Bluestocking Bookclub 2013

From mid-2013 Bluestocking is running a bimonthly Bookclub. We’ll post up the books 1-2 months in advance and invite everyone to a discussion session at a café on a Sunday morning over coffee. New book suggestions are more than welcome!

The first Bluestocking Bookclub get-together will be on Sunday June 9^th at 9:30am at Cranked café in Leederville. The books to read are: Barbara Kingsolver’s ‘Flight Behavior’ and Alice Munroe’s ‘Lives of Girls and Women’. Read either of these books- or both if you’re feeling adventurous – and come along on the 9^th for some discussion, coffee/tea and a bit of fun.

Details:

9:30am Sunday 9^th June

Cranked café at 106 Oxford St, Leederville

RSVP here by Monday 3^rd June

See below for more information on the books, and post your own comments about the books!

  

From www.goodreads.com :-

“Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world. …

Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.”

“Lives of Girls and Women

by Alice Munro

[A]n insightful, honest book, ‘autobiographical in form but not in fact’, that chronicles a young girl's growing up in rural Ontario in the 1940's.

Del Jordan lives out at the end of the Flats Road on her father's fox farm, where her most frequent companions are an eccentric bachelor family friend and her rough younger brother. When she begins spending more time in town, she is surrounded by women- her mother, an agnostic, opinionated woman who sells encyclopaedias to local farmers; her mother's boarder, the lusty Fern Dogherty; and her best friend, Naomi, with whom she shares the frustrations and unbridled glee of adolescence. Through these unwitting mentors and in her own encounters with sex, birth, and death, Del explores the dark and bright sides of womanhood. All along she remains a wise, witty observer and recorder of truths in small-town life. The result is a powerful, moving, and humorous demonstration of Alice Munro's unparalleled awareness of the lives of girls and women.”

Cohousing and other innovative habitats

Having a neighbour babysit, a friend around the corner to drop in for a cup of tea, no noisy cars and choking exhaust fumes, shared dinners, communal gardens... where is this utopia? 

At the September Discussion Group we spoke about cohousing. Cohousing is an intentional community, meaning a group of people plan and manage shared living arrangements that generally comprise private homes and some shared facilities, such as gardens, kitchens and recreational spaces. The idea originated in Denmark in the 1960s by groups of families that were dissatisfied with the existing housing options, and sought to establish a living arrangement that would meet both social and physical needs. The idea has risen in popularity in recent years, particularly in the promotion of 'eco-villages' that also seek solutions to environmental concerns by sharing energy needs and reducing people's reliance on cars for transport.

Australia's cohousing communities are listed on the cohousing website, which provides details of the two currently operating in Perth. SomerVille EcoVillage is in Chidlow, and is set in 162 hectares. It comprises 10 clusters of residences, each with a car-free common area at the centre, and a 20-hectare car-free zone in the centre of the village. Owners can purchase land in the community and must build their dwellings to specific sustainability requirements, and the community also has shared gardens, farms, laundry and living areas. Pinakarri is in Hamilton Hill, and has a land area of less than one acre with 15-20 dwellings. It is funded by both public and private funds, and offers affordable rentals as well as private ownership. Again, it has shared gardens, farms, laundry and living areas as well as holding shared meals on a self-rostered basis and a monthly open house community dinner.

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These innovative habitats seek to address a range of social and environmental issues and are based on the premise that by working collectively individuals can achieve more than they would otherwise. In the midst of Perth’s current housing crisis, with only 2% of rental properties vacant, such projects could not be timelier. However, cohousing does not necessarily have to involve spending large sums of money to buy into a cohousing estate or even the collective ownership by a group (which can be problematic as a result of the legal issues associated with shared ownership- this should become easier if the new cooperative law is passed in state parliament). Sharehousing can be a way of creating intentional communities, with weekly dinners or Mojito Mondays providing a social event for housemates. Choosing to rent or buy a property in close proximity to friends, family, and work/study locations is another way of intentionally designing your living arrangements around social, environmental and consumption concerns. Taking down fences between properties (obviously with your neighbour’s consent) is also a means of structuring your living space so you can share it with others.

However, these options may not available to everyone, particularly our newest Australians. The First Home Project is a unique and inspirational form of cohousing, where a family of three have sought and received community support and funding to buy a large property that can fit three families at one time to provide medium term accommodation and an inclusive community for recently-arrived refugees. 

So if neither a 3x1 in Perth’s rolling suburban sprawl or an inner-city dog-box are appealing or affordable, perhaps cohousing offers some alternatives.

Discussion Group: Cohousing and other innovative habitats

Suburban sprawl getting you down? Inner-city living unattractive and/or unaffordable? Come to this month's Bluestocking Discussion Group to explore innovative ways to build communities. Our discussion will first look at the concept of cohousing and its emergence, and examples in both Australia and elsewhere. We'll then look at "intentional neighbourhoods" and other efforts to build communities within the boundaries of standard property rental and ownership regulations, and also some of the issues facing such ventures.

Location: The Moon Cafe, 2/323 William Street (corner Newcastle), Perth
Time: 6pm, Sunday September 9th
RSVP: in the comments here, or on the Facebook event page. 

Discussion Group: Bluestocking Week 2012

Celebrating Bluestocking Week

 August 2012

At the Discussion Group last Sunday we celebrated the start of Bluestocking Week for 2012, enjoying a delicious dinner and delving into discussions about what ‘bluestocking’ represents for women, education and society today.

Below is a blog by one of our members, ‘Lizzy Unpronounceable’, with some fascinating insights into the history and significance of the Bluestocking ‘movement’. Thanks Liz!

Lizzy’s disclaimer: This post is very brief, and so skirts around a lot of issues. It is also focused on English and Australian higher education.  History of bluestockings in non-English speaking countries such as Japan would be pretty fascinating, and I invite others to comment with any information about such movements.

'Bluestocking'

It is ironic that the term 'bluestocking', now used to exclusively refer to women in academia, was actually coined in this sense in 1756 in reference to a man.  Benjamin Stillingfleet was the first Bluestocking; the term referenced his eccentric behaviour of wearing his blue woollen stockings to a high society literary gathering, rather than fine white silk stockings as was expected.  The literary gatherings were hosted by Elizabeth Montagu, a member of the literary elite who was wealthy enough and well connected enough to encourage the growth of a circle of fashionable intellectuals.  The group (the membership of which also included Mary Wollstonecraft, Catharine Macaulay, Hannah More, Samuel Johnson, and Edmund Burke) become known as the 'blue stocking philosophers' after Stillingfleet's faux pas, and Montagu's house became known as the 'Blue Stocking Lodge'.  Stillingfleet's blue stockings were taken on as a sort of symbol of unconventional behaviour, just as the idea of women being interested in and able to participate in intellectual pursuits was unconventional.  The term came to refer only to women engaging in intellectual pursuits, and then to women lobbying for (greater) access to higher education and as a derogatory term for supposedly unfeminine, unwomanly, and worst of all unmarriageable women engaging in academia and higher education in conjunction with women's rights more generally.

Bluestockings and women in higher education

Elizabeth Montagu and her intellectually minded friends were operating at a time when women were completely excluded from higher education.  Universities were elite institutions, and higher education was not nearly as accessible in the 18th century as it is now in the 21st century.  However, while men were excluded from the academy on the basis of class or wealth, women were excluded because they were women.

Girls were notionally expected to be educated up to a point, either through the contemporary equivalent of primary and secondary schools, or home schooling by a parent or governess.  However, schooling was limited by the teacher's own level of education and by the parents' willingness to bear the financial burden, particularly when the child reached an age where they could start to earn an income.

There were avenues that women could follow if they were academically minded, for example enjoying religious and literary scholarship by joining nunneries, or self instruction through reading their way through fathers' or husbands' libraries.  Girls could learn vicariously through their brothers when they were home for the holidays, relying on second-hand information remembered from the boys' own classes.  However, until the 1800s, there were no social structures for girls' continued schooling or for encouraging women to engage with academia.

In England in the 1800s, teaching colleges started to spring up, providing women a way to qualify for one of the only respectable careers available to them.  Colleges and universities started to allow women to attend out-of-hours public lectures.  In America, a number of colleges admitted women from about 1830 onwards, and women-only colleges like Vassar and Smith were established in the second half of the century.  In Australia, the first universities were established in the 1850s, and women were excluded from them until 1881.

Once women were admitted to universities, there was still no guarantee of equal access to educational experiences.  Some universities still excluded women from certain courses, effectively funnelling women into education and home economics.  There are examples of lecturers refusing to lecture when only the female students had bothered to turn up to class, and of tutors setting different problems for female students, or marking them differently.  Oxford and Cambridge allowed women to matriculate, studying the same degree courses as men, from the second half of the 1800s.  However, women were not awarded degrees until 1920 and 1948 respectively.  After winning the fight to occupy academia, women had to fight to participate in academia.

A range of bizarre beliefs about women and women's capacity to learn plagued the bluestocking cause.  One commonly held medical belief was that women's reproductive 'apparatus' would be endangered by the redirection of energy from the ladyparts to the brain.  Anti-bluestocking arguments asserted that the act of studying would lead to a withering of the womb, and would make women barren, weak or sickly, mentally ill, and possibly eventually cause death.  Those whose education did not rob them of their reproductive abilities and physical and mental strength were attacked for marrying later in life or not at all, and anti-bluestocking arguments morphed into concerns about low birth rate leading to humans dying out.  Another argument against higher education for women was a little closer to reality.  There was little demand for women with degrees in the labour market, and so what use was a university education to a women whose post-degree options were often limited to a career in teaching or homemaking?  For many women, university life was a brief respite from familial duty, and once the classes ended, so did their access to the academic world.

Arguments that supported women's higher education were not all that enlightened either, and tended to focus on the benefits of an educated thinking woman to society and to their menfolk.  That is, an educated woman would be better placed to pass on that education to their sons.  Education for the betterment of women as individuals did not seem to be taken as a compelling argument.

Bluestocking and Suffrage

Restricting women’s access to higher education was also a way of restricting women's access to other freedoms, particularly suffrage.  As male student riots in Cambridge in 1897 demonstrated, people were motivated by an underlying fear of gender equality that manifested in attacks against women's education, women's suffrage, and even women's right to ride bicycles – all symbols of the freedom and equality that first wave feminists were fighting for.  Arguments against women being allowed to vote often centred on their supposed inability to think rationally and their childish or uninformed opinions.  Voting while female was a danger to society, as women were not in a position to know enough about the world to make meaningful decisions about it.  Increased equality in higher education was a slippery slope that would eventually lead to equality in many other areas where men enjoyed privilege.  Give women degrees and soon they would expect equal access to employment, income, and suffrage.  With hindsight, we can now happily say that they were spot on about that, at least.

In 1949, women accounted for 20% of all university undergraduate students in Australia.  A government briefing paper from 2003 put women's engagement in higher education at just over 50%.  However, echoes of the historical bluestocking experience are still evident when looking at the subject areas that men and women tend to pursue.  In 2002, women were still more likely to engage in arts and humanities, and far more likely to pursue education than men.  Men were slightly more likely to enrol in physical and chemical sciences, and far more likely to pursue information technology and engineering.  This is also true across the globe, as women are vastly more likely to graduate with a degree in an education area than one in engineering or computing [UNESCO have released an atlas of global access to education].

In less than 200 years, women have gone from complete exclusion from higher education to making up more than half of the global student body.  However, 19th century ideas of biological 'fitness' for certain areas of academia still inform both women and men's choices about higher education.  Women still tend to pursue higher education in traditionally 'feminine' fields seen as requiring communication and nurturing skills, and are actively discouraged from pursuing areas that are perceived as requiring 'masculine' abilities of logic and rational thought or of manual dexterity and strength.  'Bluestocking' as a label has changed from a badge of honour to a vicious pejorative, and back again.  Women's education is now seen as an integral part of economic and social growth, recognising the potential for women as change agents.  Far from bringing about the end of the human species, Bluestockings started the ball rolling for equal access to higher education and academia, a cause that we must still actively pursue.

Further Reading

Aleman, Ana M. Martinez & Renn, Kristen A. (2003) Women in Higher Education: an encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=dqVP7mU5vuEC]

Carrington, Karry & Pratt, Angela (2003) How Far Have We Come? Gender disparities in the Australian higher education system, Information and Research Services, Department of the Parliamentary Library. [http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/CIB/cib0203/03CIB31]

Eger, Elizabeth (2010) Bluestockings: Women of reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism, Palgrave MacMillan,

[http://books.google.com.au/books?id=DRA2uAAACAAJ&dq]

Kamm, Josephine (1965) Hope Deferred : Girls' Education in English History, Routledge [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=yW_TWf7RwiMC]

Robinson, Jane (2009) Bluestockings: The remarkable story of the first women to fight for an education, Viking. [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=LV7Opc061ZYC&dq]

UNESCO eAtlas of Gender Equality in Education (2012) [http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/gender-and-education/resources/the-world-atlas-of-gender-equality-in-education/]

Proud to be a Bluestocking

This article was written by Shannon Green and was originally published in the Frederick News-Post on 8 June 2012.  Click here for a link to the original article.

One day while waiting for my daughter's gymnastics class to let out, I decided to steal a few minutes to read my book. I hadn't finished one chapter when a woman plopped her gym bag on the couch seat next to me and asked, "What are you reading?" I replied that I was finishing up "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin." She paused and then said, "There's a name for women like you, intellectual women, blue something or other." I told her that I was not familiar with any such term. After rummaging in her bag for a moment she made a hasty retreat. I didn't think a whole lot of the exchange until I recounted it to my husband that evening at dinner. He encouraged me to look it up, and thanks to the infinite knowledge of Wikipedia, I discovered what she was trying to call me: a blue stocking.

I had never heard this term before, so I read the entire article. Wikipedia defines "blue stocking" as an 18th-century term for an educated, intellectual woman. OK, that's not so bad. But as I read further I discovered that the term had mostly negative connotations, and the blue stocking name itself came from the cheaper stockings allegedly worn by educated women as opposed to the more fashionable black stockings that were in style. What really got to me was there was only one word in the "See Also" section of the entry. And that word was "nerd."

Upon further investigation, I also found that in 1811 an Irish playwright wrote a play titled "The Blue Stocking" that parodied such women. On the flip side, I also discovered the Blue Stocking Society. Established in England in the mid-1700s, the society was a circle of women interested in the education of their fellow females. They would meet, invite learned men to attend and discuss the intellectual issues of the day.

Since women were not allowed to attend college at that time, meetings like this attempted to fill the gap in their education. One quote from one of the most famous Blue Stocking members, Elizabeth Montagu, really struck a chord with me. In 1743 she stated: "In a woman's education little but outward accomplishments is regarded ... sure the men are very imprudent to endeavor to make fools of those to whom they so much trust their honour and fortune, but it is in the nature of mankind to hazard their peace to secure power, and they know fools make the best slaves."

In the 20th century, some women's groups and colleges have tried to reclaim the name much the way Revolutionary War soldiers reclaimed the word "Yankee." Not to much avail, however, since the term is rarely used.
Now I won't pretend to know the woman's motivation or intentions when she called me this. Perhaps she didn't mean it as an insult. Most of my friends think that she did. Whatever her reason, I am thankful that she did it.
Who knows if I would have ever encountered this term or learned about these women who so bravely sought equality and an education?
--
Shannon Green writes from Frederick, Maryland where she still reads in public, no matter what the cost.

Fairtrade product search

From Fairtrade Australia New Zealand

Click on Find Fairtrade on the Fairtrade Australia New Zealand website to use a great new product search function. Type in a product type, location or simply browse the many brands of Fairtrade Certified products available. Generated by Fairly Local, you too can contribute to the database by submitting locations where you have seen Fairtrade Certified products - read more here on how to contribute.

Uranium Mining and Fracking in Australia

This month's discussion group will look at uranium mining and fracking in Australia. For those who can't make the discussion, there are some overviews below. Feel free to add comments if you have questions or opinions to share.

Uranium Mining in Australia
There have been three main bursts of uranium mining exploration in Australia. The first was in the mid-1940s and 1950s, after pressure from the US and UK governments encouraged the federal government to offer tax concessions. The second came in the late 1960s as nuclear power began to take off, and the third has happened since 2002 (driven, in part, by claims that nuclear power will help to provide an energy source with a lower impact on climate change than coal).

Photo courtesy of Alberto OG on Flickr

Opposition to uranium mining has accompanied these developments, with activists concerned about the environmental impacts, the impacts on Aboriginal communities and lands, and the links between uranium mining and nuclear weapons.


The Wikipedia entries on uranium mining in Australia and the anti-nuclear movement in Australia both provide useful overviews.

This interactive map provides a useful overview of previous, current, and proposed nuclear sites, covering processing facilities and waste storage sites as well as military and mine sites.

The RoxStop website offers some suggestions on how to take action on uranium mining in Australia, including signing petitions and shifting your super away from funds that invest in uranium mining.

The Lizard's Revenge website provides information on the upcoming attempt to highlight the problems with the expansion of Olympic Dam.

For people in Western Australia, the Conservation Council of Western Australia has provided an overview of the problems with the proposed Toro Energy mine at Wiluna.

Fracking in Australia

Photo from Darth Ambiguous on Flickr

Fracking is a relatively recent development in Australia: the technology has only become feasible over the last decade or so, and while it has been used quite extensively elsewhere Australia has seen the most rapid expansion of fracking since 2010. Fracking involves using pressurised fluid mixed with sand and a range of chemicals to fracture gas reservoirs so that the gas can be accessed. There are a number of concerns about this technology, including the environmental impacts and the impacts on farmers. 

This article in The Economist, Gas Goes Boom, looks at the development of fracking in Australia, as well as some of the concerns about the environment and effects on farmers.

Dennis Cooke's Explainer: coal seam gas, shale gas, and fracking in Australia on The Conversation is also a good starting-point for those wanting to find out more.

For more on opposition to fracking in Australia, you can visit:

• No Fracking WAy (in Western Australia)

and

• The Lock the Gate Alliance (Queensland)