LewisCarson

So with my week of women taking ownership of my choices ending rather tamely, I will use this, the last of my blogs to try and reflect on the week gone by.

Why has it been an ongoing struggle to find anything noteworthy to blog on?

Is it due to my own lack of commitment? maybe partially.

Is it to do with the lack of willing of the women around me to give me tasks and chores? Quite possibly

Mrs Trunchball would have been a legend of my poverty challenge!

I ultimately feel the problem lay with the premise of the challenge- trying to replicate the social norms of an entirely different context. Choice is not a tangible commodity like food, money and hot water  as sacrificed by my fellow poverty challengers, rather it is the complex result of historical processes. We can look all around the world and throughout history to spot differing social views of race, class, caste and age. To understand how these social norms came about, is a truly mammoth task.

Within this complexity however there are many rather more simple conclusions that can be drawn.

It is resoundingly wrong that women all over the world are facing unequal access to health, education, equity, and resources. Oxfam supports a broad array of work helping women to overcome the discrimination they face, and secure their basic rights. This is crucial for the simple reason of material support, and also as a process of empowerment.

Steve Biko once asserted- "the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed", as the Black Consciousness Movement is widely credited as a pivitol turning point in the struggle against Apartheid, through installing a sense of pride and self worth amongst oppressed people deprived of power and control. I regard this to resonate strongly with issues of gender inequality- poverty and power are intrinsically interlinked.

History has shown that change does come. Anti-Apartheid, the Civil Rights Movement and the Suffragettes all exemplify historic victories in a struggle for empowerment which challenged social norms in the process. I believe change will come again.

I leave on a final call to action, if we join together we really can overcome the global gender inequality documented in this blog. After my challenge I can categorically conclude that that this can be done with or without a glittery, pink purse in your pocket. 

6 days of walking around with my pretty, glittery purple purse I have become used to the looks and smirks that accompany an accessory usually associated with pre-teenage girls. This time however, has categorically not enabled me to acclimatise to the complex practicalities of actually using the thing. I mean there just isn't enough space for cards, coins, notes, and receipts. Completely absent of any organisation- it seems to be designed so that the coin you really want will situate itself firmly in the realms of the most inaccessible corner...

There's just simply not enough space!!!

I am also beginning to suspect the women around me will be a little sad when my poverty challenge is over. Spending perhaps as much time on errands to the shop and tea runs as at my desk, I certainly had practical use. My sporadic 'choices' to break into renditions of the national anthem whilst skipping up and down the hallway I can only hope served some purpose of 'morale boosting'.

With a Saturday filled with sport and socialising- and crucially no-one with a need or desire to instruct me to do anything else, I find my challenge again undermined by the freedom allowed to me in terms of readily available social opportunities. I wonder what proportion of women worldwide have the same, almost unconstrained, access to sport and leisure?

Some time back now, at this very time of year, the explosion of a firework close to a tree gave a squiirel such a fright that it fell straight off a branch- coming unervingly close to bonking me on the head. This is of course no comparison to the hardship currently being suffered by Sakineh Ashtiani facing death row in Iran for the alleged crime of committing adultery, but a hardship all the same. Now imagine my despair when 'chosen' to put on a frankly daunting giant squirrel head and do star jumps in the office.

... how the memories come flooding back.

This is the standout of a day in the office where demands, some more irrational than others, were in full supply. Tasked with paying compliments to unsuspecting members of the public, embarking upon disproportionate levels of tea runs, sent on a mass chocolate purchase, and finally a sprint in the rain for an ultimately unsuccesful attempt of giving my colleague a hug goodbye.

I remain very conscious that todays absence of choice was all in good spirits, in fact actively encouraged for the purpose of stumbling upon something of interest to note in this blog. I am also aware that my office environment is one of mutual respect and understanding, a feeling sadly not universally replicated.

What a day: cleaning, cooking, tidying, working... might as well start calling me Cinderella!

Not quite. But the chores I did embark upon were made all the more tedious for coming in addition to a day of work where I have travelled to North Yorkshire and back chatting to the public about worldly issues from the Oxfam shop. Admittedly I did find the time to watch a full football game on the tv, but I would like to feel as if I have somehow faced the Double Shift that many women around the world have as an everyday reality. That of holding an unequal share of household and child care duties, when already having paid employment.

At least I can rest in the knowledge that my chores have spread some happiness today.

Upon my mums gleeful instruction, I had no choice but to tackle the bomb-sight that is my 'not quite unpacked from leaving University despite being home a number of months now' area outside my bedroom.

I made good of my promise to the girls I stay with in Manchester that I would cook for them tomorrow night, despite a clashing social arrangement. My only option was to cook a lasagne this evening and keep it refrigerated until I dropped it over to them.

More washing up, though I am actually growing to enjoy it, kind of relaxing you see.

So now I can only await my fate of an office tomorrow who I cannot help but suspect may have plenty of 'choices' to throw my way.

So before I started to write, I had a good old flick around my fellow poverty challengers recap's of their days. Reading tales of sacrifice, hunger, and discomfort- I could not help but feel that for all my rhetoric and good intentions, all I have really discovered is that finding ways to have 'my choice' decided elsewhere, really is a challenge in itself.

Yes I have been forced far closer to dog defecation than I ever wish to be. 

Yes my fingers are feeling a little wrinkled for the extra washing up I have been allocated.

Yes I was responsible for causing utter confusion to a stranger on the train by asking her where I could sit for my journey (that the carriage was almost empty did not help matters).

But is this really an exercise relating to the disempowerment of women across the globe? Being honest, No.

This may in part be due to the good nature of those women I have thus far found myself in the company of, but really I feel the problem is within the context of my task. With my challenge taking place in conditions where economic comfort and majority opinion gift both men and women a great freedom of opportunity, trying to manipulate a suppression of 'choice' is just not quite natural.

Today a good friend of mine, herself a feminist scholar, sent me a link to a wonderful video detailing how understandings of womanhood impacts upon the education, health and ultimately lives of women in poverty around the world. This really emphasised to me how social expectations and norms really do shape opportunities and ultimately 'choice' for women in poverty.

So now in my pre-sleep contemplations, I am full of gratitude for the continued; opportunities, resources, and support- that have allowed my sister to recently find a great job in a profession of her choosing. I am also full of hope that one day sisters all over the planet will have access to the same.

I am simultaneously frantically thinking of ways to liven up my challenge...