Stop the Violence - Women Speak Out

"If you're not outraged you're not paying attention!" is my favorite feminist t-shirt (outside of always thinking outside the box), so I don't know why I'm so shocked at the domestic violence figures recently released. But I am, because it is shocking.

Approx half of ALL homicides in Australia are women murdered at the hands of near and dear ones. It's apparently hard to get the figures because not all near and dear are married and sometimes death isn't immediate and if the perpetrator kills themselves then it doesn't count... statistically that is.

 

In Memory of Evelina Gavrilovic

Photo and Quote from Sydney Morning Herald article by Ruth Pollard

Symbol of protest ... after Evelina Gavrilovic died activists against domestic violence put red roses on the Parliament House fence.

"Our key concern is that the increased number that we are seeing is only the tip of the iceberg and that there are a lot more women dying in domestic violence-related fatalities than what we know about," said Betty Green, the co-ordinator of the NSW Domestic Violence Coalition.
Despite education campaigns, there were still significant misunderstandings about domestic violence in the community and in key services such as police, leading many to miss clear danger signs women and children were at extreme risk, she warned.
"Women do not die by accident, they don't die because of a mistake, they die because of a culmination of a repeated pattern of violent behaviour," she said. "There is no passion, there is no love in a domestic violence fatality. It is really, really important that we name it for what it is - in most cases it is premeditated, it is anger, it is revenge and it is the ultimate act of control."

from Shameful Secret of Our Family Murder Epidemic, SMH by Ruth Pollard

A review of the response to domestic violence by various agencies has been successful in implementing changes which reduce the death toll significantly. Victoria is the first state in Australia to establish a review although the NSW Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, recommended the establishment of a domestic violence review team in 2006.

The NSW Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, first recommended the establishment of a domestic violence review team in 2006, after reviewing police practice in response to domestic violence. Since then dozens more women and children have died, and NSW is no closer to finding out why.
"We can see that looking at … the way families and individuals interact with a range of different government departments and services providers … can give you the benefit, certainly in hindsight, of seeing what you could have done differently," Mr Barbour said.
"By trying to identify factors that continually crop up where you see fatalities in a domestic situation will help identify risks and allow you to intervene in a relationship earlier, with the obvious benefit of preventing a fatality."
The review would also help agencies to improve their capacity to respond to potentially fatal situations, he said.

Again an excerpt from another article in SMH by Ruth Pollard

Go Ruth Pollard! 3 SWORD AWARD!

Only this is serious folks. What can we do to prevent women and children dying in NSW? Petition the Hon Verity Firth MP, Minister for Women and chair of The Premier's Council on Preventing Violence Against Women. Only recently set up and still finding its feet mind!

Donate to the NSW Women's Refuge Movement directly. And lobby your Federal Minister for catch up funding - more information and letter templates here!

Finally, celebrate 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence! from November 25th to December 10th. I'm totally on board this one! Now, how to celebrate uniquely but ... ninjaly.

Women Hold Fewer Top Jobs Than Before - POST FEMINISM AT ITS WORST

I've been arguing this for quite a while and no one believes the figures. Australia is resting on its laurels. (Hi Laurel) Although, I still argue that this is a global problem. Things haven't significantly changed for hundreds of years, feminism not withstanding, aside from women having the vote and better financial protection in law (better than nothing).

We permit a few women to operate in the top levels of power in a token way. These are often positions gained through connections, sometimes through utter uber bloke bloodymindnedness and usually at the expense of other women.

Even if not explicitly keeping the sisters down to protect your own job, then if you are a successful woman then you are used to excuse the lack of affirmative action that is now espoused by the head of the Business Council of Australia.

Katie Lahey … called for a national debate on quotas.
Photo: Quentin Jones

Katie Lahey, the chief executive of the council, which represents the heads of Australia's top 100 corporations, said promotion of women on merit had not worked.

"I've pooh-poohed quotas for years, but other strategies have not worked, and it's time for a national debate on quotas for women," she said.

I GIVE HER THREE SWORDS FOR SPEAKING OUT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FROM HER POSITION, TEETERING ON THE BRINK OF FOUR SWORDS BECAUSE THIS IS A VERY CONTROVERSIAL COMMENT! BRING ON THE ARGUMENTS AND DEBATE!

The rest of the SMH article follows...

THE proportion of women on corporate boards and in top management in leading companies has fallen, and the head of the Business Council of Australia has called for affirmative action quotas.
Katie Lahey, the chief executive of the council, which represents the heads of Australia's top 100 corporations, said promotion of women on merit had not worked. "I've pooh-poohed quotas for years, but other strategies have not worked, and it's time for a national debate on quotas for women," she said.

The 2008 census on women in leadership, to be published today, shows Australia has gone backwards in the promotion of women to executive management positions in top corporations and to boards.
The number of women coming through the pipeline in "feeder line" management positions is back to pre-2004 levels. Women who make it to senior roles are clustered in human resources and legal services rather than in operations, sales or finance, the usual routes to the top.

Where Australia once ranked second behind the United States in the number of top companies with a woman senior executive, it now ranks last in a list of comparable countries, including New Zealand, Britain, South Africa and Canada. The census is the fifth undertaken for the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency to measure the progress of senior women in the top 200 publicly listed corporations.

It shows the proportion of women senior executive managers - who directly report to the CEO - has declined to 10.7 per cent from 12 per cent in 2006 and is lower than in 2004. The number of women in these positions has fallen to just 182, down from 246 in 2004. While the size of executive management teams has fallen, women's representation has fallen faster.

Naseema Sparks, the incoming president of Chief Executive Women, which promotes the development and use of leadership talent, said "it's disgraceful". At the time of the census on February 1 there were four women CEOs. Women comprised 8.3 per cent of board members, a decline from 8.7 per cent in 2006, and barely higher than in 2004.

The number of top companies with no women executive managers had risen sharply since 2006, from 39.5 per cent to 45.5 per cent. And more than half the ASX200 boards had no women directors. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, said the most disturbing figure was the decrease in women in line executive management from 7.5 per cent to 5.9 per cent.

"This figure is particularly discouraging for younger women trying to climb the corporate ladder. Are we sending a message to women waiting in these feeder positions that their opportunities for advancement are drying up, and if so, why?"

A number of male-dominated mining, materials and energy companies have joined the ranks of the ASX 200 since the last census.

But Wendy McCarthy, a feminist business woman, said women had been graduating with first class honours degrees in geology and engineering for 25 years, "not in large number but with outstanding results, but they go back to academic life because the culture [in these companies] is unsustainable".

NOTE: my sister was THE top geology student in Australia when she graduated but eventually left both industry AND academia due to the harassment and lack of career path. She continually saw much less able male geologists getting offered better positions or promoted over her.

Matildas win ASEAN Championships 1-0

A tense final culminated in a 1-0 win to the Matildas against host nation Vietnam in the ASEAN Championships. We expected a great result from the side who made the quarterfinals of the World Cup and they delivered.

Lydia Williams, pictured above, had a very tough time in goal but kept a clean sheet! according to articles on The World Game site and other sources.

Seeing the players in action in the forthcoming W-League will be a treat! As far as I'm concerned, all Matildas, young or otherwise are worthy of 3 SWORDs. They deliver every day (for very little pay).

Dr Who's Companions and the SWORD AWARDS

NOTE - First up is my PRE-SEASON FINALE POST which wasn't finished before Sunday night. There's a POST SEASON FINALE follow up!

Firstly, the fact that the women on Dr Who are all companions and that Dr Who has never been a woman for all of his vaunted alien regenerative body shifting abilities automatically disqualifies ANY of them from getting 4 SWORDS.

If Dr Who becomes a woman though, she's a fair chance at 4 or even 5 SWORDS of AWESOME WOMAN WARRIORNESS!




Secondly, Billie Piper with a gun bigger than her entire torso. PUHLEASE! She is so 1 SWORD of awkward. She is BIG CAR LITTLE DICK!

Now, some other companions have been more Emma Peel and less Agent 99, but I'm still waiting for serious SWORDS! There are a bucket load of companions on wikipedia and I'm going to enjoy revisiting old episodes in my new quest to rate the companions.

For now:

River Song: 3 SWORDS - only we don't really know if you're a companion yet.
Sarah Jane Smith: 3 SWORDS - for sheer persistence and fun.
Sara Kingdom: 3 SWORDS - only you got killed off straightaway - such is the fate of many of the strong women companions it seems!

Donna Noble: 2 SWORDS - when you're good, you're great but you're such a temp warrior.
Martha Jones: 2 SWORDS - you were a bit whiny to start but the uniform suits you.

Astrid Peth: 1 SWORD - worth a mention even if only a canary sized mini companion.
Rose Tyler: 1 SWORD - as said above, you are a bit BCLD !







All I can say though, is thank heavens for the taboo against kissing in the tardis!

Tech and the City - Ella Morton AND BEING ALMOST 3 SWORDS

I love intrepid girl scientists. I also dig the feminist housewife movement (trying to rediscover the issues with irony). But I am most in awe when the kick ass 2 SWORD worthy fabulous women involved in either area get that little bit meta or mega or ideally BOTH.

Ella, Tech and the City was fun (finished June 07). I wish you had more stuff of your own and fewer consumer tech reviews. This may be inevitable with your move up from associate editor at ZDNet to Features Editor at Cnet.com.au. But I"m looking forward to less 'Choice' and more 'voice' from you. Because you have a great voice, Ella. I have 3 SWORDS just waiting for you.

About Ella Morton

Member since: June 2007

Hey ho, I'm the Features Editor for CNET.com.au. I focus on our video content, manage the portable audio category and review the odd phone when the mood strikes.

Outside nine-to-five, you're likely to find me rehearsing a play, misplacing expensive possessions and whiling away the last days of my fading youth on the Internets.

Ella Morton is interested in: Camcorders, Digital Cameras, Mobile Phones, MP3 Players and Software.

3 SWORDS - Pru Goward, Paid Maternity Leave and Product Placement

What is there left to say, when this incisive piece by Pru Goward is simply the subtext for the big BIG "Beauty and Beyond" ad from Vogue. No thanks, Vogue. I am already Beyond Beauty.

PS. Guess I was just lucky, cause when I go back now I get AMP Financial Services.

3 SWORDS to Pru Goward.

I am going to have to come up with a new category NO SWORDS AND BEYOND for Vogue. Suggestions?

clipped from www.news.com.au Super Mums hurt us mortals By Pru Goward September 27, 2008 12:00am THIS week we've celebrated the appointment of the first woman deputy speaker of the NSW Parliament. Labor's Tania Gadiel will no doubt make an adequate deputy but my heart sank a little when her parliamentary colleague, Diane Beamer, extolled her virtues as a working mother. The House was told that so dedicated was Gadiel to the Parramatta electorate she resumed her duties 10 days after giving birth to daughter No.1 and, four days after the birth of her "second adorable little girl she was back at a local function''. Perhaps Gadiel is a woman of remarkable stamina, endowed with a cast-iron character, a partner able to efficiently take over and a remarkable baby. Sadly, most of us do not have this trifecta of qualities necessary for a seamless transition from pregnancy to working motherhood. Which is why generations of women, led admirably by the feminist movement, have fought so hard for paid maternity leave.

Headline - Labor councillor attacks her party

There are not enough women in politics. Meredith Burgmann - 3 SWORDS.

Meredith Burgmann ... hates the way the party operates.
Photo: Danielle Smith

Sunanda Creagh Urban Affairs Reporter SMH
September 24, 2008

The NSW ALP is run by right-wing machine men, has an offensive, blokey culture and would be vastly improved by the departure of the power broker Joe Tripodi.

No, it was not the Greens talking; it was Labor's newly elected City of Sydney councillor, Meredith Burgmann, who yesterday delivered a stinging attack on her party.

Cr Burgmann told the Herald at the swearing-in of the new Sydney city councillors that she "hates the way the party operates".

"I think it's offensive. I hate the right-wing, blokey culture," she said. "I would be much happier if Joe Tripodi wasn't there."

Cr Burgmann attracted 9066 votes in her bid to become lord mayor of Sydney. It was nowhere near enough to beat the incumbent, Clover Moore, who got 56 per cent of the lord mayoral vote, but the silver-haired Labor left-winger got almost 1000 more votes than the Greens candidate, Chris Harris.

"My personal vote was fine, which shows we were right to run a defiantly left-wing campaign," she said.

To view the entire article, click on: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/09/23/1221935641162.html

and Vale Bronwyn Moye - Another Fun, Fearless Female - 1950-2008

3 SWORDS for this fallen woman warrior. VALE!

Sydney Morning Herald Obituary: September 16, 2008

WHEN Bronwyn Moye attended question time in the NSW Parliament, which she did regularly, she made herself as visible as possible, positioning her wheelchair on the floor of the house, facing the Government benches. She never let the MPs forget that people with disabilities lived in their constituencies.

Moye, who has died at 57, was in many ways the midwife to a number of key pieces of legislation concerning the rights of people with disabilities in NSW, and one of the foremost campaigners for the disabled.

Bronwyn was one of five children born to Kenneth Powell, a Rose Bay chemist, and his wife, Betty. She went to Rose Bay public and Kambala schools, and began an arts degree at Sydney University but left in 1972, when she married Richard Moye, an engineer. They moved to Whyalla, where he worked in the BHP steelworks. She taught English at Eyre High School until their son Daniel was born in 1974, after which she was a marriage guidance counsellor.

Moye's neck was broken in a road accident near Cobar in 1975, and she became a quadriplegic. Yet the injury made her life busier, rather than less so. She had a second son, David, in 1978, did a BA at Macquarie University in 1981, and carried out many roles in the field of disability. A stroke in 1985, which reduced the limited movement in her left arm, did not stop her.

She became a visiting lecturer on sexuality and disability at Sydney University's faculty of medicine; sat on the Women's Advisory Council for the NSW International Year of Disabled People project; presented and produced Freedom Bound, a weekly radio program on 2SER-FM; was a director, then president of the Australian Quadriplegic Association (now Spinal Cord Injuries Australia); was a leader of the NSW Disability Council, the advisory body to the NSW Government, and contributor to the publication of I Always Wanted To Be A Tap Dancer, a book about women with disabilities.

Fighting with Citizens for Accessible Public Transport in 1991, Moye helped lead a group of wheelchair users to block Broadway in protest at the lack of access on buses. She lobbied the NSW Legislative Council for appliances for disabled people, was an advocate at the Disability Complaints Service, helping disabled people solve problems, and joined Reclaim the Night marches.

Moye helped develop the Disability Services Act (1993) and Complaints Appeals and Monitoring Act (1993). She was a leader in the Commonwealth-State Disability Agreement negotiations, which cemented the funder-provider role between state and federal governments.

More recently, she turned her energies to the NSW Network of Women with Disability, which provides a place where women with disabilities can share ideas and experiences, and make themselves heard in their fight for equality. She co-ordinated the network's participation in the annual International Women's Day marches.

Moye had an engaging, zany and raucous sense of humour - and a trademark laugh. She loved family occasions and having coffee and eating out with her friends - especially garlic prawns and a glass of red wine. She was awarded an OAM in 1987 for service to those with disabilities. In 2005, she won the Edna Ryan Award for feminist activity in the political sphere.

Edna Ryan - the real Fun, Fearless Female!

3 SWORDS for this amazing woman warrior. VALE!

clipped from welnsw.org.au Each year the women's electoral lobby celebrate the life and work of Edna Ryan through the presentation of the "Ednas". When Edna died in 1997 at the age of 92, she left a rich legacy. These awards are designed to support the interests that Edna championed, and to proclaim the fun and humour that she enjoyed. She balanced her advocacy with friendship (mothering more than her own three children), a sense of fun (creating potholders with political slogans) and a love of theatre. She passionately wanted to make the world better for all, and especially for working women. More information on Edna Ryan Follow the links to read extracts of the nominations for 2008. The full nominations are deposited with the NSW State Library and made available to the public. The recipients were: MENTORING: Dori Wisniewski (photo ), Suna Er (photo ), Sandra D'Souza (photo ) EDUCATION: Jude Irwin (photo ), Lesley Laing (photo ) WORKFORCE: Jo Kowalczyk (photo ) MEDIA/COMMUNICATION: Julie James Bailey GOVERNMENT: Liz Barlow (photo ) COMMUNITY ACTIVISM: Matina Mottee (photo ), Elaine Odgers Norling (photo ), Christine Sinclair , Beth Eldridge (photo ), Tess Brill (photo ) THE GRAND STIRRER: Karen Lee Willis (photo )

Super Mummy - we pick on them for all the wrong reasons

From The Sunday Times

July 11, 2004

She's not having it all any more

In her first interview since her husband left and her City career stalled, Nicola Horlick tells Margarette Driscoll where it all went wrong

Not so long ago, all that Nicola Horlick touched turned to gold. She was Superwoman, the City high-flyer who combined six children and a career managing more than £5 billion of pension fund investments with apparent ease. Life seemed to have handed her its greatest gifts; brains, beauty, a loving family and money — tons of it.

Her spirited battle to keep her job after she was suspended by Deutsche Morgan Grenfell in 1997 and accused of conspiring to take her team to a rival company — when she famously stormed the company’s headquarters with a gang of reporters in tow — made her a standard bearer for working women everywhere. Ambitious sixth-formers started dreaming of “being like Nicola Horlick”.

When she became chief executive of SG Asset Management, the smiling face of Horlick appeared on the advertisements as the firm’s main selling point.

Of course, it was never that simple: although she admitted to knitting, staying up late at night to make the children’s birthday cakes and ticking Christmas presents for 70 children off a master checklist in October (to avoid giving the same present twice), Horlick, 43, always slightly balked at the Superwoman tag.

She, of all people, knew you could not “have it all”. Her first-born daughter, Georgina, was diagnosed with leukaemia when she was two and much of Horlick’s working life was underpinned by the battle to save her after she relapsed.

Georgie was 12 when she died in November 1998 and the loss seems to have triggered a series of untoward events in Horlick’s life. Last year she took a job with the Australian conglomerate AMP without telling her bosses at SG who were, not surprisingly, furious. She was put on gardening leave.

The AMP move was trumpeted as a “plum job”, but shortly after the Horlicks had hosted a lavish farewell party for 330 friends at the Victoria & Albert museum in December they decided they were not moving to Sydney after all. Now she and Tim, her husband of 20 years, are getting divorced. Has Superwoman lost her touch? “Everyone has their ups and downs,” she says, with understatement. “All the upheaval must have made me look unreliable — I took all the children out of school and then had to put them back again. But now people will know there was something behind it.”

That “something” was a steadily deteriorating relationship with Tim, whom she met when they were both students at Oxford. They married young: Horlick was 23 and had her first baby two years later. Nearly 20 years on she is facing life as a single mother (to Alice, 15, Serena, 13, Rupert, 10, Antonia, 8, and Benjamin, 4).

“It’s really scary,” says Horlick. “I didn’t get divorced as quickly as I might have done because I was terrified of being alone for the rest of my life.”

To those who have followed her meteoric rise — and stumble — it is surprising to hear her admit to being scared of anything. Indeed, I am reminded of her formidable side when she breaks a sentence to bark “Out!” at Benjamin (who was born the year after Georgie died) as he peeps round the door into the drawing room.

But the divorce and the prospect of launching yet another new business — she is working from the family home in South Kensington, setting up a new investment firm — seem to have rippled her usually indomitable confidence.

She looks fantastic — slender and younger than she used to — but she is dressed in an elaborate, expensively frilled and beaded suit — the sort of thing you would wear to a wedding. It’s as if she has had to take a deep breath and put on her best togs to face the world.

Things started to go really wrong 2½ years ago. Tim had always worked long City-style hours (16-hour days were the norm and he could be away on business for three weeks at a time) and while Georgie was ill Horlick stayed with her in hospital, sometimes for weeks. After she died they must both have been emotionally exhausted. But Horlick is reluctant to blame the strain caused by Georgie’s leukaemia for the split.

“It had a huge impact on our lives but it’s too easy to quote statistics saying 80% of marriages break down after a child dies,” says Horlick. “In fact, I think it might have kept the marriage together because we had a common purpose. Maybe we shouldn’t have been together in the first place, though I don’t want to say that because we’ve had six children and they’re wonderful and there were many years when we were perfectly happy.”

But gradually they stopped talking. Last year they went to marriage guidance and tried a psychologist and a psychoanalyst. “We did everything we could. It’s your duty as the parents of five children to do everything you can to hold it together. But there came a point when I realised I was so unhappy that I wasn’t doing the children any favours by being unhappy.

“It wasn’t as if we were bickering. It was just a case of not loving each other any more. It’s very sad and regrettable but I’ve reached a point where it doesn’t upset me any more. The children know we both love them and we just have to get on with it.”

She is adamant that it was not the fact that she worked that ruined the marriage — fund management is the genteel end of finance — although she admits that the number of charities and committees she served on did impose a strain, as did her notoriety. Tim, who runs his investment company, clearly did not enjoy being “Mr Nicola Horlick”.

“Maybe the answer is you can’t necessarily have a happy marriage if you end up being a very high-powered woman,” she says. “It may well be that men find it difficult living with a woman who’s forging ahead and asserting her position. I don’t know. But would I have wanted to sit around at home just doing the school run? I don’t think I could take that.”

Last summer, as she and Tim grew more distant, she came up with the idea of moving to Australia: “I needed to do something dramatic that would either restart the marriage or make clear that it was dead.”

She flew to Australia, spoke to a headhunter and three hours later was meeting AMP and being offered a job that she accepted. Tim was keen on the idea. But no sooner was she back in Britain than The Sunday Times got wind of the story. Horlick tried to deny it — no contract had been signed — but the paper was sure of its source and the story appeared.

Horlick’s plans were public, forcing her hand. She made three trips to Sydney, found schools for all the children and told everyone how much she was looking forward to moving. The idea was that Tim would “commute”, spending two out of every eight weeks in Sydney while continuing to run his business here. If people thought it odd — well, it was the super high-powered Horlicks, wasn’t it? But as the leaving party approached, Horlick realised that the plan was not going to work: “The marriage was not stable enough for us to move.” She spent the day of the party moving Tim’s stuff from the house into a nearby flat. Then she had to put on an evening frock and face her 330 guests, pretending nothing was wrong.

“I had to go to the party and smile. It was a bit traumatic,” she says, ruefully. “It was too late to do anything — you can’t really cancel something like that — so we went ahead.”

It is odd hearing her relate this drama in her cool, matter-of-fact way. Horlick is able to hide emotion — and she must feel some, surely — like nobody else I have met. At one point she says the split no longer upsets her “although I have been very upset, obviously” — as though she feels that I need persuading.

Friends who were there on the night acknowledge Horlick’s talent for hiding the way she feels: “Most people have said we were brilliant actors. One or two said ‘Oh, I could tell’, but I’m not sure I believe that.

“Most people have been extremely surprised because Tim and I never argued. We’ve always been each other’s best friends, so there was never any nastiness. It’s a shock and I can’t explain to people why it didn’t work.”

Although Tim moved out last December, she could not admit it for ages: “I’m usually outgoing and gregarious but I suddenly got terribly . . . shy, almost, when I went to a party. People would say ‘Where’s Tim tonight?’ and I’d say ‘Oh, he’s doing something else tonight’, or whatever, and then I’d get a bit morose and not be able to say anything. It was all a bit grim.”

Things have been improved by the arrival of a new man in her life, a property developer she met while seeking funds for one of her charities. It’s all very new. “It’s scary,” she says. “But one thing led to another and it’s good to know that people don’t think I’m past it and aren’t scared of the fact that I have five children.”

The details of the divorce are still being worked out. “Financial independence is something I’m pleased to have,” she says. “I wouldn’t like to be in the position some of my friends are in because, when it comes down to it, there isn’t as much money as they thought there had been and they’ve been out of the workplace for a long time.

“I am fortunate. I can earn a lot of money. The idea of having to live on some sort of allowance provided by my husband does not appeal. I feel that women have really benefited from the opportunity to go out and earn their own living. All these surveys that say they’d rather be housewives: frankly, I think that’s nonsense.”

That’s more like it: the voice of the old Horlick. Divorce may have dented her faith in marriage but it certainly won’t dent her belief in working motherdom.

Copyright 2008 Times Newspapers Ltd.

3 SWORDS for Nicola Horlicks. It's good to hear some reality about being a successful business woman.

The Three Faces of Me - Mad, Mum and Menopaused

"The truth is, a great mind must be androgynous." Coleridge.

2008 has been marked by early menopause. So to celebrate, I'm taking Menopause the Moshpit and all things grumpy old woman to a new blog - andragy.com

The stages of life have blurred somewhat. I'm still in the middle of the playground mafia but I've gone from presexual, to full sexual, to breeder (thus no sex) to ... been there done that... let's talk about bonescans. Good news though after the hot flushes have finished the sex drive returns and I don't need to worry about having more children! Haven't got round to telling my hubbie yet though, I'm still wondering just how many laps I want to take a sex drive for.

And I'm still young enough to be going to gigs, learning to surf and playing soccer - albeit creakily at times. And I'm still mad enough to give a shit that feminism is harder to find than a flea's dick with a microscope. (Why do women think they won? What is this post feminist rhetoric? We have entered a pre-Victorian era!)

So Azabela will wait for the return of the woman warrior and all three faces of me are moving to somewhere grumpier... perhaps with a bigger agenda. And whatever happened to those earlier blogs that I forgot about?

Andragyne; the union of both sexes in one body. (Websters)

And i know promote myself to 3 SWORDS for bringing all the grumbling into one long loud SHOUT OUT!

Caroline Coppola : 2007 French jnr vicechamp

So good, so young! Just like me.

2006 World Championships : Women 51+

especially watch Australia's Bronwyn Butterworth take Silver Medal!

2006 World Poomsae Championship: Female (14-18)

2006 World Poomsae Championship: Female (19-30)

2006 World Poomsae Championship: Female (31-40)

2006 World Poomsae Championship: Female (41-50)

Carmela Hartnett - Australia - gets bronze

Female Inventor - Frances Gabe - Self Cleaning House

"Housework is a thankless, unending job, a nerve-twangling bore. Who wants it? Nobody! With my jaw set hard I was determined that there had to be a better way!" Frances Gabe, of Newberg, Oregon, was driven by her hatred of housecleaning to develop one of the most radical and yet practical inventions of all time: the self-cleaning house.

Each of the rooms of Gabe's house has a 10-inch square "Cleaning/ Drying/ Heating/ Cooling" apparatus at the center of its ceiling. At the touch of a button, this unit first emits a powerful spray of soapy water over the room, then rinses, then blow-dries the entire area. The rooms' floors are sloped slightly toward the corners to allow excess water to run off; vulnerable or valuable objects are protected under glass. The overall effect has been compared to an automated car wash---by admirers as well as critics.

More specifically, dishes are cleaned, dried and stored inside a cupboard which is also a dishwasher; clothes are cleaned, dried and stored while hanging in a closet which is also a washing machine/ dryer. The house's sinks, tubs and toilets are self-cleaning; the bookshelves dust themselves.

After 40 years of work and 68 devices, Gabe is still fine-tuning her house. But the final product is no mere science fiction or fantasy: Gabe actually lives in her patented, prototype home. It is no surprise that Gabe has earned the keen interest and strong support of various inventors' organizations. For her innovations clearly have great potential to benefit overworked homeowners as well as the physically challenged. Although Gabe's house may be a bit too practical for some people's taste, it is likely that many of her conveniences, and perhaps even houses modeled on hers, will be adopted for use in time to come.

Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT School of Engineering