Category Archives: Society

There will be blood: women on the shocking truth about periods and perimenopause

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The menopause brings an end to menstruation – but in the lead-up, many women experience periods that can disrupt their lives and careers

If Emma Pickett needs to make a long journey, she checks her calendar very carefully. She will often take an emergency change of clothes when she goes out, and if giving a lecture for work, has to ensure it is no longer than half an hour. Yet she rarely hears anyone talk about the reason so many older women secretly go to all this trouble; why they’ve started to stick to black trousers, give up the sports they loved, or plan days out – especially with children – meticulously.

“If you have a bunch of 12-year-olds in the car, you can’t say: ‘Sorry chaps, I’m just bleeding heavily today,’” says Pickett, a 48-year-old breastfeeding counsellor and author of The Breast Book, who also happens to be among the one in five British women who suffer from heavy periods in the run-up to menopause (or perimenopause). “You can talk about hot flushes, make a joke about it. But because menstrual blood is gross in our society, there’s no conversation about it. There must be women round the world just pretending they need to dash off for some other reason.”

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English care homes could lose 70,000 staff over mandatory Covid jab

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Government estimates between 3% and 12% of staff may resist getting jab – meaning they will lose their jobs

Up to 70,000 care home staff in England could leave the workforce or lose their jobs because the government is insisting they must be vaccinated against Covid, with women and ethnic minorities disproportionately affected, according to an official estimate.

In an impact statement from the government, officials believe between 3% and 12% of care home staff may still resist getting a Covid jab by the end of a 16-week grace period. The central estimate was that 40,000 could be left without jobs, but it could be as high as 70,000 or as low as 17,000.

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Death of 13-year-old girl sparks calls for action on FGM in Somalia

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Fartun Hassan Ahmed bled to death after undergoing female genital mutilation, a practice that 98% of women in the east African country undergo

A 13-year-old girl has died after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia, as activists report a rise in the practice during the pandemic.

Fartun Hassan Ahmed, the daughter of nomadic pastoralists, bled to death after being cut earlier this month in the village of Jeerinle in the state of Galmudug, her mother said.

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A moment that changed me: meeting the rescue dog who comforted me through unfathomable loss | Shirley Manson

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When I first held my dog Veela in my arms, I was grappling with my mother’s dementia, which was followed much too soon by her death. The teachings of my little red dog helped me survive

The first time I rescued an animal was almost 15 years ago, while I was on hiatus from my band, Garbage, in 2007. Shuffling around Los Angeles with little to occupy my time and my catastrophic imagination, my husband suggested we might consider adopting a rescue dog from one of the local shelters. I was a little hesitant at first. It struck me as a massive undertaking (I was not wrong) and I was unsure I had the emotional capacity to engage in the love of a small, defenceless, living thing.

My mother had just been diagnosed with Pick’s disease, a criminally aggressive form of dementia that can take a person, as it did my mother, out of the game in less than two years from the day of diagnosis. I was deeply disturbed by the course her disease was taking and finding it hard to connect with life in any joyful, meaningful way.

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Offering aid without development is costing lives in the global south | Letter

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The west is acting like the empires of old and failing to help poor people stand on their own two feet, says Benny Dembitzer

The debate in the Guardian (Outrage aimed at No 10 as MPs back £4bn cut to foreign aid budget, 13 July; Letters, 15 July) over the past few days has only contributed to the continuation of a fundamental error that is literally costing millions of lives in the global south. None of the politicians or correspondents who have intervened in the discussions have emphasised the profound conflict between aid and development. The two are usually presented as synonymous – they are not.

Because we have nurtured very little development to enable poor people in poor countries to stand on their own two feet, we have had to give them more aid. We have not helped them develop their own agency. We have not enabled them to develop agriculture to meet their own needs, encouraged governments to undertake land reform, educated women farmers, facilitated local seed multiplication or created local agricultural colleges.

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Goodbye wheat! Readers on 10 great gluten-free recipes – from katsu curry to cherry cake

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Steering clear of wheat, rye and barley doesn’t mean avoiding delicious dishes. Here are some of the tastiest offerings, including soda bread, peanut butter cookies and banana oat pancakes

My favourite gluten-free recipe is poodla (small pancakes), which I make using gram (chickpea) flour, water, cumin seeds, garam masala, turmeric and salt, with added chillies (chopped), grated onion and grated courgettes (it also works with mashed peas, spinach, grated cauliflower etc). Simply make a batter to any consistency, add your vegetables, then shallow fry on both sides. It’s delicious with a raita and a salad; we eat them for breakfast, lunch and sometimes as a main meal. Rekha Shah, retired, Bournemouth

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‘Contraception divides opinion’: tackling taboos in Zimbabwe as teen pregnancies soar

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With Covid lockdowns blamed for rising rates, MPs and teachers say it’s time to ‘face reality’ and allow younger teens access to birth control

Malet*, 14, stands in the long queue at the maternity clinic in Harare. She is here for her routine checkup. Most of the people in the queue are teenage girls.

Malet fell pregnant the first time she had sex. Her baby is due in two months.

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Instagram ‘pushes weight-loss messages to teenagers’

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Researchers find minimal interactions by teen users can trigger a deluge of thin-body and dieting images

Instagram’s algorithms are pushing teenage girls who even briefly engage with fitness-related images towards a flood of weight-loss content, according to new research which aimed to recreate the experience of being a child on social networks.

Researchers adopting “mystery shopper” techniques set up a series of Instagram profiles mirroring real children and followed the same accounts as the volunteer teenagers. They then began liking a handful of posts to see how quickly the network’s algorithm pushed potentially damaging material into the site’s “explore” tab, which highlights material that the social network thinks a user might like.

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UK children will not be offered Covid jab unless vulnerable

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Sajid Javid accepts JCVI advice that jab should only be offered to clinically at-risk children over age of 12

Children in the UK will get a Covid vaccine only if they are over 12 and extremely vulnerable, or live with someone at risk, as scientists raised concerns about inflammation around the heart linked to the Pfizer jab.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said he accepted the advice of scientific advisers that only children over 12 with severe neuro-disabilities, Down’s syndrome, immunosuppression and multiple or severe learning disabilities should be allowed to get the Pfizer vaccine. Children over 12 who live in the same house as people who are immunosuppressed will also be eligible for jabs.

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Looking for love? Dress as a shark! Is Sexy Beasts a new low for dating shows?

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A disturbing new Netflix series makes dates dress up as animals – from rhinos to insects – so that choices are made on personality not looks. So why is everyone involved so hot?

“Ass first, personality second,” says a deadpan beaver at a bar. Meanwhile, a panda with pleading eyes says she wants a baby by the age of 26. A rhino in a dress shirt chips in with “Vulnerability is our biggest muscle” – and gets a high five from a delighted dolphin.

What fresh hell is this? Are we not, for just one moment, deserving of a rest? Netflix says no. After holding us hostage for three weeks with Love Is Blind – in hindsight, not a good use of our last days before the pandemic – the evil-genius algorithm has come up with another “dating experiment”.

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‘I couldn’t talk about her for years’: my godmother, Amy Winehouse

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She cooked, watched Countdown and was mentored by the legendary singer. Now, 10 years after her death, Dionne Bromfield has finally addressed the grief she couldn’t deal with aged 15

Dionne Bromfield is leaning into the screen as we talk on Zoom, recounting the moment 10 years ago when she received the news that would change her life for ever. On a sunny July day, the 15-year-old singer was waiting to go on stage. She was supporting the boyband The Wanted on tour in Wales, the atmosphere backstage fizzing with energy before each show. However, that day something felt off. People were unusually quiet, and no one would meet her eyes. Eventually, she was told something was wrong: “It’s Amy.”

Amy Winehouse, whose remarkable, all-too-brief career ended with her death a decade ago this month, had been the teenager’s godmother, friend and mentor. Winehouse had nurtured Bromfield’s burgeoning vocal skills and helped her break into a notoriously competitive industry. For years after her death, Bromfield couldn’t listen to Amy’s music, let alone think about her. After two albums and a stint presenting the CBBC show Friday Download, the singer who had been marked out by many as one to watch and performed on live television with Winehouse, stepped back from music.

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Migration and Covid deaths depriving poorest nations of health workers

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Fragile health systems are at risk due to high numbers of medical staff leaving to work in richer countries, say experts

The loss of frontline health workers dying of Covid around the globe, is being compounded in the hospitals of developing nations by trained medical staff leaving to help in the pandemic effort abroad, according to experts.

With new Covid waves in Africa, and with Latin America and Asia facing unrelenting health emergencies, the number of health worker deaths from Covid-19 in May was at least 115,000, according to the World Health Organization. Its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledged data is “scant” and the true figure is likely to be far higher.

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‘I’ll be wearing a mask’: businesses and staff wary as England unlocking begins

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Bira chief says guidelines fail to reflect rise in coronavirus cases, as workers fear employers won’t protect them

At a public library in London, staff members are filled with nerves about “freedom day” on 19 July. Billed as the big unlocking and an end to social distancing rules and mandatory face coverings in England, they fear for their safety as Covid cases grow daily.

“I will still be wearing a mask and so will lots of colleagues. We will still be washing and sanitising our hands and trying to keep a distance, but it is hard as a lot of people just walk straight up to you,” said Alan Wylie, a 55-year-old librarian.

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Guns, gangs and ‘bad aid’: Haiti’s crisis reaches full throttle

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Incessant foreign meddling and corrupt elites have ensured life for Haitians remains mired in violence and poverty. President Moïse’s assassination marks an escalating catastrophe

The Haitian political activist Marie Antoinette Duclair appears to have been unaware that two men on a motorbike were following her car through the badly lit streets of Port-au-Prince.

Her passenger on the night of 29 June was a journalist, Diego Charles. They had been attending a meeting, and she was now, at 11 o’clock at night, dropping him at his home in the Christ-Roi area of Haiti’s capital.

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Masks, hugs and hand washing: 18 new rules for protecting yourself and others

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When should you open the windows, wear a mask and take a lateral flow test? As we enter the ‘personal responsibility’ era, here’s an expert guide

Freedom day is here, at least for those of us who live in England, and we’re back in the place nobody wants to be. On one hand: yay, freedom. On the other: an uneasy sense that the relaxation of restrictions has very little to do with the data, and very much more to do with a government that is bored of imposing Covid-related restrictions.

So we arrive on the unwanted (by me) territory of personal responsibility. Which freedoms should you grab with both hands, which should you foreswear for the time being, which should you exercise caution around? How should informed, polite, civic-minded and reasonable sorts conduct themselves? Expertise provided here is from Greg Fell, the director of public health in Sheffield; Prof Christina Pagel, the director of the clinical operational research unit at University College London, which applies advanced analytical methods to problems in healthcare; and Debora Robertson, the co-author of Manners: A Modern Field Guide.

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Loneliness: coping with the gap where friends used to be

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Friendships can be difficult, and lockdowns have made them even harder to maintain. But we should cherish them

Almost every day for the past few months, I’ve told my husband I am lonely. Obviously I’m glad that he’s around. What I miss are my friends. In the first lockdown, we stayed in touch with Zoom dates, which were awkward, often drunk and occasionally very joyful. Those days are long gone. I’ve returned to texting, and though I’m often deep in four or five conversations at once, it isn’t the same as being together.

In the past year, there was a difficult bereavement in my family, and work has been harder than normal. None of these things are unique or insurmountable but the isolation has left me feeling almost capsized by anxiety and paranoia.

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Gross inequality stoked the violence in South Africa. It’s a warning to us all | Kenan Malik

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The country’s social contract has broken, fuelled by corruption and extreme poverty

‘It feels qualitatively different this time.” There are few people I know in South Africa who don’t think this about the carnage now engulfing the nation. Violence was institutionalised during the years of apartheid. In the post-apartheid years, it has rarely been far from the surface – police violence, gangster violence, the violence of protest. What is being exposed now, however, is just how far the social contract that has held the nation together since the end of apartheid has eroded.

Many aspects of the disorder are peculiar to South Africa. There are also themes with wider resonance. Events in the country demonstrate in a particularly acute fashion a phenomenon we are witnessing in different ways and in degrees of severity across the globe: the old order breaking down, with little to fill the void but sectarian movements or identity politics.

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Former solicitor, 96, believed to be UK’s oldest new graduate

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Archie White awarded fine arts degree from East Sussex College aged 96 years and 56 days

A former solicitor from Hastings is believed to have become Britain’s oldest new graduate after receiving a degree in fine art at the age of 96.

Archie White, who retired at 92, said he was “not too bothered about being the oldest graduate or not” and had thoroughly enjoyed studying at East Sussex College.

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London casino let rich patrons racially abuse staff, tribunal hears

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Ex-employee is suing Aspinalls in Mayfair for discrimination, alleging a ‘hostile and demeaning environment’

An exclusive London casino allowed wealthy patrons to racially abuse staff with impunity and “segregated” black employees from gamblers who insisted on white dealers, a tribunal has heard.

Semhar Tesfagiorgis, 41, is suing Crown London Aspinalls, in Mayfair, for race and sex discrimination, alleging there was a “hostile and demeaning environment” when she worked there.

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How public ‘apologies’ are used against domestic abuse victims in Chechnya

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Activists say Ramzan Kadyrov’s regime uses televised confessions ‘under duress’ to hold back women’s rights, despite changes in society

Khalimat Taramova, the 22-year-old daughter of a prominent Chechen businessman, sits demurely on a velvet sofa ornately embellished in gold. She is wearing a modest dress and a headscarf. With her on the sofa are three men dressed in suits. They are appearing on Grozny TV, the state television channel of Russia’s Chechen Republic.

Only a couple of weeks before the programme was shown on 14 June, Taramova fled her home, where she said she was subjected to violence after going against her family’s wishes. She sought help from a group of women’s rights activists, the Marem project , who let her stay in a flat owned by one of its members in the neighbouring republic of Dagestan. In a video released on social media on 6 June, she pleaded for the Chechen authorities not to come looking for her.

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