International Women's Day: Inspire Inclusion

Sally Bavage writes:

The Shire Oak, used in Headingley as an assembly place until it was brought down by gales close to a century ago, was the name used for the assembly hall in the Heart Centre in Headingley.  We had gales too this morning – gales of laughter as we gathered to celebrate the achievements and advances of women.

The Headingley Creative Writing Group gathered to share their prose, poems and observations of the significance of March 8^th, International Women's Day since 1913.  Barbara  Lawton explored the history of the day that has helped to make women's rights and issues become more prominent.  A dedicated website was set up in 2001 to publicise, promote and celebrate what is now a bank holiday in quite a few countries around the world.  Not in the UK.  Yet.

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

Barbara's poem about the Cradley Heath Chainmakers' strike of 1910 old of women working at home with 'forges flaring in flimsy sheds behind their dirtyard homes.'  Health and safety, eh?  Still, the women beat the chain barons and their victory continued the march towards equality.

 

Kaz Byrne's poem about sports day  - yes, women do play – reminded me of the recent video clip that went viral of a man explaining to a professional woman golfer how to improve her stroke.  Less amusing is the news item today that women footballers suffer anterior cruciate ligament injuries (dreadful, often career-ending) up to six times more frequently than men and that the research into training techniques and boot technology for women hasn't been done. Kaz also gave a simple rollcall of famous influential women in so many fields of endeavour.  Such a long list was heartening.

 

Eileen Neil's moving poem on My Grandmother's Hands, which were 'small and square, skin threadbare, veins tracing her years' were the symbol of her hard life in a tiny terrace house caring and catering for her family, rubbing Stork margerine into her pastry.  Now Eileen possesses those hands and wondered what future she was rubbing with them.

 

Jackie Parsons poem Metamorphosis was a journey along a timeline.  Her second poem – Novelty or Freak Show – was a wry remembrance of her audition for a (male) band as a base player.  In 1974 she was rather a novelty and she lost out in the final two as she had 'no Fender base, no Y chromosome'. Later, playing in an all-women progressive rock band Mother Superior, they wore too many clothes for a record company to understand.

https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=7962

 

Our privileged audience were then treated to songs from an all-women a capella group called Harissa – yes, spicy and fiery when it comes to defining what women want and deserve.   But one refrain 'I will not hate and I will not fear, In our darkest hour hope lingers here' summed up the determination of women worldwide to taste progress and equality. Ain't No Mountain High Enough and Fernando's Highway with new words were both inspiring and joyful.

 

Bill Fitzsimons first poem referenced the book by Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls.  In itself a thought-provoking book, Bill's writing took to task the one man in ten who taint the rest with their sexist entitled behaviours whilst women feel silenced to complain.  And his Hidden Figures noted that three female mathematicians working for NASA in the 1960s were neither featured nor acknowledged.  Houston might have been calling, but only for white-shirted white men.  He celebrated the work of Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan whose computer prowess supported John Glenn and focused on the safety of the mission.

 

Marie Paule Sheard's Monsoon Mirage was a poem of contrasts. Falling streams of monsoon rain create the silver bars of a cage at the door beyond which a female servant may not go.  She looks out at the light dancing on raindrops like diamonds she can never reach before the clouds return and she returns to her work.

 

Linda Marshall's poem told us She Couldn't Cook, despite it being expected of every women. Her heroine provided for her children with a balanced diet – bacon-flavoured crisps for breakfast, cheese and onion flavour for lunch and the roast beef variety for supper.  She avoided the sweet desserts – too unhealthy – and went for apple or beetroot crisps for a better diet. Her children clamoured for real food that was crisp-flavoured.

 

Myrna Moore's Skin was 'Beautiful no more except in the memory' as she reviewed the lives and deaths of Nicole Henry and Biba Smallman, murdered and ignored then defiled.  'Was it your melamine skin?' Her second poem was The Conversation, the words that deny recognition of children and women as part of humanity.  'For a fairer world shouldn't we all be feminists?'

 

Dru Long's writing Spoonfuls of Sugar had been inspired by the statue of a man who had been involved in the slave trade.  A child stolen, imprisoned, fitted with a metal collar, abused, frightened by the 'Cold wind that makes the sharp canes shiver.' Sugar in coffee, was it worth  it?  Fitting that the news today notes the Church of England has agreed to set up a £100 million fund to start to redress the Archbishop of Canterbury's description of their 'moral sin' in benefiting to the tune of billions from the slave trade.

 

Maria Sandle, with ukelele and guitar,  and Rob Baker on the melodeon teamed up to present two numbers.  Tear Down the Fences, music and lyrics by Ola Belle Read, a feisty banjo-playing social reformer from the Appalachians, wants to ...

 

'Tear down the fences that fence us all in

Then we could walk together again.'

 

Ola turned down a lucrative radio contract because she disapproved of their ethics and was devoted to advancing social justice and civil rights causes via her music.

 

Maria's own words in praise of Skipper Dora (Dora Walker) were a delightful celebration of the first woman skipper of a fishing boat on the North East coast and she is now memorialised by a wire statue on the cliffs at Whitby. First President of the Ladies Lifeboat Guild, the former WW1 nurse was a strong woman trailblazer indeed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dora_Walker

 

Malcolm Henshall wrote a bittersweet piece, Is Parking the Only Benefit?, on twins where one is born disabled after a problem birth.  One is ordinary, one is special. The boy walks to school, his sister is taxied.  The boy goes to university, his sister to a 'centre'. The boy will be cared for in old age by his children, his young sister is cared for by old parents.  The boy looks to the future, his sister …?

Only a Woman was a wry look at the failure of a male employee to grasp the woman he worked with was his boss.  His derisory comment to her 'What would you know?' rebounded on him when she did know – all  about sacking.

 

Jim Mallin wrote a sweet account of Greta Thunberg and her fight for climate change action from such a young age.  School striker to activist to international acknowledgement as a voice to be listened to.  Te men need to listen!

 

Finally, the group's former tutor, Liz McPherson, whose original work brought the group together, read our final poem I'm Going In!  Whoever cleans the bathroom – yes, normally a women reader of Mrs Hinch -  has to tackle the scum in the bath, the gymsweat grease, the beard hair residue, with fortitude and an array of fearsome chemicals.  A jolly jab at a task more usually done by long-suffering women.  Things have to change.

 

Harissa closed the show with Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.  Hear hear!