I find this so interesting because when you work with others, you experience and share working, which is really beneficial for everyone.

What current Mexican artists inspire you?

At the moment, I’m inspired by some of the collectives I mentioned. I admire their dedication and their way of working. ’Dolor local’ is one of them - it’s a collective of

illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, musicians, tattoo artists and more. Another is ‘Electric Pussy’ who are also dedicated to sharing publications and content from women, especially the work of women just entering the art world.

I recently discovered a photographer from Mexico City called Sonia Madrigal, whose work deals with topics like violence against women and femicides - every day, nine women are killed in Mexico. This complex project involves documentary photography, ‘territory intervention’ and the collective digital mapping of cases of femicide. I’d highly recommend taking a look at his work.

What brought you to Europe? And how do you feel your work has been received here so far?

Love and lack of love. I believe that love is something that always invites us to do extraordinary things. In Mexico City, I was in the process of escaping from violent things in my life - an abusive relationship, an earthquake, and the fear and paranoia that constantly grips you in that monstrous city.

I arrived in Portugal and decided to create an artists’ residence in Porto. Everything’s been very nurturing - I’ve met people who have loved my work and identified with my ideas.

I’m living in a remote region of Portugal so it’s difficult to find an audience or people to work with more, but it’s a struggle I’m trying to overcome.

As a woman in the arts, have you encountered any difficulties in putting your work out there - especially now that you live far away from Mexico?

There will always be difficulties, but I also think that these days it’s a bit easier. I like new technologies because they help me avoid everything that my introverted personality detests, like selling my own work.

Most of my contacts and the people I work with were always outside Mexico, and even now, being far away, I work more with Mexican and South American artists. All this is possible through the internet. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, as long as you know how to find people who accept and support you and the things you do. It’s easier to connect.

There’s clearly competition online too, but we need to have more empathy with others. The more artists I discover, the more followers I gain!

Your work seems to be very focused on distorting things, transforming realities or questioning them. Can you speak a bit more about the specific themes you show in your work?

I like to deconstruct images. I believe that it’s part of recreating a scene, either through repetition, or through twisting it and dividing it until it forms a completely different one, but without being able to eliminate the original completely.

I’m also interested in the different textures and organic forms that I can mix with these images, to form and distort feelings and sensations within the same images. The women within my photographs are formed and they disappear.

The collages are also part of this - the female body disguised, masked in constant changes and mutations. A body in pieces with constant shock, between a monstrous woman and the idea of a femme fatale.

You’re the subject in many of the works you create. How do you manage to be the artist and the subject of your art - and what’s the intention behind this?

I’m interested in the female character within the image, constructing an illusion within photography and the importance of the presence of the other. Whenever I mention this, I think of Cindy Sherman, whose work hugely influenced me - the work where she retains the stills format as an artefact of mass culture, and also how she explores women in cinema through their images and gestures within the films, whether they’re film noir, drama or suspense. An implicit presence of the ‘other’ and of voyeurism, the male gaze, and thus the representation of the woman as an object.

I try to show this through myself within my self-portraits, rarely with the presence of someone else. What hurts us, what makes us women - it’s part of our identity even if sometimes we don’t want to show it, as are our continuous changes of mood, our fears, internal dramas, traumas, jealousies and insecurities.

As well as displaying your work online, are you taking part in any exhibitions?

At the moment I have an exhibition with João Delicado, at the ‘noc noc’ in Guimarães.

You also have a strong relationship with music - your work is often a fusion between film and music. What inspired you to do this?

My images wouldn’t exist without music. It’s the same with films - it seems that one and the other are faithful companions. Because how could you tell a story without it being accompanied by a soundtrack?

I’m also obsessed with album or book covers - I’ve been obsessed since childhood, and that’s why I love making music album covers. Sometimes I buy music or books simply because I like the cover.

I like doing album covers. It’s very intuitive work, representing a whole album with a single image.

It’s also my way of exposing my work as well, since I have never really liked exhibitions.

Any new projects you’d like to tell us about?

Yes, I’m making some music - a musical project called ‘Mexican Girl’, with synthesiser and guitar. I still don’t know how to define it, but it’s cooking well... I’m also collaborating with a band and I’m working on a new album cover for a band that I admire a lot!

That it’s almost out is a surprise!

Find out more Lorena promotes her work on Instagram and Facebook, and you can also view her work on her Tumblr blog.

photography by Chris Relvas

With more unicorn statues than statues of women in Edinburgh, Vicki White leads a passionate call for more statues celebrating the achievements of women to line the streets of Scotland’s capital and questions the messages we’re sending about how women are represented.

illustration by Ida Henrich

Vicki White (also known as author Victoria Hendry) will give a talk on this subject and lead a tour of Edinburgh’s statues from a female perspective at the WomanBeing Conference, 2020. A fun map will be available for self-guiding tours too.

Statues and why unicorns on girls’ clothing is no joke Are we blind to urban messages that still inhibit female empowerment?

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Lord Provost William Chambers, Edinburgh

Meet publisher Lord Provost William Chambers standing over three naked girls outside the Crown Office and Sheriff Court on Chambers Street. One of the girls represents literature. It’s ironic because in the 19th century, women were rarely published or they had to publish anonymously to be taken seriously, and couldn’t practise law until the Sex Disqualification Removal Act of 1919. The ironies appear to have been lost then as now.

And most women I know write with their clothes on.

There are more statues of unicorns than women in Edinburgh, and when any women appear on buildings, or the plinths of statues celebrating men, they are often small and almost always naked. We’ve stopped noticing this as we pass in the streets with our daughters, but if you stop and look, the message that was given to the women before us was sinister. That message persists today.

When women appear only as nude statues all over cities, we should remember that these

statues were erected at a time when women wore corsets and weren’t allowed to show their ankles. They weren’t allowed to vote or go to university. Implicitly they were told that there are no women of talent - but you can be the muse of these successful men. You are their inspiration. This was meant to cheer them up and make them feel valued, despite professional work and education being closed to them. So idealised, female, naked bodies were exposed to the male gaze with impunity in public while women sat in restrictive clothing, sweating all summer, with little money in their pockets and fewer options. In 1851, Amelia Bloomer (1818-1894), an American women’s rights activist, was criticised for promoting a corset-less, hip-length dress with long pantaloons in her ground-breaking magazine for women called ‘The Lily’.

Corseted ladies surrounded by naked women - the double standard of the 19th century is astounding. But does it still persist?

Unicorns drifting onto girls’ clothing is no laughing matter precisely because there are still more public images of unicorns in the city than women who aren’t Queen Victoria or Greek mythological beings. Images affect us.

In 2019, there are racks and racks of clothing covered in unicorns for girls and women in high street shops. The colourway is pink, white and silver. This infantilisation extends to late teenage and older women too. It embodies the idea of cute, but real women are not cute. They are powerful, human mammals.

We’ve forgotten the cultural and religious associations of the unicorn as a dangerous animal that can only be tamed by a virgin.

It associates women and girls with fictional animals.

As Simone de Beauvoir pointed out, this mythologising of women as ‘other’, associating her from childhood with the fantastic and mythological, diminishes women as active agents of their own very real being.

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One t-shirt even challenges its own mythology by proclaiming in writing under the picture, ‘Unicorns ARE real.’ No, they aren’t, girls are real. Women are real. Unicorns are not.

the nation in the figure of Queen Victoria or as the Virgin Mother of Christ. Mary’s symbol of triumphant virginity, the unicorn, is raised up on seven plinths.

Some may say, ‘It’s just a joke’ but is it? Is it just fun? Would we associate boys with unicorns?

Would we sit famous men like the Duke of Wellington on a unicorn instead of a horse and say it’s just a joke? It would be seen as a joke at his expense. It would be seen as diminishing his status as a general, so why isn’t it seen this way in relation to women? What deepseated prejudice says that this is okay? How has it become normalised? Why do women accept it and buy the unicorn clothing for their daughters, but not for their sons? Why do we, as women, accept the association of ourselves with otherness?

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Queen Victoria, Royal Scottish Academy, Princes Street, Edinburgh

Women depicted in statues are never middle-aged and accomplished, unlike the statesmanlike men who are depicted everywhere and celebrated for their contribution to society. Women, often confined to the home as wives, were not even visibly celebrated for their potential and courage as the pregnant, fruitful body, but as the naked temptress associated with Eve. The one that got everyone thrown out of the Garden of Eden. In the 19th century, when attending a Christian church was the norm and father read to his family from a large bible at home, mother was seen as the original sinner. Even now, it’s never the mother with her children that is celebrated. At best, maternity is conceptualised as the mother of 1 24

Ross Fountain, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh

In central Edinburgh today, Woman can only be seen as a victim, mutilated, fictionalised, in the shadows or entirely absent. She appears as a victim of apartheid in her statue outside the Sheraton Grand Hotel in Festival Square; the decapitated, pregnant woman by Damian Hurst in the Gallery of Modern Art; or the fish-tailed women, and water-spewing nature spirits on the Ross Fountain in Princes Street Gardens. The scantily-clad women of the Ross Fountain are called Science, Poetry, Art and Industry. They hold symbols for arts in which they could not get recognition and tools for industries in which they were paid slave wages, if they were allowed to work at all.

Susan Ferrier’s novel ‘Marriage’, published anonymously in 1818, was attributed to Walter Scott because it was good. He referred to her as his ‘shadow sister’ - and her bust still stands in his shadow at the National Portrait Gallery on Queen Street. Woman appears as half-woman, half-shop with scrolls for legs on Jenner’s department store, or a fictionalised version of herself in Diana Vernon from ‘Rob Roy’ on the huge Scott Monument. She is Victory above the Bank of Scotland.

Mary Livingstone is not to be found next to David Livingstone’s statue on Princes Street.

Real women are not to be seen on plinths raising men up to the sky, closer to God and the place she stripped from Adam. She is as naked as the day they were thrown out of Eden by the enraged Deity. Only Adam has reclothed himself, celebrated his creative

ability and his scientific achievements, climbed on a horse and armed himself, celebrated his wars, proclaimed his victories and decorated himself with medals.

The memorial to the Royal Scots Greys and the Second Boer War (1899-1902) stands below Edinburgh Castle, but the city fathers ignored the reality of British concentration camps in which thousands of women and children starved. Public memory is selective.

They show no women on the memorials to the First and Second World Wars. The grieving mothers, Women’s Land Army, munitions workers, nurses and doctors like Elsie Inglis – all are forgotten. The new monument to Polish men and women in the Second World War shows a man and a bear. We need to ask, is it a deliberate oversight? A conscious omission among all the commissions? Do the omissions speak as loudly to women as the commissions, and if so why are men deaf to it? Until the internet-connected and informed women’s voices across nations, many women’s aspirations to education and the professions remained low. They wrongly believed there were no statues of significant women because there were no significant women – message that continues to be absorbed unconsciously by new generations passing the statues.

So why do cities like Edinburgh continue to put up multiple new, male statues to historical figures such as Adam Smith, David Hume, John Clerk Maxwell and his dog, and William Playfair - or the head of a rhinoceros on the Informatics Building of Edinburgh University but not the head of suffragist, barrister, Liberal politician and first female science graduate of Edinburgh University in 1896, Chrystal Macmillan, on the Chrystal Macmillan Building nearby? What’s the criteria? Why are the authorities so slow to correct the imbalance and address women’s invisibility by including storytelling about women in the city’s visible histories?

Doctor Sophia Jex-Blake and the ‘Edinburgh Seven’ will finally be able to graduate in medicine from Edinburgh University this year, 150 years after they enrolled in 1869. Male students slamming the gates of Surgeons’ Hall in the faces of these women to prevent them sitting their anatomy exam is not widely remembered, and very few people notice the wall plaque for Sophia Jex-Blake on the Bruntsfield Women’s Hospital. The City Council’s ‘Women of Achievement’ map of 1995, detailing twenty commemorative plaques of women is out of print.

Will we have a tomb of the unknown woman in Westminster Abbey or under the Arc De Triomph in Paris? There are as many as the

lost soldiers. Their achievements and sacrifices are not publicly remembered. Cenotaph means empty tomb. No body there to our glorious female dead. In Carnoustie, a brand new statue to Airedale rescue dogs in the First World War is to be unveiled, but still none for women.

In Edinburgh, as in other cities, where is the visible evidence of women of achievement?

Elsie Inglis, Marie Stopes, Sophia Jex-Blake, Chrystal Macmillan, Naomi Mitchison, Muriel Spark, Mary Livingstone, Anne Redpath. A few plaques or a name on a building are no more than a nod to reputation that does not celebrate, uplift, make visible and threedimensional, but is a footnote in history. A ‘by the way’, an ‘oh, I just remembered’, a whisper not a shout, in the shadows, not the light. And now, printed on girls and women ‘Unicorns ARE real’. No they aren’t, we’re not fools, women ARE real.

So my sisters and friends. Pick a woman you admire, print her face and achievements on a t-shirt and wear that, upload her name and biography to Wikipedia. Upload your own achievements. Look around you, make noise, celebrate and remember that every human on the planet, every living sculpture was made by a woman. Every finger and tiny toe. Women are the birth-givers of humanity. Men made the statues but women made the men - you or your sisters made the crowd that passes the statues on the street. Hip, hip, HOORAH for you.

Vicki White References Photos by Vicki White de Beauvoir, Simone, The Second Sex, Vintage, London, 1997, (1949): www.ed.ac.uk/equality-diversity/celebratingdiversity/inspiring-women/women-in-history/edinburghseven Bruntsfield Hospital: www.archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/ archives/abfddc48-fb21-373c-a02b-085342ce4e70 Boer War concentration camps: www.bbc.co.uk/history/ british/victorians/boer_wars_01.shtml Melusine: Fish-tailed spirit of fresh water on Ross Fountain (French folklore) www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melusine Recommended reading to discover the women history omitted to mention Fara, Patricia, Pandora’s Breeches Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment, Penguin, 2004 Dani Garavelli’s excellent article, 23.1.2016: www.scotsman. com/news-2-15012/where-are-the-statues-of-scotswomen-1-4009631 Travelling the Distance, 100 Women, porcelain wall sculpture, Scottish Parliament, by Shuana McMullan, 2006: www.parliament.scot/visitandlearn/24518.aspx Women of Achievement Trail, City of Edinburgh Council, 1995 (out of print): www.flickr.com/photos/ craigmillar/3586088391

photography by Camille Vincent

I’d like to say we’ve met before but you have never known me.

You took me fresh at forty weeks, split and peeled me with your surgeon’s hands, took my death as opportunity, rendered my life down to meat and bone.

Your artist friend from the Netherlands had a talent for Plaster of Paris; the curved mountain range of my dead child’s spine, takes the breath away; one perfect seashell of an ear turns outwards in a question mark; my stomach parts in waves, I gleam as though still wet, as though the cord was still pulsing, as though I were still there; as if I was ever there.

I’ll raise a glass, though, to sublime detail if you, Dr Hunter, will drink a toast two hundred and forty years later to the ragged ends of my thigh bones, to permission still not granted, to this Lady Lazarus, your Enlightenment.

Morag Smith Human Gravid Uterus Speaks was written in response to William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum (Sept2018-Jan2019) at the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow University. The poem also refers to Lady Lazarus from Sylvia Plath’s Ariel collection, published in 1962.

Human Gravid Uterus Speaks

(The body was first opened and placed in a proper situation. Every part was examined in the most public manner)

When Edinburgh met Sweden Fifteen years ago, Anna and Mike Christopherson spotted a chance to bring their own unique style to Edinburgh’s bar scene. Monica Martins catches up with Anna to discover the philosophy behind their business and how it’s helped their bars become beloved Edinburgh institutions.

Akva is part of the Boda Bars group in Edinburgh. When did you have the idea to open the first bar in Edinburgh?

In 2004 – my husband and I moved to Leith and couldn’t find a place we liked to relax away from home that felt female friendly and welcoming.

So we saw a gap in the market.

Can you tell us a bit more about the Swedish bar concept?

The idea was to create a living room ambience where people meet and socialise. Funnily enough, there are not a lot of bars like this in Sweden. The idea comes from Boda, a small village in Sweden where I grew up and where you always had to create your own events to bring people together and make something happen.

Over the years, the Boda Bar group grew exponentially. How do you think that Edinburgh’s residents feel about your bars and the concept behind them?

I get so much positive feedback all the time – every time I’m organising an event, I receive lots of compliments and even hugs.

The things people appreciate the most are how friendly the staff are and what a cosy ambience the bars have. They also seem to love the wide range of quirky events we run such as singles nights, vegan cocktail nights, clothes swaps, and our Midsummer party with BBQ and outdoor games.

What’s the most recent venue to become part of the Boda Bar group?

We took over Harry’s West End and Sofi’s Southside in October 2018. It was a completely different idea for us taking over a social enterprise that was struggling - so it’s been a challenging year and a steep learning curve. But in hospitality, resilience is key!

You seem to be very open to supporting small groups of people or festivals in their activities. This is extremely important for small independent initiatives like ours, and for the city itself. How do you feel about this and what motivates you to support these initiatives?

When you grow up in the countryside, you have to organise events yourself if you want anything to happen. So being part of the community and helping each other has always been a big part of my life. Even now when I’m home I still do a lot of volunteering work in the village.

Obviously our bars are profit-driven businesses and can’t give things away for free but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be a positive part of our community. I also hope that most people living in Edinburgh would rather see that the money goes back into local businesses rather than big chain restaurants.

You recently sold the first bar you opened, Boda in Leith Walk. Why did you make that decision and how do you feel about it?

I’m very happy, especially since it’s Nathan and Louise, previous managers of Victoria, who took it over. It was time for us to let it go after 15 years and honestly you can spread yourself too thin.

Which characteristics about your venues do you value the most?

The warmth and the smiles plus so many regular guests. I think our places make people relax.

photography by Bo Saunders

// WH E N

// WH E R E

8 th - 11 th March 2020

Queen Margaret University Edinburgh, Scotland United Kingdom

2nd International Interdisciplinary Conference on Gender Studies and the Status of Women

FIRST CONFIRMATIONS KEYNOTE:

Gender equality in practice the Swedish context

WORKSHOP:

Checklist for assessment of gender mainstreaming – a tool for getting started and/ or improvement by Anders Eriksson and Katarina Fehir, gender equality experts, Malmö City Council, Sweden

SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT BY 15 th DECEMBER 2019 www.womenbeing.co.uk/conference2020 / / FOR M ORE INFORM ATION PLEASE CONTACT / / Monica Martins Managing Director info@womenbeing.co.uk / / Or visit: www.womenbeing.co.uk

// FOL LOW U S

International Feminist Perspectives www.womenbeing.co.uk