Feminism

Sir Christopher Chope is not, perhaps, a household name, but he is a man of quite considerable courage. By raising an objection to the preposterous private member’s bill, brought by Wera Hobhouse, a LibDem MP, to make upskirting – taking pictures up girls’ skirts –  a specific criminal offence, he has seen off a bill which was a preposterous waste of time. The Government and Wera H has been hoping to get through the bill on the nod but it could only happen if no one in the chamber had the bad taste to object to it being passed without debate. Sir Christopher, one of parliament’s tough nuts, took the

According to a new study published by some feminist academics at the Australian National University, women risk damaging their health if they work more than 34 hours a week. That’s not because women are the weaker sex, obviously, but because they do more housework and childcare than men, effectively working just as hard but dividing their labour between the office and home. On the back of this, the report’s authors have called for women to be paid the same for working a 34-hour week as men are for a 47-hour week. Until this happens, according to the researchers, women are being forced to choose between their health and gender equality.

School girls have a new heroine this week. Tammie Jo Shults was the pilot onboard Tuesday’s ill-fated flight from New York to Dallas. She safely negotiated an emergency landing after one of the aeroplane’s engines broke up, throwing debris into the fuselage. One passenger died after being partially sucked through a broken window. This could so easily have been a much bigger tragedy. That no one else on board that plane died is thanks to the skill and bravery of Shults. The audio of her calmly informing air traffic controllers, ‘We are single engine. Descending,’ followed by: ‘There is a hole and someone went out,’ is astonishing to hear. Her

In this week’s episode, we talk about the escalating situation in Syria and ask, would counter strikes actually help? We also look into ‘drill’ music, a genre of rap popular with the London youth most vulnerable to gang activity. Last, we talk Spice Girls and Beyoncé – what is modern ‘girl power’? President Trump is facing a major foreign policy test in the Middle East. Reports came in over the weekend of a brutal chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria. The most likely suspect is President Assad, or as Trump likes to call him, ‘Animal Assad’. But, Paul Wood asks in this week’s cover, how certain can we be that

Since I started writing about issues of sex and gender here a few weeks ago, I have made all sorts of new acquaintances; a lot of people are interested in this topic, it seems. Many of the people I’ve been in touch with are women who worry about the direction of politics, policy and even popular culture when it comes to gender and sex. And many of them are frightened. Frightened of what happens if the law is changed to let people born male become legally female simply on the strength of their own declaration. Frightened that the word “woman” will become meaningless and allow the legal rights and protections

A Times investigation has uncovered the terrible fact that women and possibly young girls in Haiti have been exploited by the very people paid to keep them safe: the staff of Oxfam, which sucks up £300 million a year from us in public and private money.  It’s a shock — and it’s not. Under the cover of moral superiority, out of sight and out of the media, all manner of NGOs, charities, and the saintly UN have committed some of the most disgusting crimes against the world’s most vulnerable women and children, and got away scot free. Not even the hyper-sensitive  #MeToo movement seems to give the shadow of a

It is 100 years since women got the vote and I have been joining in the celebrations, on public transport — lightly tapping attractive women on the knee or gently massaging their lovely shoulders and saying, cheerfully, ‘Well done, babes!’ Some react with anger and irritation to my heartfelt congratulations, especially when I ask for their phone numbers so that we might discuss suffrage further — which is, I suppose, an indication they did not really want the vote in the first place. Certainly it imposes a terrible pressure upon them — they are forced, every five years, to make a clear decision. The statistics suggest many resent this imposition