Providing talks and articles by inspiring female figures for self-identifying women at the University of Cambridge
We are excited to announce our brand spanking new Spotify playlists!
Our resident DJs, Emmanuel College lawyer Gee Kim and engineer Martha Dillon, are continuing to curate a series of playlists that celebrate the female voice in all its shapes and forms. From Japanese jazz to Brazilian bossa nova, from downtime to the dancefloor, the @cambridgegirltalk Spotify has got it all.
Spotify has got it all.
(Main image: Still from ‘Pretty Girl Rock’, Keri Hilson, 2012)
I began this term by taking part in my College’s telephone campaign. In the middle of a Monday evening shift, after a series of voicemails and call-back-laters, I had the surprise privilege of speaking to a feminist activist from the 1970s.
‘I’m not sure how interested you are in feminism’, she said, before recounting how she had put her career as a history professor on hold to join a feminist cooperative in London. Over the course of forty-five minutes, she shared with me her conception of feminism, particularly stressing the importance of female solidarity. Remarkably, this retired academic told me that ‘Angelina Jolie’s feminism is good because she fights for others – other celebrities use feminism for themselves’. Has feminism indeed been appropriated for selfish means, a tool for securing a few more thousand social media followers rather than a collective struggle for equality?
In a world where some sisters do seem to be literally ‘doing it for themselves’, the current Guerrilla Girls’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery is an important reminder that girl power is alive, kicking and ready to complete the fight for equality. Continue reading Why you need to go and see the Guerrilla Girls exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery
Pass the milk tray. More than just a Christmas telly staple, Bridget Jones is a flawed feminist hero we can all learn a thing or two from.
The BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour Power List has established itself as a modern pantheon of female achievement and activism.
So, the inclusion of Bridget Jones into the list this year, which also included Margaret Thatcher, Beyoncé Knowles and Germaine Greer, created a small controversy, and not just because she’s a fictional character.
There’s certainly a case to say Bridget Jones is an anti-feminist figure. She is obsessed by her weight, getting on the scales multiple times a day. She flirts shamelessly with her lothario boss Daniel Cleaver, dreams of marital bliss with him and wears ‘sluttishly’ short skirts and see-through tops to the office in an attempt to achieve said bliss which she believes will be her happily ever after.
However, if we analyse her inclusion with the specific Woman’s Hour Power List criteria in mind: women who have positively impacted and reflected female British life in the past seventy years, then Ms. Jones seems rather excellently placed.
Most figures on the list are problematic in some way. Jenni Murray once said that Thatcher, ‘did nothing’ for women, as she got herself to the top but helped no women rise up with her. Greer is widely accused by third wave feminists as transphobic. Playing devil’s advocate, you could say that Beyoncé, a music industry puppet and media-trained machine who doesn’t write her own music and performs in revealing clothing, is hardly a role model for young girls.
It all comes down to that horribly overused word: empowerment. Beyoncé makes women feel like they can be comfortable in their own skin and that they can achieve anything. And before ‘Independent Woman’ and ‘Single Ladies’, there was Chaka Khan (and vodka). Continue reading Why Bridget Jones deserves her place on the Woman’s Hour Power List
