On Saturday 10 October, thousands of women, children and men took to the streets of Edinburgh to re-enact the women's suffrage movement procession that took place along Princes Street a century ago to the day.

The original demonstration took place on Princes Street, Edinburgh's main commercial thoroughfare, which looks onto Princes Street Gardens and Edinburgh Castle beyond. However, due to ongoing tram-works in the city's centre, the 21st century recreation of the iconic historical movement was not able to retrace the original route, which was a real shame, but unfortunately an unavoidable one. Instead, the march, starting at Bruntsfield Links, wove through the Old Town past the City Chambers on the Royal Mile to terminate atop Calton Hill, where a rally of speeches, music and singing took place.

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We have two problems when it comes to representations of women in film: not enough films which treat women as subject not object, and not enough women making films. It's not a hard and fast rule that the two are related: one of my favourite films that Jan Chapman has produced is Lantana, a thoroughly intelligent film with three dimensional female characters directed and written by men.

Still, here in the UK only 6% of film directors and 12% of screenwriters are women, according to Birds Eye View. A San Diago State University's Center for Study of Women in TV and Film study found that the picture is not so different in Hollywood. Only 9% of directors are women, 12% of screenwriters and 17% of editors. Producers appear to be slightly more representative - women make up 23% of all producers and 16% of executive producers - as well as 44% of production supervisors.

We are also in a situation where the stories we see told at the cinema turn the focus constantly on men, with female characters mostly acting as adjuncts, plot devices to demonstrate something about the male lead or eye candy.

I couldn't, therefore, pass up the opportunity of speaking to Australian film producer Jan Chapman, given her long - and successful - career in the film industry. Chapman often works with one of the world's highest-profile directors who happens to be female, Jane Campion of The Piano and Holy Smoke among other films (Interestingly, in Chapman's early career this included working with the Sydney Co-Op and women's film collectives, according to an interview with Senses of Cinema a few years ago.)

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When discussing a recent high profile child abuse case on The Ten O'Clock News on the BBC, anchor George Alagiah asked if it was more shocking and more "disgusting" because women were involved in the abuse of these children. The reporter covering the case agreed, stating that there are more women involved in abusing children than the public might think: 25% of cases, he informed us. This small discussion struck me immediately. Gendered preconceptions were shifting the focus of the report away from the crime itself to the gender of those involved and saying a lot about society's deep-rooted beliefs about appropriate gendered behaviour for women and men. In cases of violence of any kind (I'm using 'violence' in its broadest sense to mean all forms of physical, mental and emotional abuse) the issue of gender can play a large role in the court process and media reporting of the case. The law should be genderless, but once faced with the decidedly human situation of the courtroom, ideas about gender roles begin to impact on juries, the media, public reaction and the very sentences dolled out.

We have a belief within our society that women care. I mean 'care' in two senses: caring for other people and caring about other people. Parenting or caring for elderly or other dependent relatives within the home, or the paid work of nurse, social worker or teacher is all seen as 'women's work'. The archetypal woman should be predisposed to care, her 'natural' femininity making her willing to work hard to nurture and protect those around her and, importantly, prevent her from being able to harm anyone, particularly children. If a woman does act to harm another person she has transgressed the natural order and will be judged accordingly as something less than a 'normal', 'proper' woman.

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It was 1997, and I was seven years old; my friend and I were sat in her lounge practising our times tables and discussing the Spice Girls. We were deciding which group members were most like our friends and, as always, because of my red hair I was Gerri and, because of her curly hair, she was Mel B.

"I'm so jealous of your hair, I think its so pretty... mine's just boring and brown," she said and smiled at me, dreamily surveying my fringed bob cut.

In my primary school days, I had come to the conclusion that I loved my hair, because everyone else seemed to, and my friend's faces were not framed by such distinctive manes.

Fast forward to 2003, when I was 13-years-old; the same friend and I were stood beside one another drying our hands in the toilets of a village hall, which was the venue for her 13th birthday disco. She had changed schools soon after that Spice Girls discussion and we'd drifted apart as friends and become different people. She was popular with her classmates, which is so important for 13-year-old girls, straightened her beautiful cherubic curls, wore makeup and kissed boys; to put things in perspective, I was bullied and enjoyed talking about my love for platform donning face-painted stadium rockers KISS... occasionally with boys.

This childhood friend and I had become polar opposites in six years, which was expressed perfectly in the image of us in the hall's toilets, a slender designer clothes wearing blonde standing betweenn us, looking down her nose at my tiny boyish frame. My childhood friend ignored me and, admiring her reflection, asked her newer friend whether she "looked ginger". My heart sank with the heavy disgusted tone of her voice, it was something I had become used to, but sounded even worse from the mouth of a girl who'd once been "so jealous" of my hair. They went on to cackle to themselves dropping various ginger-related insults, which I have and still do hear a million times.

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We want to start by asking for some reader feedback to help influence this process: particularly -

• What are the top five things you'd like to see more of?
• What are your top five gripes - things you'd like to see work differently?

Feel free to leave your lists as comments - or email me.

Photo by m-c, shared under a Creative Commons license

Thanks once again to Helen G who has compiled and coded the comments. Her help means this month's comments are up once again in a timely fashion :-)

This month, Kate's piece on sexism in primary schools received lots of great responses.

And, from the archive, Anne's article on how male privilege affects men's role in feminist activism got another interesting comment.

Photo of an abandoned feminist surf school in Costa Rica is by linkzilla and shared on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

There's been a lot of awareness raising on use of Photoshop to make women's bodies look impossibly beautiful. But what about in video?

Via Sarah at Uplift!, this showreel advertising work by post-production firm Room demonstrates how much 'correcting' is done to both women and men's bodies and faces in music videos.

You can see it here, or Sarah posted some stills on Uplift!

According to Arts Admin, Jane Arden's play "was the first theatre work to come out of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain when it was staged at the Drury Lane Arts Lab in 1969. To mark its 40th anniversary Unfinished Histories are staging a reading of the play followed by a roundtable discussion."

You can book tickets and get venue info here.

The staging of Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven is part of the Unfinished Histories project - you can read Red Chidgey's review of their CD about women's theatre troupes in the 1970s and 1980s here.

This study day will consider all aspects of writing for or about the screen by the large number of women involved in the British cinema industry of the silent era, whether as screenwriters, critics, columnists, publicists, or authors of source novels and plays. The day consists of screenings from the BFI National Archive, talks and workshops, followed by a screening of the rarely seen silent classic The Constant Nymph.Tickets £10 (day only), £15 including The Constant Nymph (Members pay £1.40 less)

More info here

One of the films, a hip hop and grime musical, 1 Day, directed by Penny Woolcock, has been at the centre of some controversy after Birmingham police intervention led to all the city's cinemas refusing to screen it.

BEV interviewed Woolcock:

I have no idea whether the police were under some sinister political pressure or whether they have decided to set themselves up as arbiters of what films we are allowed to see. The film has a 15 certificate!! It is far less violent than any Hollywood film or video game.

Sadly I think there is only one explanation. Racism. They are afraid of allowing young black people to gather to watch a film.

Also out tomorrow is Bright Star by Jane Campion - I interviewed the producer Jan Chapman last week about the film, which will be up along with a review as soon as I can get the time to write it :-)

Here in Oxford we’re all getting excited as we build up to Oxfordshire Reclaim the Night 2009. Tomorrow, straight after work, we’ll march from East Oxford across the bridge into the centre of town, through the evening crowds with our message that all women have the right to live without fear of violence. At the rally speakers will include the city council's domestic violence services co-ordinator, the co-ordinator of Oxford's rape crisis centre and a speaker from Amnesty International, with entertainment from performance poet Lizzie Mc and legendary punk folk heroine Maeve Bayton.

This is the second year the Oxfordshire RTN collective has organised a march that involves both students and local people, helped by funding from the city council. And that’s really important in Oxford. Because despite what you might expect in an age when universities are increasingly proud of their local engagement, etc, etc, there is still a pretty severe divide between ‘town and gown’ in the city. The divide is visible in lots of ways - the postcodes in the centre of the city include some of the wealthiest wards in the UK, with levels of education, income and health all exceeding the national average. But the postcodes out on the eastern edge of Oxford, near the industrial areas with the car plant (and the proposed site of England’s first council-run urban wind turbine), include wards that rank amongst the most highly deprived in the UK. But although students and residents are different in lots of ways, the risks of violence - by strangers, at home, through forced marriage, sexual coercion and sexual abuse - faced by all kinds of women make this one issue where we need to come together to show our strength.

And just as Oxfordshire RTN brings students and residents together, it also brings women and men together. Men who support the White Ribbon Campaign help out with organising the rally, and arrive early to have tea and biscuits ready for the women marchers (all women are welcome on the march, including trans women). They help design leaflets and make banners, and of course, with women on the march, the role of men as child carers is vitally important.

In some ways, Oxfordshire is a pretty lovely, safe place to live. We’ve got a strong network of domestic violence champions, supported by the city council - professionals in the courts, the police, the social services and the health service who look out for women experiencing violence and help to put them in touch with the support services they need. We’ve got OSARCC, who have been providing phone counselling and information services to women experiencing sexual abuse for 20 years. They even have paid workers! But we still have high rates of sexual violence, our rate of convictions for rape cases hovers around the national average and isn’t anything to shout about, and reports of rape regularly make the local papers, as they do everywhere in the country.

So like last year, we’re hoping that more than 150 women and men will come together - women on the march, men joining us at the rally - to educate the general public, raise the profile in the media (we were covered by every single local media outlet last year!) and support the year round work of OSARCC and the women’s anti-violence projects across Oxfordshire. Join us if you can!

(Edit: Vikki Chowney has posted a nice follow-up about an Oxfam event which involved four women talking about how climate change was changing their lives).

As Helen mentioned already, today is Equal Pay Day - the average pay gap between men and women is 17.1%, meaning that while men in work will be paid for the full year, women in work are effectively working for free from today until 2010.

A sobering thought! Shake Up Media has put together a fantastic graphic exploring the picture on unequal pay in more detail, comparing Haringay - in the top 10 on pay equality, with a gap of -2% - with Wokingham, in the bottom 10, with a pay gap of 31.7%. It's not the worst performer though - West Somerset has a staggering pay gap of 52.7%!

See the whole thing here

But it was not only the erosion of the Liberal government's big majority that made the by-election news in such papers as The New York Times but an incident at Boutcher School in Grange Road.

At 11am Alice Chapin, a 45 year old supporter of votes for women living in the West End, entered the polling station at the school. She broke a glass test tube on the ballot box and at that moment the presiding officer George Thorley felt the liquid on his face.

The chemical splashed one of Mr Thorley's eyes. Although examined at once by a doctor who happened to be present it was the view a month later of Guy's opthalmic surgeon Arthur Ormond that there might be a slight permanent haze to Mr Thorley's sight.

However, the victim believed that the injury to him was "purely accidental". Although his clothing was burnt he maintained that Mrs Chapin did not intend to hurt him.

"The first thing I did on receiving the splash was to go to a cupboard in the polling-room where there was some ammonia, used for chemical experiments in the school, intending to apply it to my burns. One of the polling clerks tried to dilute it for me, but I found his solution was too strong to use."

The 83 ballot papers in the box were later found to be damaged but all decipherable.

The Times reported that the 'suffragists' had "struck out a new form of annoyance" which was "childish malice characteristic of suffragette methods".

At the Old Bailey the following month Mrs Chapin was found guilty of interfering with the ballot box and sentenced to three months imprisonment. In addition she was found guilty of a common assault for which she received four months to run concurrently.

Also sentenced in the same court was Alison Neilans who tried to pour fluid into the ballot box at the Long Lane polling station. There were no injuries but two papers were rendered undecipherable and Miss Neilans was sentenced to three months in Holloway Prison along with her fellow conspirator.

Both women were members of the Women's Freedom League (WFL) which was a breakaway from the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU).

The protest in Bermondsey was a direct response to the refusal of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith to receive a WFL deputation. Days later the League launched The Vote newspaper which declared: "We shall make a protest where our right is denied - in the polling booth where women ought to be voting."

(links added by me)

This one is local history for me; both of these incidents happened down the road from my flat.

Photo from Parliament, of a banner unfurled at another WFL protest - more info here.

Jessica Mann, an award-winning author who reviews crime fiction for the Literary Review, has said that an increasing proportion of the books she is sent to review feature male perpetrators and female victims in situations of "sadistic misogyny". "Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit, as young women are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up or tied down, raped, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or buried alive," she said.

"Authors must be free to write and publishers to publish. But critics must be free to say they have had enough. So however many more outpourings of sadistic misogyny are crammed on to the bandwagon, no more of them will be reviewed by me," said Mann, who has written her own bestselling series of crime novels and a non-fiction book about female crime writers.

She said that when a female corpse recently appeared on the jacket of a crime-writing colleague's new book, the author pointed out to her publisher that the victim in the story was actually a man. Mann said the publisher replied: "Never mind that. Dead, brutalised women sell books, dead men don't. Nor do dead children or geriatrics."

Some of these books (although not all) are written by women, the Guardian reports. But while Mann suggests this means there is no anti-feminist backlash involved, it doesn't seem so clear cut.

Natasha Cooper, former chair of the Crime Writers' Association, agreed with Mann. "There is a general feeling that women writers are less important than male writers and what can save and propel them on to the bestseller list is if they produce at least one novel with very graphic violence in it to establish their credibility and prove they are not girly," she said.

So one theory is it's a reaction to ... surprise, surprise... sexism directed at female writers.

While another theory is it's about commerical pressure:

Val McDermid, author of the books adapted for the television series Wire in the Blood starring Robson Green, whose novel The Mermaids Singing won the association's Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year, said that crime writing was increasingly "sensationalist and gratuitous" because of the demands of the market.

"There has been a general desensitisation among readers, who are upping the ante by demanding ever more sensationalist and gratuitous plotlines," she said. "But when women write about violence against women, it will almost inevitably be more terrifying because women grow up knowing that to be female is to be at risk of attack. We write about violence from the inside. Men, on the other hand, write about it from the outside."

I am in the classroom tidying up with a pupil named Ellen. One of the advantages (and difficulties) of being a relatively young teacher is that sometimes children will talk to you in an unguarded way. You get to hear what they really think about things, which is usually fascinating and frightening in equal measure.

Today is no exception to that particular rule. Ellen is telling me that she is giving up chocolate for Lent. When I commend her self control and ask if her family are religious she looks at me with amusement and tells me that really, she just wants to lose a bit of weight. Sensing my perplexity she elaborates on the statement with disarming, resigned honesty. "I would be more popular if I were thinner," she sighs. Ellen is 10 years old.

During my experiences on the supply circuit I have been into a vast number of primary schools. And I have come to believe that there is a major and universal problem with the self-image of the little girls that populate them.

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Refuge has come a long way since we opened the world’s first refuge in West London in 1971. What started off as a single house has grown into the country’s largest single provider of emergency accommodation and support to women and children escaping domestic violence.

On any one day we support over 1,000 women and children through our refuges and community outreach schemes. We operate services for children; counselling for abused women; a team of independent legal advocates and specialist services for women from minority ethnic communities. Refuge also runs the 24 hour national domestic violence helpline in partnership with Women’s Aid. Our political lobbying has been instrumental to the shift in the legal understanding of domestic violence and we also challenge social attitudes through award-winning public education campaigns.

Internship opportunities

Refuge is looking for capable and enthusiastic interns to provide a range of support in fundraising. Taking on an internship role at Refuge will not only provide personal development but also the opportunity to gain a wide range of work experience in a successful charity environment.

* Location: Refuge Head Office in central London
* Start date: ASAP
* Duration: 3 - 6 months
* Ideally, interns will work 3 days per week, although it may be possible to work 2
* Travel expenses provided
* Suitable for graduates or postgraduates
* Excellent IT and communications skills essential
* Candidates must have empathy with the aims and objectives of Refuge

To apply, please send a CV with covering letter (of no more than 2 A4 pages). Please outline any relevant experience including your reasons for applying for this post to: sonia_johal@refuge.org.uk

Please quote reference FW

The deadline for applications is 5pm, Monday 26 October 2009

For further information about Refuge, please see our website: www.refuge.org.uk

There was a memorable series devoted to Antonin Artaud, which included the phrase: "Artaud I couldn't have borne to know you alive your despair". Her art could also be riotously funny and sexy as well as macabre, and she made many works which dealt with female jouissance and eroticism, pleasure and pain. Spero was a spearhead of feminist art in the 1960s, calling for greater recognition of women artists and women in the New York art world. A recent show, Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution, which I saw in New York a couple of years ago, revisited those turbulent times, and Spero's place in them. It should have come to Europe.

Spero was a vital, energetic artist. She never lost her curiosity in the world, nor her sense of anger at its injustices, and she found a way of making work which combined the graphic with installation, relevance and timelessness. She and Golub were partners for over half a century. I knew them since my first visits to New York in the late 1970s, and they were a unique and unguardedly generous double act. I owe something of my formation to this couple, who I once described as the conscience of the art world. And so they were.

Here are two videos showing two of her pieces, from a retrospective of Spero's work in Sevilla in 2007:

Le Guin is on the list of mindblowing science fiction by women & people of colour we linked to recently. You can read an interesting short story she wrote at Infinity Matrix, the seasons of the ansarac, (which appeared in Changing Planes, a collection of short stories roughly in which humans have discovered the ability to shift between different worlds through intense airport-induced boredom).

The Guardian also did a good interview with her a few years ago, which will make most sense for fans very familiar with her various creations.