Wednesday, 10 October 2012

Beyonce eat your heart out - a call to the female masses!

I've just got back from a killer three-week stint at party conferences and I'm totally 'exhaustballs'! I really could use a night on the sofa but unfortunately I have too much to do - not least training! I think I'm too knackered to actually cycle the 20 miles I had planned to tonight but I've decided to compromise on some fundraising activities and a 20 min run instead to assuage my guilt about doing nothing.

On the fundraising side I've just set up a Facebook event and I'm working on ideas for a calendar I want to make & sell for the cause. Actually it's a lot about awareness-raising too. At first I thought it'd be funny to do a re-working of the WI Calendar Girls' one using 'Emcupcakes' for modesty....but then I'd just signed that petition going round 'Get the Bare Boobs Out of the Sun' http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/dominic-mohan-take-the-bare-boobs-out-of-the-sun-nomorepage3 and I thought it'd be a bit hypocritical to then produce a calendar full of women with only 'buns' covering their boobs!


So instead I've been thinking about all the freedoms women enjoy in the UK which women around the world  sadly can't. Things that include (but a not exhaustive list):


- driving

- spending leisure time with men other than family members
- access to contraception
- choice of who we marry (or don't!)
- recognition of domestic violence
- access to education
- freedom from stereotypically gendered roles in the workplace / home

and so on....


I appreciate there is still room for improvement with some of these things in the UK, particularly in the context of things like the news today of the conviction of Justin Lee Collins and the 'derisory' sentence he has received.


However, we cannot ignore the fact that we do have better health care appropriate to our particular needs as women, we don't face discrimination if we try to become scientists or car mechanics, we can wear our hair out if we choose not to conform to a faith that requires it to be covered, the law recognises that we can say no to sex with someone with whom we have previously consented and many other things.



Amnesty devotes much of its resources to championing the rights of women around the world. Here are just three reasons why I want to support this work:
- pregnancy kills one woman every minute around the world. 
- two thirds of the 774 million illiterate adults worldwide are women, a proportion which hasn't changed for 20 years
- more than 60 million girls worldwide are forced into marriage before they reach 18

I am very lucky to have lots of brilliant women in my life: my mum, my two sisters, my niece, aunties, cousins, and many, many friends who make me feel lucky to be a woman and inspire me every day. I think we've got a huge amount to be thankful for - freedoms, access to services and rights over our bodies, minds and reproductive systems that women around the world do not enjoy. 

And for that reason I'm appealing for ideas and volunteers for my calendar. If you can think of other freedoms that mark out women in the UK as luckier than their counterparts elsewhere in the world, please let me know so that I can start gathering ideas. And even better, if you'd like to be in the calendar, please contact me via the blog, on twitter or via facebook (emcupcakes).

Thanks




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