World Wide Woman

Physics can be feminine

2008-06-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

˗ Girls know that they can choose the same career path as guys, but they don’t want to. The challenge lies in how to show them that science studies can be “girlie”, and that scientists make the world better.

These are the words of meteorologist and scientist Camilla Schreiner at the Norwegian Centre for Science Education at the University of Oslo. She believes that youth culture, gender identity and role models are key elements when planning a career. Her new research project, Vilje-con-valg, deals with how youth choose or not choose science studies. Their priorities and choices will be studied through quantitative and qualitative research with the aim of identifying the criteria and priorities which cause girls and boys to choose or not choose science studies.

Reluctant to study gender

Schreiner’s doctoral thesis, Exploring a ROSE-garden: Norwegian youth's orientations towards science ˗ seen as signs of late modern identities, was based on the international research project ROSE ˗ The Relevance of Science Education. This project dealt with the attitudes 15-year-olds have towards science studies. At the time, Schreiner was reluctant to employ a gender perspective.

˗ I wasn’t interested in that. Quite the contrary. I didn’t want to have gender differences as a starting point. I felt that there were other, more interesting ways to categorise youth. But gender turned out to be important, she says.

Schreiner’s creative approach was to categorise the youths based on their answers. She ended up with eight different groups of pupils, each with their own characteristic profile, with certain interests and attitudes regarding science studies.

˗ But when I looked at the composition of the groups I noticed that they were gender specific. The groups were virtually all-female or all-male. I was surprised, but gender is a decisive factor. So with Vilje-con-valg we have chosen to make the gender perspective a central element.

Why do they choose so differently?

In the autumn of 2008, Schreiner and her research colleague Ellen Karoline Henriksen will collect data from students at all institutions that offer science studies. The project has a dual purpose. One is to tackle a problem in society. The project will offer critique and advice with regards to teaching methods.

˗ We also want to develop a better theoretical understanding of why girls and boys choose so differently. Hopefully, some of our PhD students will examine this matter, says Schreiner.

˗ There are vast differences between girls and boys, and there are also differences between girls and girls. But there is a strong link between gender and those values, ideals, and attitudes youth express with regards to choosing a career, she states.

Modern – not traditional

Camilla Schreiner has her own theory:

˗ It is a well-known fact that Norway is one of the world’s most progressive countries when it comes to equal opportunities for girls and boys. At the same time, our work force is extremely gender segregated. This division line is considered “traditional”. In my opinion it is modern. This is how Norwegian youth like to see themselves. Girls feel that they can choose between something that suits them and something that doesn’t suit them. So they choose something they feel suits them.

According to Schreiner, this is related to our culture and the modern zeitgeist. And it is related to how science studies are portrayed.

˗ We can’t encourage girls to choose like boys. They won’t do that. Instead, we have to show them that science studies can be feminine – that they can suit girls and their values and ideals. She picks up a copy of the science magazine Teknisk Ukeblad. Einstein is on the cover – complete with eye shadow and lipstick.

˗ A humorous attempt to show that physics can be feminine. Pushed to its extreme, this is the way to go. We have to show girls that physics can suit them, and then hope that they choose it.

Girls often express a desire to make the world better. Therefore they want to become doctors, psychologists or veterinarians, or they study the Humanities. In order to get more girls interested in engineering we have to show them that these professions make a positive contribution, Schreiner states.

Afraid to be geeks

Schreiner believes that a sustainable society requires new and different technological solutions to meet our modern needs.

˗ Engineers play a central role in this work. We need to find a new way to convey this fact to girls.

It is more acceptable for guys to be geeks, she says.

˗ Guys, more than girls, can be interested in a certain phenomenon without considering if it is relevant to society or how it can be put to use. It is more legitimate for guys than girls to study things like physics just because they find it interesting.

Idealism is necessary

Girls want to be able to say that their career choice is important and meaningful, says Schreiner. She believes that technology is just that.

˗ Think of certain elements of technological development. We have wafer thin computers and mobile phones with thousands of possibilities. At the same time we lack technology to make use of alternative energy sources. Does that say something about who is behind the technology? If more idealistic girls were involved in developing technology we might have had slightly bigger computers, but more environmental-friendly solutions. We have to show girls that this is a way to make the world better.

Translated by Vigdis Isachsen

This article is also publicised on http://kvinneriforskning.no/english/

Nina Strand frilanser@kilden.forskningsradet.no (17.03.2008)

Men as Violence Abolition Partner

2008-06-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Men as Violence Abolition Partner

Men erased violence over women? Impossible, they (read: men) was part of problem. How problem became solution? That was perhaps answer from radical feminism realm that had believe men was main subject of violence over women.

Is it possible that partnership to be done? What was became rationalization that partnership? What values that would be promoted men on this partnership?

Violence over women (VoW) was related with gender injustice problem. The problem, this matter was often mean in wrong way as men versus women problem. Whereas, there was 4 basic principles gender justice, which was injustice (a) wasn’t “fight” between men and women; (b) wasn’t problem about idea or movement of “anti-men”; (c) right men or women suffered and became victim although women was more suffer; and (d) because of that there was no other way, men and women must arm in arm to abolish VoW.

Partnership rationalization
Men was in power throne on society structure and violence over women was one of the power realizations. There are some principal that took role, which was patriarchy: all idea, relations, and stratification on society were arranged on men. Because of that, men got a privilege or special right that was got only because the gender men and society accepted it as something that should. Because of that, on many situation that born permissive attitude.

Thus, what reason that could push men to want to become women partner on stop VoW? On this point partnership social basis could be revealed.

Naturally, men weren’t violence subject. According to psychology research, almost 90% men of violence subject came from family or environment that usually used violence as a way to solve problem. Actually, men generally didn’t agree with violence, but they were majority group that didn’t voice and considered VoW as norm that had been accepted on society because of that 3P above.

Apparently there was paradoxical from this men power. In one side, violence always showed unconfident feeling, weak, and always worried the power as men would disappear or not be obeyed anymore. So, he must keep examining it by doing violence. In other side, many men was forced to enter to violence environment just because didn’t want to be called not part of manhood (men superiority).

Until here, we should realize just only few men that became subject and mostly didn’t do. Basically they didn’t agree, opposed, and felt became victim. Remember, although they didn’t do violence, they also had responsibility because let VoW around them.

Value that was promoted
There was many values that could became alternative from masculine values that very bias gender. There are 3 values that could be used men to be part, right individual or movement, on stopped VoW.

First, male-positive, which was believe they can changed and gave support to do change. Masculine values such power, dependability, and firmness that was believed during this previous time precisely could be use for change by promoted other masculine value, such as respect and valued equivalence.

Second, pro-feminism, which were men that had resolved to always fight suppression over women, sexism, and gender injustice. Became pro-feminism was made serious effort to develop non-oppressive masculinity form and relation with non-sexism women.

Third, marginalized-affirmative. Men were always determined to oppose every form of prejudice form toward marginal realm or minority like homophobia. They joined promoted gender relation that was equal and fair without differentiated whether they were marginal or not.

If what was revealed could became understanding and values on men inner body, so invited men as partner on VoW abolition.

How men friend, want to join? How also women friend, want to accept? Together we stopped violence over women right now.

Education and Gender in Indonesia

2008-05-28T03:15:00.000-07:00

written by : Gernandi Ganie

Equivalence: Gender Based Education
Education expense that every year became more expensive burdened student’s parents. In result, for student from poor people, school more became dream.

To enjoyed “qualified” education facilities became more impossible. Many school aged children from poor family continued their study in under standard quality school. That was important, they could reach the expense.

Expensive of education expense in Indonesia was caused by education commercialization wave. Education became commodity that was offered to student (student’s parent) with various expenses.

”Superior” categorized education expense of course was so high like sky. Many superior schools staked expensive education expense. Started from institution development contribution that millions rupiah, uniform expense, extracurricular activity expense, until text book that shouldn’t became student’s parent burden.

Education commercialization impact slowly would make rights discrimination to get education facility for children from poor family. Whereas, enjoyed education that had low expense and qualified was a form of human fundamental rights, social-economy-culture rights that should became country responsibility.

Government (country) that had promised to commitment to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had responsibility to facilitate basic education achievement effort for school aged children.

Rights to get education facility must be guaranteed through country subsidy continuously through proper country calculation allocation.

Unfortunately, philosophy UU No 12/2003 (UU Sisdiknas/National Education System) made education not fully country responsibility. Country as if freed their hand from financed education for society. Education precisely was freed as society “duty” to take part on education financing.

Not confused education calculation allocation in Indonesia that was staked on APBN still not fulfilled minimal limit 20%.

Minim of country calculation allocation for education program really would cause bad impact for commitment facilitated poor children right got proper education. There would be more school aged children that didn’t continued school.

Research data from Education Watch on 2007 said that reality tendency not continued school for children from poor family increased from its percentage. Data children from poor family that broken down school when was in elementary school increased became 24%, while that didn’t continued to junior high school became 21.7%. While school aged children from poor family that broken down when entered high school reached 18.3%, and that didn’t continue to high school from junior high school reached 29.5%.

Discrimination
Ironically, mostly school aged children from poor family that failed continued school from SD to SMP or from SMP to SMA majority (72.3%) was girl student.

School aged girls that didn’t continue school beside cause by minim of education expense from family, also because still trapped on parents patriarchy opinion.

School aged girl’s parent from poor family considered their daughter didn’t need to continue their school. It would be better if their daughter was married or pushed to work in public sector as servant or informal labor.

This kind of condition made school aged girl from poor family became social group that social-economy-culture rights was violated. They couldn’t get rights to get (enjoy) qualified and cheap expense education.

If those school aged girl from poor family might be could continue study until junior high school, they would sink became informal sector worker with low payment.

Read reality above, so actually education world in this country had discriminated girl rights.

Alternative education
For that this time need for alternative education activist realm to developed equivalence gender education program.

Steps were, first, need to formulate education curriculum reorientation that was sensitive gender so there was respect to girl’s rights.

Second, needed alternative education activist realm to urge for existence of education calculation subsidy ceiling that specially for school aged children from women community (poor family) so they could continue study at least until graduated high school.

Third, it needed to be implemented an equivalence education for girl realization program on various level and kind of education.

Fourth, equivalence on actualized self on process and learn-teach activity.

Gender identity

2008-05-18T05:39:00.000-07:00

Gender identity (or core gender identity) is a person's own sense of identification as male or female. The term is intended to distinguish this psychological association, from physiological and sociological aspects of gender. Gender identity was originally a medical term used to explain sex reassignment procedures to the public. The term is also found in psychology, often as core gender identity. Sociology, gender studies and feminism are still inclined to refer to gender identity, gender role and erotic preference under the catch-all term gender.
Gender identity is affected by "genetic, prenatal hormonal, postnatal social, and post pubertal hormonal determinants." Biological factors include the influence of testosterone and gene regulation in brain cells. Social factors are primarily based on the family, as gender identity is thought to be formed by the third year of life.

Gender identity - below the surface

Most human beings are considered to be cisgendered, attributed to either women or men, on the basis of their biological sex. Before the 20th century a person's sex would be determined entirely by the appearance of the genitalia, but as chromosomes and genes came to be understood, these were then used to help determine sex. Those defined as women, by sex, have genitalia that is considered female as well as two X chromosomes; those viewed as men, by sex, are seen as having male genitalia, one X and one Y chromosome. However some individuals have combinations of chromosomes, hormones, and genitalia that do not follow the traditional definitions of "men" and "women". In addition, genitalia vary greatly or individuals may have more than one type of genitalia, and other bodily attributes related to a person's sex (body shape, facial hair, high or deep voice, etc.) may or may not coincide with the social category, as woman or man. Recent research suggests that as many as one in every hundred individuals may have some intersex characteristic.

Transsexual individuals are those who wish to undergo physical surgery to refashion their primary sexual characteristics, secondary characteristics, or both. Typically this will involve removal of penis, testicles or breasts, or the fashioning of a vagina or breasts. Historically, such surgery has been performed on infants who present with ambiguous genitalia. However, current medical opinion is broadly against such procedures, shaped to a significant extent by the mature feedback of adults who regret these decisions being made on their behalf at their birth. Gender reassignment surgery (formerly sex change operations) elected by adults is also subject to several kinds of debate. One discussion involves the legal sex-gender status of transgender people, for marriage, retirement and insurance purposes, for example. Another involves whether such surgery is ethically sound. Is it a right people should be free to exercise, or is it a responsibility surgeons should accept only in cases of genuine need?

The most easily understood case in which it becomes necessary to distinguish between sex and gender is that in which the external genitalia are removed - when such a thing happens through accident or through deliberate intent, the libido and the ability to express oneself in sexual activity are changed, but the individual's gender identity may or may not change. One such case is that of David Reimer, reported in As Nature Made Him by John Colapinto. It details the persistence of a male gender identity and the stubborn adherence to a male gender role of a person whose penis had been totally destroyed shortly after birth as the result of a botched circumcision, and who had subsequently been surgically reassigned by constructing female genitalia. In other cases, a person's gender identity may contrast sharply with that assigned to them according to their genitalia, and/or a person's gendered appearance as a woman or man (or an androgynous person, etc.) in public may not coincide with their physical sex. So the term "gender identity" is broader than the sex of the individual as determined by examination of the external genitalia.

Gender identity and sex

Some people do not believe that their gender identity corresponds to their biological sex, namely transgender people, including transsexual people and many intersexed individuals as well. Consequently, complications arise when society insists that an individual adopt a manner of social expression (gender role) which is based on sex, that the individual feels is inconsistent with that person's gender identity.

One reason for such discordances in intersexed people is that some individuals have a chromosomal sex that has not been expressed in the external genitalia because of hormonal or other abnormal conditions during critical periods in gestation. Such a person may appear to others to be of one sex, but may recognize him self or herself as belonging to the other sex. The causes of transgenderism are less clear; it has been subject of much speculation, but no psychological theory has ever been proven to apply to even a significant minority of transgender individuals, and theories that assume a sex difference in the brain are relatively new and difficult to prove, because at the moment they require a destructive analysis of inner brain structures, which are quite small.

In recent decades it has become possible to surgically reassign sex. A person who experiences gender dysphoria may, then, seek these forms of medical intervention to have their physiological sex match their gender identity. Alternatively, some people who experience gender dysphoria retain the genitalia that they were born with (see transsexual for some of the possible reasons), but adopt a gender role that is consonant with what they perceive as their gender identity.

Relationship to gender role

There are probably as many shades and complexities of sexual identity and gender identity as there are human beings, and there are an equal number of ways of working those gender identities out in the intricacies of daily life. Societies, however, tend to assign some classes of social roles to "male" individuals, and some classes of social roles to "female" individuals (as society perceives their sexes). In some societies, there are other classes of social roles for, e.g., surgically neutered physiological male.Sometimes the connection between gender identity and gender role is unclear. The original oversimplification was that there are unambiguously male human beings and unambiguously female human beings, that they are clearly men and clearly women, and that they should behave in all important ways as women and men "naturally" behave. Investigations in biology and sociology have strongly supported the view that "the sex between the ears is more important than the sex between the legs", and the implication has been that people with masculine gender identities will truthfully give external representation of their gender identities by adopting gender roles that are appropriate to men, and, similarly, that people with feminine gender identities will adopt gender roles that are appropriate to women. It may be very difficult to determine, however, whether a specific drag queen is someone who has a female gender identity and is learning a female gender role, or whether that person is someone with a male gender identity who enjoys mimicking a female gender role to entertain others, to taunt the more rigid members of his society, or for some other reason, such as to repudiate the value or validity of rigid gender roles.

The Dimensions of Depression in Women

2008-05-17T03:54:00.000-07:00

Adolescence

Studies show that the higher incidence of depression in females begins in adolescence, when roles and expectations change dramatically. The stresses of adolescence include forming an identity, confronting sexuality, separating from parents, and making decisions for the first time, along with other physical, intellectual, and hormonal changes. These stresses are generally different for boys and girls, and may be associated more often with depression in females. Some researchers have suggested that men and women differ in their expression of emotional problems. In adolescence, boys are more likely to develop behavioral and substance abuse problems, while girls are more likely to become depressed.

Adulthood: relationships and work roles

Stress can contribute to depression in many people. The higher incidence of depression in women may not be due to greater vulnerability, but to the particular stresses that many women face. These stresses include major responsibilities at home and work, single parenthood, and caring for children and aging parents. Social expectations play a role here as well. In two career families, women are more likely to have responsibility for a greater share of child care and household responsibilities. Role conflict is also an issue, as debate continues regarding whether women need to choose between family and work responsibilities, and about which choice is the "proper" one.

Reproductive events

Women's reproductive events include the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, the post pregnancy period, infertility, menopause, and sometimes, the decision not to have children. These events bring fluctuations in mood that for some women include depression. Researchers have confirmed that hormones have an effect on brain chemistry. Changes in emotions and mood often result. The specific biological mechanism explaining hormonal involvement in depression is not known.

Many women experience certain behavioral and physical changes associated with phases of their menstrual cycles. In some women, these changes are severe, occur regularly, and include depressed feelings, irritability, and other emotional and physical changes. Called premenstrual syndrome, its relation to depressive disorders is not yet understood. Some have questioned whether it is, in fact, a disorder. Further research will eventually add to our understanding of this condition.

Postpartum depressions can range from transient "blues" following childbirth to severe, incapacitating, psychotic depressions. Studies suggest that women who experience depression after childbirth very often have had prior depressive episodes. However, for most women, postpartum depressions are transient, with no adverse consequences.

Pregnancy (if it is desired) seldom contributes to depression, and having an abortion does not appear to lead to a higher incidence of depression. Women with infertility problems may be subject to extreme anxiety or sadness, though it is unclear if this contributes to a higher rate of depressive illness. In addition, young motherhood may be a time of heightened risk for depression, due to the increased stress.

Personality and psychology

Studies show that individuals with certain characteristics-- pessimistic thinking, low self-esteem, a sense of having little control over life events, and proneness to excessive worrying-- are more likely to develop depression. These attributes may heighten the effect of stressful events or interfere with taking action to cope with them. Some experts have suggested that the traditional upbringing of girls might foster these traits and that may be a factor in the higher rate of depression in women.

Other researchers have suggested that women are not more vulnerable to depression than men, but simply express or label their symptoms differently. Women may be more likely to admit feelings of depression, brood about their feelings, or seek professional assistance. Men, on the other hand, may be socially conditioned to deny such feelings or to bury them. Men also have a greater tendency to "act out" when they are under stress. This results in higher rates of alcoholism in men, and higher rates of physical violence.

Victimization

Studies show that women molested as children are more likely to have clinical depression at some time in their lives than those with no such history. In addition, several studies show a higher incidence of depression among women who were raped as adults. Since far more women than men were sexually abused as children, these findings are relevant. Women who experience other commonly occurring forms of abuse, such as physical abuse and sexual harassment on the job, also may experience higher rates of depression. Abuse may lead to depression by fostering low self-esteem, a sense of helplessness, self-blame, and social isolation. At present, more research is needed to understand whether victimization is connected specifically to depression.

Poverty

Women and children represent seventy-five percent of the US. population considered poor. Some researchers are exploring the possibility that poverty is one of the "pathways to depression." Low economic status brings with it many stresses, including isolation, uncertainty, frequent negative events, and poor access to helpful resources. Sadness and low morale are more common among persons with low incomes and those lacking social supports. But research has not yet established whether depression is more prevalent among those facing environmental stressors such as these. One very large study has shown that depression tends to equally effect the poor and the rich.

Depression in later adulthood

Once, depression at menopause was considered a unique illness known as "involutional melancholia." Research has shown, however, that depressive illnesses are no different, and no more likely to occur, at menopause than at other ages. In fact, the women most vulnerable to change-of-life depression are those with a history of past depressive episodes. An old theory, the "empty nest syndrome", stated that when children leave home, women may experience a profound loss of purpose and identity that leads to depression. However, studies show no increase in depressive illness among women at this stage of life.

As with younger age groups, more elderly women than men suffer from depressive illness. Similarly, for all age groups, being unmarried (which includes widowhood) is also a risk factor for depression. Despite this, depression should not be dismissed as a normal consequence of the physical, social and economic problems of later life. In fact, studies show that most older people feel satisfied with their lives.

About 800,000 persons are widowed each year, most of them are older, female, and experience varying degrees of depressive symptomatology. Most do not need formal treatment, but those who are moderately or severely sad appear to benefit from self-help groups or psychotherapy. Remarkably, a third of widows/widowers meet criteria for major depressive episode in the first month after the death, and half of these remain clinically depressed 1 year later. These depressions respond to psychotherapy and standard antidepressant medications.

Treatment for Depression

Even severe depression can be highly responsive to treatment. Indeed, believing one's condition is "incurable" is often part of the hopelessness that accompanies serious depression. Information about the effectiveness of modern treatments for depression is clear. As with other psychological problems, the earlier treatment begins, the more effective it is. Of course, treatment will not eliminate life's inevitable stresses and ups and downs. But it can greatly enhance your ability to manage such challenges and lead to greater enjoyment of life.

Types of treatment for depression

The most commonly used treatments for depression are psychotherapy and antidepressant medication, or a combination of the two. Which of these is the right treatment for an individual depends on the nature and severity of the depression and, to some extent, on individual preference. In mild or moderate depression, psychotherapy is most likely the most appropriate treatment But, in severe or incapacitating depression, medication is generally recommended, in addition to psychotherapy. In combined treatment, medication can relieve physical symptoms quickly, while psychotherapy allows you to learn more effective ways of handling your problems.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is used to treat depression in several ways. First, supportive counseling can help to ease the pain of depression, and can address the hopelessness of depression. Second, cognitive therapy works to change the pessimistic ideas, unrealistic expectations, and overly critical self-evaluations that create the depression and sustain it. Cognitive therapy can help the depressed person recognize which life problems are critical, and which are minor. It also helps them to develop positive life goals, and a more positive self-assessment. Third, problem solving therapy is usually needed to change the areas of the person's life that are creating significant stress, and contributing to the depression. This may require behavioral therapy to develop better coping skills, or Interpersonal therapy, to assist in resolving relationship problems. Research has shown that these psychotherapies are particularly helpful for treating depression.

Medications

Except in the more severe depressions, and bipolar depression, medication is usually an option, rather than a necessity. Antidepressant medication does not cure depression, it only helps you to feel better by controlling certain symptoms. If you are depressed because of life problems, such as relationship conflicts, divorce, loss of a loved one, job pressures, financial crises, serious medical problems in yourself or a family member, legal problems, or problems with your children, taking a pill will not make those problems go away.

The medications used to treat depression include tricyclic antidepressants, monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs), and bupropion. Each acts on different chemical pathways of the human brain related to moods. Antidepressant medications are not habit-forming. To be effective, medications must be taken for about 4-6 months (in a first episode), carefully following the doctor's instructions. Medications must be monitored to ensure the most effective dosage and to minimize side effects.

Your prescribing doctor will provide information about possible side-effects and/or dietary restrictions. Always remember that all prescription drugs have potential side effects. In addition, other medically prescribed medications being used should be reviewed because some can interact negatively with antidepressant medication.

Pregnant, Nursing, or Childbearing-Age Women

In general, during pregnancy, all medications (including psychotherapeutic medications) should be avoided where possible, and other methods of treatment should be tried.

A woman who is taking a psychotherapeutic medication and plans to become pregnant should discuss her plans with her doctor; if she discovers that she is pregnant, she should contact her doctor immediately. During early pregnancy, there is a possible risk of birth defects with some of these medications, and for this reason:

1) Lithium is not recommended during the first 3 months of pregnancy.

2) Benzodiazepines are not recommended during the first 3 months of pregnancy.

The decision to use a psychotherapeutic medication should be made only after a careful discussion with the doctor concerning the risks and benefits to the woman and her baby.

Small amounts of medication pass into the breast milk; this is a consideration for mothers who are planning to breast-feed.

A woman who is taking birth-control pills should be sure that her doctor is aware of this. The estrogen in these pills may alter the breakdown of medications by the body, for example increasing side effects of some antianxiety medications and/or reducing their efficacy to relieve symptoms of anxiety.

source : psychologyinfo

The Nobel Prize For Literature Goes To Doris Lessing!

2008-05-14T05:11:00.000-07:00

The 87-year- old British Novelist Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for literature, proving an official wrong, who had once remarked about her inefficiency to do so. Ironically, she found out about her prestigious award from a reporter who was waiting outside her house. She was delighted at being the chosen one, and revealed that having won literally all the prizes in Europe, this addition gave her the �royal flush�.

Doris sat talking to the media persons on her front door step, with the phone ringing behind her continuously. She informed how she had taken her son to the hospital and then was in the Heath, and was unaware of the prize, but was glad that now people would buy her books. She initially mistook the television crew for photographing the street for some television soap, and was quite surprised to know that she was the actual center of attraction. So, finally she would be earning good money, she stated casually!

Lessing spoke about her next venture, Alfred and Emily an anti-war book, dedicated solely to her parents. They had gone through the horrifying experiences of the World War One and she had given them ordinary, decent lives without war, through her book. The second half of the book has been picked up from the lives of her parents, as her father was wounded before the 1917 battle of Passchendaele, suffering for the rest of his life.

Doris has a message to convey to the people and politicians, regarding the ill effects of war, mentioning that only those who have gone through this hell can know what it�s like. Her agent, who had read the manuscript, has described the last 200 pages of �Alfred and Emily� as �unbearably painful�. This elated her further, for if reading about the dreadful consequences of war could move one person, it might make a difference somewhere in the system. We sincerely wish her good luck in her endeavor to wash away war from our planet!

On being questioned whether she would refuse the Nobel Prize like �some good people� had in the past, she said she hadn�t contemplated on the issue and would think about it seriously now.

Source : womanlifestyle

Woman and Depression

2008-05-13T03:35:00.001-07:00

Women are more likely to become depressed than men. Because of this fact, Psychology Information Online provides information about women and depression, including diagnosis, possible causes and risk factors that might be responsible for the higher rate of depression in women, and what to do if you think you are depressed.

What Every Woman Should Know About Depression

Life is full of emotional ups and downs. But when the "down" times are long lasting or interfere with an individual's ability to function, that person may be suffering from a common, but serious psychological problem - depression

Clinical depression affects your physical well-being, resulting in chronic fatigue, sleep problems, and changes in appetite. It affects your mood, with feelings of sadness, emptiness, hopelessness and dysphoria. It affects the way you think, interfering with concentration and decision making. And, it affects your behavior, with increased irritability and loss of temper, social withdrawal, and a reduction in your desire to engage in pleasurable activities. Research indicates that in the United States more than 17 million people experience depression each year, and nearly two thirds do not get the help they need. Proper treatment would alleviate the symptoms in over 80 percent of the cases. Yet, because depression is often unrecognized, depressed individuals often continue to suffer needlessly.

Women are almost twice as likely as men to experience depression. Research continues to explore how this psychological problem affects women. At the same time, it is important for women to increase their awareness of what is already known about depression, so that they seek early and appropriate treatment.

What is Depression?

Depression is a "whole-body" illness, involving your body, mood, and thoughts. It affects the way you eat and sleep, the way you feel about yourself, and the way you think about things. A depressive disorder is not the same as a passing blue mood. It is not a sign of personal weakness or a condition that can be willed or wished away. People with depression cannot merely "pull themselves together" and get better. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months, or years. Appropriate treatment, however, can help most people who have depression.

The symptoms of depression vary from person to person, and the intensity of the symptoms depends on the severity of the depression. Depression causes changes in thinking, feeling, behavior, and physical well-being.

There are three primary types of depression: Major Depression; Dysthymia; and Bipolar Depression. In addition to these primary depressions, many people also develop a "reactive depression," which may be less severe, but still requires psychological treatment. A reactive depression occurs when you develop many of the symptoms of depression in response to the stress of a major life problem, but they are not severe enough to be considered a major depression. If these milder symptoms of depression occur without a clear life stress as the cause, and the depression has not lasted long enough to by considered dysthymia, then it is called an Unspecified Depression. Other depressions may be caused by the physiological effects of a medical condition, or by substance abuse. The specific depression label, beyond the three primary types of depression and reactive depression, will not be reviewed here.

Major depression - Also known as unipolar or clinical depression, people have some or all of the depression symptoms listed below for at least 2 weeks or as long as several months or even longer. Episodes of the illness can occur once, twice, or several times in a lifetime.

Dysthymia - The same symptoms are present. However they are usually milder, but last at least two years. People with dysthymia also can experience major depressive episodes.

Manic-depression - This is also called bipolar disorder. This type of depression is not nearly as common as other forms of depression. It involves disruptive cycles of depressive symptoms that alternate with euphoria, irritable excitement, or mania.

The Symptoms of Depression and Mania

You should talk to a psychologist for an evaluation, if you experience several of the following symptom clusters, and the symptoms persist for more than two weeks, or if they interfere with your work or your family life. However, not everyone with depression experiences all of these symptoms, and the severity of the symptoms also varies from person to person.

Depression

Persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" mood
Loss of interest or pleasure in your usual activities, including sex
Restlessness, irritability, or excessive crying
Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness, hopelessness, pessimism
Sleeping too much or too little, early morning awakening
Appetite and/or weight loss or overeating and weight gain
Decreased energy, fatigue, feeling "slowed down"
Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts
Difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
Persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment, such as headaches, digestive disorders, or chronic pain

Mania

Abnormally elevated mood
Irritability
Severe insomnia
Grandiose notions
Increased talking
Racing thoughts
Increased activity, including sexual activity
Markedly increased energy
Poor judgment that leads to risk-taking behavior
Inappropriate social behavior

Some people mistakenly try to control their depressive symptoms through alcohol or other mood-altering drugs. While such drugs may provide temporary relief, they will eventually complicate the depressive disorder and its treatment, and can lead to dependence and the life adjustment problems that come with it. Many people with drug and alcohol problems have an underlying depression. Additionally, the chronic substance abuse leads to the development of additional pessimistic perceptions of life, and additional stressors that can create depression.

Women at Greater Risk for Depression than Men

Major depression and dysthymia affect twice as many women as men. This two-to-one ratio exists regardless of racial and ethnic background or economic status. The same ratio has been reported in eleven other countries all over the world. Men and women have about the same rate of bipolar disorder (manic depression), though its course in women typically has more depressive and fewer manic episodes. Also, a greater number of women have the rapid cycling form of bipolar disorder, which may be more resistant to standard treatments.

Many factors unique to women are suspected to play a role in developing depression. Research is focused on understanding these factors, including: reproductive, hormonal, genetic or other biological factors; abuse and oppression; interpersonal factors; and certain psychological and personality characteristics. But, the specific causes of depression in women remain unclear. Many women exposed to these stress factors do not develop depression. Remember, depression is a treatable psychological problem, and treatment is effective for most women

source :psychologyinfo

Feminist Effects on religion

2008-05-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

The feminist movement has had a great effect on many aspects of religion. In liberal branches of Protestant Christianity, women are now ordained as clergy, and in Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, women are now ordained as rabbis and cantors. Within these Christian and Jewish groups, women have gradually become more nearly equal to men by obtaining positions of power; their perspectives are now sought out in developing new statements of belief. These trends, however, have been resisted within Islam and Roman Catholicism. All the mainstream denominations of Islam, (the vast majority of Sunni and Shi'i scholars,) forbid the imamate of women over men in prayer. Yet, the past has not been absent of female scholars of Islam — in all disciplines — (as it would have to profile nearly ten thousand women, or roughly forty volumes). Rather, it is the present that is showing this absence, if indeed it is showing one. [See: Akram, Mohammad Nadwi, (Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies), al-Muhaddithât] Liberal movements within Islamhave nonetheless persisted in trying to bring about feminist reforms in Muslim societies. Roman Catholicism has historically excluded women from entering the main Church hierarchy and does not allow women to hold any positions as clergy except as nuns. However, given the shortage of new priests, key roles in Roman Catholic churches are increasingly being filled by lay ministers, 80% of whom are women.^[1]

The movement also has had an important role in embracing new forms of religion. Neopagan religions especially tend to emphasise the importance of Goddess spirituality, and question what they regard as traditional religion's hostility to women and the sacred feminine. In particular Dianic Wicca is a religion whose origins lie within radical feminism. Among traditional religions, the feminist movement has led to self examination, with reclaimed positive Christian and Islamic views and ideals of Mary, Islamic views of Fatima Zahra, and especially to the Catholic belief in the Coredemptrix, as counterexamples. However, criticism of these efforts as unable to salvage corrupt church structures and philosophies continues. Some argue that Mary, with her status as mother and virgin, and as traditionally the main role model for women, sets women up to aspire to an impossible ideal and also thus has negative consequences on human sense of identity and sexuality. Others argue that greater emphasis on Mary, as the symbolic embodiment of nurturance and feminine wisdom, is greatly needed to bring Christianity back to Christ's core teachings on love.

While feminism has affected religion, feminism's roots in America can be traced back to religious activism. Women, through involvement in religious social activism movements such as temperance (an attempt to stop domestic violence), abolition, and others, began to draw their collective attention to the conditions and rights of women. ^[2]

A separate article on God and gender discusses how monotheistic religions reconcile their theologies with contemporary gender issues and how the modern feminist movement has influenced the theology of many religions.

History of Feminist Movement

2008-05-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

The feminist movement reaches far back before the 18th century, but the seeds of modern feminist movement were planted during the late part of that century. The earliest works on the so-called "woman question" criticised the restrictive role of women, without necessarily claiming that women were disadvantaged or that men were to blame.

Prior to 1850

Christine de Pizan, a late medieval writer, was possibly the earliest feminist in the western tradition. She is believed to be the first woman to make a living out of writing. Feminist thought began to take a more substantial shape during The Enlightenment with such thinkers as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and the Marquis de Condorcet championing women's education. The first scientific society for women was founded in Middleberg, a city in the south of the Dutch republic, in 1785. Journals for women which focused on issues like science became popular during this period as well.

During the period of the French Revolution two of the first works that can unambiguously be called feminist appeared. In the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), Olympe de Gouges paraphrased the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), a central document of the Revolution. By modern standards, or in comparison to Olympe de Gouges, her English contemporary Mary Wollstonecraft's comparison of women to the nobility, the elite of society, coddled, fragile, and in danger of intellectual and moral sloth in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) does not sound like a feminist argument, but Wollstonecraft believed that both sexes contributed to this situation and took it for granted that women had considerable power over men.

Harriet Martineau, an English writer and philosopher, renowned in her day as a controversial journalist, political economist, abolitionist and life-long feminist, is known as "the mother of sociology". She highlighted the importance of women's issues as an essential component to the study of society. Although she presumed her readers to be male, Martineau directed their attention to the study of the household and the domestic role of women in culture as necessary for a sociological study. She contributed to classical social theory, and recently has been argued to be on par with the canonical masters. She felt that the contradiction between principles and conduct was a particularly striking feature of American society in her time. No society so formally and self consciously had ever stated its moral principles, as they are stated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In particular, she was struck with the contradiction between the professed equality of all men with the institution of slavery and the subjugation of women. She recommends paying attention to the status of women as an indicator of a society’s moral status.

In the 19th century

The movement is generally said to have begun in the 19th century as people increasingly adopted the perception that women are oppressed in a male-centred society (see patriarchy). The feminist movement is rooted in the West and especially in the reform movement of the 19th century. The organized movement is dated from the first Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. John Stuart Mill, with the influence of his wife Harriet Taylor, made a considerable contribution with his work The Subjection of Women, in the mid-19th Century.

Emmeline Pankhurst was one of the founders of the suffragette movement and aimed to reveal the institutional sexism in British society, forming the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). Often the repeated jailing for forms of activism that broke the law, particularly property destruction, inspired members to go on hunger strikes. As a result of the resultant force-feeding that was the practice, these members became very ill, serving to draw attention to the brutality of the legal system at the time and to further their cause. In an attempt to solve this, the government introduced a bill that became known as the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed women to be released when they starved themselves to dangerous levels, then to be re-arrested later.

Other notable 19th-century feminists include, Susan B. Anthony, Emma Goldman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, Margaret Sanger, Margaret Fuller

The feminist movement in the Arab world saw Egyptian jurist Qasim Amin, the author of the 1899 pioneering book Women's Liberation (Tahrir al-Mar'a), as the father of the Egyptian feminist movement. In his work, Amin criticized some of the practices prevalent in his society at the time, such as polygamy, the veil, and women's segregation. He condemned them as un-Islamic and contradictory to the true spirit of Islam. His work had an enormous influence on women's political movements throughout the Islamic and Arab world, and is read and cited today. Less known, however, are the women who preceded Amin in their feminist critique of their societies. The women's press in Egypt started voicing such concerns since its very first issues in 1892.

In China, the 19th century feminist movement found root in local social groups supporting the anti foot binding movement for girls, along with the establishment of the first girls' school in Shanghai (part of the Hundred Days Reforms in 1898). In her book Women in the Chinese Enlightenment (1999), author Wang Zheng outlines the basic rise of feminism in late 19th century China, as well as the feminist movement tied with the May 4th Movement. After that point, feminism and new emphasis for women's social equality were used as core political platforms by the early Republic of China (after 1911), by both the Kuomintang Party and the Communist Party of China.

In the 20th century

Many countries began to grant women the vote in the early years of the 20th century, especially in the final years of the First World War and the first years after the war. The reasons for this varied, but included a desire to recognize the contributions of women.

The 1920s were an important time for women, who, in addition to gaining the vote also gained legal recognition in many countries. However, in many countries, women lost the jobs they had gained during the war. In fact, women who had held jobs prior to the war were sometimes compelled to give up their jobs to returning soldiers, partly due to a conservative backlash, and partially through societal pressure to reward the soldiers. Many women continued to work in blue collar jobs, on farms, and traditionally female occupations. Women did make strides in some fields such as nursing. In Nigeria, the Igbo Women's War of 1929 saw women demanding a greater role in local politics.

In both World Wars, manpower shortages brought women into traditionally male occupations, ranging from munitions manufacturing and mechanical work to a female baseball league. By demonstrating that women could do "men's work", and highlighting society's dependence on their labour, this shift encouraged women to strive for equality. In World War II, the popular icon Rosie the Riveter became a symbol for a generation of working women.

The rise of socialism and communism advanced the rights of women to economic parity with men in some countries. Women were often encouraged to take their place as equals in these societies, although they rarely enjoyed the same level of political power as men, and still often faced very different social expectations.

In some areas, regimes actively discouraged the feminist movement and women's liberation. In Nazi Germany, a very hierarchical society was idealized where women maintained a position largely subordinate to men. Women's activism was very difficult there, and in other societies that deliberately set out to restrict women's, and men's, gender roles, such as Italy, and much later Afghanistan.

Early feminists are often called the first wave feminists, and feminists after about 1960 are called the second wave feminists. Second wave feminists were concerned with gaining full social and economic equality, having already gained almost full legal equality in many western nations. One of the main fields of interest to these women was in gaining the right to contraception and birth control, which were almost universally restricted until the 1960s. With the development of the first birth control pill feminists hoped to make it as available as possible. Many hoped that this would free women from the perceived burden of mothering children they did not want; they felt that control of reproduction was necessary for full economic independence from men. Access to abortion was also widely demanded, but this was much more difficult to secure because of the deep societal divisions that exists over the issue. To this day, abortion remains controversial in many parts of the world.

Many feminists also fought to change perceptions of female sexual behaviour. Since it was often considered more acceptable for men to have multiple sexual partners, many feminists encouraged women into "sexual liberation" and having sex for pleasure with multiple partners. The extent to which most women in fact changed their behaviour, first of all because many women had already slept with multiple partners, and secondly because most women still remained in mainly monogamous relationships, is debatable. However, it seems clear that women becoming sexually active since the 1980s are relatively more sexually active than previous generations. Moreover, much of the taboo of sexuality evaporated within Western societies as women in monogamous and open relationships asserted their right to enjoy and not regret or be shamed by sexuality. (See: Sexual revolution)

These developments in sexual behavior have not gone without criticism by some feminists. They see the sexual revolution primarily as a tool used by men to gain easy access to sex without the obligations entailed by marriage and traditional social norms. They see the relaxation of social attitudes towards sex in general, and the increased availability of pornography without stigma, as leading towards greater sexual objectification of women by men. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin gained notoriety in the 1980s by attempting to classify pornography as a violation of women's civil rights.

In the 1990s, various strands of feminism that emphasized what they perceived as failures of second-wave feminism were given the name third-wave feminism. Third-wave feminists often claim that second-wave feminism form an essentialist definition of femininity that assumes a universal female identity and experience and so tends to exclude poor women, women of color, and gay women. Third wave feminism is thus made up of a number of diverse elements, each emphasizing the different ways in which feminism might apply to particular groups; these include womanism, queer theory, and postmodern feminism

Source : wikipedia

Paula Rego

2008-05-07T20:32:00.000-07:00

By Professor Paul Coldwell ©

The dreams, however could not help me over my feeling of disorientation. On the contrary, I had lived as if under constant inner pressure. At times this became so strong that I suspected there was some psychic disturbance in myself. Therefore I twice went over all the details of my entire life, with particular attention to childhood memories; for I thought there might be something in my past, which I could not see and which might possibly be the cause of the disturbance. But this retrospection led to nothing but a fresh acknowledgement of my own ignorance. Thereupon I said to myself, "Since I know nothing at all, I shall simply do whatever occurs to me." Thus I consciously submitted myself to the impulses of the unconscious. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. C.G.Jung

Paula Rego is one of the most celebrated and , I would suggest, problematic artists currently working in Britain. She has continually renewed her practice, which has included the cut, paste and painted collages of the 1950s and 60s, the animal pictures of the 80s which developed into the more grounded grand compositions, the large pastels through to the present obsessive fixation with working directly from the observed experience, in order to delve into her imagination. While many contemporary artists, especially women, have embraced new media and processes to discover a personal visual language, Rego has steadfastly engaged herself within the complexities of traditional practice, seeking to take on the challenge of painting. Parallel to this, she has produced a profound body of work as a printmaker, the subject of this retrospective, in which once again she works within established modes of practice, in her case predominantly intaglio and more recently lithography. Her prints shadow the changes and innovations within her practice as a painter, while always retaining an exploration of the very special qualities of light and dark that is particular to the medium. Her pressing concern is to tell a story, everything else is subordinate to this end. In her Graphic work, as in her painting, Rego is a great storyteller who both persuasively and subversively seizes you at the first encounter, and then keeps a relentless grip on your mind and senses until she has finished her complex, infinitely subtle and reverberating tales (Tom Rosenthal)

There are two central pillars to an understanding of Paula Rego the artist. Firstly that she is pre eminently a draughtswoman of extraordinary range, both stylistically and emotionally, and secondly that she is the quintessential storyteller. Together, these two attributes make printmaking a highly appropriate medium within which to explore her fertile and often dark imagination.

She is, I believe, one of those rare creators whose body of work produced through printmaking extends and deepens our understanding of the artist's personality. It is impossible to evaluate Rego's art without a serious and due consideration of her prints. This exhibition provides the first opportunity to see this body of work together as a whole. They include the rarely seen early experiments made in the 1950's, the now familiar etchings of the Nursery Rhymes and Peter Pan and the lithographs of Jane Eyre. The exhibition would not have been possible without the thorough research by Tom Rosenthal, which resulted in the sumptuous publication of Paula Rego, The Complete Graphic Work in 2003. This book documents all her prints to date, provides a valuable commentary and points to the changing role that print has played within her oeuvre.

If Paula Rego is a storyteller then she herself is also the centre of a life story that has the ingredients of an opera libretto. Her story is well documented in the monograph by John McEwen, which details her childhood in Portugal, her studies at the Slade, her marriage to the painter Victor Willing, and her life in London. Her work openly draws on her own childhood experiences, her relationships, responsibilities and family life with all its complexities. Vic Willing more specifically defines her concerns as being, 'domination and rebellion, suffocation and escape'. Her childhood in Portugal was a mixture of upper middle class privilege (her father an engineer and anglophile) and the company of servants. The Portugal she grew up in was under the dictatorship of Salazar, a country held in tension and somewhat isolated from the rest of Europe.

She attended an English school in Portugal before being sent to a finishing school in Kent. From there she went on to study at the Slade under William Coldstream in the company of students who were to become leading figures in the British art scene; Craigie Aitchison, Michael Andrews, Euan Uglow and her future husband Victor Willing. I would recommend John McEwen's monograph on Rego as a rich source for further study. But while Rego has lived in London continuously since 1976 the landscapes and places in her work recall her childhood in Portugal. For Rego her work is a way of revisiting, re ordering and perhaps reclaiming this birthplace.

It is also her childhood that provides clues to the roots of her graphic art; a solitary childhood with her appetite for stories fed by her grandparents and aunts who would tell her stories recalled from memory, Blanco y negro (a publication full of tales told through drawings presented in a bold comic style), the tradition of painted Portuguese tiles, the illustrations of amongst others, Cruickshank, Dore and Gillray and the discovery later on of Dubuffet, outsider art and of course Goya. This mixture of high and low culture, paintings, illustrations, stories and storytellers form the background from which Rego's printmaking has grown.

Storytelling places the emphasis on the narrator who can reinvent the story afresh for each telling. In this oral tradition, meaning is not fixed in the manner of the written text, but reframed each time, often in direct response to the listener. In her work and with particular reference to her prints, Rego, recalling and revisiting her childhood, takes on the role of the narrator herself. She invents her own stories, freely interprets existing ones and delights in the telling and retelling.

Rego had her first introduction to printmaking in 1954 from Anthony Gross who taught etching at the Slade. Gross was celebrated as the master of the etched and engraved line and in her early experiments, his influence is evident, in particular in the linear composition of The Bull Fight. There first prints, while remaining in most cases unresolved as images, already point to a pleasure in the medium and an understanding of the delicacy of line possible through etching. Later on she was introduced to the technique of aquatint by Bartolomeu dos Santos, the Portuguese etcher. She explores this process in the small prints Two Monkeys and The Nightmare, bringing a solidity and degree of resolution to these images.

In 1982 Rego worked with Alan Cox on three large format lithographs, which refer to the Red Monkey paintings she had completed, and point forward to the Operas. They are ambitious works but something of the delicacy and clarity that she was able to achieve in the paintings had been lost. Colour lithography requires a separate drawing for each colour and it is possible that considering the speed and directness of her painting at this stage, this process was simply be too slow and indirect. When she returned to lithography almost twenty years later, her approach was dramatically different. Whereas these earlier lithographs were worked on as paintings using brush and lithographic ink, the later prints would explore the drawn mark, using lithographic pencils and crayons to extend her vocabulary of drawing.

It was not until 1987 that Paula re engaged with printmaking and began a sustained commitment that has continued to the present. Edward Totah Gallery staged an exhibition of her acrylic paintings, Girls & Dogs, for which she approached me to work with her on a set of related etchings. This followed The Young Predators, an etching she had made with me at the Culford Press a few months earlier for a portfolio for the Royal College of Art.

In the making of the Girl & Dog series she established her mondus operandi, which has remained unchanged since. Firstly, she would publish her own work, providing her with the freedom to explore and take risks, independent of external pressures. Secondly, the initial stages of all the series of prints would be the subject of secrecy, close to the contract of the confessional. Secrets would be exchanged and entrusted, thereby creating a climate conducive for risk taking, invention and occasional failure, secrecy itself being one of the predominant themes in her work. Thirdly, she would deploy a direct form of printmaking where she is physically involved and maintains control.

I had established the Culford Press with my wife, the painter Charlotte Hodes, in 1985 in a small room adjacent to the kitchen in our terraced house in Hackney. It was cramped, crudely equipped and set up primarily to publish our own work, but it provided an informal, secret location, which matched Rego's requirements.

The procedure for working on Girls & Dogs was straightforward. I would prepare a number of plates, just off square, with smoked hard ground, providing a black matt surface through which Paula could draw. Paula would work on the plates in her studio, initially drawing onto the wax with gouache, before drawing through the wax with an etching needle. She would then bring the plates round, (accompanied always by an abundance of croissants and pastries) to begin etching. The drawing at this stage would be linear and stark. The quality of the line would then be determined by the length of time in the acid, the longer in the acid, the darker the line. I would pull trial proofs so that she could see the image, now reversed through the printing process and make decisions on how to progress. It should be said that I was relatively inexperienced at working with another artist and that patience was required as we both had to learn to work together while I also had to sharpen up my technical skills. At this stage we didn't have access to an aquatint box so all the aquatints were hand shaken through a variety of scrim and old tights, providing a range from very fine through to course aquatints. The Girls & Dog etchings have a particular raw quality, in many cases foul biting was embraced as an addition to surface and texture, and aquatints applied with a bold sense of decision-making.

Night Stories, the most complex of the series shows Paula's ability to paint with aquatint while also demonstrating her extraordinary range within drawing, which makes this image bristle with visceral experience. The Totah exhibition was a critical and commercial success with considerable interest in the way printmaking could act as a counterpoint to her painting. Following this exhibition, Paula joined Marlborough Fine Art and it is significant that her first solo show with her new gallery would be The Nursery Rhymes in 1989.

Rego has always identified with the least, not the mighty, taken from the child's eye view, and counted herself amongst the commonplace and the disregarded, by the side of the beast, not the beauty. But she has also confronted, even celebrated, the powers emanating from this quarter: hers are not simplistic tales of victims and oppressors at all, but constantly surprise the viewer with unexpected reversals. Her sympathy with na�vet�, her love of its double character, its weakness and its force, led her to nursery rhymes as a new source for her imagery.' (Mariner Warner)

The Nursery Rhyme etchings immediately established Rego as one of the foremost graphic artists of her generation. The prints were made after an intense period of painting, resulting in a major retrospective at the Guilbenkian Foundation, Lisbon and the critical and popular success of her solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery. It also tragically coincided with the death of her husband Victor Willing after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis.

The Nursery Rhymes represented a project that Rego had had in mind for some while but held back until the time and conditions were right. Her position as an artist with Marlborough now gave her the support necessary to promote and distribute such an ambitious project, but even so, the first few months of working on the project were conducted in secret, until it became obvious that the work was going well and that it had a momentum that was unstoppable. Prior to starting The Nursery Rhymes, Rego had completed The Dance, (purchased by the Tate Gallery). This was a very complex painting not only for its scale, 213x274cms, her largest painting to date, but also for the emotional content in the wake of her husband's death. To begin on a series of small etchings seemed to provide the release of a wealth of stories, held in abeyance while resolving The Dance. The outpouring of these images, 35 in total, made within a period of 4-5 months was at times, almost terrifying.

'Rego finds printmaking extremely satisfying, not only as an antidote to painting, but as a means by which images may flow thick and fast from her mind.' (Fiona Bradley)

Rego decided on two formats, one just off square 21x22.5cms and the other a vertical 32x21cms. Once again, plates were prepare with hardground and delivered to her studio. From the outset Paula wanted make each print different. While The Nursery Rhymes portfolio can obviously be seen as a suite, they are each in fact self-contained miniature paintings, completely resolved within their own terms. This is a characteristic of all Rego's etchings. While many artists use printmaking to develop their drawings or to make small versions of their paintings, Rego's prints are unique stories made through etching and aquatint and with the exception of the Abortion prints, which I will discuss later, do not exist in any other form. In virtually all cases, the print would begin with a drawing through the hard ground wax.

Familiar with English Nursery Rhymes from her own childhood, the artist found them a rich sources of inspiration, images for each rhyme either existing already in her mind, or coming to her on waking, having read a rhyme before going to sleep in the hope of finding inspiration in the night." (Fiona Bradley)

In this series, Rego was concerned to have a clear outline which would provide the framework onto which she could paint the aquatint. The prints look as if they had been made effortlessly, but it is worth remembering the difficulties presented to the artist when using aquatint. Firstly the artist has to work backwards from light to dark, stopping out the areas of tone, beginning with the areas that are to remain white. Some of these prints have upward of 10 tonal gradations, where the final areas of the plate left exposed to the acid for the longest time, print back. To orchestrate these subtle tonal gradations, each day I would prepare a test strip to gauge accurately the length of time in the acid needed to achieve each tone. Rego would often be working on up to four plates simultaneously, so careful notes had to be kept of what stage each plate was at. To a hidden observer, the studio would resembled a scene from Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice, with plates being juggled and controlled panic all round.

In terms of the control of tone, Polly Put the Kettle On is a masterwork. The bare linear drawing provides the framework onto which the tonal solidity of the print is built, while details like the plates on the dresser are realised with great economy through a few deft brush stokes. But she also creates an impression of colour; the dark uniforms of the little soldiers against the white aprons of the disproportionably large young girls conjure up the impression of rich deep colour. Paula, commenting on the print is disarmingly pragmatic. I remember not knowing what to do next and I was sitting there at this table where there was one of Carmen's dolls; so I just started by drawing the doll and that turned into the big girl. The other girl's face is a sort of self-portrait, which I did from the mirror to see how the shadows fell'.

In Little Miss Muffet 1, the hand shaken aquatint becomes a starry sky, in contrast to the flatter acquaints that described the spider and Miss Muffet caught together in the moonlight. There are overtones of David Cronenburg's film The Fly (1986) where the daring scientist gradually transmutes into an insect and of course Kafka's Metamorphosis. Rego said, I haven't read Freud but this is what he says apparently that spiders are mother figures, not letting you get away. So I made it with lots of grabbing arms and hairy, sticky bits-horrible.'

While the intention for Rego is to resolve each of the prints instantly, this was rarely the case in practice. Occasionally a print would come together 'at one sitting' but one of the great strengths of Rego as a printmaker is her tenacity to do whatever is necessarily to produce the required image. In this respect, she would have no hesitation in reworking a plate, which to others might look very beautiful, if the image and consequently the story weren't clear. The print and indeed the niceties of printmaking, clean lines, rich aquatints, were always subordinate to the desire to make an image, which carries the story. This tenacity is most evident in Sing a Song a Sixpence; the overall drawn composition was established early on and the plate was subsequently re-aquatinted on numerous occasions, going round the houses to try to find a resolution. Finally, on the verge of abandoning the plate, the aquatints were polished down, leaving behind a ghost image onto which the three central figures and the foreground were again re aquatinted and it seemed to work. It was important for Rego that there were 24 blackbirds actually in the print, although the one flying the highest seems to have undergone a transformation into a dove. A further strength in these prints is the way that although many rely on dark shadows, the shadows are never used to conceal. She is very aware that the mystery in an image is in what the viewer can see. This is nowhere more apparent than in The Encampment, a large format print made immediately after the Nursery Rhymes, which while presenting a scene of stories under a night sky, allows everything to be seen. The Nursery Rhymes were greeted with immediate popular and critical success and since 1989 have been exhibited throughout the world, bringing new audiences to her work.

In 1994, she produced a further five prints for the publication of the Folio Society edition of the Nursery Rhymes. These included, Rub a dub-dub, a particularly rich and atmospheric print featuring three old men being attended to by three women, the clues to the identity of the men provided by a still life on the table with a loaf of bread, a candlestick and a very dead chicken. In contrast the two prints for Old Mother Hubbard suggest sheets of drawings, reminiscent of her Opera paintings, rather than representing a single coherent space.

Success also brings expectations and there was now an audience eager to see how this series could be matched. In the meantime Rego was appointed the first Associate Artist at the National Gallery London and only made a few individual prints over the next two years. Rego finds working on individual prints quite difficult since there is not the head of steam that is produced when working on a group or series. Working on a number of plates also gives scope for a range of decision making, while still maintaining a momentum; if in doubt, some images can be placed on hold, while other can be progressed. Working on a single print can be a slow process with long gaps for etching and proofing, and can slow down the decision making to the point when concentration is lost. This was very apparent in the making of The Wild Duck, a commission for the Contemporary Arts Society. This etching had more profound changes than almost any of her etchings with the plate being reworked on numerous occasions. It was interesting however that as the print changed, so did the emotional and dramatic focus, resting eventually on the young girl sitting on the man's lap. The curtain and shadowy figures were added later with aquatint, as was the silhouette, reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock. In the end it is a very successful print and compelling image, that belies the struggle of its making.

In 1991, following an invitation from the Folio Society, she began working on a set of prints on the theme of Peter Pan. David Case, Director of Marlborough Graphics suggested to her that she should consider using colour, an idea that she embraced. However, neither Rego or I had any experience of coloured etching so this was a learning curve that at times was somewhat precarious. It is perhaps significant that Rego still wanted to continue to work with me in the cramped conditions at Culford Press. Her position and reputation as an artist has grown immeasurably since The Nursery Rhymes but we had established a very good working relationship and indeed a deep friendship.

The Nursery Rhymes contained some handcoloured prints, watercoloured in the tradition of hand-tinted prints in addition to some, printed chine colle, onto coloured Japanese tissue, but these gave little guidance about how to proceed with multiplate coloured etchings. Months were spent on experiments to find a way that would enable Rego to keep a grasp of the overall image and prevent the technical issues inhibiting the development of the images. The resolution to the problem was to have a key plate with the bulk of the drawn information printed in one colour, working additional plates with stencilled areas of aquatint, that could hold additional patches of colour, accurate registration being essential.

Having resolved how to work the colour technically, the second problem was to make the colour work emotionally with the images. Children Flying was the first print to be resolved and set the mood for the whole series. Through proofing, the colour was gradually reduced enabling the drawing to register and also ensure the prints had an expansive quality, that belies their actual size. Size and scale are very distinct. Rego is masterful at creating a monumental image within her prints. Wendy and Hook is a good example, Hook has to bow in order to stay within the plate making him seem awkward and ungainly, while Wendy is disproportionately small. The print also contrasts Hook with his elaborate baroque outline, as apposed to Wendy's sealed simple demeanour. Hook is showing all his cards, his sword, his hook, his elaborate wig, while Wendy meanwhile keeps her secrets hidden. The colour in this print is particularly refined, slightly musty and a sense of former, faded glory. Rego's economy of colour is further beautifully illustrated in Mermaid drowning Wendy where black becomes the colour of the sea at night and the faintest cold blue tint of Wendy's nightdress adds to the pathos of the overall scene.

Neverland, Rego's apocalyptic vision was the most complex of the whole series, with once again black as colour playing the dominant role, supported by two additional plates with sixteen colours in all. Peter Pan also presented Paula with a very different proposition from the Nursery Rhymes. Whereas nursery rhymes come from an oral tradition, ditties memorised and repeated until their original meaning is lost, Peter Pan comes from a written, albeit theatrical tradition. Rego asked a friend, himself a seafarer, to read her the salient parts of the play, thereby immediately disconnecting it from the original and receiving the story through the telling.

Rego's studio practice was undergoing a further transformation, which would impact on her approach to printmaking. For years she had been working with Lila, her model for years, as preparation and studies for compositions but increasing the obsession of working direction from an observed situation grew and became her mondus operandi. This became obvious in the Dog Women series of large pastels made directly from studio set up. The studio began to change and resemble a theatrical costume and props store, while elaborate stages were established, furnished with extraordinary props, stuffed animals etc. So when in 2000 she embarked on the series in response to Pendle Witches, a set of poems of Blake Morrison, her requirements for print had changed. The plates were larger overall than the majority of her previous prints and the images were drawn directly from observation in the studio. There is a much greater emphasis on drawing in these etchings, particularly in terms of the way the line is no longer tied to the outline but enters the form to describe volume. While a number of the images place the figure within a landscape, these function like theatrical backdrops to the drama and even in Whinny Moor, the most atmospheric, the space depicted is never deep. The function of landscape in Rego's work is to determine a place remembered, rather than as a space to explore.

Pendle Witches is characterised by an emphasis on grounding the figures. Their contact with the ground is emphasised, connecting the figures with the earth and the gravitational forces acting upon the protagonists. While many of the prints use aquatint very simply, often to differentiate background from the figure as in Pendle Witches, in Flood Rego produces one of her finest prints with a full orchestration of tone, conjuring up the tragic, if not absurd, image of a woman in a bath in a storm tossed sea. The range of surfaces and textures in this print are quite remarkable, fur, metal, flesh, scales, water, held together by the boldness of the design and an unwavering command of tone.

The Children's Crusade followed, a project that Rego had been intrigued by for many years. This beautiful series of prints is often overlooked but show the directness that she was able to bring to her graphic work. Paula Rego's etchings are wonderfully poised between these two ways of seeing the Children's Crusade. She doesn't shirk the horror; hanging, cruxifiction, execution and torture are part of her story. But she doesn't lose sight of innocence, either, no matter how complex its nature.' (Blake Morrison)

The stark images of Voices rely totally on her ability to fix a pose and confront the viewer. In Lost Girl, she makes one of her rare drypoints, drawn directly from Frankie Rossi, the NEW director of graphics at Marlborough. A number of the prints were handcoloured, in some cases quite expressively as a counterpoint to the etched line. Charlotte Hodes handcoloured the prints, faithfully following the master copy by Rego along with detailed colour notes and instructions.

In 2000, in response to a forthcoming referendum in Portugal on abortion, Rego made a series of prints for the first time from images already resolved in paintings. This is rare in her overall output for, as I have already said, while a number of her prints reference paintings, they were never transcriptions. The Abortion series was different and came from a compulsion to act politically and use print to gain a wider audience for her argument. As a consequence these prints were raw, drawn directly, the urgent cross-hatching creating a bleak interior landscape in which the girls endure alone. The basic props of furniture serve to highlight the sense of isolation and abandonment while the expressive power of her drawing is ideal for the incised line of etching, where the line is bitten by the acid into the metal. They make for uncomfortable viewing, and while a comparison with Goya was often made with the Nursery Rhymes, it is in this series that she really takes on his mantle and presents with compassion, and understanding, a view of the human condition at its most elemental.

Rego is always a political artist insofar as she seeks to challenge the status quo, and overturn existing hierarchies but in the Abortion series, one can sense the anger and A voice demanding to be heard. It is easy to forget the rich tradition within printmaking of political discourse, including Hogarth and Daumier and more recently Kentridge. Prints can get out in the world quicker than painting, find their way into places that painting cannot and as a process that allows for multiple and therefore cheaper copies, reach a wider audience. These are essential ingredients if you want to effect change. In the introduction to the exhibition of these prints in Lisbon, Jorge Molder writes The next moment of the artist's work does not follow any particular story: it accompanies or, better denounces a condition. Another word might have been employed because, in human things, 'condition' suggests a permanent state. But Paula Rego works, in this nameless moment, precisely on this permanence of things, of things that could and should change, and yet do not.

Rego's career has been characterised by her need to set up fresh challenges both for herself and her audience. The measure of her as an artist is the manner in which she drives herself forward, putting herself under pressure to extend her visual language and continually renew herself. Although, as I mentioned earlier, Rego had worked on some lithographs in 1982 with Alan Cox, and later with Michael Taylor, she didn't really engage with the media until 2001. In retrospect this is strange since lithography is the natural process for the draughtsman. Of all the printmaking processes, it is most like direct drawing, since the artist can draw with crayons, pencils and ink, and the tonal variation and nuance of mark is controlled primarily by the artist at the moment of drawing rather than, through the etching as in intaglio. Also, while in etching, the artist uses a needle to draw through a wax ground on metal, a very different experience to drawing on paper, in lithography the very similarity to drawing conceals the subtle difference. The artist has to be aware that he or she is actually drawing with the grease content of the material and that tonalities need to be built up subtly in order to avoid an area merely printing a dead black. Also, while in etching the embossed edge of the plate asserts the parameters of the print, in lithography the edge must be defined by the artist. Furthermore, the scale of mark is radically different between the two mediums, etching offering a range beginning with the finest hairline, while in lithography it begins with something closer to the width of a pencil mark, (although the artist can work into areas of black with a needle to create fine white incised lines). -These can seem minor differences but they represent a major adjustment on behalf of the artist, if they are to exploit the rich possibilities a new medium offers. It is also important, particularly for Rego, to establish a relationship with the printer that goes beyond the merely professional and engages in a sense of common purpose. Stanley Jones was the ideal collaborator, having not only been at the Slade with her as a student, but is widely regarded as the lithographer responsible for the modern development of lithography as a medium for artists in the UK.

At the Curwen Studio Jones had developed in the past very close relationships with the artists he had worked with, notably Ceri Richards and Henry Moore and he immediately established a sensitive rapport with Rego. One of Jones's great strengths as a collaborator is his ability to begin with what artists want and not impose a preconceived idea of what they might need. While lithography can easily become a complicated process, it has been important for Rego that it is kept as direct as possible and under Jones's direction she was able, after initial trials, to work fluently with this new medium.

She worked on over 25 lithographs on the theme of Jane Eyre at the Curwen Studio between 2001-2002, drawing on stones, plates, specially made transfer paper, and film. There is an immediate difference between these lithographs and her etchings; not only in terms of the increased scale, the largest being the triptych Getting Ready for the Ball which measures 82x180cms but also in the way they reference the mark making of her pastels and the directness of her drawing. Jones notes "that pastel and lithographic crayon have a parallel quality, a similar feel, so the stones that we prepared for her were medium fine in order to further connect with this experience of pastel on paper". In the series, The Guardians, she made drawings in her studio onto transfer paper with lithographic chalks, which were then transferred onto lithographic plates. They demonstrate Rego's enthusiasm for drawing and her ability to orchestrate the tonal range, possible in lithography. Mr Rochester, features her close friend Anthony Rudolf who is cast in the role of Rochester, sitting astride a fibreglass horse rented from BBC props, in an ironic play on power and wealth. The undrawn areas give this print a sense of air and sky, while also highlighting the drawn areas which define the figure, horse, dog and tree. Crumpled, Jane Eyre and Up the Tree, continue a long running preoccupation with the expressive power of skirts as containers of secrets. These beautiful prints show the spontaneity of her drawing and how observation informs and enriches her imaginative vision. In the series, The Sensuality of the Stone, Rego works directly on the litho stones at the Curwen Studio. These are more inventive compositions, worked on from preparatory drawings and has a softness, which is associated with stone lithography. In these prints, one can sense Rego responding to the surface of the stone as well as its organic shape as she feels her way to define the edge of the drawing. Rego is an impatient artist and lithography by its nature can be a slow process. In order to offset this and avoid wasting time she worked on a number of plates as well as having stones to work directly on in the studio, to fill some of those gaps. Furthermore as Jones comments "She really got under the skin of working with grained film, a method we developed in the studio, which is a quick way for the artist to see the image resolved in terms of plate and press, a contraction of the usual time necessary in lithography". In addition, this process is ideal for the accurate rendering of washes, which Rego clearly exploits in the liquidity of the drawing in Bertha.

Black is the dominant colour in all the lithographs, the colour of the master drawing that governs the image while the additional colour is added (as in her handcoloured etchings) as tint, to differentiate areas and to lead the viewer around the image. In the print, Come to Me, while the master drawing is still black, the blue of the dress and the full-bodied burnt sienna of the background provide an emphatic emotional note which gives the strident lithograph an expressionist quality.

Whether is it through etching or lithography, Rego's prints are a vital element in her overall vocabulary. She uses print to lead her audience to the childhood illustrations and stories that have informed her work. But, printmaking also has a function to make an image reproducible without any loss of quality or scale, each print in the edition being a faithful copy of the matrix. Paula as a storyteller needs an audience and printmaking provides her with a means for distributing her ideas throughout the world, and making her vision accessible to a wider audience. There is a generosity in these prints and an understanding of the power of the printed image. They are not minor works but complete images resolved through the manner of their making.

Professor Paul Coldwell

I would like to thank Stanley Jones and Jenny Roland at The Curwen Studio and Charlotte Hodes at Culford Press for their help and advice. I would also like to express my gratitude to Anthony Rudolf for his support, critical observations and for proof reading the text. Finally I would like to thank Paula Rego for the many hours that we have spent together while making the etchings, for her generosity in providing me with an insight into her practice and for sharing her stories.

1. T.G.Rosenthal Paula Rego the complete graphic works London, Thames and Hudson 2003
2. John McEwen Paula Rego London,Phaidon 1992
3. Paul Rego Nursery Rhymes London, The Folio Society 1994
4. Fiona Bradley Paula Rego London, Tate Gallery Publishing 1997
5. Fiona Bradley Paula Rego London, Tate Gallery Publishing 1997
6. John McEwen Paula Rego: The Nursery Rhymes London, South Bank Centre 1990
7. John McEwen Paula Rego: The Nursery Rhymes London, South Bank Centre 1990
8. Blake Morrison The Children's Crusade London, Enitharmon Press 1999
9. Jorge Molder Paula Rego Untitled Lisbon, Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian 1999
10. Stanley Jones in conversation with Paul Coldwell, Cambridge, 2004
11. Stanley Jones in conversation with Paul Coldwell , Cambridge, 2004

Copyright: Paul Coldwell

Paul Coldwell is a sculptor and printmaker and is Postgraduate Director at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. http://www.csm.arts.ac.uk/22025.htm

Source : Paula Rego

Doris Lessing

2008-05-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through maize farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Doris's mother adapted to the rough life in the settlement, energetically trying to reproduce what was, in her view, a civilized, Edwardian life among savages; but her father did not, and the thousand-odd acres of bush he had bought failed to yield the promised wealth.

Lessing has described her childhood as an uneven mix of some pleasure and much pain. The natural world, which she explored with her brother, Harry, was one retreat from an otherwise miserable existence. Her mother, obsessed with raising a proper daughter, enforced a rigid system of rules and hygiene at home, then installed Doris in a convent school, where nuns terrified their charges with stories of hell and damnation. Lessing was later sent to an all-girls high school in the capital of Salisbury, from which she soon dropped out. She was thirteen; and it was the end of her formal education.

But like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school (such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer), Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual. She recently commented that unhappy childhoods seem to produce fiction writers. "Yes, I think that is true. Though it wasn't apparent to me then. Of course, I wasn't thinking in terms of being a writer then - I was just thinking about how to escape, all the time." The parcels of books ordered from London fed her imagination, laying out other worlds to escape into. Lessing's early reading included Dickens, Scott, Stevenson, Kipling; later she discovered D.H. Lawrence, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. Bedtime stories also nurtured her youth: her mother told them to the children and Doris herself kept her younger brother awake, spinning out tales. Doris's early years were also spent absorbing her fathers bitter memories of World War I, taking them in as a kind of "poison." "We are all of us made by war," Lessing has written, "twisted and warped by war, but we seem to forget it."

In flight from her mother, Lessing left home when she was fifteen and took a job as a nursemaid. Her employer gave her books on politics and sociology to read, while his brother-in-law crept into her bed at night and gave her inept kisses. During that time she was, Lessing has written, "in a fever of erotic longing." Frustrated by her backward suitor, she indulged in elaborate romantic fantasies. She was also writing stories, and sold two to magazines in South Africa.

Lessing's life has been a challenge to her belief that people cannot resist the currents of their time, as she fought against the biological and cultural imperatives that fated her to sink without a murmur into marriage and motherhood. "There is a whole generation of women," she has said, speaking of her mother's era, "and it was as if their lives came to a stop when they had children. Most of them got pretty neurotic - because, I think, of the contrast between what they were taught at school they were capable of being and what actually happened to them." Lessing believes that she was freer than most people because she became a writer. For her, writing is a process of "setting at a distance," taking the "raw, the individual, the uncriticized, the unexamined, into the realm of the general."

In 1937 she moved to Salisbury, where she worked as a telephone operator for a year. At nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom, and had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists "who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read." Gottfried Lessing was a central member of the group; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

During the postwar years, Lessing became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

Lessing's fiction is deeply autobiographical, much of it emerging out of her experiences in Africa. Drawing upon her childhood memories and her serious engagement with politics and social concerns, Lessing has written about the clash of cultures, the gross injustices of racial inequality, the struggle among opposing elements within an individuals own personality, and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. Her stories and novellas set in Africa, published during the fifties and early sixties, decry the dispossession of black Africans by white colonials, and expose the sterility of the white culture in southern Africa. In 1956, in response to Lessing's courageous outspokenness, she was declared a prohibited alien in both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.

Over the years, Lessing has attempted to accommodate what she admires in the novels of the nineteenth century - their "climate of ethical judgement" - to the demands of twentieth-century ideas about consciousness and time. After writing the Children of Violence series (1951-1959), a formally conventional bildungsroman (novel of education) about the growth in consciousness of her heroine, Martha Quest, Lessing broke new ground with The Golden Notebook (1962), a daring narrative experiment, in which the multiple selves of a contemporary woman are rendered in astonishing depth and detail. Anna Wulf, like Lessing herself, strives for ruthless honesty as she aims to free herself from the chaos, emotional numbness, and hypocrisy afflicting her generation.

Attacked for being "unfeminine" in her depiction of female anger and aggression, Lessing responded, "Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise." As at least one early critic noticed, Anna Wulf "tries to live with the freedom of a man" - a point Lessing seems to confirm: "These attitudes in male writers were taken for granted, accepted as sound philosophical bases, as quite normal, certainly not as woman-hating, aggressive, or neurotic."

In the 1970s and 1980s, Lessing began to explore more fully the quasi-mystical insight Anna Wulf seems to reach by the end of The Golden Notebook. Her "inner-space fiction" deals with cosmic fantasies (Briefing for a Descent into Hell, 1971), dreamscapes and other dimensions (Memoirs of a Survivor, 1974), and science fiction probings of higher planes of existence (Canopus in Argos: Archives, 1979-1983). These reflect Lessing's interest, since the 1960s, in Idries Shah, whose writings on Sufi mysticism stress the evolution of consciousness and the belief that individual liberation can come about only if people understand the link between their own fates and the fate of society.

Lessing's other novels include The Good Terrorist (1985) and The Fifth Child (1988); she also published two novels under the pseudonym Jane Somers (The Diary of a Good Neighbour, 1983 and If the Old Could..., 1984). In addition, she has written several nonfiction works, including books about cats, a love since childhood. Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 appeared in 1995 and received the James Tait Black Prize for best biography.

Addenda (by Jan Hanford)

In June 1995 she received an Honorary Degree from Harvard University. Also in 1995, she visited South Africa to see her daughter and grandchildren, and to promote her autobiography. It was her first visit since being forcibly removed in 1956 for her political views. Ironically, she is welcomed now as a writer acclaimed for the very topics for which she was banished 40 years ago.

She collaborated with illustrator Charlie Adlard to create the unique and unusual graphic novel, Playing the Game. After being out of print in the U.S. for more than 30 years, Going Home and In Pursuit of the English were republished by HarperCollins in 1996. These two fascinating and important books give rare insight into Mrs. Lessing's personality, life and views.

In 1996, her first novel in 7 years, Love Again, was published by HarperCollins. She did not make any personal appearances to promote the book. In an interview she describes the frustration she felt during a 14-week worldwide tour to promote her autobiography: "I told my publishers it would be far more useful for everyone if I stayed at home, writing another book. But they wouldn't listen. This time round I stamped my little foot and said I would not move from my house and would do only one interview." And the honors keep on coming: she was on the list of nominees for the Nobel Prize for Literature and Britain's Writer's Guild Award for Fiction in 1996.

Late in the year, HarperCollins published Play with A Tiger and Other Plays, a compilation of 3 of her plays: Play with a Tiger, The Singing Door and Each His Own Wilderness. In an unexplained move, HarperCollins only published this volume in the U.K. and it is not available in the U.S., to the disappointment of her North American readers.

In 1997 she collaborated with Philip Glass for the second time, providing the libretto for the opera "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five" which premiered in Heidelberg, Germany in May. Walking in the Shade, the anxiously awaited second volume of her autobiography, was published in October and was nominated for the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award in the biography/autobiography category. This volume documents her arrival in England in 1949 and takes us up to the publication of The Golden Notebook. This is the final volume of her autobiography, she will not be writing a third volume.

Her new novel, titled "Mara and Dann", was been published in the U.S in January 1999 and in the U.K. in April 1999. In an interview in the London Daily Telegraph she said, "I adore writing it. I'll be so sad when it's finished. It's freed my mind." 1999 also saw her first experience on-line, with a chat at Barnes & Noble (transcript). In May 1999 she will be presented with the XI Annual International Catalunya Award, an award by the government of Catalunya.

December 31 1999: In the U.K.'s last Honours List before the new Millennium, Doris Lessing was appointed a Companion of Honour, an exclusive order for those who have done "conspicuous national service." She revealed she had turned down the offer of becoming a Dame of the British Empire because there is no British Empire. Being a Companion of Honour, she explained, means "you're not called anything - and it's not demanding. I like that". Being a Dame was "a bit pantomimey". The list was selected by the Labor Party government to honor people in all walks of life for their contributions to their professions and to charity. It was officially bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II.

In January, 2000 the National Portrait Gallery in London unveiled Leonard McComb's portrait of Doris Lessing.

Ben, in the World, the sequel to The Fifth Child was published in Spring 2000 (U.K.) and Summer 2000 (U.S.).

In 2001 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize in Literature, one of Spain's most important distinctions, for her brilliant literary works in defense of freedom and Third World causes. She also received the David Cohen British Literature Prize.

She was on the shortlist for the first Man Booker International Prize in 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Her most recent novel is Alfred and Emily. She has announced it is her final book.

Source : dorislessing

Strong in Life; Weak in Labor

2008-05-07T04:50:00.000-07:00

By Emily Jones

Women’s liberation has given so much to our generation of women. We have more freedom and ability than women ever did. Not only do we have so many choices, we also live in a culture of individual right. Every woman is entitled to make a choice based on her own values and act accordingly, and women are considered capable and intelligent in making life decisions. If you live in America today, you believe that you are a strong, independent woman. You believe that you have the right to accept or decline whatever treatment is offered to you.

How is it that a woman who is treated as smart and valuable in the entire course of her life becomes an imbecilic creature, unable to think for herself, in pregnancy, and particularly, in labor? It is because she is entering someone else’s turf: namely, the doctor’s. And I believe this phenomenon is particular to doctors. Doctors believe themselves to be the “experts” on pregnancy and birth.

When a woman enters a doctor’s office, she is instantly perceived as a helpless, weak creature who must submit to the doctor’s good judgment. Women don’t question this, interestingly enough, in this age of women’s lib. Women would never under other circumstances stand for a man (or in many cases now, another woman!) to pat them on the head and tell them “not to worry about a thing.” But for some reason, they allow doctors to do this to them. Some women may have an illusion of control in writing a birth plan, or asking their doctor’s “permission” to accept or decline certain procedures or medications in their upcoming labor, but it’s only an illusion: they are being patronized.

Doctors like to humor their patients during pregnancy because they really have nothing better to do. All they can do is wait for the Big Day to “show their stuff.” And when the Big Day arrives, it is the doctor who is front-and-center on the stage of life. But wait, isn’t it the woman having the baby? Unfortunately, as soon as a pregnant woman goes into labor in America, she is no longer considered to be part of the equation.

Doctors and nurses routinely administer medication and perform procedures without permission of the laboring woman. If a woman is given the “choice” of procedures, she is not told the risks or dangers of them. If a laboring woman thinks to question them, she is quickly put in her place and made to feel “disobedient.” If a laboring woman is vocal enough to insist on having “her way,” doctors and nurses will frequently threaten the woman with her (potentially) dead baby if she refuses to comply.

What else can a doctor do in labor? He cannot push the baby out and he cannot personally deal with contractions. There is nothing for a doctor to do but perform. And if he is not allowed to perform, then what is his purpose in being there? The answer is simple: there is no purpose to him being there. This is why a laboring woman is put aside for her own labor. This is why a perfectly healthy, strong, intelligent woman is made to feel like a child, incapable of making good decisions and embarrassed for questioning the doctor’s decisions.

Women do not believe this will happen to them. They tell me all the time, “But my doctor is so nice and so respectful of my decision!” They say, “He agrees that birth is natural!” And they say, “He would never do anything to hurt me!” It is a naïve and closed-minded approach to your health care. You are putting your power into the hands of someone else. You are giving up your own independence by entrusting your healthcare decisions to anybody other than yourself. You might be one of the lucky ones and get a doctor who really does care about you and set aside his own ego for your health and that of the baby, but you would be beating the odds if you did.

It is amazing in our generation that the power and independence that was fought for so hard in women’s liberation we squander so lightly. It is amazing to me that so many women, so strong and vocal in every other area of their lives, willingly submit their own good judgment and female intuition to their doctor during pregnancy and labor.

What we need today is a new women’s liberation movement: we need to show women that their bodies are THEIRS to do wish what they like, and that they have a right, and even an imperative, to take control of their own pregnancies and labors. We are strong, smart, and capable, and that does not change once we become pregnant, and we need to stand up for ourselves and each other and prove it!

Source : TrueBirth