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For International Women’s Day, I wanted to talk about Equal Pay Day, something that is very important but not many people know about (in the UK at least). The date of Equal Pay Day (EPD) changes every year and is celebrated slightly differently in each country, but at its core it is a day that recognises the gender pay gap. In the UK, EPD usually falls in November and it marks the day that women effectively would stop earning money for the year if they were paid the same hourly amount as men when they reached their pay amount. For example, if a man earns £12.50 an hour to make £26,000 a year, a woman earning £12.50 an hour at the same rate would reach her salary of £22,204 by November for doing the same job. The Fawcett Society calculate this each year by taking the full-time mean average gender pay gap across all companies and workers to work out EPD. In 2018, that day was November 10th. In 2019 it was November 14th. In 2020 it was November 20th.  Luckily, this shows that the gender pay gap is closing in the UK. However, the gap is still 11.5% for full-time workers according to the Fawcett Society, which is still way too high and shows that we still have a long way to go. The USA and Germany celebrate EPD slightly differently. They mark it as the day women make as much as men did in the last year. For example, if a man earnt €26,000 between January and December 2019, women in the same roles won’t meet the same €26,000 until March or April 2020. Germany is shown to have one of the biggest gender pay gaps in Europe. In a report gathered by DeutscheWelle, in2018 women made 20% less than men, and this only went down by 1% in 2019. As EPD has not happened yet, their gap is yet to be released for 2020. For comparison, the EU has an average 15% gender pay gap across the bloc, went down to 14.5% in 2019 and then 14.1% in 2020.  In the USA, there is the March EPD for women, but there are also four other EPD that cover Asian-American women, African and Black American women, Native American women, and Latinx women. In 2019, these days were (in list order) March 5th, August 22nd, September 23rd, and November 20th. Mothers also have a separate day – in 2018 this was June 10th.  This year, the average day will fall on March 24th. Women earnt $0.82 for every dollar men earnt last year.
The gender pay gap isn’t going to go away quickly. This is only a brief overview on how big the problem is. This year’s theme for International Woman’s Day is Choose to Challenge – this year I choose to challenge gender pay disparity and will be educating myself on this issue as much as I can over the next year. I will also be marking as many Equal Pay Days this year as I can. I urge you to do the same. It is only when we work together that we can stop injustice and disparity in the world.
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Today is the 17th May 2020, hope everyone is doing well. Every few days, especially at the moment, I will be doing a good news update for the podcast and for my blog, where the stories will be written out in more detail, with links for you all to read into them more yourselves. I hope that this brings a little light to lockdown.
On this Day First of all, a quick little bit of On This Day In History, supplied by Good News Network. In 1992, the World Health Organisation officially removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. And finally, in 1954, Brown v Board of Education passes in the United States, meaning that schools could no longer be racially specific. Care home in France has zero covid-19 cases Staff at a nursing home in Vilanova, France have received some incredible news after deciding to quarantine with their patients at the beginning of lockdown on March 17th. 29 workers joined Valerie Martin, who runs the home, bringing pillows, sleeping bags and mattresses to the care home, volunteering to sleep on the floor so they could carry on working during lockdown. Martin was determined that none of her 106 elderly residents would become part of a statistic. By May 4th, 12 of the staff were left when they learnt the news that covid-19 tests for all staff and residents had come back negative. The total 47 days of lockdown were filled with laughter, fun and communal games and meals, with Martin describing it as ‘a holiday camp with moments of total joy’. So for all of you out there doubting the impact of lockdown, this is solid proof that it is the most beneficial thing we can currently do. Don’t be selfish, stay at home, stop the spread of the virus. India's carbon emissions have fallen for first time in 40 years The latest in positive climate change news, India’s Annual Carbon Emissions have fallen for the first time in four decades. Not only did CO2 emissions fall by 15% in March and 30% in April, the last 12 months have seen Indians demand for power slow dramatically. March shutdowns capped the growth of power generation from coal, oil and gas at below zero for the first time in 30 years. March also saw a 6.7% increase in use of renewable energy and a fall in total coal deliveries from home and abroad, which is absolutely fantastic. Imagine what we could do worldwide if other countries started taking the same initiative! we contributed to climate change and we can absolutely help slow it down and let the planet recover, even if it’s just a little bit. Project Seagrass is replanting sea meadows A little more environmental news for you. Project Seagrass (made up of Sky Ocean Rescue, WWF and Swansea University) has currently planted over 1 million seagrass seeds around the British Isles to help restore sea meadows. This is incredible news as sea meadows are believed to be able to capture carbon 35 times faster than tropic rainforests, such as the Amazon. Seagrass filters nutrients that comes from industrial discharge and stormwater runoff and prevents these harmful nutrients from being washed out into the sea, therefore preserving marine wildlife and habitats. Seagrass also stabilises the sea bottom, provides food and habitat for marine life, maintains water quality and supports local economies. The UK has lost 92% of its seagrass over the last 100 years. Teams believe that once these meadows mature, 160,000 fish and 200 million invertebrates could return to these habitats. If you see any stories you want me to talk about, please send them over to me on my Instagram (@niamhs_randomthoughts) or my twitter (@niamhblogs), or comment them down below! I made this as part of my final project for my degree but I thought I should share it here too. I have put a lot of work into this experiment and it has taken me three weeks to put the final product together and I am both relieved and excited about it. I decided to take this on as I realised a lot of my daily use products were packaged in plastic. So I bought some replacements and documented my week using them and doing everything in my power not to use plastic in my day-to-day life. Here are the results:
Throughout the week, I found that most of the things that I thought would be difficult to adjust to (such as switching to the new hair products, remembering my coffee cup and water bottle, all the things that weren’t in my regular routine) were really easy after the first couple of days and I was able to adjust quickly. However, the easy things like buying lunch at university or food shopping turned out to be a lot more difficult. In the supermarket I found that almost everything is wrapped in plastic. Yes, you can buy fresh loose fruit and vegetables, but you can’t buy meat not wrapped in plastic – I even tried taking in a box for the meat counter but was told they weren’t allowed to sell it that way. In the student shops and kiosks at university I found that plastic free options were limited to drinks cans and that was about it. You couldn’t even use a reusable coffee cup at the machine because they don’t fit. This is probably due to plastic being a quick and easy product for companies to use. It’s cheap to produce and buy, quick to make, and there is an endless supply. Unfortunately, that makes it very hard for us to help our planet by living plastic free. The big take away that I got from this experiment was yes, it is possible to live plastic-free on a student budget, but you have to be a lot more meticulous about how you live. It isn’t as easy as it should be! But I strongly believe that if enough people start living plastic free, then the demand for reusable and environmentally friendly products will go up, forcing companies to follow that course. This week was interesting, it was rewarding, and it opened my eyes up to how great plastic-free living can be and I strongly recommend it to everyone! A lot of aspects in society are built on a funny thing called ‘tradition’. For many things, tradition is the excuse for it existing. “Why do we have a royal family?”. Tradition. “Why do lawyers wear wigs?”. Tradition. “Why do we cook the Christmas turkey on a beer can in the barbecue?”. Tradition – well, my family’s anyway. The point is, tradition leads society and how we act. The word ‘tradition’ is defined as “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on this way”. Like the belief that you aren’t doing Christmas properly if you don’t have a tree. Or the custom of bowing or curtsying before royalty as a sign of respect. There’s no particular reason whatever people tell you; it’s just expected because of tradition. Tradition is an important aspect of culture. It shapes different cultures to make them stand out against each other. For example, in China to show respect when you greet someone you bow or nod your head – the lower the bow, the more respect. In India, the traditional greeting is “namaste” which means “I bow to the divine in you”, usually paired with bringing your hands together in front of your chest. A lot of traditions are ingrained in the religion of the country. In the UK we celebrate Christmas every year, a tradition of the Christian faith that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. In Niger, the Wodaabe tribe observe an annual mating ritual called Guérewol – men dress in elaborate ornamentation and traditional face paint and dance for marriageable women in the tribe. Why do traditions matter? There’s no real reason for them existing. Someone just turned around one day and decided that we had to do something and that was passed down through generations until it became an assumed part of culture. But we still all observe them, no questions asked. They matter because they are an integral part of being human. Traditions shape our society, our culture and our identity. Whether the tradition is widely observed, or just within your family or group of friends, traditions become a part of you, who you are and what you identify as. For example, my friends from school and I have a movie night every Christmas at my mum’s house, and we all have to wear Christmas jumpers. We watch two or three films (sometimes there’s a theme involved) and then we play Cards Against Humanity. We’ve been doing this for six years now. It’s become a way for us to always see each other and it’s an instilled tradition within our group. When December comes around, the group chat is filled with people asking when the movie night is happening, what we’re going to watch, who’s sleeping over at whose and, in more recent years, who’s willing to drive so everyone else can get pissed. And there’s Secret Santa. It’s our big tradition and we love it.  The best part of tradition is how we can change and adapt them. Christmas is a tradition, but each family has their own way of doing it, their own traditional Christmas. For my family, that’s various pastries for breakfast as we open our stocking presents, putting on our Christmas jumpers, eating a big Christmas lunch featuring a barbequed turkey followed by opening all of our presents. Then we sit around eating leftovers and chocolate watching whatever Christmas specials are playing (Doctor Who is a must). But it wasn’t always like that. Our traditions have changed as our family has grown.  Traditions are so important to who we are, and we can change and adapt them as we grow and change ourselves. And that’s what makes them so integral to the human experience.
Okay this may seem a bit random, but it annoyed me so STRAP IN KIDS. I ordered a dead sea mud face mask and some silicon mask brushes on Amazon. Two small items. From the same place. To arrive on the same day. So, in my head, I thought that they would arrive both in the same medium sized box or in two smaller packages. But NO. Instead I get a large box and a large plastic envelope. The face mask took up a small corner of the box and was in its own packaging. The brushes took up about an eighth of the envelope.  See down in the bottom left hand corner? That's what I bought. The rest of the photo is PACKAGING. Granted, Most of that can be recycled. But recycling isn't always the solution. Things can be "theoretically recyclable" (Prospect magazine) but whether or not it actually goes through the recycling depends on how big or small the object is. For example, shredded paper can't be recycled because it falls through the machine. It can be recycled as long as there is somewhere to sort it and someone to buy it. If one or both of those things don't exist in your area, it gets chucked in the landfill with everything else. Which is the one thing recycling is trying to avoid. Recycling isn't always going to help the situation. We need to cut down on packaging, otherwise items like this that aren't bought up will be discarded into landfill, putting this planet in a worse situation every day. And that's just sad.
Whilst meeting my personal tutor today, he brought up a very interesting question - what is news? Is there a clear definition? Of course, as new Journalism students, we gave the general answers one would expect; news was communication of information to feed curiosity. My tutor agreed that that was a very good answer. However, he said, there was a very good definition by British Journalist Harold Evans (editor to the Sunday Times who uncovered the Thalidomide scandal) who simply said that news could be defined in three words: News is people. I found this quite powerful. The reason we read news is because everything in the news affects us as people, whether directly or not. For example, we are interested in the events of Hurricane Harvey and Irma because it is affecting a group of people extremely badly, even though it has no direct affect on us. In the same way, someone would be interested in a news story about developments in cancer research because the illness has affected someone in their family, therefore having a direct impact on them. We consume all this media because it is about us.
In this modern social age of over-sharing, we all want to know what everyone is doing all the time. The fact that the media will always target people by being about people only feeds all this curiosity that we all have - this keeps the media thriving, feeding curious appetites for information all over the world. News is suddenly running our lives - our thoughts, our opinions, our actions - and we can't get enough. News is us as a world population, and our consumption of it gives it the power to become us. News is people. After watching Bo Burnham's Happy, some questions have been brought to my attention in how our lives conduct themselves. Everyone strives for happiness - surely that is the ultimate goal - but what does it mean?
As you know, Britain voted to leave the EU in the referendum on Thursday, much to the dismay of a lot of people who wished to stay a member.
I just started watching Pretty Little Liars on Netflix and I'm only about three episodes in, but it got me thinking ....... how do you know when the ones closest to you are lying?
Surely, you'd be able to tell, right? You know these people back to front and inside out - or is that just their fake persona they have to tear you away from their real ambitions? To deceive you and find out your weaknesses, so that eventually they can use them against you? Although, deceiving someone isn't always to gather information about them. Maybe this person is just different and is just trying to make themselves seem normal and able to fit in. So in front of you they'll act happy, but not too happy. They'll laugh, but not too loud or too often. They'll talk, but it will be simple and a little funny, or sometimes loving or serious. But not too funny, not too loving and not too serious. Then as soon as they are away from all of that, they collapse. They go back into their strange cave of loneliness and confusion and reveal who they truly are, to no one but themselves. And each day as they play out the same character over and over again, there's a voice in the back of their head saying: "But this isn't you" And they become afraid. So they play up this character, or fake persona, more and more, until they can convince themselves that this character is them. That voice is still always there though. Waiting and biding its time until it can spring to the front of that person's mind once more and make them lose it all over again. Make them reinvent the person they are. Then people question them and start to lose faith in who they are: "Why are you acting so different?" "What's wrong with you?" "Why are you being like this?" "You aren't who I thought you were" And that's when it comes crashing down. They realise they can't keep up this false pretence any longer, but they are also afraid of being themselves. So they turn into the backstabber. They take everything you told them and turn it against you. Because they don't know what else to do. They don't know who they are anymore. they have caught themselves up in a web of lies they can't get out of. So they use someone else's weaknesses to give them power because they have lost who they truly are. That voice in the back of their head has broken down and been pushed so far back that this person can't hear what it's saying anymore. No one knows what it's saying anymore. But I like to think it's telling this person to stop and be themselves. That just because you think yourself as different doesn't make it bad. In fact, it's an amazing thing to be different. Look at what you have. Maybe you can dance or play an instrument. Maybe you can recite the whole script of Mean Girls off by heart. Maybe you can say the alphabet backwards. And you see that person over there? They can't do that like you can. They wish they could because it's amazing to them. To you it's normal, but to them it's brilliant! Now think about what's been said. What you've learned. It's OK to be different. If everyone was the same, the world would be a boring place. If you read this and thought it sounded familiar, it's probably because you have a fake persona and don't realise it. I have one, we all do. But I've realise that I need to get rid of it. I can act differently around people, but not as someone I've created. I can be a louder, quieter or more colourful version of myself around different people and in different situations but I don't need to create an all-new personality to go with it. And I'm going to keep to that. Personally, I think it would be healthier for me to do that. I don't want to be retreating to my cave anymore to be myself. I want to be myself all the time. And society is just going to have to deal with it. So what have we learnt? Society is wrong. TV is good for you and is educational. And Pretty Little Liars is awesome. |
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