Dawn.com: Peggy Reynolds.
WHEN I was a young lecturer a knock came at my office door. “Oh”, said the young man as I opened it, “So sorry — I was looking for Dr Reynolds.”
This is a story from the ‘olden days’ but things have not changed that much. I think of one eminent woman friend whose writing was criticised for “a streak of vulgarity”.
Or the colleague serving on a selection committee where a man expressed surprise at her support for another woman because she was “so much better looking”.
Women’s under-representation in all spheres of public life (in the UK) was the prompt for last week’s British Academy debate at the Culture Capital Exchange’s Inside Out Festival: ‘Where are all the women?’
Speakers included women working in film, business, nursing and the police, as well as two representatives from higher education, traditionally a place where women seem assured of a presence.
On another note – but on the same headline: While watching the Friday Sermon on MTA – Muslim Television Ahmadiyya – one may ask ‘Where are all the women’?
Most readers of The Muslim Times know that in the Bait ul Futuh Mosque in London the space for the ladies is equal to the space of the men and therefore they know that nearly the same number of ladies are present on the Friday prayers.
However, viewers from Arab countries for instance, where often ladies do not attend the Mosques, will not know this. I had suggested to MTA that they should, from time to time, give us a ‘glimpse’ of the ladies joining the prayers too. We do not need ‘close-ups’, just a general view to let viewers from afar know that ladies attend the mosque as well in the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at.
(Just a thought….)