Nobel Prizes vs Beauty Queens

But I was sent for lessons first to Mr Romilly at Tranquillity Boys, and then to the lessons Mr Granderson of Eastern Boys gave in his front half-verandah. I put down my exhibition results to those co-ed lessons. So did my parents.

Both parents had only one dissatisfaction with St Joseph’s Convent of the time. Science was not taught. That eliminated any possibility of my following in my father’s footsteps. He was a pyrotechnist ie fireworks, and that meant chemistry and perhaps physics.

And so hearing from Mr Farrell, who lived around the corner that he was tipped to be Headmaster at St George’s and that St George’s being co-ed, would provide the same subjects and the same teachers for girls as for boys, off my little sister went to St George’s. There has been no reason to regret the choice. By the time that she had ended her secondary schooling at St George’s two women had notably dented the superstition of what women could do or couldn’t do. Marie Curie of France had twice – yes twice – won the Nobel Prize in science. The first time was with her husband, the second time was on her own. Marie Curie now lies with other French greats, in the Pantheon. She is the first woman to achieve this distinction. Dorothy Hodgkin, the British Quaker also won the Nobel Prize in science. That Hodgkin win had turned attention to the reasons why Quaker women did as well at science as did Quaker men. The answer was found in Quaker schools. These were traditionally co-ed, with a strong streak of Quaker equality in administration and in extra-curricular activities. Incidentally the Hodgkin marriage was as good as any other.

From the Cradle?

What was peculiar about the Manning administration’s hussle to re-establish single sex schools, was the little debate on the subject. What there was, concerned the situation where girls were doing better than boys at school and in nearly every subject. The howl was that this could and should not be permitted to continue. The remedy was to get boys back to “their own” schools with male teachers and therefore out performing girls as boys are schooled for their future return to dominance. This return to single sex schools was, it was claimed, backed by research which showed that boys did better at school when there were no girls around.

This is true in some countries and may be true here. There is however other research largely coming out of the Nordic countries, which suggests that the factors which will govern male academic success are already present, when boys begin their education. Those factors are first of all in the family and the friends of the family. Boys and girls are treated differently from birth. This difference is particularly present in two areas: From day one girls are given more practical responsibility than are boys and they are taught to be more disciplined and obedient from the cradle. Unfortunately for boys, these are the factors needed for success and particularly for academic success. We only need to watch our male folk. Taking orders is a problem especially if orders come from women. Work relationships are confused with familial relationships of flattery outbursts and aggressivity. Discipline is out. Reading is considered girlish. It is replaced by an excessive interest in sport. Girls are not allowed to be out alone after dark. Boys lime.

The Model and the Beauty Queen

What about women? Two BBC programmes in one week in late August rang the bell of concern. Over the weekend of the August 22, BBC broadcast Natasha Walter’s views on Feminism in the programme The Interview. Natasha Walter, now in her 40s, had been part of the feminist struggles during the 1990 and in the early years of 2000. Now in 2010, she worries about feminism or the lack of it, today. Natasha Walter outlined the difference between yesterday and today.

The struggles in the 1990s were about equality. Important gains had been made noticeably in political participation and leadership, as well as in the entry of women into a number of professions.

And yet today these gains were being little by little, and subtly, reversed. Women were being persuaded that the highest status “profession” was the model and the ultimate goal was winning in one of the numerous beauty pageants. Women, Natasha Walter insisted, were being “sexualised” into a particular form of difference. Natasha Walter called it socialisation into the pornographic. Worse according to Natasha Walter, women were being taught that this sexualisation was being “liberated.” This insistence of the sexualisation of women as being the ultimate in female liberation, silenced other feminists uneasy or aghast at this “liberation.”

Perfumed Womanhood

The BBC interview coincided with a number of “feminist” affairs here in Trinidad and Tobago. After some meeting of female Commonwealth politicians which PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar attended, the news came through that female politicians should “use their womanhood” and should let the men “smell their perfume.” This use of the feminine would have been regarded with distaste in my generation and with horror in my mother’s generation. The absolute rule in both generations was that no use should be made of sex, sexuality or feminism in work relationships.

There was the LaToya Woods, Miss Trinidad and Tobago affair. This was only the culmination of the trend now presented to Trini women and as from teenagers. It is not to be a Marie Curie nor yet a Dorothy Hodgkin. It is not to be a Jane Austen or a Theresa of Avilla.

It is to be a model. The height of feminine status is to be a Beauty Queen. But then the spin being put on our first woman as Prime Minister is that she brings with her a motherly concern for charity and children. So did Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir of Israel. Both turned out to be as tough as old nails.

Anyway one woman interviewed by BBC made it clear that too much cleavage and bare breasts, were not beauty. In our culture she claimed, they were embarrassment for those forced to watch them. Men as well as women. And don’t tell the French writer Elizabeth Badinter about a woman’s “natural” motherly qualities. After years of research, Elizabeth Badinter concluded that Upper Class women in Europe had no special “motherly” love. They had wet nurses for their babies. Nannies for their young children.

These children were sent to Boarding School and brought up by teachers part of whose training was how to instil Upper Class values in the young. Motherly love was relegated to holidays. The preoccupation with family and mother love Badinter claims, was largely a Victorian affair and oriented towards the lower middle class and towards the working class. Elizabeth Badinter has been championing a man’s “motherly” qualities too often ignored. That would be grand for our men..