Feminism

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

I’ve worked in several warehouses unloading stock and I’ve also worked in supermarkets stacking shelves. I’d have to say the latter is marginally harder. Not that there’s much in it: both are physically hard, mentally untaxing, and probably undervalued – but then, don’t we all feel undervalued at work? Warehouse jobs are more of a laugh. When unloading boxes that all looked the same, some were much heavier than others. If you were on the van you’d make out the heavy ones were light and vice versa. Oh, the japes we had… Best of all, there was usually an unloaded pallet you could hide behind for a nap. Whereas on

Today’s centenary of some women being given the right to vote seems to have bewildered a number of people. My colleague Ross Clark, in particular, was perturbed by the Today programme turning into Woman’s Hour to mark the centenary, which he felt was inappropriate for a news programme, and also didn’t cover the fact that suffrage was also extended to 5.6 million working men. Instead, he writes, the programme turned the occasion ‘into a women’s fest’. Worse: almost every story involving men was about sexual assault. There seems to be a curious reflex among some people to protest immediately when women are mentioned that no-one is talking about men. It’s