In today’s Daily Mail, Janet Street-Porter has written a great article outlining her ‘manifesto for young women’, which ends by saying that young women need to believe in themselves. She has some excellent advice, including ‘work like hell at school’, ‘hold your head high’, ‘set your goals’, ‘swap telly trash and internet twaddle for books, …
Category: engineering
May 01
Is Susie Orbach right to be optimistic?
I have just been re-reading Susie Orbach’s article in the Guardian, published on 20th April, and I feel rather buoyed up by the experience. Writing about the Body Confidence Awards which took place in the House of Commons earlier that week, she drew attention, of course, to the grip which the ‘beauty’ industry has on …
Apr 23
Body Confidence winners! ‘Body Image in the Primary School’: clear, practical and straight to the point
Congratulations to Nicky Hutchinson and Chris Calland, speakers at the last November’s GSA conference, who won the award for Education at last week’s Body Confidence Awards for their book, ‘Body Image in the Primary School’. It is a great book, aimed at teachers in primary schools who have responsibility for personal and social development, and …
Mar 10
Miss Representation: developing healthier attitudes to women and girls
I wrote a few weeks ago about the thought-provoking documentary, Miss Representation, which was shown at the Houses of Parliament recently and which is developing into a powerful voice in America today. When you visit the site, www.missrepresentation.org, you are given the opportunity to sign a pledge to ‘challenge the media’s limiting portrayal of women …
Mar 07
Dame Joan Bakewell speaks out: teen magazines sexualise girls
Dame Joan Bakewell, the journalist and television presenter, who helped lead the sexual revolution of the Sixties, and who shocked the nation in 2001 when she presented the BBC TV series Taboo, spoke out earlier this week at the Bath Literature Festival about the effect that teenage magazines are having on young people – and …
Jan 20
Miss-Representation – how we portray women in the media, and what we can do about it
One of the sessions at the UK Girls’ Schools Association Conference in Bristol in November, which I hosted as GSA President, was an uplifting interactive conversation with colleagues from the States. It immediately preceded the arrival of Nick Gibb, Minister of State for Schools, who was delayed; the positive upshot was that we were able …
Dec 06
The dangers of pole-dancing …
I am perplexed by the apparent craze for pole-dancing. It may not in fact be a craze, but we certainly seem to be hearing more about it these days. Marketed as ‘pole fitness’, its proponents are quick to stress the physical benefits of the classes, as well as the fact that they are ‘fun’. Quite …
Oct 20
ParentPort: a way forward to protect our children
It was fantastic last week to see clear action being taken by the Government – as promised – to implement some of the major recommendations of the Bailey Report, ‘Letting Children be Children’, which was published in June. The report described a landscape in which our children are bombarded by sexualised imagery, and content designed …
Aug 23
School skirts: a matter of human rights?
Ever since this morning’s article in The Times about some schools banning skirts in school from the beginning of the new academic year, I have been waiting with bated breath for the inevitable comment piece decrying the fact that choice has been taken away from girls, and that all girls should have the chance to …
- 1
- 2