SHUT UP! ‘But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence’ As a starting point, and for a bit of a change, let’s begin on a pious note, with a biblical quotation. The ponderous words above are allegedly those of St Paul writing to his follower Timothy, a missionary. In fact, we may actually be looking at an early example of fake news as there is some debate about the authenticity of the epistle. But hey, when did a questionable piece of information ever stop anyone for relaying it (and in this case literally) as gospel truth? Ways of silencing women have persisted since the year dot. In Women and Power  Mary Beard describes what she calls the first example in Western literature of a man telling a woman to shut up. In The Odyssey , when Penelope enters a public area of the palace to make a complaint, her son, Telemachus, tells her to be silent, return to her own rooms and do women’s work, reminding her that public life is the exclusive re...

  August Reflections The Dog Days In late July and August, Sirius (known as the Dog Star), appears to rise at the same time as the sun. In Ancient Greece and Rome, the belief was that the combined heat of the two stars led to intolerable blazing hot weather, which in turn resulted in thunderstorms, fires, drought, high fever, and madness – a period known as the dog days. Today the phrase tends to evoke the hot, lazy days of summer, and until recently this time of year has been known as the ‘silly season’, described by the Cambridge Dictionary as a time:  ‘usually in the summer, when newspapers are full of stories that are not important because there is no important, especially political, news’.  The silly season, if it ever really existed, is now in the past, and today’s news bulletins are more likely to lead to despair. Wars are raging around the world with scant hopes for peaceful resolutions. The climate emergency is terrifying. In Britain, dreadful harms have been inf...

If you live to be eighty, you will have survived for about four thousand weeks. Which doesn’t really sound very much, although as Harold Wilson said, ‘A week is a long time in politics.’  It can also be a long time in women’s lives. The week of 19-26 July 2024 has included Joe Biden stepping down as a candidate for the US elections, a full week of business for the new British government, and several important and disturbing reports. As the week ended the Paris Olympics began, and another eventful week is now unfolding. If we unpick some events in a little more detail, we might conclude that it has been a bit of an emotional journey for women, offering hope, anger, joy, cynicism, excitement and despair, often all at the same time. Of course, many women may not have experienced any of those emotions – or even noticed some of these events. But the sensitive antennae of the members of Milton Keynes Fawcett Group have been twitching energetically recently – you can find more about this ...

Justice Denied This month’s blog should probably be focusing on the General Election that has just been announced. After all, there are only a few weeks to go until July 4th. Not quite yet though. Soon we’ll be inundated with the vox-pops, the polls, the debates and the party-political broadcasts. But before the party campaigners with their rosettes, leaflets, banners, buses and megaphones get underway, there’s some unfinished business. Let’s take a look at some different campaigners, remarkable women and men who deserve our total admiration. We’ve seen a lot of these campaigners recently. As the dismal and squalid procession of scandals and cover-ups has grown larger, we’ve become aware of people who have devoted years of their lives to exposing terrible wrongs. People who have been denied justice, who have lost their livelihoods and whose families have been devastated. People who, in spite of experiencing terrible personal trauma, have found the courage and resilience to speak out a...

May 2nd will usher in a round of local elections across the country. Sooner or later there will also be a general election. If a candidate comes knocking at your door, or catches you in the street, do you have questions ready to ask them?  Will you be able to pin them down and get answers that make some kind of sense? Women from the Milton Keynes Fawcett Group have been thinking and talking about these issues and putting some ideas together. How can Milton Keynes become a better place for women to live and work? How can the wellbeing of the whole population be improved by making our city safer, healthier and fairer? And of course, these ideas and questions are not restricted to MK – they can broadly apply to any setting, large or small, village, town or city. Here are our thoughts. We’ll be putting them together in the form of a manifesto. It’s a work in progress and we are showing it here in a shorter format before the upcoming local elections. More detailed flyers and posters wil...

EQUALITY? FREEDOM? FAIRNESS? ELECTIONS IN 2024 So many elections! Two billion people are eligible to vote this year, and more than 60 countries will be holding elections. The freedom and fairness of these elections will vary. The results of some of them are in the bag already, before even a single vote is cast, and others will take place in dangerous and unpredictable circumstances. Two major elections have already taken place this year. In Bangladesh, following mass arrests of opposition activists, the unsurprising result was to keep the sitting premier for another year. Taiwan also voted to keep their president, but citizens did so in the full knowledge that this would incur the wrath of China which insisted that ‘the motherland will eventually be reunified’. Ukraine is due to hold a presidential election on March 31st this year, but their state of martial law may lead to a postponement. Other elections, from Mexico to Somaliland and from Tuvalu to Russia are all scheduled for this y...

  ‘WATCH THE WALL MY DARLING, WHILE THE GENTLEMEN GO BY’ These days we are used to hearing about the darker side of nursery rhymes. We know that ‘Ring a Ring o’Roses’ is all about the plague, and that ‘Little Miss Muffet’ probably refers to a certain Dr Muffet who crushed up spiders and used them as medicine for his patients (including his daughter). But it’s sometimes a bit unnerving to read a poem that probably seemed quite charming in its original context, but then takes on a darker meaning in the 21st Century. ‘Smugglers’ Song’ by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1930) is a rhythmic and mysterious poem, where a child is told by a parent to face the wall and to ask no questions if she hears horses' hooves at midnight: Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark — Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk; Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie — Watch the wall, my darling,  While the Gentlemen go by Kipling’s smugglers are ‘gentlemen’, romantic figures bringing brandy...

Image is a link to: https://plinth.uk.com/collections/keepers-exhibition   Art, Barbie and the Women’s World Cup It’s July. The school holidays have started. Politicians are disappearing into rabbit holes to lick their wounds and invent ever more grotesque policies. The NHS staggers on, war rages in Ukraine and holiday makers are getting upset that 48 degree temperatures are turning beaches into no-go areas.  But, in the good old Roman tradition of bread and circuses, it’s the time of year when media attention often turns to blockbuster films and major sporting events, so let’s focus our attention there and try to make some sense of what’s going on.  ‘Keepers’ It’s worth taking a look at a rather interesting online art exhibition that has recently opened. Entitled ‘Keepers’ , it reminds us that men have long been the key gatekeepers and rule-makers for sport.  The exhibition is on until 31 August and includes a wonderful take on the table football game that still dom...

  SANCTUARY, REFUGE, COMPASSION Supporting refugee women Refugee Week  - 19 to 25 June 2023 Refugee Week takes place every year in June. Everyone is invited to take part in this world-wide festival of art and culture celebrating the remarkable contributions of refugees. If you take a look at the wonderful website www.refugeeweek.org.uk you will find information, ideas and suggestions about how you might get involved, ranging from simply reading a poem to joining a major campaign. The theme for this year is Compassion, and how we might extend our own circles of compassion, referencing Einstein, who spoke of ….widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. And they have this specially designed poster available for anyone to download. A terrible irony It’s horrible to see, in the midst of the positive waves of support for refugees and all the preparations for the festival, that appalling tragedies continue. As Refugee W...

  Taking a Stand on Hats! Where did you get that hat? On May 6th an elderly chap who had just inherited a new job also received a new hat to go with the post. It   was carefully placed on his head by the Archbishop of Canterbury who is no stranger himself to a bit of jaunty headgear. At this point the   historians among you will surely recall the immortal words of King Frederick the Great, who grumbled that: ‘A crown is just a hat the lets the rain in’. A rather more precise definition of a ‘proper’ hat is available for any women planning to enter the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. Ladies must wear a hat or headpiece with a solid base of 4 inches in diameter in the Royal Enclosure. Fascinators are not permitted. Novelty hats (i.e. ones which are excessively oversized, or are promoting or marketing any product or brand) are not permitted. In fact it is really quite remarkable to think about how much time has been squandered on making up rules about what constitutes ac...