An interesting set of statistics highlighted by last week’s Sunday Times revealed that, after David Cameron’s latest reshuffle, almost a third of female ministers are “divorced or unattached”, and 40% of the female Shadow ministers on the Labour benches are in exactly the same position. The numbers are small – a rather damning comment still …
Category: Uncategorized
Sep 14
Children “too embarrassed” to read
A very worrying report was published last week by the National Literacy Trust and reported in the Daily Telegraph. The survey, of 21,000 children in primary and secondary education over the past few years, revealed a steady and concerning drop in the number of pupils reading in their spare time – from 38.1% in 2005 …
Sep 11
Talking of female role models …
… what an amazing set of role models we have had in our Team GB Paralympians! With the strains of Sunday’s final Closing Ceremony still ringing in our ears, and the images of fire still dancing before our eyes, as well as the images of the thousands of people who lined the streets of London …
Sep 08
Tulisa: a role model and inspiration for broken Britain?
I have been thinking a lot about female role models recently, and so was drawn to the Daily Mail online article this week which reported an interview in Look magazine with Tulisa Contostavlos, singer and X Factor judge. In the interview, she described herself as an “inspiration for broken Britain”; I was intrigued. I was …
Sep 05
Beauty and the beast – why we should just ban beauty pageants for children
Tuesday’s report in the Daily Mail of a beauty pageant in Lincolnshire has – quite understandably – created a storm online. Beauty pageants as a formalised concept seem somehow entirely outdated these days – parades of women marked out of ten for their looks and physical appearance, with barely a nod to their ‘personality’. These …
Sep 03
Back to school …
This poem brought a little lump to my throat, but a big smile to my face when I found it recently: WHOSE CHILD IS THIS? Author Unknown “Whose child is this?” I asked one day Seeing a little one out at play “Mine”, said the parent with a tender smile “Mine to keep a little …
Aug 31
Girls are the key to solving world poverty
Advance warning: Thursday 11th October 2012 is the first ever International Day of the Girl, and watch this space for more information. Investing in girls – in their education, above all – makes an enormous difference to their lives and to their lives of their communities, and it is because I have become so convinced …
Aug 28
The minefield of celebrating female achievement
I came across a fantastic site recently: a list of 22 inspirational female Australian entrepreneurs. You can find the site here; it is a blog attached – slightly anomalously – to a website about credit cards, but this doesn’t detract from the content. Here, you can read some interesting stories, including that of: Gina Rinehart, …
Aug 24
The deep horrors of motherhood. We Need to Talk About Kevin
I recently read – in one intensive, all-encompassing go – We Need to Talk About Kevin. I know that Lionel Shriver wrote it in 2003, and we are now almost a decade on, in 2012; I know too that it was made into a film last year, so I am well aware that I am …
Aug 22
Good news about Physics … well, sort of.
Figures for this year’s A Levels, released last week, show that there has been another increase this year (on average, 3%) in the number of students taking A Level Science and Maths subjects. Physics has seen an especially positive rise: the total number of taking Physics A Level this year increased by 5%, up from …