Uncovering her story

Tracing our female ancestors can be tricky, but it is vital if we really want to know who we are.

It is often difficult finding any reference to women in history, let alone understanding what they did and how they contributed to society.

Until quite recently women routinely changed their names after marrying, they were not allowed to vote and own property, men paid the bills and wrote the wills, so finding them is not so easy.

Sharon DeBartolo Carmack, author of Finding Female Ancestors, believes following the female line can open up new possibilities.

Women are important to trace because they are the ones who give us new family lines to pursue, and researching your female line can help explode myths and challenge stereotypes.

Carmack believes getting to know your female ancestors can help develop a more rounded picture of life in the past.

“While we may find many records for men detailing their military service, land purchases and civic lives, women were more likely to be the letter writers, the family Bible recorders, and the diarists.

“They recorded family and daily life,” she said.

A good example of this, for Carmack, came from one of her clients.

“She's fortunate to have her mother's high school diaries from the 1930s.

“Here you have the mom's own writing, her own voice, her own thoughts, her own opinions, as well as the names of all the boys she dated and had crushes on.

“No other record will give you that kind of information,” said Carmack.

But for genealogist Emma Jolly, author of titles like Family History for Kids and an upcoming book about women in war, tracing her female line helps her understand her own experiences.

“I’m a mother, so I’m interested in the pregnancy, child rearing and childbirth experiences of my ancestors.

"It’s something you can learn from, as pregnancy is something that women experience whatever era you’re in.

“I grew up with my grandmother, she used to live with us and my grandmother, my mother's and my pregnancy experiences have been the same. We all had the same morning sickness and childbirth experiences,” she said.

“When you trace your female line you realise how many women worked outside the home," she said.

“If you have a more middle class line you may find women who engaged in political campaigning. Many working class women were working all the time, right through pregnancy in some cases.

“My great, great grandmother worked as a domestic servant in a London townhouse while pregnant, so she would have had to go up several flights of stairs," said Jolly. "It must have been very hard.”

You often have to dig deep to find out what your female ancestors were doing, Jolly said.

"Newspapers are really useful for finding female ancestors. There are the digital archives of the Times, 

Guardian, Observer and Daily Mirror.

“Women were often involved in church and community activities, so you may have to look at more specific archives, so for example if your ancestor was a member of the Methodist church it might be with the National Methodist Archives.

“There may be a really detailed obituary or an example of your ancestor running a church fete.

“You can also check marriage certificates and birth certificates for maiden names,” she said.

Vital - and fun.

Story published on Women's Views on News, May 8, 2013

A UK Lifeboat for Eastern Europeans

WVoN spoke to four women who help East European women who are in the UK and need support.

Most women who settle in the UK from Eastern Europe find work and are happy here. But some need support.

Barka UK is an organisation that helps vulnerable Eastern Europeans in Britain.

Barka is Polish for barge and the organisation provides a lifeboat for people who are homeless or out of work in London.

It also runs a national telephone helpline where women can get immediate support and advice.

Dorota Harembska, who runs the outreach and resettlement service, says that 90 per cent of the homeless people they come across are men, and they often suffer from severe drug and alcohol addiction.

Most of the people who call Barka UK's helpline however, are women.

Agnieszka Baczkiewicz runs the helpline, and receives calls from Eastern European women, not just in London but from across the country.

“I can have a call about something simple like free school meals, but there are quite a few calls about legal issues such as housing benefit, finding a private landlord that will be willing to accept them, or finding a council willing to house them.

“We are not always able to find services that can reconnect people to their home country.

“Someone living in the middle of nowhere can find themselves homeless with no language services.

“A lot of the phone calls come from women, because women are quite pro-active in looking after their families.

"They are worried about things going wrong,” she said.

Malgorzata Bachmiak runs the Social Economy Centre, which provides support with vocational training and job seeking.

“We know quite a few people who were paid under the minimum wage.

"They were paid £6 an hour which is illegal and were not being paid National Insurance,” she said.

Although most of her clients are men working in industries like construction and catering, Bachmiak says that most Eastern European women work, and they tend to return to work very quickly after having children.

“I had this woman she had never worked before, she lived here for two years she had three kids and then she got pregnant again.

“She went to the Jobcentre and applied for JSA, but she wanted to get some work and get some rights.

“She had to return to work after two weeks [after giving birth].

"It was very difficult, as she had a caesarean. She gave her baby to her mother to look after.

“It's quite difficult, especially for single mothers, the father runs away, what should they do, should they go back to Poland?

"They are in a different country. Maybe the kids are not three years old yet, so they can't go to pre-school, but there is nothing for them in Poland,” said Baczkiewicz.

She said her helpline receives some calls about domestic violence, but not as many as she would expect.

“Perhaps women are afraid, they just put up with it. Perhaps its not so much of an issue, but I don't think so because of all the alcoholism. Maybe they find other services,” said Baczkiewicz.

The women thought Barka UK offered a unique and valuable service to their community.

“We are different from other services first of all because of the language. We are able to communicate with people from Eastern Europe, some of the staff speak Russian as well.

“We are closer to them culturally. We know their situation better,” said Monika Zerbin, who worked as an outreach worker for the charity.

However Barka UK has recently faced worrying funding cuts.

Lambeth Council and the City of London decided not to continue commissioning it to provide reconnection services for Central and Eastern European migrants living in these boroughs, although they will still be able to access Barka's helpline and Social Economy Centre, which are funded from other sources.

Lord Roberts of Llandudno, President of the Friends of Barka UK, wrote last month: “Such decisions make little sense since migrants from countries such as Poland account for nearly a third of London’s homeless population, a figure which may rise when barriers to Romanian and Bulgarian workers are lifted next year.

"Barka UK must be allowed to continue making a difference.

"London councils need to realise that organisations that know what they are doing in this difficult area should be supported in these tough times.

"Now, more than ever, we need to reach out and help migrant rough-sleepers on the streets of our capital.

"And we must ensure that inspirational groups such as Barka UK can continue to do their unsung and indispensable work.”

Story published on Women's Views on News, 7 May, 2013

Nobody gets off lightly in here

WVoN talked to Julie McNamara, writer of the play The Knitting Circle.

The Knitting Circle is about a a group of women locked up for decades in a Hertfordshire asylum.

Julie McNamara lived and worked as a nursing assistant and social work trainee in the Harperbury hospital in Radlett, Hertfordshire, in the 1980s.

That was on the eve of the introduction of Care in the Community, a government policy which saw the closure of most of the large asylums and their replacement with smaller group homes.

Harperbury was one of six ‘big bins’ in Hertfordshire and could accommodate up to 2,000 patients.

It survives to this day, in a smaller form, and is now known as Kingsley Green.

At the time she worked there, McNamara wanted to do something constructive for the women at the hospital, but Sister Mary Frances, an old style nursing sister working there, warned her that she could not be seen to be doing anything political.

"She told me the only way you can get away with it is if you do something for the hospital shop.

"She suggested I form a knitting circle," recalled McNamara.

Years later McNamara came across an old tape of the knitting circle conversations, which gave her the idea for the play.

"I heard those voices and I said whatever happened to those people on that tape?” she said.

So she put out feelers on the survivor networks and was amazed at the response.

"I was absolutely inundated.  I am still hearing from people with nowhere else to tell their stories.

"There were thousands and thousands of people who were put away for no good reason.

"I lived and worked with a woman who was put away for 48 years for stealing a bicycle aged nine.

"I met people who had children to their own fathers or grandfathers.

"These were young, young women. They were placed in these asylums ‘for their own protection’ and described as ‘morally deficient’."

The play is based on the testimonies of 70 women, including a woman who was born in an asylum and wondered why she had never been adopted.

"When she traced her mother she found she had done 34 years in this ‘bin’. She had been nursed for years in a women-only ward, and had 12 pregnancies. She had a PhD in Philosophy,” said McNamara.

"The only way these women survived was through their own love for each other and through utter mischief," said McNamara.

One of her favourite stories was from Anne from Enfield.

"Every Christmas the Friends used to give them chocolate brazils.  She had never liked brazil nuts so she sucked the chocolate off and gave the nuts to the nurses as presents.

"It took them four years to find out,” said McNamara.

McNamara started to think of new ways of working with actors, because she wanted them to hear the voices of the people who were telling their stories.

"I wanted them to hear from the patients themselves. I wanted them to hear from former staff members,” she said.

So she cast six actors and matched them with some of the survivors and staff.

The play is a moving and authentic portrayal of a group of patients and staff as they struggle to maintain their morality, dignity and individuality in a world where the only thing to look forward to is the next cup of tea.

And where, if you step out of line, you can expect a cold bath, a beating and a spell in isolation.

"Nobody gets off lightly in here," says Colin Shine, the charge nurse in the piece, played by actor Sanjiv Hayre.

McNamara says the people who gifted her their stories think of this as their play.

"It’s been enormous fun.  I’ve had huge mischief.

"The people who have given me their stories have stayed in touch with me for the past three years.  It’s become a huge tribe,” she said.

McNamara is now in talks with producers about turning the play into a film.

The Knitting Circle  will visit Oxford, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Deptford and Bristol.

The performances have integrated sign language interpretation, and some, such as the performance at Liverpool's Bluecoat Theatre on 9 May, are audio described.

In Bristol, the cast will be joined on stage by some of the survivors, who will receive a public apology.

In February Ireland's Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, apologised on behalf of the Irish state to the survivors for the appalling treatment of hundreds of women in the Magdalene Laundries, and McNamara believes those who survived the asylums deserve the same from the British government.

When I heard that, I thought my God we’ve heard not even an acknowledgement of what women went through in the asylums, in the so-called long care system where, for the most spurious of reasons, women were thrown away for the rest of their lives.

Nobody is after compensation, she points out, but every single story-teller who gifted their stories to this play wants an apology.

McNamara believes services for today’s mental health patients are patchy.

"It’s chequered. It depends where you live, it depends whether you’ve got money, it depends whether you’ve got access to the protocols that allow you to be treated, it depends whether you’re black or white, 

whether you are rich or poor.

"It is an appalling time to be unwell in the mental health system in this country, because we are taking a huge retrograde step by selling off the health service and by decimating the welfare system.

"Nye Bevan must be spinning in his grave," she said.

Story published on Women's Views on News, May 3, 2013

Polish women discuss their lives in the UK

The first major conference of Polish women living in the UK took place last weekend.  

Rachel Salmon spoke to some of the women who took part.

“The main goal is to show that Polish women living in the UK are the ambitious ones, the passionate ones. 

They are hard working and can achieve great success,” said Alexandra Musial, a student from London,  and one of the organisers of the conference, called the United Kingdom of Polish Women.

This event was put together by volunteers, government bodies and community organisations,  and 

Saturday's opening session attracted over 200 women.

The conference was run on similar lines to the Women’s Congress, an annual event which has brought women together to discuss gender equality in Poland for the last five years.

Polish people now make up Britain's second largest migrant community, so the organisers wanted to explore how the diaspora had affected women.

There were workshops on women's rights, arts, science, health and personal development as well as a Woman of the Year award ceremony, to celebrate the contribution Polish women are making to British life.

All of the women I spoke to enjoyed living in the UK.  They appreciated the multiculturalism and opportunities available, especially in London.

“I can meet lots of different people.  Britain has more opportunities to spread your wings,” Alexandra Musial said.

Kinga Goodwin, a cultural psychologist, and one of the panelists in the discussion about women in science at the conference, agreed.

Goodwin has lived in the UK for eight years with her British husband. She believes that British culture is quite similar to that of Poland, and any prejudices are more to do with class than race.

“People assume that migrants are working class because they tend to do working class jobs.

“People have a patronising attitude, ‘you must be a cleaner’.  It may have been the case several years ago but now it is completely different.

“I have heard about discrimination because of some vague economic reasons rather than nationalism,” she said.

Olivia Kapchia, who runs an estate agency in west London, believes you need to be a very hard worker to survive, especially in the capital.

“But you can develop in any areas you want, personal as well as business, which you could not do outside London,” she said.

The conference also featured a Polish Woman of the Year competition.

One of the finalists, Eva Sadowska, runs Barka UK, the British branch of a charity established by her parents in Poland in the wake of the fall of communism.

Barka UK supports vulnerable people from across Eastern Europe. It has offices in Hackney and the Elephant and Castle. Most of its staff do outreach work with street homeless people.

The charity also runs a national helpline.

Sadowska said fewer Eastern Europeans are coming to this country now, and those who do face huge problems.

“Even people with Masters Degrees are cleaning toilets in bars and hotels. Their potential is being devalued.

“Well educated people who lose their jobs sometimes lose their flats and are finding themselves on the streets.

“This is a very difficult time for migrants,” she said

Sadowska believes that older migrants, who spent most of their time living under communism, can find life in the UK particularly difficult.

“They find it very challenging to deal with the free market economy, not having the state having a monopoly over everything,” she said.

Barka has helped over 3,000 Eastern Europeans to return to their home countries, where they can access a range of services, from vocational training to detoxing.

Some return to Britain, and a number of Barca’s 15 UK-based staff are former clients.

“If you take overall migration into Britain it is only a small minority who fail, but we must do what we can to support them,” said Sadowska.

Story published on Women's Views on News, April 25, 2013

Campaigners plan to 'Occupy Barbie'

Protests planned if massive Barbie Dreamhouse goes up in central Berlin.

Franziska Sedlak a 24-year-old student and left-wing activist first heard of Austrian businessman 

Christoph Rahofer’s plans to erect a lifesize pink Barbie doll's house when she attended a debate about sexism at the end of last year.

Sediak and her friends in the Left Party's youth organisation and Socialist Alternative decided to organise a campaign against it.

The doll's house, to be situated on a 26,000 square-foot site in Berlin’s central Alexander Square, was due to open on 26 March, but this was put back to 16 May.

Sediak and her friends are using the time to organise a broad-based campaign.

They have set up the ‘Occupy Barbie’ Facebook page, which already has over 700 followers and are organising leafleting sessions and meetings to talk about role models, sexism and the economic situation faced by women.

They plan to organise a demonstration in the run-up to the opening in May.

Sediak said the Barbie Dreamhouse would consist of ten rooms full of clichés.

Young girls will be offered catwalk training, styling advice and a photoshoot.  The highlight of their visit will be to choose whether they want to be a superstar or a top model.

“Barbie is pushing a completely unnatural beauty.  If she were a human she would not survive, she would break in two.

“What is being suggested is that the only role of the woman is to be beautiful, to wear high-heels and at the same time have a fresh cake in the oven.

“These childhood role models will shape their whole lives,” she said.

“The Barbie Dreamhouse is a symbol of women’s oppression. Women are paid less than men, women must always be beautiful and well made up, as well as working and cleaning.

“It’s about sexism, and the Barbie Dreamhouse is a symbol of this,” said Sediak.

Rahofer plans touring the house round Europe when it has finished its stint in Berlin.

Sediak is clear that if the house comes to the UK, feminists and political activists should use it as an opportunity to educate society.

“Start a campaign against sexism and use it as an opportunity to engage people in a conversation,” she said.

Review, Lean In

New book by Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg asks why so few women are choosing to become leaders.

Sheryl Sandberg started college in 1987 and graduated in 1991, and has an excellent academic record.

She graduated from Harvard and was appointed Chief of Staff at the US Treasury at age 30.

In 2001 she joined Google as vice president for online global sales.

She took up her current job at Facebook in 2007.

Sandberg admits that in her younger years she did not want much to do with feminism or women’s rights, assuming that all the battles had been won.

She admits that she and her friends ‘lowered their voices’, worked hard and tried to fit in.

But as she got older Sandburg noticed that fewer and fewer of her peers were still in the workplace, and she frequently found she was the only woman in the room.

The reason for this, she argues in her recently published book 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead', is that women too readily withdraw from the world of work because of the pressures and obstacles they face, either from employers with inflexible working patterns, husbands who refuse to do their fair share of housework and childcare, or because of their own self-doubt and lack of confidence, which is often the product of social stereotypes.

“Self doubt becomes a form of self-defence,” writes Sandberg.

She says that women start scaling back on their ambitions long before they even have children, scared off by horror stories of what it is like to be a working mother peddled in films like 'I don’t know how she does it' and 'Working Girl'.

It all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Women fail to take risks and end up in unfulfilling jobs, which they are more likely to want to quit - and are even encouraged to give up.

But Sandberg urges them not to heed to these voices and argues that they are better off hanging in there, despite the high cost of childcare, as they will be rewarded with higher pay in the long run.

Sandberg encourages women to seek out men who will support them in their careers and urges men to ‘lean in’ to family life and do more childcare and housework.

“Having it all is a myth,” writes Sandberg. "It is impossible to do everything perfectly.  We need to learn to identify what is important and what isn’t at home and at work."

She quotes American feminist and political activist Gloria Steinem: “Perfection is the enemy.

“Superwoman is the adversary of the women’s movement.”

Sandberg also says we need to promote a culture of candour and honesty at work and that women need to be more prepared to ask for what they want.

And she offers some helpful practical advice on dealing with difficult discussions and raising concerns at work.

She also feels that some statutory measures to protect women and minorities ‘can have a chilling effect on discourse’.

While  this may be a reaction to the more litigious culture of the US, it is disappointing that she is so lukewarm when it comes to providing women with more statutory protection.

How else does she think we will attain paid parental leave and more flexible working, which she rightly calls for in the book?

Just leaving it up to individual businesses to implement does not seem to be working, because one of the things that struck me about this book is how tough life must be for women in the USA.

According to Sandberg only five states have any form of statutory maternity pay.  

The Family and Medical Leave Act enables women who work for public organisations or employers with over 50 workers to take three months off after having a child, but employers do not have to pay them.

Only 16 per cent of employers in the US offer any paid maternity leave, and a report by the US Census 

Bureau in 2011 found that only 6 per cent of working women in the US received support from government, an employer or their partner to meet the cost of childcare.  Women living below the poverty line spent a third of their income on childcare.

No wonder women drop out of  the workforce.

It is easy for highly paid and highly educated women like Sandburg  to tell women to 'lean in', grit their teeth and plough on, despite the obstacles, but they are not faced with the prospect of  having to get into debt just to pay for childcare.

Much of the book is devoted to measures that women themselves can take to improve their working lives, but even Sandberg concludes that individual action will only take us so far and, to make real progress, women and men need to work together and support each other.

And she quotes Stamford professor Deborah Gruenfeld; “As individuals we have relatively low levels of power.

“Working together we are fifty per cent of the population and therefore have real power.”

Domestic violence refuges face closure under benefit changes

Women’s Aid fears it will lose money when new benefit changes are introduced.

Half of all  refuges run by Women's Aid, a leading UK charity supporting victims of domestic and  sexual violence could lose money under Universal Credit being launched next month.

From April the Government will impose a £500 weekly cap on the amount of benefits a family can claim, and £350 for single people, excluding some disability benefits.

If benefits, including housing benefit, exceed this level councils will be required to reduce the amount of housing benefit in line with the new limits.

The government will also start to introduce Universal Credit.  Most benefits, including housing benefit, will be made in a single monthly payment directly to the claimant.

Women’s Aid is concerned that the Benefit Cap will hit survivors of domestic violence who receive benefits for two rents, one for the refuge service they are living in and rent for the home which they have fled but intend to return to.

Entitlement to Universal Credit will be assessed on the woman’s circumstances at the end of each monthly assessment period, so the refuge may receive no payment for a short stay of less than a month. Also, the 

Government have decided not to pay housing benefit directly to refuges like Women's Aid, which will leave them chasing money from their vulnerable clients.

Both these changes could mean Women's Aid refuges are under threat of survival.

And the new benefits may not cover charges for services like personal safety alarms and adjustments for disabled residents.

Women’s Aid owns around half of its refuges and the Government has announced that these will be exempted from the new arrangements for the time being.

But it will be up to local authorities to decide if refuges not owned by the charity will be exempt.

Women’s Aid fears this will lead to a two-tier system in which some residents and services face a cap whilst others don't.

Scottish Women’s Aid has reported that women their support will be hit by the 'bedroom tax'. This means victims of violence placed in larger homes on an emergency basis will be expected to pay for spare bedrooms out of their own benefits.

Women’s Aid is still in negotiations with the Government to try and make sure their refuges are exempt from benefit cuts that would threaten their survival.  They are urging its supporters to sign its petition and write to their MPs.

A template letter is available on their website.