jencableart

Lock up your daughters

According to UNESCO estimates, 130 million girls between the age of 6 and 17 are out of school and 15 million girls of primary-school age will never enter a classroom. What’s taking us so long to get this right; when people like Mary Wollstonecraft was arguing as early as 1791 that women were deserving of the same fundamental rights as men and were not just ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage?

Touch Screen

In 2011 the UN declared access to the internet as a basic human right. Yet the pool of information on the web looks very different from one language to the next. Giving different answers to the same question depending on how you ask it. Dividing rather than uniting us.

The Surrendered Wife

From an early age I’d always wanted to make a quilt. Some kind of childhood fantasy about stitching around an open fire, making a beautiful heirloom from treasured scraps of clothing. You only have to think about Red Riding Hood’s grandmother tucked up under the covers, or Goldilocks examining the beds in the bears’ houseContinue reading “The Surrendered Wife”

Some day my prince will come

When I was a child, I would read fairy tales late into the night by the light on the landing outside my bedroom (unless I was caught that is…). I despised the insipid heroines waiting patiently for rescue instead identifying with those who used their skills to rescue their brothers or cursed princes by weavingContinue reading “Some day my prince will come”

Darn It

I was listening to woman’s hour quietly sipping my coffee (a white americano since you ask), when I nearly spat it across the room with outrage. An elderly lady was describing how, when she was a young child, her mother had bought her an expensive pair of silk stockings and immediately ripped them in frontContinue reading “Darn It”