Power Lists and Heroines

By NASA/Bill Ingalls via Wikimedia Commons

Last weekend BBC Radio 4 released a Woman's Hour Power List of the UK's most influential women.

The Queen topped the poll, followed by the Home Secretary Theresa May (fair enough - they're quite influential). Below them, the top 20 included women at the top of their fields in business, law, medicine, the media (a Murdoch), science, politics and the arts.

It is heartening to see that only a handful of these women are 'famous' in our usual celebrity-obsessed sense: Adele, JK Rowling, Joanna Lumley and Victoria Beckham (for her fashion work).

These lists are pretty abstract and subjective. How do you really measure influence, and are the list-makers trying too hard to cover as many different areas and professions as possible?

A truly feminist result would be a list of powerful people, in which half were men and half women, but we still have a long way to go before we get to that point. What is great about reading through this list is that these women are out there, being important and influential, and making history.

History's losers

There is a saying that history is always written by the winning side. Up until the 20th century history was written by and about men. When asked to name pre-19th century important men, you could probably keep going for hours. Do the same for women and you won't run out of fingers.

There were plenty of women around when big historical events were taking place, but women couldn't vote, they lost out on positions of power to their brothers, and their education rarely went beyond learning to sew and sing.

Historic Codpiece Influencer Anne Boleyn

That's not to say that women haven't had an impact on history. If it wasn't for Anne Boleyn (and her daughter Elizabeth I), the entire religious landscape of this country would have been different. But up until the 20th century when women fought for the right to vote, fought for the right to a decent education and fought for places in all of the professions reflected on the Power List, we didn't really have a chance.

Codpiece politics

What the Power List does suggest is that history in the future will no longer be male-dominated. There will be heroines who change history because of what they think, say and do - not just because some fat bloke in a codpiece and a crown fancies having his way with them.

Maybe we still haven't reached the point where half the world's movers and shakers are men and half are women, and maybe we never will. But in the UK, if not elsewhere, the landscape in business, law, medicine, the media, science, politics and the arts is being influenced and changed by both men and women. We're no longer the losers.

Female role models

Aung San Suu Kyi by Htoo Tay Zar 

Listening to Dessert Island Discs on Radio 4 with Aung San Suu Kyi, it struck me that our choice of female role models is sadly revealing.

Last week I talked about Joanna Lumley as a role model. A model and actor, since 2008 Lumley has been involved in more role model worthy activities, in her Gurkha Justice Campaign. But she was a female role model long before this. For what - looking glamorous and delivering lines?

I'm not having another pop at Lumley. I'm just wondering, when there are people as courageous, charismatic and intelligent as Aung San Suu Kyi in the world, why do we persist in adoring Cheryl Cole and Kate Moss?

We could model ourselves on the women who are trying to change the world. Instead we choose those who can sing, dance and smile. 

Hilary Clinton by Michael Gross for US State Department

More than just a pretty face

Is a pretty face and a nice bottom really all every woman wants? I hope not.

Shouldn't we really be showering our misplaced adulation on more meaningful targets - women like Hilary Clinton, who get out there and do something real?

You might not agree with everything Clinton says and does, but Kate Moss went out with Pete Doherty and we still love her.

Aung San Suu Kyi 

Suu Kyi is the kind of female role model we should be talking about, and encouraging our sisters and daughters to talk about, and here's why:

• Intelligence - she's Oxford University educated
• Conviction: she spoke out against the rule of Burma's brutal dictator
• Strength of character - it sustained her through 15 years under house arrest, often alone
• Courage - she's faced down guns and much more
• Power - she's leader of Burma's opposition, she could be leading the country soon

And if you want your female role models to be beautiful, she could give most of her rivals a run for their money in that department too. 

The fact that Aung San Suu Kyi has even married and and raised two children, also goes to show that powerful, impressive women don't necessarily don't have to compromise on feminine aspirations (although I'm not saying this is easy - but that's another blog post). 

Serious role models

I'm as guilty as any - who doesn't want a pretty face and killer abs? But I by continuing to adulate women who prance about for a living, instead of those who get on and change things, we're not really helping the world - meaning men and women - to take us seriously. More Aung San Suu Kyi, less Angelina Jolie. 

Get drunk and get raped - thanks Joanna Lumley

Yet again this week we got the message that women who drink too much and dress too little are inviting rape. This time it came from a surprising source - the actor-turned-campaigner Joanna Lumley, someone who should know better.

Lumley is known for being extremely posh and extremely elegant - not the kind of woman to be caught flashing her crotch coming out of a nightclub. But the role Lumley is best known for is Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. Patsy is exactly the kind of woman to do this kind of thing.

In an interview in the Women's Life section of the Telegraph, Lumley says: "Don’t be sick in the gutter at midnight in a silly dress with no money to get a taxi home, because somebody will take advantage of you, either they’ll rape you, or they’ll knock you on the head or they’ll rob you."

I'm not advocating that women/girls do these things. She's right - it's not a good look. And I can see that she's trying to encourage young women to protect themselves.

But in doing this she suggests that getting raped is women's fault, something that women need to guard themselves against, and that women don't have the same freedoms that men have, to behave as they wish. Lumley doesn't exhort men and boys to avoid these kinds of behaviour. And isn't it equally unpleasant having shouty vomity lads staggering around the streets as shouty vomity ladettes?

Maybe Lumley is just trying to advise and protect, but she should know better. She could have encouraged both sexes to not get drunk and disgrace themselves. By putting it on women she places the responsibility for rape at the victim's door, not the rapist's. This is not on.

As one of my wise Facebook friends said this week: "Alcohol and short dresses don't mean people get raped, rapists' decisions mean people get raped."

Should Patsy be raped?
Lumley's character, Patsy, is a drunken, lecherous old sot, who expects to live the high life but give nothing in return. She deserves a lot of things, but she doesn't deserve to be raped. Patsy is sick in the gutter, on herself and on other people, she wouldn't be seen dead in anything that wasn't a "silly dress" and she never has ready money for anything, not least getting a taxi home.

According to Lumley's description, Patsy would indeed be raped, knocked on the head or robbed, probably all three if you take into account the regularity with which she does these things.

Excusing rape
In telling people that rape is a consequence of skimpy clothing, we give rapists and potential rapists an excuse. We encourage them to go ahead, because she's asking for it, in that dress.

Rape is not a passive activity. You cannot accidentally rape someone. Rape is a deliberate, violent and intentional act of abuse inflicted on one person by another. There really is no other way about it. Society needs to accept that the responsibility for rape lies firmly at the door of the rapist.

Role models like Joanna Lumley may think they're trying to protect young women, but by not thinking their advice through before doling it out so publicly, they are giving rapists an excuse and putting the responsibility for this horrible, abusive act onto the very people they are trying to protect.