Women in Politics 3

Winnie Ewing

Ten years ago on 12Th May 1999, the Scottish Parliament met for the first time as a democratically elected body. Dr Winnie Ewing opened the first session with some well-chosen words.

The Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on March 25 1707, is hereby reconvened.

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/history/firstDays/1999firstMeeting.htm

The Scottish Parliament was in abeyance for nearly 300 years until devolution and the Scotland Act 1998 legislated for the Parliament to reconvene. The former parliament was feudal and unrepresentative of the people of Scotland. The current version somewhat better but with room for improvement. In its first sitting there was 39.5% female representation, but that has fallen to 33.3% now. So, although the SNP has always had high profile and very effective women in its ranks, it needs to get serious about recruiting more.

Ewing has been in politics for four decades having been elected as SNP MP for Hamilton in 1967. This spectacular and popular electoral victory is profiled in the BBC Alba documentary on her life. She became even more famous as she took her seat in Europe in 1975 where she was known as Madame Ecosse, presumably because she was there to represent Scottish interests and promote European legislation that would benefit her country.

This is a woman who could employ a pertinent turn of phrase. She is reported as commenting at the time of her Hamilton election victory “stop the world, Scotland wants to get on”.

On taking her seat in the Commons, she noted, “a shiver ran along the Labour front bench looking for a spine to run up.”

The BBC Alba documentary on Winnie Ewing is on YouTube in several parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaXMT_7wmXs&feature=related

At 79 she is today, returning to Holyrood to see her portrait unveiled as part of the celebration of ten years of devolution. http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/nmCentre/news/news-09/pa09-013.htm

Oil fired sneezes

Field of yellow taken from the train somewhere in West Lothian.

Sneezes start this month when I go into the country and am surrounded by this damn stuff. It looks quite pretty, but causes so much hassle for those with sensitive little nasal passages.

Although much touted by healthy eaters as an equivalent to olive oil, I am so annoyed by it I simply refuse to buy the processed oil.

Other yellow is gentler on the eye and on the nose at this time in the countryside. Whenever I see broom flowering in spring I’m reminded of this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_E7JnqGcA8

The Yellow’s On the Broom is the story of Traveller woman Betsy Whyte.

http://www.booksfromscotland.com/Books/The-Yellow-On-The-Broom-9781841581354

Yellow over Morningside, Edinburgh

Another inspiring role model

Dr Eileen M Galloway 1906-2009

What an inspiring woman and I only get to hear of her because she has died aged almost 103 years.

Dr Galloway was born a few years after the Wright brothers managed their historic flight and lived to see the space age reach its half century. In this video to commemorate fifty years since Sputnik was launched, Eileen Galloway describes the concern that the space age would herald an age of weapons of mass destruction in space. This is less likely owing to the ongoing efforts by Dr Galloway in opposing the use of space for military purposes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9l2eCxalvg

Her NASA obituary states that:
Galloway worked for several decades with the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and was instrumental in creating the International Institute of Space Law, which serves as the forum for legal scholars and others from around the world in studying and debating the legal issues associated with the exploration and utilization of space.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/galloway_obit.html

Her role in setting up NASA deserves the widest recognition. Her work is an inspiration for women who want to work in this field as well as those of us who want this planet to get serious about colonising our solar system. (Am I reading too much science fiction again?)

Kirkish stramash

There’s nothing like a good schism to get the theological juices flowing. Sadly, what is happening in the Kirk is absolutely nothing like a good (potential) schism. This stramash is over the appointment of a minister who is living with his male partner and this is unacceptable to a vocal minority of traditionalists and conservatives (conservative minorities are often vocal).

The protesting minority in this case are under the umbrella of The Fellowship of Confessing Churches, whose covenant contains the following:
We recognize God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We acknowledge the great harm that has come from our failures to maintain this standard, and we repent and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.
http://www.confessingchurch.org.uk/

Not surprisingly with such inflexible notions, they are agin any minister who chooses to live with his or her same sex partner. They have set up an online list of signatories who are equally agin this sort of thing. 6000 people have signed it, and counting .

What interested me when I saw this news was curiosity as to whether an old boyfriend of mine, who became a minister, had signed it. It took a while to casually trawl through this number of names, but I got caught up in it and began to notice the odd name I knew from churches in the town I grew up in. Delightfully, the minister of the church that I joined several decades ago and which still insists on sending me newsletters has not signed. Neither did I find the name of old boyfriend, which surprised me a little, because umpteen years ago when I knew him his intolerant attitudes to women were a prime cause of his dumpedness. I have to hope he matured into a decent human being (being a Christian is no guarantee of tolerance).

While engaged on my self-appointed mission to inspect the names, several things are worthy of comment.

Vast numbers of people signed as Mr & Mrs Reactionary, whose joint signing would only count as one person. I tried to fathom why this was not apparent to all those people. I idly speculated that perhaps Mrs R snuck onto hubbie’s computer and signed him up too. Alternatively, that Mr R was making the old time biblical assumption that as woman is part of man (Adam’s rib and all that) then her individual signature would not count anyway. Or maybe they are so dim or unused to online protest that they didn’t think it through. I’m rather grateful, as I’d have taken even longer to scroll through if all these conjoined pairs had separated long enough to complete the online process to register their individual protest.

Of the 6000, far too many were women. It is fairly well known that amongst churchgoers there are more women than men, so depressingly more women jumped up and signed. If only they would use their energy to further the position of women in society by working from within their congregations then we could all admire them more.

Best of all was the section reserved for Non-Church of Scotland signatories. Some people have gained PhD’s in this subject, so I’ll not be trying to analyse this in any depth, but I found it all fascinating. In fact I once worked with a woman whose thesis was on church schisms, therefore I was prepared for the presence of the Free Church of Scotland, the United Free Church (my grandmother attended this), and the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) (with and without brackets).

However, the Presbyterians had more varieties than I knew of. There was a hefty presence from the Associated Presbyterians, but fewer from the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Previously, I only knew of Presbyterians.

The Pentecostals were out in some force and included, for listing purposes, those who claimed membership of Pentecostal/Charismatic, while others were solely Charismatic. There were extremely few Methodists, or Roman Catholics, and sundry members of small local gatherings. While the Brethren were better represented with Open Brethren, Christian Brethren, and Christian Brethren – Evangelical.

Considerably more numerous were the Baptists, whose passion for the truth can be divined from the array of versions. There were plain old Baptists, Scottish Baptists, Zion Baptists, Reformed Baptists, Independent Baptists, Independent Reformed Baptists and the intriguingly named Strict Baptists. Did those last named wander into this looking for a more arcane discussion?

In the section reserved for those signatories from other parts of the world, the first up were the Southern Baptists. I was obscurely comforted by that.

Finally, there were those who tried to cover all bases or maybe couldn’t make up their minds. I include in this list, the Interdenominational, Multi Denominational and the Non-Denominational.

Ultimately, this all forces people to consider their views on tolerance of people's lifestyles and just because someone who avers a calling to the ministry in the Kirk, happens to have a particular relationship preference should not provoke this international storm of reactionary outpouring. Rather I hope an open discussion will help more in the Kirk to live up to their espoused Christian tolerance for difference and equality.

Feminist Icon

Marilyn French 1929-2009

All of the wonderful feminist writers I discovered in my teens had an impact on my thinking and attitudes, but Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room was the most accessible. In later years, as a young mother, when I felt the parameters of my life had diminished to the extent summed up by the prominent refrain in the book of life being about “string beans and shit” I'd frequently mutter this phrase under my breath. Too many of us have had our own Norm (the main character’s husband).

After reading The Women’s Room in my late teens, I immediately pressed it upon a couple of male friends advising them that this would explain all the concepts I had been failing to get across to them about feminism. Naively, I assumed that because it contained the truth about so many women’s lives (although I admit we are talking white, middle class, educated, western women), that no one reading it could fail to understand French's stark messages about patriarchy. I had yet to comprehend the depth of (most) men’s and many women’s ability to deny women’s oppression.

20 million copies sold and 20 language translations has to count for something but as noted in the Telegraph’s obituary:
Some felt that her portrayals of men as prime chauvinist beef were unfair, but Marilyn French retorted: "The men are there as women see them and feel them, impediments in women's lives."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/5273331/Marilyn-French.html

Marilyn French has some of the best feminist quips:
"Men are victimised too. But they're not protesting. They're still blaming all their problems on women."

“Men’s need to dominate women may be based in their own sense of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men are making no effort to discover it,” she wrote in “The War Against Women” (1992).

I reread The Women’s Room a couple of years ago when the book group I attend chose it. It had lost little of its power and I decided to read it again in another ten years, but maybe not, in case still nothing much has changed in the struggle to end women’s oppression.