National Girl Child Day, Bangladesh

Since 2000, 30 September has been National Girl Child Day in Bangladesh. It is one day in the Child's Rights Week, with action organised at both national and local levels.

Nationally there are rallies and marches, but locally an effort is made to ensure rural communities, the vast majority of the population, are involved by Hunger Project volunteers leading celebrations in every area.

Dr. Badiul Alam Majumdar is President, The Girl Child Advocacy Forum, has written what I think is an excellent article on the consequences of gender discrimination in The Daily Star, much of which concerns girls and women all over the world.

The main points he makes cover:

• The "missing girls" caused by foeticide and infanticide causing population imbalance primarily in India and China.
• During childhood, 20% of girls in developing nations do not finish primary education and only 43% attend secondary schools.
• Adolescence brings on many other problems such as child marriage and premature parenthood leading to greater death rates for mother and baby; sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking.
• In some countries the rate of HIV/Aids is up to 6 times higher for women, partly for physiological reasons but also because of lack of education, knowledge of risk factors and protection, and not having the right to say "no".
• Motherhood - 99% of maternal deaths occur in developing countries.
• During old age women often suffer double discrimination. Although they tend to live longer than men, in many countries they have little control over family resources and no inheritance rights so may face poverty at a vulnerable age.

It really is well worth reading the article in full.

Shameful

From the most recent copy of the Lancet:

My young daughter needed to go to the toilet during a shopping trip in London during the last school holidays. While I stood next to the hand basins waiting for her, a woman came out of one of the cubicles and as she washed her hands, looked up and admonished me in no uncertain terms for the poor job I had done in keeping the toilets clean. Speechless, I watched her storm out. I am not an indolent cleaner; but I am Black, of African descent, and an Australian national. My daughter, having overheard, asked why I had not explained that I was a professor. But why do I have to?

It makes me ashamed of my fellows.

Disappointing

We went to a 70th birthday party on Saturday, another international event. All four corners of the UK were represented, along with France, Holland and South Africa. Although we were in France, I would say there were more Dutch people there than any one other nationality.

The subject of our son's wedding came up and the fact that his new wife is not of European descent. It's obvious from her name. I was asked where she was born.

"France." The eyebrows raised very slightly.

"So what language does she speak? Does she speak English?"

"She speaks six languages, including English, yes." The eyebrows hit their full height.

"Oh. She's educated?"

That disappoints me in so many different ways.

Books for Boys

Earlier this year the Guardian book blog published a post "The wrong kind of reading lessons" which more or less says that the books being targeted at boys, while praiseworthy in their attempts to persuade boys to read, are reinforcing stereotypes: “a fast food menu of impoverished stereotypes …., based on rigid class systems and exclusion”. The article received a mixed reception.

This week Guardian Unlimited ran an article which reports that a government minister is advocating boys’ bookshelves in school libraries, again in an effort to encourage boys to read.

When they were young I did everything I possibly could to introduce my two sons to the pleasures of reading: library visits, story times, reading at bedtime. One of them turned out to be a reader, the other, well, perhaps he is a late developer.

Personally I don’t really think the content matters too much within certain limits. I was such an avid reader as a child that, living in Africa as we did, my parents couldn’t keep the supply of books going. That’s when I developed my liking for medical journals, specifically The Lancet. I happily read my way through the multiple Enid Blyton series and I really don’t think it did me any harm, for all their repetitiveness, limited vocabulary and dated attitudes. I remember one story which praised a “good” girl though I can’t remember why. I was not impressed so I clearly didn’t think I was likely to be included in that group. Strange the things which stick in your mind.

Where I do quibble about these “boys’ books” articles is at the division of reading matter into boys’ and girls’. As a girl I loved mysteries and adventures. Would they have been available to me if we had had a boys’ bookshelf at school? The books my younger son could be persuaded to read were usually about crafts. Would they have been on the girls’ shelf? Why compartmentalise reading like this, and worse still label it male and female? It could be alienating a sizable number of children who don’t feel their reading tastes fall into the “right” category.

Sixties

Early days

We were students in Liverpool during the sixties. It was well after the Beatles were famous and had left Liverpool but the Penny Lane road signs were still disappearing with monotonous regularity, reputedly turning up in students’ rooms. Eventually the council gave up replacing them and just painted the name of the road on a building.

During that time the fashion was for long, blonde, straight hair. So what have I? Short, dark, and curly. I was scarred for life! The length and the colour you can do something about, but curly, it was such a raw deal. I would have so liked to have hair like Marianne Faithful.

As I finished university I started applying for jobs. The very first one I think was as a research assistant at the Unit of Human Reproductive Biology. I would have loved that job but the interviewer actually told me that I would most likely leave to have a baby in a year or two so he wasn’t going to give it to me. That was something there were able to say in those days but you’d think the Unit of Human Reproductive Biology would realise that I did actually have some choice in the matter. However I had my indirect revenge: the person who did get the job was someone we knew. He lasted seven months, whereas I didn’t have a baby for six years.

It’s amazing now to look back on how employers were allowed discriminate in those days. I remember at one point having a refusal letter because they intended to give the job to a man, no further explanation. They were perfectly happy to put it in print. I was disgusted even then. I remember asking my mother if she would have been a suffragette, although that would have been before she was born.