With Christmas fast approaching, take a moment to enjoy the new material on the Sophia site this month:
It's that time of year again, when lists are compiled of the people, events and places that have been significant in 2008.
So who's your woman of the year? The woman who has inspired you, challenged you, that you want to celebrate?
Perhaps it was Hillary for being the first woman to run for President in the United States; or Rebecca Addlington who won two swimming golds at the Olympics; or Gill Hicks who lost her legs in the 2005 tube bombings and who this year walked 200 miles as part of an initiative to bring people together; or maybe a friend who will never be in the news but who is courageous, creative and determined? Leave your suggestions in the comments - I'd love to hear them.
Shona Collins was crowned Miss Naked Beauty last night by Gok Wan and Mylene Klass. As a champion for natural beauty, she will write a regular magazine colum, be the face of 'a revolutionary new model agency with a fresh twist on the typical, stick-thin catwalk clothes horse', and help to present Gok's How to Look Good Naked show. I loved her campaign idea to make magazines admit to which of their images have been airbrushed, just like mascara ads now have to say when false eyelashes are used. Shona is curvier and shorter than conventional models, with pale skin and red hair. Will this contest have a long-term effect on images of beauty in the media? Who knows - but it's a great talking point to use with young people and you can watch the episodes online again for the next month or so.
The Sophia Network is one year old - we launched at the Youthwork conferences in 2007. Thanks to everyone who has been part of the journey with us. It's exciting to look back at how far we've come in just 12 months. You can read a report of our first year here, along with some of our plans for the next year. For those of you whose memership is coming up for renewal, we hope you'll stay with us, and we've organised some great incentives to make it worth your while! As always, we're really keen to hear your ideas and feedback - we wouldn't exist without you.
Vicky Tuck, head of Cheltenham Ladies College, claimed this week that girls' education is sacrificed in order to help struggling teenage boys. Speaking at the annual conference of the Girls' School Association, she said that girls are being used to improve their male classmates' education and are losing out on a focused women-only school life, according to this report. "What happens at boys' schools is there may be falling rolls, or their results may not be as good as they might like. They think they can solve that by widening the catchment and taking in girls. Girls are regarded as more diligent and they will pull up exam results and they assume the boys will respond and it will be a wake-up call for them."
The GSA website has interesting articles on why they believe girls are short-changed by the co-educational system, and how girls schools do things differently.
The Global Gender Gap Report 2008 reveals that Norway is the country that has been most successful in closing the equality gap between men and women. The UK comes 13th having dropped two places in the last year, and Ireland is up one place in 8th. The report is published by the World Economic Forum and comments on 130 countries which cover 92% of the world's population. It measures the size of the gender gap in four critical areas of inequality between men and women, looking at how countries share resources and opportunities between their male and female population:
1) Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2) Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher-level education
3) Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4) Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio
Britain's only specialist police trafficking unit is to close after just two years because of a lack of funding, according to this report. Last week six traffickers, pimps and brothel keepers were convicted, thanks to this unit, for their role in trafficking and exploiting a 16-year-old Slovakian girl who was forced into prostitution. She tells her story here. This week the unit is closed - where's the logic in that? You can find out more about human trafficking and how you can get involved in campaigning against it from Stop the Traffik.
Sexual bullying in schools is so rife it is hardly noticed according to a fascinating article in today's Guardian. Girls routinely get called slags, slappers, sluts and bitches, often by each other. But then with role models like Christ Moyles, who has referred to a female news presenter as a slut and Victoria Beckham as a whore on air, perhaps it's not surprising. In the article, Damian Carnell who works for the Nottinghamshire Domestic Violence Forum talks about instances of sexual bullying that affect youth workers as well as young people. 'One incident in a school we work in involved a boy who grabbed hold of a girl in the school corridor and gave her a love bite. Female youth workers talk about situations in which boys play chatline messages to them from their mobile phones, point porn images at them from their phones or draw porn images on paper that they've just been looking at on the computer, even in the school library. So this is sexual bullying or harassment of staff as well as pupils.' Have you experienced anything like this? And how did you respond?
Northern Baptist College are hosting a day called Leading Women - exploring women's ministries. It's organised by Rev Anne Phillips who says: 'Women sometimes struggle to respond to a calling to leadership roles -family commitments, traditional women's roles, negative attitudes in some churches, no encouragement to explore. Baptist Union is committed to redressing this, and NBC is holding this event as part of a wider strategy to explore thse issues.'
This is what's in store for you this month: