Another year – and another chance to read genderpol’s top blogs of 2017

Graffiti: AUD Delhi Campus

Happy New Year to all our genderpol readers! To mark the beginning of a new year, we’re taking the opportunity to revisit the most-read blogs of 2017. Enjoy!

In November, we posted a series of blogs to raise awareness of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence. Guest bloggers Lesley McMillan (Glasgow Caledonian) [link] and Deborah White (Trent University, Ontario) kicked off the series with a thought-provoking piece entitled Technologising Rape and Sexual Assault: Can we really innovate the problem away?  They examined a growing trend in ‘anti-rape’ technologies (prototypes and on-the-shelf products) which range from the farcical to the, frankly, sinister. They argue such technologies commodify the safety of women, misplace responsibility for rape and sexual assault on everyone except the perpetrator, and misrepresent the issue as individualised rather than society-wide.

Introducing genderED: A new hub for gender and sexuality teaching and research at University of Edinburgh  reported on the launch in 2017 of a new virtual portal that links researchers, students and teachers across the institution. We’re proud that the genderpol blog will provide a platform for the new hub in 2018.

We’ve been reporting on the under representation of women in Scottish politics and beyond since we started up the blog five years ago. In May Meryl Kenny, Fiona Mackay and Judith Sijstermans  (all University of Edinburgh) posted their latest report: Here We, Here We, Here We … Go (Again): Women and the 2017 Local Government Elections.  Although there was a small rise in the number of female councillors, less than one in three Scottish councillors is a women. A case of another year and another missed opportunity to achieve equal representation in Scottish politics…

In March, on International Women’s Day, we celebrated the end of an ambitious project by University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) to use social media to pose the question What is a Dangerous Woman? 365 days and more than 400 posts later the project succeeded beyond all expectations – and had grown a new global online community. In Reflections on a Year of Dangerous Women: Speaking Out, Listening, Resisting and Persisting! @genderpol’s Fiona Mackay – a member of the Dangerous Women Project Advisory Board – reflected on what a year of Dangerous Women has meant to her.

Thanks for your support and happy reading in 2018!