Organisation says Black Lives Matter movement reaffirmed commitment to changing name to MSI Reproductive Choices
Marie Stopes International (MSI) is to change its name in an attempt to break its association with the family planning pioneer.
From Tuesday, the abortion and contraception provider, which operates in 37 countries, will abbreviate the initials and go by the name MSI Reproductive Choices.
Continue reading...A new jukebox musical of Carrà’s songs caps a 60-year career for a cultural icon who revolutionised Italian entertainment – and gave women agency in the bedroom
At the beginning of Explota Explota, a new Spanish-Italian jukebox musical comedy set at the tail end of the Franco dictatorship in 1970s Spain, airport employee Maria is making a delivery at a TV studio when she catches the attention of Chimo, the director of a variety show. When she tells him she’s not a dancer, he replies: “No dancer with blood flowing in their veins can resist this rhythm.”
He plays her Bailo Bailo, a hit by Italian pop star Raffaella Carrà, who, on top of becoming one of the best known personalities in her native Italy, ended up a sensation in the 20th-century Spanish-speaking world. Where Sweden had Abba, Italy had Carrà, who sold millions of records across Europe. Sure enough, Maria can’t resist Bailo Bailo, and Chimo hires her.
Continue reading...She went platinum by plugging Bach into 20th-century machines, and was soon working with Stanley Kubrick. But prejudice around her gender transition pushed Wendy Carlos out of sight
This summer, an 80-year-old synthesiser pioneer suddenly appeared online. She had been silent for 11 years, but now something had appeared that she just wouldn’t tolerate. “Please be aware there’s a purported ‘biography’ on me just released,” wrote Wendy Carlos on the homepage of her 16-bit-friendly website, a Siamese cat and a synthesiser behind her portrait. “No one ever interviewed me [for it], nor anyone I know,” she went on. “Aren’t there new, more interesting targets?”
Given that Carlos is arguably the most important living figure in the history of electronic music, it’s remarkable that Amanda Sewell’s Wendy Carlos: A Biography is the first book about her. This is the musician who pushed Robert Moog to perfect his first analogue synthesiser, from which pop, prog, electronica and film music flourished. Her smash-hit 1968 album Switched-On Bach made the Moog internationally famous and became the second classical album ever to go platinum in the US. Then came her extraordinary soundtracks for A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Tron. She made an ambient album five years before Brian Eno did, and jumped from analogue machines to do leading work in digital synthesis, but worried that her status as one of the first visible transgender artists in the US would overshadow it.
Continue reading...At the age of seven, she flew to Birmingham from Antigua on her own – and became the first globally successful British female singer-songwriter. As she wins the award she once gave to Margaret Thatcher, Joan Armatrading looks back
‘It’s very nice to be honoured,” says Joan Armatrading, down the phone from her home in Surrey. The 69-year-old is talking about receiving this year’s Women of the Year lifetime achievement award, which sees her honoured alongside the likes of child burns survivor Sylvia Mac and Adwoa Dickson, who set up a community choir for young women who survived trafficking. “Whether I measure up is another question.”
She’s joking, of course, but what does the continued existence of the award tell us about where the struggle for equality is in 2020? “It’s maybe not as relevant as it was in 1955,” she says, “when Tony Lothian set it up after being denied admission to a men-only meeting. But women are still doing incredible things in this society, so reward them.”
Continue reading...Human rights activists in Mexico have expressed indignation after police opened fire on protesters who tried to force their way into Cancún city hall during a demonstration against the country’s femicide crisis.
Four journalists were injured in the incident late on Monday, including two who suffered bullet wounds. Eight protesters were reportedly detained after the shooting.
Continue reading...Free sanitary pad dispensers installed on campuses in effort to counter ‘stigma of menstruation’ in the country
Chinese students have launched a program setting up free sanitary pad dispensers in toilets at universities across the country in a bid to end period shaming of young women.
“Sanitary pad support boxes” have been set up in almost 250 campuses following a campaign on social media by an advocacy group called Stand By Her. Those who take from the period support boxes are encouraged to help replenish its stock later.
Continue reading...Fed up with modern finance and Britain’s broken banking system, Anne Boden decided there was only one thing to do: set up a bank that ran in the way she wanted it to
The first time I met Anne Boden was last December at a glitzy awards ceremony where I knew no one, felt out of place and was skulking in the loos. In she bustled – she’s smaller than me (I’m 5ft 1in), older than me (she’s 60), a little eccentric and perhaps the friendliest person in the place. She didn’t stop talking. She ushered me out, remained by my side until the ceremony started (think Disney’s Fairy Godmother) and, along the way, mentioned that she was the founder and CEO of Starling Bank, the event’s main sponsor.
I couldn’t have been more surprised – or picture a less likely “banking mogul”. When she explained that Starling was an app-based bank, I rewarded her with the worst response possible. “You mean like Monzo?” (My daughter had signed up to Monzo, the trendy “no branches” bank, to acquire its distinctive coral-coloured card, which now gathers dust on her bookshelf.) Boden was gracious but flustered. I ascertained that Monzo had been founded by her former business partner Tom Blomfield. He was considerably younger, more hip, more Hoxton – and he’d left her, taking the other directors with him.
Continue reading...For years, I repressed thinking about three things that shaped my life and my body. But the fourth blow of coronavirus pushed it all out into the open
For six years now, I have been writing down three good things that have happened in my day, every day. It doesn’t matter how big or small they are. It could be having pastries in bed. Spotting a fox in the garden. Successfully descaling a kettle. I do not call this my gratitude journal, because I am not a motivational wellness blogger. But I have found it vital, in order to rewire my brain to focus on the things that have gone right. Left unattended, my thoughts have a tendency to slip into a downward spiral, to somewhere much darker.
I grew up in Italy, where there is a saying: “Non c’è due senza tre”, which roughly means “Good (or bad) things come in threes”. For most of my adult life, there have been three main issues that have preoccupied my thoughts when I’m lying in bed at night. I have guarded them preciously: I barely mention them, even to my closest friends. But, sometimes, repressing thoughts takes more effort than confronting them.
Continue reading...Publisher labels ‘bitch’ as offensive but fails to satisfy some equality campaigners
Oxford University Press has updated its dictionaries’ definitions of the word “woman” following an extensive review triggered by equality campaigners.
Among the updates to Oxford Dictionaries’ definitions is the acknowledgement that a woman can be “a person’s wife, girlfriend, or female lover”, rather than only a man’s.
Continue reading...Mass demonstrations have exposed underlying anger at political and religious interference in people’s everyday lives
For 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since Solidarność toppled the communist regime in the 1980s.
Until soaring coronavirus numbers and a looming national lockdown made it almost impossible, up to a million people nightly defied a government ban on protests, taking to the streets from Warsaw to Łódź, Poznań to Wrocław, Gdańsk to Kraków.
Continue reading...Abused women expected to be ‘meek and subservient’ to receive public sympathy, says QC
Amber Heard’s stand against Johnny Depp’s assaults should not have deprived her of public sympathy for suffering the ordeal of domestic violence, a leading human rights lawyer has said.
Heard was subjected to death threats and misogynistic attacks on social media during the libel trial that left her feeling “down and beleaguered”, according to Helena Kennedy QC, who met Heard while the case was before the high court.
Continue reading...Anti-government rallies continue over court’s ruling to restrict access to terminations
Poland’s rightwing government has delayed implementation of a controversial court ruling that would outlaw almost all abortion after it prompted the largest protests since the fall of communism.
“There is a discussion going on, and it would be good to take some time for dialogue and for finding a new position in this situation, which is difficult and stirs high emotions,” Michał Dworczyk, the head of the prime minister’s office, told Polish media on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Two women took Harare authorities to court to force them to reopen 42 maternity clinics
In agonising labour pain and turned away from a Harare health centre, Aurage Katume feared that, like many other Zimbabwean women, she could lose her unborn baby.
She struggled to another clinic in the country’s capital. The midwives there were not ready to help her either.
Continue reading...About 100,00o people take to the streets of Warsaw to oppose tightened abortion law
About one hundred thousand protesters took to the streets of the Polish capital, Warsaw, on Friday, in the largest demonstration of popular anger directed against Poland’s ruling rightwing Law and Justice party (PiS) since it assumed office in 2015.
Protests have been held across the country since Poland’s constitutional tribunal declared earlier this month that abortions in instances where a foetus is diagnosed with a serious and irreversible birth defect were unconstitutional. Such procedures constitute about 96% of legal abortions in Poland, which already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
Continue reading...Complaints of ‘white saviourism’ and harassment at the group led to the review, which found no individual responsible
The results of an investigation into allegations of racism and harassment at one of the world’s most high profile women’s rights organisations has been described as a “slap in the face” to those who complained.
Investigators concluded this week that no single person was responsible for the “challenges” at the group, Women Deliver, which had undergone a period of rapid growth “during which its policies and practices lagged behind”. The report added the workplace culture had been “too demanding, urgent, and high-pressure”.
Continue reading...A strikingly-designed centre reminiscent of Rajasthan’s famous forts will soon be opening its doors in conservative Jaisalmer
“Don’t even try,” friends told Michael Daube, when he said he wanted to coax women in Jaisalmer to embroider yoga bags to help them earn some income.
For the most part, at least in rural areas, this is Federico García Lorca territory, where marriage for a woman, as a character in the Spanish poet’s play Blood Wedding describes it, is “a man, children, and as for the rest a wall that’s two feet thick”. Rajasthan is one of the most conservative states in India, where ancient customs circumscribe a woman’s freedom and in turn any chance of economic independence.
Continue reading...Members of security and intelligence committee snub invite in protest at invasive treatment of women before flight to Sydney
Australian politicians from the major parties have pulled out of a formal dinner at the Qatari ambassador’s residence in protest at the invasive treatment of women at Doha airport.
Members of parliament’s security and intelligence committee have taken the stand as political pressure grows for the government to strengthen its response to the compulsory medical examination travellers endured before travelling from Doha to Sydney on 2 October.
Continue reading...It’s not only Roe v Wade on the line. Parental leave, affordable childcare, equal pay, the Affordable Care Act - all are under threat
The pandemic and its collateral economic crisis have illustrated like never before that women are the backbone of America. Before Covid-19, women made up more than half the workforce, nearly two-thirds of minimum-wage workers, and the majority of caregivers. One in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential. Right now, millions of women are pulling off an impossible balancing act: working while trying to keep their families safe and healthy during a terrifying time. Others have lost jobs, have had their wages or hours cut, and more than 800,000 women have left the workforce.
This crisis is disproportionately burdening women, especially women of color. They need immediate relief, but instead of solving this crisis, Donald Trump and Senate Republicans have focused on one thing: pushing through a supreme court nominee who wants to take away healthcare for millions and strip away rights women have had for decades. And they’re doing it against the will of the majority of Americans, who believe that voters should decide who makes the next appointment to the court.
Continue reading...Kim Mills was one of nine women taken off a Qatar Airways flight in Doha, and the only one not to be strip-searched as authorities hunted the mother of an abandoned newborn baby
An Australian woman has described the “terrifying” experience of being taken off a Qatar Airways flight by authorities who strip-searched passengers as they tried to identify the mother of an infant found in the Doha airport toilets.
Kim Mills was one of nine women taken off a Qatar Airways flight bound for Sydney on 2 October and led through the bowels of the Hamad International airport to what appeared to be a dark carpark or turning circle, where three ambulances were waiting to perform medical examinations to determine if any of the women had recently given birth.
Continue reading...Demonstrations planned amid anger over court decision banning almost all abortions
Protests are planned for various Polish cities this weekend amid public anger over a ruling banning almost all abortion in the country.
Poland already has some of the most draconian abortion laws in Europe, and on Thursday a constitutional tribunal ruled that one of the few exceptions to the ban – cases of severe foetal impairment – should also be made illegal. These cases, which hardline Catholic anti-abortion activists have called “eugenic abortion”, made up almost all of the small number of abortions performed legally in Poland.
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