Category Archives: Gender

Javid orders inquiry into NHS gender identity services for under-18s – reports

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The health secretary is planning an overhaul of services offered to young people who question their gender identity, the Times reports

An inquiry into the impact on under-18s of NHS treatment for gender dysphoria is to be launched by the UK government, according to reports.

The health secretary, Sajid Javid, is said to be concerned that vulnerable children are being given gender hormone treatment before alternatives have been explored, according to the Times, and is planning an overhaul of services.

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Female fighters to make boxing history at Madison Square Garden

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Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano face off in April at legendary New York venue where Ali fought Frazier

At the end of April, boxing history will be made. For the first time, two female fighters, Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano, will face off at New York’s legendary venue Madison Square Garden, in a fight that is predicted to supercharge the sport’s rapid rise in popularity.

For two women to go 10 rounds at the same venue where Muhammad Ali fought Joe Frazier – twice – and Rocky Marciano knocked out an ageing Joe Louis shows the remarkable, rapid progress that has taken place in the past two decades.

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University of Melbourne staff push for paid gender transition leave and flexible approach to Australia Day

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Law expert warns changing Australia Day status in employee agreements could lead to reduction in public holiday entitlement

The national academics’ union is urging the university sector to pave the way for nation-leading gender affirmation leave in Australia.

The issue has been highlighted by University of Melbourne staff calling for paid gender transition leave as part of negotiations on a new three-year enterprise agreement, first reported by the Age.

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Morrison abandons support for trans sport ban after hand-picked candidate apologises for tweets

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Liberal Katherine Deves apologises for post describing trans kids as ‘surgically mutilated and sterilised’ as Zali Steggall calls for her disendorsement

Scott Morrison has backpedalled after flagging the Coalition might support a bill banning transgender women from playing women’s sport, following a backlash from Liberal moderates and independents.

Morrison said on Wednesday the Coalition “does not have any plans” for Liberal senator Claire Chandler’s private bill to become a government one.

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Women-led UK firms struggle to attract equal investment, study finds

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The Gender Index aims to support growth of female-led companies, which tend to have lower turnovers

Companies led by women disproportionately attract less investment than those led by men, according to a large-scale study of female entrepreneurship in the UK.

The Gender Index, which was launched on Thursday, is a research study of all 4.4m active UK companies and allows users to track the impact of female-led firms on the economy via an online, interactive tool.

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Law should change to reflect how Victorian budgets affect gender equality, report says

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Committee says current moves towards ‘gender responsive budgeting’ should go further

Assessing how the state budget affects Victorians based on their gender should become enshrined in law, a parliamentary committee has found.

The state government announced it would establish a “gender responsive budgeting” unit as part of its 2021/22 budget last year, in a push towards equality for women in budget decisions.

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‘Women of the wild’: the platform giving India’s nature experts a voice

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Frustrated by a lack of female representation, film-maker Akanksha Sood Singh set up an Instagram account to showcase ‘the untold stories of women working for science and nature’

“I wish these things wouldn’t happen to anyone,” says Akanksha Sood Singh, a wildlife film-maker based in Delhi. “But if it has happened, this is a safe space for women to come and to share their experiences.”

The safe space Sood Singh is referring to is the Instagram account Women of the Wild – India, which showcases “the untold stories of women working for science and nature”. The platform gives them a chance to promote their expertise, but also somewhere to share their experiences of working in what are often male-dominated fields where sexual harassment can often feature.

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International Women’s Day is blind to the greatest threat to women – Australia’s welfare system | Kristin O’Connell

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Australia’s welfare system is deeply imbued with misogyny and far too often traps women in unsafe situations

International Women’s Day is upon us, and along with it the endless gabfests about women’s equality, mostly led and attended by women in suits.

Increasingly we’re seeing women’s safety feature in the discussion and cursory mentions of issues facing Blak, disabled and queer women.

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South Korea’s poisonous gender politics a test for next president

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As election campaign enters final stages, the two leading candidates have been accused of pandering to sexism to win the votes of aggrieved young men

The identity of South Korea’s next leader will be determined this week by the economy, housing prices and incomes, but the road to the presidential Blue House will also be dotted with the wreckage of the country’s poisonous gender politics.

The successor to Moon Jae-in, who is restricted by law to a single five-year term, will not be able to ignore the fallout from a campaign defined by the culture war being waged in the world’s 10th-biggest economy.

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Companies with female leaders outperform those dominated by men, data shows

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Labour’s Anneliese Dodds says women should play a central role in the UK’s post-pandemic economic recovery

Women should play a central role in the UK’s post-pandemic economic recovery, with evidence revealing companies with more female leaders outperform those dominated by men, according to House of Commons research.

Accusing the government of ignoring women’s needs during the coronavirus pandemic and side-lining them in plans for recovery, the shadow secretary for women and equalities, Anneliese Dodds, said the data showed women held the key to a stronger economy, but they were being held back by a lack of investment and the risk of “childcare deserts” in parts of the country.

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Meet the ‘vegan bros’ here to bust the myth that real men eat meat

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From plant-eating bodybuilders to role models like Lewis Hamilton, so-called ‘hegans’ are turning gender stereotypes on their head

It was a Sunday afternoon in the late 1980s and the house was filled with the fatty scent of roast lamb. I absentmindedly enquired about the origins of lunch and my brother pointed at the mewing sheep in the field adjacent to our house. I was a five-year-old boy, and I decided on the spot to become the first vegetarian in my family.

My parents, while broadly supportive, were understandably bemused – and concerned. It was a less enlightened time, and my lack of dietary protein was a constant worry. They assuaged this by occasionally feeding me Chicken McNuggets under the not entirely misplaced logic that they weren’t really meat. After I’d cottoned on, I would sheepishly order a cheeseburger “without the burger” whenever we went to McDonald’s.

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Covid has intensified gender inequalities, global study finds

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Researchers find women hit harder by negative social and economic impacts of the pandemic than men

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic threatens to reverse decades of progress made towards gender equality, according to a global study that reveals women have been hit much harder socially and economically than men.

Previously, coronavirus-related gender disparity studies have focused on the direct health impacts of the crisis. It is well known, for example, that across the globe men have experienced higher rates of Covid cases, hospitalisation and death. However, until now, few studies have examined how gender inequalities have been affected by the many indirect social and economic effects of the pandemic worldwide.

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Margaret Atwood on feminism, culture wars and speaking her mind: ‘I’m very willing to listen, but not to be scammed’

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At 82, the Canadian author has seen it all - and her novels predicted most of it. Just don’t presume you know what she thinks, she tells Hadley Freeman

‘How are you? You’re named after Ernest Hemingway’s first wife,” Margaret Atwood announces by way of a greeting when we meet on a hotel’s heated patio near her home in Toronto. Atwood, 82, has often been described as a prophet, thanks to her uncanny ability to foresee the future in her books. When Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in January 2021, it looked, terrifyingly, like a scene out of The Handmaid’s Tale, when the government is overthrown and the dystopian land of Gilead is founded. She seemingly predicted the 2008 financial crash in her nonfiction book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, published that year. Atwood has always scoffed at any suggestion of telepathy, pointing out that every atrocity in The Handmaid’s Tale had been carried out by totalitarian regimes in real life, and she “predicted” the crash by noticing the number of adverts offering to help people with their personal debt. But as she stands in front of me, snowflakes glittering around her like stars, the flames of the hotel’s gas heaters leaping on either side of her, dressed all in black save for her little red hat, correctly guessing who I’m named after, she certainly seems to have a touch of magic about her. How did she know about the Hemingway connection?

“Because I’m deep into Martha Gellhorn,” she says, launching into a long discussion about the celebrated war correspondent and Hemingway’s third wife. Atwood isn’t writing a book about Gellhorn (yet), but she found a letter from her to the father of her late partner, Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019, and is now a Gellhornologist. After six or so minutes, I wonder if we’ll ever talk about anything else, but Atwood has a regal quality that makes interruption unthinkable. It does not, as I later learn, render argument impossible.

I don’t like to favouritise my books. The others would be out to get you: ‘How could you? I spent all this time with you!’

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Scotland launches women’s audit to look at barriers to entering Holyrood

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Exclusive: presiding officer Alison Johnstone says it will be disappointing if parliament cannot attract more female politicians

It will be “really disappointing” if the Scottish parliament cannot attract more female politicians within the next five years, says Holyrood’s presiding officer, as she launches Holyrood’s first women’s audit to investigate barriers to representation and participation.

Alison Johnstone, the former Scottish Green politician who was elected last May to the position of presiding officer – the Holyrood equivalent of the Commons speaker – also suggests that political parties are falling short in selecting female candidates. She signals that the hybrid working arrangements used during lockdown and which suited working women in particular could become permanent.

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Afghan universities reopen with strict rules for female students

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Women required to attend separate classes and follow dress code at facilities in Kandahar and Helmand as they restart classes for first time since Taliban takeover

Public universities in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan have reopened after being closed for nearly nine months, with some female students joining classes.

Despite calls from education activists and students, universities and high schools across Afghanistan stayed shut after their usual summer break as the Taliban came to power. High schools have since reopened, but only for boys.

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New gender-neutral pronoun likely to enter Norwegian dictionaries

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‘Hen’ expected to be recognised as alternative to feminine ‘hun’ and masculine ‘han’ in official language this year

A new gender-neutral pronoun is likely to enter the official Norwegian language within a year, the Language Council of Norway has confirmed.

“Hen” would become an alternative to the existing singular third-person pronouns, the feminine “hun” and the masculine “han”.

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‘It stopped me having sex for a year’: why Generation Z is turning its back on sex-positive feminism

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The movement championed the right to enjoy sex and was supposed to free women from guilt or being shamed. But now many are questioning whether it has left them more vulnerable

Lala likes to think of herself as pretty unshockable. On her popular Instagram account @lalalaletmeexplain, she dishes out anonymous sex and dating advice on everything from orgasms to the etiquette of sending nude pictures. Nor is the 40-year-old sex educator and former social worker (Lala is a pseudonym) shy of sharing her own dating experiences as a single woman.

But even she was perturbed by a recent question, from a woman with a seven-year-old daughter who had caught her new partner watching “stepdaughter” porn involving teenage girls. Was that a red flag?

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Taliban launch raids on homes of Afghan women’s rights activists

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Campaigners arrested by armed men days after anti-hijab protest in Kabul, with beatings reported

Taliban gunmen have raided the homes of women’s rights activists in Kabul, beating and arresting female campaigners in a string of actions apparently triggered by recent demonstrations.

Tamana Zaryabi Paryani and Parawana Ibrahimkhel, who participated in a series of protests held in Kabul over the last few months, were seized on Wednesday night by armed men claiming to be from the Taliban intelligence department.

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‘She chopped her hair off’: Pakistani women’s struggle to play cricket

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In such a conservative country, young women often have to fight their own families first just to play the sport they love

Bisma Amjad plays cricket. She aspires to play internationally and was picked for Pakistan’s under-19 World Cup squad.

But when the pandemic came, because she was a woman, there was nowhere for her to practise, so she dressed as a man to play alongside male cricketers at “gully cricket” – the street game.

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Archaeology’s sexual revolution

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Graves dating back thousands of years are giving up their secrets, as new ways to pin down the sex of old bones are overturning long-held, biased beliefs about gender and love

In the early summer of 2009, a team of archaeologists arrived at a construction site in a residential neighbourhood of Modena, Italy. Digging had started for a new building and in the process workers unearthed a cemetery, dating back 1,500 years. There were 11 graves, but it quickly became clear that one of them was not like the others. Instead of a single skeleton, Tomb 16 contained two and they were holding hands.

“Here’s the demonstration of how love between a man and a woman can really be eternal,” wrote Gazzetta di Modena of the pair, instantly dubbed “the Lovers”. However, according to the original anthropological report, the sex of the Lovers was not obvious from the bones alone. At some point, someone tried to analyse their DNA, but “the data were so bad”, says Federico Lugli at the University of Bologna, that it looked like “just random noise”.

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