When I originally planned to write this in early February, the world still felt heavy – but at the same time there seemed to be a light at the end of the COVID-19 related tunnel. Fast forward several weeks and while we’re learning to live with the pandemic, we’re now over a week into the Russian invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine and thanks in part to the unprecedented real-time window to this provided by social media, feeling even more helpless at the state of the world.
Then a study published in The Lancet this week revealed the negative effects of the current pandemic have disproportionately affected women exacerbating existing inequalities and threatening to set back decades of hard won progress towards gender equality. Women and girls were more likely to lose their jobs, quit for caretaking responsibilities or drop out of education and worrying gender-based violence hit record highs.
As I’m sure many people can also attest, it can feel hard to stay positive and just go about our daily business, in face of all this. I’m a words person – as most people working in communications tend to be – but that means that words tend to bring me a sense of comfort and I find myself turning to these human stories, whether written down or recorded in a podcast or audiobook to help understand and unpack the (dare I say it) unprecedented challenges we face as a society.
So, this International Women’s Day (8th March) rather than simply celebrating, it felt better instead to share a shortlist of some of the female-focused stories that have moved me or moved the women (and men) in my life – and which you might also enjoy as a slight reprieve from the loudness of the world around us.
None of these represent my personal views necessarily but they have challenged me and the wonderfully smart and inquisitive people around me to think differently, and hopefully become better versions of ourselves in the actions we all take everyday.
Words we’ve loved:
1. Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall – a friend recommended this to me and it’s a brutally honest and interrogative text examining the intersectionality of race, ethnicity and gender equity and prying open the failings of the current feminist movement which has often neglected to advocate for the needs of women of colour and marginalised communities. Well worth the read.
2. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo – a must-read if you haven’t already. Storytelling at its finest.
3. Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine– a digestible overview of lot of scientific studies on gender and its effect on us
4. Animal: the Autobiography of a Female Body by Sara Pascoe – a potted evolutionary and biological history with some great storytelling from the author, a comedian. PSA language is NSFW.
5. Roxane Gay’s TED Talk “Confessions of a Bad Feminist” and Shani Dhanda’s recent TedxWomen talk “I’m Showing up to Make Inclusion Everyone’s Priority” (behind their paywall unfortunately but worth the £8 for all this year’s sessions). She is a leading UK disability advocate and a powerful speaker with an even more important lesson about inclusion. Yes I know this is technically two, but I think they both deserve a shout.
Voices we’ve loved:
6. The Guardian’s Modern Masculinity conversation series
7. The Guilty Feminist – a comedy meets feminist podcast by the ever-entertaining Deborah Frances-White
8. I Weigh podcast hosted by Jameela Jamil which challenges lots of societal norms and biases against women through great interviews with a wide range of guests.
9. The Bechdel Cast – a great intersectional feminist movie podcast examines the portrayal of women in film
10. Burn it All Down: The feminist sports podcast
I know I’ve been talking about words, but I also just LOVE Lainey Molnar’s illustrations about gender inequality and negative stereotypes about women that persist so I couldn’t help adding them here.
I hope these stories can do for you what they’ve done for me – which is reminded me of the complexity, uniqueness, and yes, good parts of our humanity. I’d also love to hear any you’ve enjoyed.
And if, like me, you feel like one of the things you individually can do to make a difference is give (even a little) to support the health and wellbeing of those in need (including many women and girls) in Ukraine, I would encourage you to donate through an organisation like Save the Children, UNICEF or book a room through Airbnb in Ukraine – the fees of which are being waived by the company as part of efforts to get funds directly to families.