BBC & Older Women

From the Guardian:

When a male newsreader gets older, he becomes an authority; when a female newsreader gets older, she becomes a problem. Harriet Harman, equalities minister, says she heard this gem from a former senior executive at the Beeb. It's probably true, but hopefully it won't be for much longer. Last September, the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, decided that the real problem was not enough older women on the telly – and urged his news chiefs to employ more of them. Suddenly, from being a problem, 50-something women news anchors were in demand.

Now four of them are back in jobs. Just before Christmas, the BBC confirmed the appointments of Julia Somerville, Zeinab Badawi, Fiona Armstrong and Carole Walker . But why hadn't news bosses realised sooner that older women were perfect as news anchors? In many cultures, after all, older women are seen as the fount of wisdom and authority — who could be better for a job that requires lashings of both?

So will this be a flash in the pan? Or might this be a real change? I think it really could. Not only is it cheering that the BBC's head of news, Helen Boaden is herself, wait for it, a 50-something, but when you look Stateside you see a TV landscape in which older women news anchors have every bit as much status as older men (and a lot more, given their experience, than younger women).

Women Only Taxis

From the Jerusalem Post:

Taxis driven by women and exclusively serving the fairer sex are the rage in Arab capitals as women seek a safe and comfortable mode of transport.

Lebanon's Banet Taxi ('Taxi Girls'), sporting signature candy-pink taxis and well-kept uniformed drivers, began in March.

Now, following the Lebanese success, two Egyptian governors in Cairo and Alexandria have stirred controversy with proposals to service women-only taxis.

"It means isolation for women," Nehad Abul Komsan, Chairwoman of the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights told The Media Line. "It's very risky for our society. If it's an excuse to solve problems like sexual harassment or other types of violence, it's a very naïve solution for a very complicated problem."

Cairo's subway network already reserves the fourth and fifth carriages for women not wishing to sit with men.

In Damascus a similar women-only taxi initiative is being launched by Widad Kanafani, aiming to make transportation more secure for female passengers.

Dubai has had a women-only pink taxi service since 2007 and the Roads and Transport Authority will be launching a women-only bus service in April 2010 to accommodate an increasing number of female passengers.

In Jordan the Amman Municipality turned down a request to set up a taxi rank to serve women exclusively and employ female drivers with rose-colored vehicles, saying there were too many taxis in the capital already.

However, you heard it here first with: "Pink Equals Women Only" and "Mexico: Pink Only Taxis"

UK: Women Blackshirts

From BBC News:

..... speaking to the historian Julie Gottlieb (author of Feminine Fascism) I was surprised to learn that the first fascist political organisation in Britain was actually founded by a woman.

"It was called the fascisti, then changed its name to the British Fascists and it was founded... in 1923, by a Miss Rotha Lintorn-Orman," she told me.

Until then the most prominent political movement for women had been the Suffragettes.

Mother Was a Blackshirt will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 4 January at 1100 GMT.

Vatican Secret Archives

From the Telegraph:

A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan’s grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican’s Secret Archives that has been published for the first time.

The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.

High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots.

Noah's Ark Was Round

From the Guardian:

According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from god's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft.

The now battered tablet, aged about 3,700 years, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while serving in the RAF from 1945 to 1948.

There are dozens of ancient tablets that have been found which describe the flood story but Finkel says this one is the first to describe the vessel's shape.

Helen Lewis

From BBC News:

A Belfast-based choreographer who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp has died aged 93.

Helen Lewis, who had a long association with the Lyric Theatre, settled in Northern Ireland after WWII.

Born in Czechoslovakia, she trained as a dancer and having made a new life in Belfast became involved in dance teaching and choreography.

In 1992 she published a widely acclaimed autobiography A Time To Speak which recounted her time in the camp.

2010

Well, another year has begun. And I would like to thank all those who have dropped by over the last couple of years. I hope that you have found something of interest.

As always, I will try and find some news articles of interest - pertaining, of course, mainly to women - and from a variety of sources worldwide. There will also a few articles from archaeology and history. I will add a list of books that I find interesting - and feel free to add your own or add a link to a review (good or bad!).

And to anyone on Facebook or Myspace - feel free to click the "add as friend" button - and I'll return the add.

Well, off to source some news stories .... take care loyal readers!

Byzantium & Werewolves

From Medieval News:

A new article explores how Byzantine doctors treated people those suffering from lycanthropy, a mental disorder where a patient believes he or she is, or has transformed into, a wolf and behaves like one. This disease is the basis for the legendary werewolves.

In "Lycanthropy in Byzantine times (AD 330–1453)," four scholars from the University of Athens examine the writings of six Byzantine physicians to see what they believed lycanthropy was and how it should be treated.

Debunking the Myth of Lady Jane Grey

Excerpt from the article "Debunking the Myth of Lady Jane Grey" by Leanda de Lisle in Intelligent Life:

Lady Jane Grey is mythologised, even festishised, as an innocent girl sacrificed on the altar of her mother's ambition. But behind the popular biographies of the Tudor Queen lies a different story of misogyny and masochism. It seems the much-maligned mother is in fact the victim.

When I began researching for "The Sisters Who Would be Queen", my triple biography of Lady Jane and her sisters, Katherine and Mary Grey, I hoped the well-known life of the iconic teenage Queen, would lend some insight to the younger sisters, the forgotten heirs to Elizabeth Tudor. I assumed there would be little new to day about Jane herself. But as I began my research it became clear that nothing written about Jane could be trusted. The first woman to wield the power of a Tudor monarch had been reduced, over time, to an eroticised image of female helplessness. Meanwhile, her conventional mother became the embodiment of the belief that powerful women are monstrous and mannish.