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I'll Be Back Soon

March 16th 2011 13:26
To all my loyal readers I apologise for such a long silence. Personal issues have taken all my spare time.

I am currently preparing a post and will be back writing regularly very shortly. Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

Janet



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Twenty-first Century Women

January 14th 2011 03:49


Marrying a rich man, having his kids and staying home to mind them – are these old fashioned ideas or the goals of the 21st century woman?

Catherine Hakim, a doctor of sociology from the London School of Economics,has once again challenged the notion that women aspire to top level positions and boardroom roles – and sparked a lot of debate - saying in a recent published paper that most women today would rather stay at home and mind the kids.


Hakim, no stranger to controversy, was once a champion of feminist causes particularly cultures that discriminated against women in the work place. Around 15 years ago she changed tack and has been arguing since that it is not necessarily discrimination that holds a lot of women back in their careers but a choice to put family ahead of ambition.

In 1995 Hakim’s address on Five Feminist Myths about Women’s Employment challenged contemporary feminist thinking and urged academics and social scientists to review their policies about women in the workforce. In a recently released paper Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine, Hakim argues that women still want to marry men who are richer and cleverer than themselves, despite social scientists telling us otherwise.

Her recent paper grabbed the attention of newspaper editors around the globe and was reported generally as a theory that reflected 1950s thinking when women quit work as soon as they married and devoted their lives to looking after the home, the husband and the family.

While Hakim’s views, in some circles, are being credited for undoing a lot of the good that has been done to combat gender discrimination in the workforce and sending us all back to the dark ages, even the most diehard feminist would have to admit – even if quietly – that there is some truth in her argument.

For one thing, not all women aspire to high level positions or aim to have a board position on a listed company. In fact, many of us do work to earn a living and that work may not necessarily be something that we love doing. It is simply a job, not a career. This is the same for men of course and just like women, many of them may not have the ambition or even the opportunity to get to the top. For many people work is simply that – work.

If most social scientists were to look at the whole situation this way, Hakim’s comments would not seem so antiquated and outdated. There is nothing to suggest in Hakim’s arguments that we should go back to an early 20th century societal trend where the male was the boss and the woman obeyed him or even that women should revert to being some sort of slave at home. Maybe though there are some who may yearn for a time when a woman could stay home without guilt or judgement even if they may not have been around at the time.

I would have considered myself a feminist in the past but I have to say that I have softened some of my views over the years. While I do not have children myself I watched many a friend juggle work and family life because women were supposed to have ambition too.

The reality, however, is that there are lots of women who loathe having to juggle work and family and the idea of not spending days under the critical eye of a demanding or unappreciative boss has a lot of appeal. The problem is that where staying at home was the norm for most married women in the 1950s, it is virtually impossible on a ongoing basis, for many women to stay at home now. The cost of living and material expectations prohibit most women from staying at home, even if they want to.

So the argument Hakim raises about women wanting to marry men who are richer is not so difficult to believe or to understand. Staying at home doesn’t really have the stigma it did more than a decade ago. In fact, it has become something of a luxury – a luxury that only those who have wealth or marry it can afford.

They often say that art imitates life and some of our movies and television series have done that and there seems to be a current fascination with the 50s and 60s on screen. A 1953 movie How to Marry a Millionaire was made into a television series that aired later in that decade. It has been rumoured that our own Nicole Kidman will be starring in a remake of that movie this year.

The series Mad Men, of which I am a fully fledged fan, has been gaining a rather large following after chalking up so many awards since it began a few years back. It starts in 1960 and centres around ad man, Don Draper, a man with a past who has reached the level of creative director with a prestigious advertising agency on Madison Avenue. The story lines are based around his work and his home and are reflective of the mood and social trends at the time where women were expected to stay home, particularly those who had the means to do so.

I have always believed that in some ways feminism diminished the importance of the role of mother which surely must be the important role of all. Feminism should be about choice but unfortunately in most of the arguments and in reality, choice has little to do with it.

Maybe it’s not only in our films and television shows that we have found a taste for an era past but let's not gloss over the fact that in these years many government agencies and large corporations had policies that gave women no choice but to resign as soon as they married and very few had a higher education.

There were definitely good sides to a woman's life in the 50s and 60s, particularly if she had a successful husband. For others it was a kind of entrapment. Let's not forget that.

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MasterCleaner Should be Next Cab Off the Block

November 14th 2010 13:20


We have had Backyard Blitz and the whole lot of other run ons that made gardening a celebrity style event. Then we had Masterchef that had so many millions glued to their television hoping they could copycat some prized recipes.

What we haven’t had so far is the Master Cleaner or Master House Organiser.
Will some celebrity guru come forward with these ones please because most of us would love to meet the experts in home organisation and domestic affairs.

Just think of the following those backyard renovations received over recent years. Everyone wanted a backyard makeover and the people in the show became celebrities overnight.

Then there was the Masterchef series that convinced all of us that cooking up a really good meal was the next best thing to an Academy Award. It even got the children interested with Kids Masterchef.

Children of a young age before this were not known for being interested in cooking but as Masterchef has shown, you can get kids interested in anything if you promote it enough or make it trendy enough.

So if kids can be so encouraged to cook, why wouldn’t they be able to be encouraged to clean and organize themselves – that is if it was actually deemed trendy enough?

I will also add that I don't have kids but the enthusiasm that Masterchef with the ongoing Kids Masterchef has enthused anyone of any age to get down to cooking, I really can't see how this whole formula can't be also be translated to cleaning and organising. Now that would be a feat!

After all, once cooking was deemed a chore and so was looking after the backyard and somehow we have made those things a pleasant thing to do.

Bring on Master Cleaner I say.



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21st Century Shopping

October 4th 2010 14:14
The New Top Ryde Shopping Complex


If the social researchers have been right in telling us how we are all moving to the convenience of shopping online, then why are so many new shopping complexes shooting up around town?
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Tomato Sauce and Aussie Tradition

August 29th 2010 13:30


Tomato sauce is one of those things that Australians hold dear. Even chefs gave up long ago chastising anyone asking for some to lather over a perfect steak. Pie sellers, rather than chastise, they just started charging for it, using the user-pay ideology for doing so.
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Mansion Living is not for Everyone

August 9th 2010 14:09
The Chester Mansion


An English couple recently decided that living in an mansion was not all it was cracked up to be. They made the move to this lifestyle after winning an £8.5 million dollar lottery in 2007, buying a dream home for £1.8 million in Hampshire.
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Too Much News!

July 15th 2010 12:49


When the ABC first started talking up its proposed 24 hour news channel and I could think of was why? There are news bulletins around us everywhere all day long on radio, the internet and on screens blasting across our city everywhere so why on earth would there be a need for more news?
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Don’t Ever Forget About Leaking Oil

July 13th 2010 10:29


After twelve weeks of an oil spill that will go down as the worst, or at least one of the worst, spills in memory there is now a possible solution to contain the spill. Why had no such strategies been in the oil giant’s program in case of such an emergency? And why did it take so long?
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Technology is not Exclusive to the Young

July 5th 2010 11:07


One stereotype that really gets my blood boiling is the one that associates young people with technology savvy. You would really think the way this is bantered around that most people over 30 are incapable of using a computer, a mobile phone, searching the internet or going on to a social networking site. Well I’ve got some really good news – just about everyone is “tech savvy” in some way.
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Twitter Goes to Washington

June 8th 2010 22:39


If you thought for one minute that “tweeting” politicians were just a passing fad, think again. In fact, political tweets are bound to become part of a politician’s day at the office since Twitter’s latest announcement that the company will be hiring its first employee in Washington.
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