News stories and Links - as it happend 2013
Well done Sam Bailey you did it!
15th December 2013
Congratulations to Sam Bailey winner of the X-Factor, what a star, and what a voice! we voted for her. We hope she has wonderful Christmas and a happy and fulfilled new year. Her amazing voice shined throughout heats and in the final of the X-Factor. Sam’s personality throughout the competition was down to earth, kind, witty and clever. We are so pleased the nation took her to their hearts. It is a bit ridiculous that at 36 she is in the “overs” category but that is the music industry for you.
Download her single Skyscraper Download Skyscraper on iTunes: http://t.co/jcXWCHslxM
Goldie Blox helps girls get into engineering
December 2013
GoldieBlox comes to the UK … Debbie Sterling, a US engineer is tackling the bland gender stereotype culture of girl’s toys.
Ms Sterling, engineer and CEO of “GoldieBlox became increasingly frustrated by the shockingly low representation of women in engineering in the US. So she set about tackling, what is clearly one of the root causes of the problem. Girls are loosing interest in science, engineering and technology (SET) subjects as early as age 8, so targeting them before and around this age group made sense.
According to the Women’s Engineering Website http://www.wes.org.uk/
“Only 6% of the engineering workforce in the UK is female, with shockingly, nearly half (46%) of all co-ed UK secondary state schools sending NO girls on to do physics at A level in 2011.”
"It all came down to one simple thing: boys like building and girls like reading," Ms Sterling said "So I thought, what if I put those two things together, spatial plus verbal, book series plus building set.“
GoldieBlox is a story book and construction kit, aimed at girls between five and nine years old, in which the heroine “Goldie” meets a number of engineering challenges, helped by her trusty friends Nacho the dog, Benjamin Cranklin, "a cat with an attitude", Katinka the dolphin ballerina, Phil the sloth and Flavio the Brazilian bear.
With engineering degrees leading to high profile jobs and remuneration in the UK lets encourage our girls, challenge the boys and inspire the next generation of female engineers in this country.
Doris Lessing
18th November 2013
Nobel Prize winning author Doris Lessing died at the age of 94 peacefully in her sleep yesterday (17 November 2013). Our thoughts are with her family at this sad time. An impressive and prolific author, Lessing has received acclaim for her books including The Golden Notebook, Memoirs of a Survivor and The Summer Before the Dark. The Swedish Academy said the Golden Notebook was seen as "a pioneering work" that "belongs to the handful of books that informed the 20th Century view of the male-female relationship".
Lily Allen
13 November 2013
Releases her latest single "Hard out Here". So the message is fantastic, but … I have a bit of a problem with the parody of women in the video being told to slut it up, I like the general idea, but there has clearly been a bit of a missed opportunity here, maybe she could have divided the video in two; The first half being the sexist crap and the second half doing it as it should be done? I think it was a great send up, but in reality it still gives the industry exactly what they want, women behaving as if they are gaging for sex in skimpy outfits licking phallic images for a male audience. At least she is saying something though, and provoking discussion. Good on you Lily
The World Economic Forum (WEF)
November 2013
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has published a comprehensive series of reports annually since 2006 for 136 countries. They have reported this year (2013) that many countries have been working hard to closed the gender equality gap in the past year. Unfortunately the UK has yet again failed to progress. The rankings of note are:
Overall ranking 18th (following a year on year decline from 9th place since 2006).
Areas of concern include:
29th Political attainment
31st for educational attainment
35th for economic gender equality
54th for getting women into parliament
59th for securing ministerial jobs
71st for helping women find professional and technical positions
97th for healthy life expectancy for women
Yes! it looks like we are better at multi-tasking
October 2013
According to a Joint study by University of Glasgow, Leeds and Hertfordshire: "Women outperform men in these multi-tasking paradigms" but warn that the near lack of empirical studies on gender differences in multitasking should caution against making strong generalisations and ask further studies be done.
Cambridge University students boycott prestigious debating competition over sexist heckling
Kitty Parker-Brooks, a judge at the competition, said: "I was sitting behind the boys from Glasgow Union and could hear them making audible derogatory comments about the speakers’ appearances – their hair, dresses, chest size, how attractive they were – physically picking them apart, as well as yelling ‘shame woman’ and booing.
“I ‘shushed’ them - and one then called me a ‘frigid b----’.”
Text taken from The Telegraph click the link below to read the full artical
NEWS FLASH 3 // Breast Cancer Drung Set for Preventative Use
Almost all of the newspapers and their websites are leading with the news that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has published draft guidelines recommending that women with a high risk of familial breast cancer should be offered preventative drug treatments.
The news is based on draft guidelines released by NICE for the care of women at risk of developing breast cancer that runs in families (familial breast cancer).
Text taken from NHS website, click the link below to read the full artical