Why are women just tagged onto what is right for men?

Yesterday I attended a day's workshop on Tibetan Healing Exercises. Rather than coming away from it feeling healed I felt frustrated and polluted. Strong word, but that is how it felt. During the morning we did some self massage techniques but as I looked around the room full of women (not a male participant in sight) and the single male leading the workshop without a thought that the anatomy of the participants in front of him were not the same has his, all the times where women were assumed to be the same as men flooded in. It left me feeling invisible, that all the women taking notes in front of him were invisible.

I did raise this issue during the Q & A time and the answer I got increased my frustration. Apparently women are to be treated the same as men without any recognition that the ancient text were written by and for men during a heavily patriarchal age. It felt like history was repeating itself again, just like when heart attack symptoms for men were assumed to be the same for same for women until some smart inquiring person decided to start asking if they really were and discovered that women have their own and different set of symptoms. Also women's moral development was assumed to be the same as men's until Carol Gilligan decided to question and check to see if that was so, and discovered that girls and women have their own set of standards and questions in terms of deciding what is right and wrong.

What bothered me most was when the male facilitator silenced a young female participant who seemed to know a lot about Tibetan healing. He said that she should go back and re-read the ancient texts because she was questioning the ancient male texts. Questioning these ancient male texts is good! They need to be questioned if anything is going to be change to include women! Women need to start questioning what we are told to be truth and start asking ourselves, "Whose truth is it?" "Does this truth include my voice, a feminine voice?" "How does this truth feel?" and "How does this truth empower me to be stronger within myself and speak my truth?" I think I'll be more careful when I sign up for a workshop because I can no longer stomach being in a place or workshops were men think that they know what women are like because they assume we are the same as them without asking, checking, wondering, questioning and inviting. 

UK is behind in its empowerment of women

Having visited Australia, New Zealand and the US during the summer I've come back rather frustrated about how far behind the UK is in acknowledging and understanding that it isn't going to flourish as a country if it doesn't start realising that half its population matter just as much as the male half. During the last 13 years of living in the UK I've noticed some improvement but now having witnessed how much New Zealand has caught up since leaving it 17 years ago, I'm wondering how well prepared the UK really is to recover economically without the direct and equal input of its females. Study after study has shown that when women are treated as having an equal voice, companies do better, the country does better, the population as a whole is better fed and cared for, and the environment isn't exploited. This isn't rocket science but somehow in the UK it is treated as if it is. As other women who are fighting for women's empowerment and equality know, the UK and especially the businesses and politics is rather deaf to these ideas.

Female Hating in Australia's Top Model Show

Hi - The Top Model television shows are pure female hating!!!! It is time that we started to react against them. In Australia, one of the top model contestants was kicked off the show because she was "too big". She was a size 8 and her weight to height ratio put her at the bottom of the healthy range. As I looked at her on the news I couldn't understand what was "too big" about her.

This kind of message is pure female hating. They pit very young girls against each other and measure their worth and value by how they look, which obviously includes how skinny they look, and they market this show to equally young girls, teaching them to judge their worth by how they look.

During the same week on the news they interviewed Elle McPherson who had just been awarded to top spot in England's Top Model show. As they celebrated her Australian heritage, they also pitted all other women against her, making us compare ourselves with her, making her a role model that we should all aspire to and look like, without mentioning a single utterance that a body like that requires a serious time and money investment. My guess is that she spends far more time on maintaining her body than I do on writing my next book. And she certainly spends far more money. Her body is her trade mark, as she admitted, so it that needs to be maintained at all cost. How can anyone compete with that? Why should any of us want to compete with that? Making women feel inadequate against a woman who uses her body as her trade mark is pure female hatred!

Don't fit in too much because it doesn't work!

Hello - I haven't been blogging for a while because I've been writing my next book. It's going extremely well. I'm not a multi-tasker - I like to focus on one thing at a time. Today I wanted to look up and write a blog and say that I have a title and a very good introduction! I'm not going to tell anyone as yet because I don't like to jinx it. To any writer out there I would suggest you keep your writing very close to your chest until you are ready to let it out into the world. Show it only to those whose opinion you trust and  who will hold your writing voice with tender respect.

I wanted to write about how lately I've learnt an important lesson - fitting in with other people doesn't work - it only leaves you invisible and creating a normal that then becomes extremely difficult to change. Just like with businesswomen who give their time and skills away for free who then have a difficult time getting paid because they have set a normal, I without realising it, set a normal in a few situations where I did too much fitting in and fitting around without voicing my needs. I didn't realise that my bending-over-backwards would be not be acknowledged because it had become normal. 

Recently I tried to speak what I need and it wasn't welcomed. At first I was angry and shocked at how invisible my support had been and then I thought sod it - this is ridiculous, I need to return my gaze to within myself and stick to what is right and best for me and in the future be far more verbal and sure about boundaries and where an okay give and take is. I have noticed that as a woman and a woman who loves to empower other women, I hit against the expectation, most often from other women, that I don't have any needs and that my needs are their needs. Though this is frustrating, it's all part of the same issue - women's needs are invisible, as I write about in "The Silent Female Scream".

And over the last months I have realised that I still have some work to do myself! 

Why have intelligent women who defied convention been silenced from the pages of history?

I have just watched the BBC production of the Secret Diaries of Anne Lister. I recommend that you watch it because it finally gives you a woman who did what we do in our power circles, lived life on her terms. I agree with Sue Perkins, the narrator, that it is sad that bright, capable, strong, independent women have been wiped from the pages of history. Jack Holland's book "Misogyny" is full of independent women being killed just because they didn't do what women were expected to do during their day. And this is still happening. I feel that my struggles in publishing "The Silent Female Scream" is part of the "conspiracy of silence" as Sue Perkins put it. Women who write about, speak about, and do it their way, regardless of what others think get silenced, and if they scream in protest, they get silenced even further. During Anne Lister's day they would've been locked up in an asylum or in the attic away from society.  Today they get guilt tripped or just ignored.

Claim some time to watch this remarkable woman's story and draw from her energy of entitlement to live life your way!

We need to debate Oliver James's book on Mothering

Hello Everyone - I am making an official call to debate Oliver James's book on Mothering that is coming out today I think. I'm going to read it and we need to talk about it, debate it, because it is time the mothering got taken from behind the curtain and debated in a new light - one that views mothers as women, as people, with rights and lives of their own, and one that views fathers as parents, with just as much responsibility for children as mothers do. Who's with me?

Mother Blaming is back and its recruited Oliver James

Well I am clearly a BAD MOTHER judging from Oliver James's new book "How Not to F*** Them UP"! (Article in The Times, 22/5/10) I had time out for my preschool children, the equivalent of the naughty step which is apparently one of the three big no nos. I also had a strict sleep routine, another way to F*** them up apparently. I didn't put them in nursery, except for one morning a week. Does that count? Am I let off? I guess pleading that I would've gone mad without time out and sleep is futile!!?? I need sleep in order to function!! and the time out was more for me than for them.

I despair that the backlash against mothers claiming their needs, claiming their lives, claiming equal parenting responsibilities is back with a vengeance. Please please tell anyone who reads Oliver James's new book to read The Silent Female Scream. This is not a plug for my book, more a scream in the dark that is frustrated that too much media attention, visibility and credentials are given to the voices that think that its okay to tell mothers that they are the primary nurturers and that they still should judge themselves again the "Good Mother" test. Have we gone back to the 1960's?

Mother-Daughter Relationship is vital in understanding women

It is gratifying see an increase in mother-daughter relationship issues being treated as something that deserves attention and help, just as much as couples counselling. The mother-daughter relationship is vital and undervalued, even marginalised within the UK, media, Universities, counselling courses and throughout the world. The marginalising of the mother-daughter relationship goes hand in hand with the silencing of women's history, with the sexualisation of girls and women, and with sexism and inequality still being an accepted normal. When we start to understand our female legacy and mother-daughter relationship more, we start to understand how sexism and inequality actually effects us and impacts our lives by reducing our self-esteem, reducing our choices and freedom, and by reducing women into roles and bodies, rather than human beings in their own right who are entitled to live their lives on their terms. This is why Women's Power Circles are so powerful because when women gather and start looking at the three themes we talk about in the circles - the loss of women's needs voice, feelings invisible and our reduced sense of entitlement, we start to peel away our internalised sexism and emotional silencing and start seeing our mothers and grandmother's as products and victims of the sexism in their generations. I am writing about this at the moment in the next book and I wonder how many doctors, writers, painters, etc have been lost in our mother's and grandmother's generations because they weren't allowed to follow their passion.
  

There is no such thing as a political wife!

I have huge respect for the way Nick Clegg's wife and partner, Miriam Gonzaliz Durantez has tried to keep herself intact and not give into the pressure to suppress her life, career, her identify as a woman in her own right behind her husband's career and new job.

I have no respect for Will Pavia who wrote in The Times on Saturday 15 May that she will be an asset to her husband because she beautiful and that "various hardnosed politcal hacks swooned slightly in her presence". What complete rubbish - not that she is in attractive women but that her asset is her beauty. What about her intellect, her thoughts and beliefs, her career, and her right to be visible and respected on her terms rather than just on what she looks like and her husband's job? And what about challenging the pure sexism that Nick Clegg's power is enhanced by his wife's beauty.

Have we not moved forward at all? It makes me sick seeing newspapers covered with skinny leggy women and their skinny bodies being presented as their source of power, wealth, and right to being visible.

Homeopathy is Witchcraft? Have we gone back to the middle ages?

The article in The Sunday Telegraph, May 16 2010 entitled "Homeopathy is NHS witchcraft" is pure sexism. It starts off saying that doctors, especially junior doctors are saying that homeopathy is witchcraft and should not be funded because it can't be proved as effective. The article ends with the worry about the huge increase of female doctors who may be wanting to take maternity leave. How are these two issues related?

The connection is the sexism inherent in calling Homeopathy as witchcraft and not seeing male doctors as fathers who also need time off to look after their children.

Reading it made me feel as if the witch finder, now as a doctor who can't see beyond the limited definition of scientific evidence, is allowed a free rein to decide what is right. It reminded me of my recent trips to the doctor and how he could only see my blood test as evidence and not how I was feeling. He even sniggered when I told him that I was less concerned about my borderline low thyroid functioning and more concerned that I was feeling exhausted. The two are connected but somehow that didn't seem to enter his mind. All he was concerned about was my blood test results. Feelings aren't apparently evidence, so neither is being helped by a homeopathic treatment that heals and makes life easier!?

This article concerns me because homeopathy and allied-health are very female dominated professions and it feels as if the witch finder of today doesn't need to hang or burn women as witches anymore to kills them. All he has to do is to economically kill women by discrediting their professions and their knowledge. All this article is about is a bunch of doctors screaming to preserve the reducing resources for themselves by discrediting homeopathy and by focusing on the increasing female doctors who can have babies. It is the same old trick of finding a scapegoat - women again, for the problem of reduced funding. The male doctors clearly don't think that their careers need to be effected by becoming a father.

I hear disturbing reports that killing women economically by not investing in their skills and professions during a time of financial hardship is already happening.

If you have any stories, please post them. I think we need to talk about this in order to stop it as much as we can and not internalise it as our fault or failing.

Where were the women when they negotiated this new UK government?

Hi Everyone - did anyone notice that not a single women was present during the days of negotiating how this new UK government was going to be formed? Last I looked, only 4 women have been given cabinet positions. What shocked me more was that I hadn't noticed that women were completely invisible in deciding who and how the UK was going to be governered until John Snow pointed it out when interviewing a female political reporter saying that she would be bringing in the only female voice. But she was only reporting, not deciding if women's interest and perspectives were going to be equally represented.

I was shocked that I hadn't noticed and how women's absence from political office has been so normalised in my mind and vision. It is as if I don't expect to see any women - but that is how inequality keeps going. It creates a normal that men govern, men make the important decision, men decide what is best for everyone and if women are invited, and yes that is the thinking of sexism that women need to be invited rather than it's our right to be present, they are only invited in small numbers so that they can't rock the boat.

I'd be interested in anyone else noticed this?

Disease to Please

Hello Everyone - I think I've uncovered more of the roots that is creating my blank mind when I'm about to blog. I think that my self-esteem to still too attached to being liked, which will successfully silence anyone. This is such a female issue! Why do we have to be liked? Who care what other people think? Females are so deeply socialised to worry about what others need, others feel and to not upset anyone that our thoughts, needs, and rights fly right out of the window.

I realised this after reading a small article in The Guardian, Thursday 6 May, about Germaine Greer being critical of Naomi Wolf. Naomi Wolf is one of my favourite authors and in the article Naomi Wolf says that Germaine Greer is still, regardless of what she says, a mentor for her. She describes Greer as a "shit disturber and I just love that". As I read this I realised that I am a "shit disturber". I wouldn't be where I am today if I wasn't. I would be living a completely different life if I didn't disturb the shit in my family and the roles that my family, in-laws, and society were trying to pour me into. And I do believe my children would be different people if they didn't have a "shit disturber" as a mother.

I think that it is time I celebrated myself for being a "shit disturber" and to not feel afraid of doing it. Maybe I need to add "shit disturber" to my credentials. Things don't change without some serious disturbance and we all know that change is needed if women are to ever be viewed as people in their own right.

After all I wrote "The Silent Female Scream". This book is very serious about disturbing the shit that is silencing women. Amazing how easy it is to not see or recognise your own strength! A strength that has saved  my life because I know that if I wasn't a "shit disturber" I would've been very depressed.

Women become depressed when they are trying to fit around everyone else

Finally someone said it - Women can't have it all in a man's world - see Sara Parkin in the Guardian Newspaper, Monday 3 May 2010. Finally the truth that women will not be fully equal and visible on our terms if we keep trying to fit in with what others expect from us has been printed. What is expected from girls and women is so in twined with sexist thinking and inequality it is hard to untangle what is right for us and what is right for others.

There is so much pressure on girls and women to be what our family, friends, colleagues, work and school culture, media, music, fashion and exercise industries, and the list goes on - expect us to be like, look like, and act like. The conversation that encourages girls and women to really think what is right for them and what nurtures them is so faint, it's inaudible. And if it does break through the surface it invokes the palpable fear of girls and women becoming powerful.

No amount of legislation will make women equal and visible. No amount of legislation will create a world in which women have as much say as men. It requires us to connect together and dare to do it the way that is right for us. To connect together and force the corporate world to see men as well as women as parents, to force the corporate world to value the world and its inhabitants more than profit (as with this BP oil disaster), and to force industries that make money out of making women feel bad about themselves to change. 

This is what motivated me to keep going. Visit (I know here it goes again but I have to keep saying it against the din that so afraid of powerful women) Women's Power Circles.

Why does my mind go blank when I've got tons to say?

I've had another lesson on blogging and Internet marketing from Matt Duggan and I think I need to start my relationship with being a blogger at the beginning. I've got tones to say but when I sit in front of a blank new post my mind goes blank. There is so much I can talk about because there are tons of examples of women and girls being reduced to a sexist invisible caricature, or I can blog about my Power Circles or my Counselling, or the rise in mother-daughter relationship counselling, or my journey to creating a life on my terms post children. But what I need to talk about some more is why my mind go blank when I'm sitting in from of a blank new blog? I need to talk about this in order to break through the fear of getting it wrong. I know, it doesn't make sense. What could I possibly get wrong? In part this fear comes from the narrow role and sphere of possibility that the women in my family were expected to live within. But that isn't all. My mind goes blank because I live in a culture that silences girls and women.

I know that I'm not the only women whose mind goes blank whenever she is confronted with a chance to speak her mind. We are surrounded by an entire language that teaches us to keep quiet, worry more about what other people think than what we think, don't upset anyone, and definitely don't become too visible on your own terms. As all my Power Circle women know, the journey to living your life on your own terms is a journey in recognising this language and challenging message by message until you create your own language that gives you complete entitlement to be and say who you are.

The real truth about my fear of getting it wrong is that by not speaking, not living my life on my terms, not claiming my voice and thoughts, I will be getting it wrong. The fear of getting it wrong is just the way the silencing of women has manifested in me. We all have our own fears that the language that silences women locks in on and creates a false truth in our minds. But if we look closely at our fears it actually evaporates in a puff of smoke because it isn't telling us the truth. The fear actually hides what we must do in order to live our lives to the full. So here goes, to kill my fear of getting it wrong, I'm going to blog anyway!

Being afraid of being visible

Hello Everyone - I know why it has taken me a year to get blogging. It wasn't only because I didn't know how to go about it, even though that was a big part of it. It was also because I have an emotional block that has stopping me from investigating how to go about it. In my childhood family being visible on my terms generates a great deal of criticism and rejection. Being a woman in my childhood family requires me to fit into the female role that hasn't changed much from before my grandmother's day. It also means not speaking what I really feel or challenge the power and control that the bullies in my family have, and definitely don't air the dirty laundry in public or go cleaning out the skeletons from the cupboard. Those of you who have read my book will know what I'm talking about.

It wasn't until Matt Duggan from www.adventuresininternetmarketing.net started showing me how to set up a more internet based marketing strategy that I had no more excuses. It was time to "face my fear and do it anyway" as Susan Jeffers would say. It was time to face my internal critic, the same one that I had to battle during the writing of "The Silent Female Scream" because this critic wasn't telling me the truth. It was based on the messages of silence and invisibility that I had been taught to live by as a girl.

Sadly, I know that I'm not alone with having to slay the dragon of feeling safe by being invisible. Countless women around the world have been taught to think that keeping quiet and not showing others what they really want and think, what they truly feel and the life they want to live is protecting them from being criticised, rejected and for too many, being killed. The tragic fact is that for many women being invisible does keep them safe. But it also doesn't challenge or change the status quo.

It is no coincidence that this has come up to be healed. It is time for me to stop writing with the hand brake on - which is how it feels. And it is time to visit New Zealand during August on my terms. I haven't been back for over 10 years. The last time I visited was for my father's funeral. It is time to reconnect with the country I was born in and find my own voice there and a home for the Women's Power Circles. What is hitting me between the eyes as I write this, is the change from leaving a silenced disempowered woman over 17 years ago and now returning having set up Women's Power Circles. Things have really changed for me and recognising this makes me relax because All is well!!!

Equality lies in not fighting the status quo? What rubbish!

Hello everyone - hope you had a lovely weekend in the sunshine! I am still wanting to rant after reading the article in yesterday's Sunday Times about Catherine Hakim "She's counting up erotic capital". She apparently believes that our "increasing sexualised age is a 'trend' and that we should just relax because there is no point swimming against the tide". What complete rubbish. I would love to have a good heart to heart with her and learn what world she inhabits. So if what she says is true, our grandmothers should've bothered to fight against the status quo and claim our political voice because somehow we would've got the vote. How? How would not swimming against the tide create change? Our increasingly sexualised age is a backlash against women's increasing power. Susan Faludi writes about this and Naomi Wolf writes about how women's and now girl's bodies have increasingly become the focus of controlling our time and self-esteem as we gain more economic, social and political power. Making girl's and women worry about how they look reduces our entitlement to claim our power and space.

I feel that the increased sexualisation of girls and women is very much because women are starting to crack the top levels of power. It is also about deflecting our attention and our daughter's attention from the very real voices of having choice, do it for yourself and girl power into hyper-focusing on what we look like on male terms. You just have to look at the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud to see this in action - the language of empowerment turned against ourselves into being extremely thin and sexy within a very narrow definition of sexiness.

Which brings me to a related issue. In March I attended the Women Unlimited conference for businesswomen where Emma Wimhurst was paraded as a role model after making millions selling cosmetics to the young Spice Girl's fans during the 1990's. I was shocked that no one seemed to say how completely unacceptable this was. No one seemed to make the connection between the increased sexualisation of our girls and this business idea. This was a room full of women, mothers with daughters for goodness sake.

I would love to hear from women who also reacted about this! There is something very destructive about the business world's obsession with making money without reflecting on the social and environmental consequences to how anyone decides to make their money.

Lets talk about getting paid well for our time and skills.

Hello, at the moment I'm busy writing my next book. Sometimes it may feel like things go very quiet from my end, but that's because I've got my head buried deep in my writing. I have realised that I'm not a multi-tasker. I can only do one thing at a time! So its official, not all women are multi-taskers. Ladies give yourself permission to not multi-task if it doesn't work for you.

During the last month I've been writing about money and how many women tend to disrespect their time and skills by not feeling entitled to ask for a good hourly rate. I am delighted that I had an article accepted by the Policy Review Magazine.
http://www.policyreview.co.uk/articles.php?article_id=90 I didn't know if they would accept it, but it feels great that someone is listening to how pay inequality gets internalised and continued as if it is normal.

I'm worried that the women who are building businesses using their much needed nurturing skills are having a hard time, not only because of all this talk of belt tightening, but because we are in danger of going backwards and expecting women to nurture for free, to give their time away for free, and to not be "greedy" and expect a good return for their time, skills and experience.

I don't think that we have as yet fully examined the pure sexism around women's time, skills and experience being undervalued, especially if their skills are traditionally female. Think about it. How much did our mothers and grandmother give away for free? Did they get a financial return for their skills? My mother or grandmother didn't. Though they were both educated women, once they married they were financially dependent. Though things have changed a lot in a short time, what hasn't changed is women feeling confident about getting a good return for their nurturing skills. We are still, and I speak for myself here too, too wobbly and unentitled to claim our financial power. Maybe it is that word "power" again that we are so afraid of, because society is afraid of powerful women. Whatever it is, I am on a mission to not only claim my own, but to empower women to claim their financial power. We cannot be fully equal or visible without it.
Talk to you next time,
Rosjke

Hello Everyone, my first blog

Exactly one year ago at the Women's Power Circles first birthday party a number of women were encouraging me to start blogging. I wasn't sure because I didn't know how to. One year later the universe made sure that I meet the Internet marketing whizz Matt Duggan who made the process sound so simple that I couldn't talk myself out of it any longer. And writing this introduction feels great. I have so much to say about women's empowerment and now I have a place to write it down and send it out into the world for women and men to read and think about.

My first thought on this first blog is about the upcoming elections in the UK. What is the deal with putting the wives of the party leaders up for election when in reality they have very little real political power or voice. And worse, they are expected to present themselves as silently supportive in a "stand by your man" kind of way in order to be liked and "help their husband" be elected to the ultimate position of power. This to me smacks of age-old sexism. A clear example that wives are still in second place to her husband's career without a voice or life of her own as she stands silently and demure next to him, making sure that she doesn't promote herself or show too much of her own life outside of being "the wife" of a very powerful man. It will be interesting to see if husbands are treated in the same way when women become politically more powerful. I strongly suspect they won't be.