Role model of the week: Supergranny

Don’t mess with supergranny and her handbag!

Tagged: Robbery, Supergranny

Role model of the week: Norwegian musician Susanne Sundfør

The award ‘Spellemannsprisen’ is presented to remarkable Norwegian musicians every year.

Rock- and folk singer Susanne Sundfør was this year nominated for 3 of the 21 categories; best lyricist, best popular composer and best female artist.

But being acknowledged as a ‘female artist’ wasn’t quite Susanne’s cup of tea.

She told the committee that she doesn’t agree with the division of male and female artists, and that her personal viewpoint is that any society should have a genderless perspective on art.

Susanne Sundfør was nominated for, and won, the category last year. She made it clear in her speech that she was first and foremost an artist, not a female artist.

I’m off to buy her record!

You ca read more (with the help of google translator) here.

Tagged: Music, Norway, Role Model

Another brilliant campaign from Rape Crisis Scotland

Campaigns by Rape Crisis Scotland have been featured on Feminist.ie several times, as they are brilliant in addressing the victim-blaming myth.

Last month, another new great campaign was released, directing the focus away from the victims and onto the perpetrators.

Sadly, festive seasons such as Christmas usually lead to a peak in the numbers of rape and sexual assault, so the campaign is well timed, and will hopefully reach out to a wide range of people.

Tagged: Rape, Rape Crisis Campaings, Sexualised violence, Violence against women

All I want for Christmas….

Is Amanda Visell’s range of posters (“Show girls they can do anything”):

See more of her work here.

Tagged: Challenging stereotypes, Children, Feminist role models, Strong women

Role model of the week: Régine Chassagne

I think women playing the drums are the coolest people in the world. There’s just something about the thought of a girl taking a seat behind a drum set, thinking ‘this is my thing’ that really fascinates me.

At the Arcade Fire gig in Dublin last night, I fell in love with Régine Chassagne. Is there an instrument she doesn’t play?

Tagged: Music, Role models

Role model of the week: Margaret E. Ward

Photo from flickr.com

The lack of female voices on Irish radio has been heavily debated in the media lately – with good reason. A large majority of presenters, DJs and general contributors (e.g. national experts on a subject) on Irish radio are men.

Margaret E. Ward, journalist and broadcaster, has now made it easier to find female expert contributors by compiling a list of women who are interested in, or are already taking part in, discussions in the media.  The list includes experts on everything from religion to marketing to sports (and everything in between), and will be updated monthly.

That should rubbish all the washed-out excuses that women ‘don’t put themselves forward’ or ‘can’t be found’!

Tagged: journalism, media, radio, women

A brilliant alternative to sexy nurse/kitten/weird sexy female version of Freddy Krueger

This year I opted for a banana myself, but this great costume featured on genfem.com is definitely a runner-up for next year! Brilliant!

From www.genfem.com

Newsflash: Barbie is a feminist role model

Ah yes, just what we’ve always associated with Barbie; the freedom to chose to be whatever you want to be.

I’m sure Barbie has inspired thousands of women out there become pilots and soccer players.

Hilarious! (I can’t decide who’s more feminist; Kevin Myers or Barbie…..)

Pulling the brakes on sexual harassment

Illustration from stock.xchn.com

My friend emailed me this great story yesterday, which really made my day. It’s a bit old, so some of you might have read it already, but I don’t think a woman like this can be mentioned too often!

Lisa Robinson, her husband and five-year old son had been on a day trip to Cardiff when their return journey on the train turned unpleasant. A group of about 30 soccer supporters on board the train were celebrating their teams’ win and at one point started shouting sexist abuse to a woman on the platform. When Robinson asked them to stop, the chanting was turned directly on her. Robinson said to the BBC that the chanting became ‘sexist and quite obscene’, so after a while she got up and pulled the red handle and stopped the train. When the driver came out, she asked him to call the police. He didn’t. Instead, he reset the handle and continued to drive, forcing the family to be subjected to abuse throughout the journey. When Robinson and her family arrived at their destination, she asked the driver to call the police, but again he refused.

That’s when she decided to take no more. She went down on the tracks and stood in front of the train until action was taken. Meanwhile, she said, some of the men from the train continued to abuse her and pulled out their camera phones to take pictures of her.

Finally, the police was called. After the incident, Robinson said to the BBC:

This is my community, this is my village. We’re not going to be bullied and certainly for women and families, they should be able to travel on the train in peace and quiet and go about their business without being bullied like that.

Truly a woman of action. As commented by the Observer’s Eva Wiseman: ‘Lisa Robinson sat on the tracks for us – I might get T-shirts made.’

Role models of the week: the Real Deal

Former teenage mothers, including Laura McLoughlin, now 24 and Holly Railton, now 28, deliver the Real Deal, a HSE Crisis Pregnancy Programme focusing on sex education to schools all over the country. According to Railton, the students have a shocking lack of knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases prior to their participation in the Real Deal.

Almost 600 girls have already participated in the sex education programme, and  HSE announced yesterday that the programme will be available to another 600 girls this autumn and the coming year.

According to the Irish Examiner, the programme has been successful in changing young girls’ attitudes towards sex and pregnancy.

I can’t help but thinking about author Emma Donoghue every time I read about sex education in this country. In an interview with the Guardian,  she summed up the content of the sex education in her former school like this:

…it would not be until I was 16 that my secondary school would lay on the first of three annual so-called Sex Education classes. The first was all about the benefits of praying with your husband.

Thanks to all the great role models involved in the Real Deal, we’re moving away from that sort of nonsense!