By Jess McCabe | 7 June 2008, 20:08

Over at Penny Red, Laurie alerts us to a story about the Tory party apologising for one of their MPs, who paid for a nanny out of her parliamentary allowance.

Was the nanny found delinquently dancing on rooftops with rogue chimney sweeps? Or is the issue simply that childcare isn’t seen as an important part of a politician’s expenses, particularly if that politician is female? Excuse me whilst I remove my jacket: it’s getting rather hot under this glass ceiling.

If the Conservatives do get into power next time, the results of this survey at ConservativeHome do not bode well for women’s rights - only 11% of candidates support the 24-week time limit, and you can bet your blue rosette that the rest are not calling for progressive reform to extend access to abortion. (Thanks Sunny)

Speaking of which, Feministe points to a telling article in the New York Times, by an 80-something doctor who was practicing medicine before Roe v Wade legalised abortion in the US. It’s a stark reminder that banning abortion does not stop women having them; it just takes away the safe methods of doing so:

Almost any implement you can imagine had been and was used to start an abortion — darning needles, crochet hooks, cut-glass salt shakers, soda bottles, sometimes intact, sometimes with the top broken off.

Another method that I did not encounter, but heard about from colleagues in other hospitals, was a soap solution forced through the cervical canal with a syringe. This could cause almost immediate death if a bubble in the solution entered a blood vessel and was transported to the heart.

The worst case I saw, and one I hope no one else will ever have to face, was that of a nurse who was admitted with what looked like a partly delivered umbilical cord. Yet as soon as we examined her, we realized that what we thought was the cord was in fact part of her intestine, which had been hooked and torn by whatever implement had been used in the abortion. It took six hours of surgery to remove the infected uterus and ovaries and repair the part of the bowel that was still functional.

Muslimah Media Watch has a great dissection of the way that Muslim women are portrayed:

Let’s play a game, shall we? It will be like a drinking game, but without drinking. Okay, here are the rules: every time you read a columnist use the follow words in an article that talks about Muslim women, give five dollars to charity:

“pushing boundaries”

“East and West”

“tradition”

a description of what a Muslim woman wears that includes “free-flowing hair” or “veiled”

She nails how patronising these reductive and oft-repeated descriptions are in one particular example in the LA Times:

But when the Middle East (I say “Middle East” because the article only mentions Egypt and Lebanon specifically when speaking of Mowafi, and Haifa Wehbe and Nada Abou Farhat, respectively. The article does not address which country playwright Lina Khoury lives in, and Egypt and Lebanon are stretched into an entire region) wants to talk about sex or women’s issues on TV or in books or through plays, the credit it always somehow detoured back to the U.S. Credit is given to “Oprah Winfrey, Beyonce and even Hillary Rodham Clinton,” but no Middle Eastern or Muslim female role models, as if there have never been any and aren’t any in existence. With no explanation as to what Oprah or Clinton ever did for these women.

Even these women’s western educations are given the credit for their work rather than they themselves, as if they never would have thought of some of these things themselves if they had been educated in the Middle East.

Brownfemipower explains why some women of colour in the US think its offensive when white women express disappointment that Clinton lost to Obama:

I feel your loss, I understand why it hurts to see a woman lose, probably (I disagree, but I am willing to see your point) because of sexism.

But some of us who care about institutional misogyny don’t feel a loss at Clinton not being elected. There would have been no barrier broken if she were elected. I personally don’t look at Clinton and think-geez, look at all she accomplished-now I can do the same thing-I think-geez-she supported the militarization of the Mexican/U.S. border. There are women now being raped, arrested, imprisoned, and ripped from their children because she actively supports increased militarization at the border.

Charcoal Ink has some thoughts about Germaine Greer.

Boing Boing has a story about a woman in Ontario who was fired for shaving her head. Hmmm!

Her employer, Dan Hilliard, says his restaurant has certain standards prohibiting men from wearing earrings and requiring employees to keep their hair at a reasonable length.

Beth Granter wonders why online services such as Spock insist on asking gender - and only provide two options.