Bring on the dancing girls! Just don't pity Theresa May...

Much has been made this week of Theresa May dancing awkwardly in South Africa and Kenya. There was uproarious laughter from some quarters, pity from others, cries of "sexism!" at those who laughed, others still offered patronising coos of "At least she had a go, bless her!", Alex Clark, meanwhile, wrote a piece "in praise of female awkwardness" in the Guardian. 

Whenever a male politician makes a berk of himself when he tried to dance in public, he is usually pilloried just as Theresa May was this week. Donald Trump and Rex Tillerson were mocked for their lame attempts at dancing in Saudi Arabia, Justin Trudeau was mostly given a leave pass by liberals but criticised by those who don't share his politics when he joined in a display of bhangra dancing, and Jeremy Corbyn caused a mass cringe among his opponents when he tried to rally the troops by showing off a few moves at a union rally Sunderland. 

Sure, they are damned if they do and damned if they don't when confronted a situation where it is considered polite or at least sporting to join a dance - and a bit rude and uptight if they try and sit it out - but we shouldn't have our giggles censored when this situation arises. There are good reasons for such images, regardless of the gender of the politician involved, being a long-time staple of Private Eye covers. 

They are all powerful and privileged men and women.   

And in the case of Theresa May, all I really saw was desperation as she danced in South Africa and Kenya, because while everyone was busy arguing over whether it was OK to laugh at her moves, nobody was really talking too much about the reality of the trade deals she was attempting to make on her whistlestop tour. 

Last year, the UK exported £2.4bn worth of goods the six southern African countries included in the deal she tried to crow about. In contrast, the UK's exports to the EU and the rest of the world combined are worth £339bn. And the six-country deal is just a replication of a deal the UK already has as part of the EU. Theresa May will need to do an awful lot of replication - and dance to an awful lot of tunes, literally and metaphorically - to come close to making up for the post-Brexit shortfall in trade we currently enjoy as part of the EU.

Let's just examine Africa, shall we? Africa's nations are moving ever-closer - there are assorted economic blocs all over the continent, such as ECOWAS, which is comprised of 15 west African states, the Arab-Maghreb Union, comprised of five North African states, the Southern African Customs Union, comprised of five states in the south of the continent, and in the east, the East African Community has customs union and common market arrangements, including provisions for free movement of labour, goods and services between six states. 

The EU has been very busy, particularly in the last three years, in making agreements to facilitate trade with these blocs. And, unlike many earlier attempts at European trade with Africa, which often took place under a grim shadow of colonialism or arrogant post-colonialism, lessons have been learnt and trade agreements that are win-wins are becoming more common. These deals involve meaningful aid for projects such as education and healthcare and investment that is aimed at creating jobs with respect to the local content laws which many African countries have passed to increase the skills of their people and reduce the reliance on expatriates. 

Critically for the global security, local content laws aim to reduce the problems created by economic migration in poorer countries, which in turn leads to economic migrants often ending up in dangerous places where either their own lives are put in danger or the risk of radicalisation increases - and contributes to the influx of refugees into Europe. It is essential for Europe to be part of the solution to this problem through investment that will create jobs that have dignity, purpose, prospects for advancement and living wages.

On top of all this, the African Union is getting ever-closer. The African Continental Free Trade Area is the result of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement between all 55 African Union members - in March this year, 44 of the 55 states signed the proposed agreement and if it is ratified, it will be the largest free trade area since the WTO was formed. It should come as no surprise to anyone who pays attention to the world that many African leaders in business and politics look to the EU as a model for free trade across a continent. If the EU ultimately does a free trade deal with the AU, the UK will be, to quote Theresa May "naked and alone" on the world stage. She may have been referring to a post-Brexit Jeremy Corbyn, and she was correct, but if her mismanagement of Brexit continues, she will be in the same position.

And if you are still feeling sorry for Theresa May because the mean people laughed at her dancing, maybe you will feel less sorry for her if you consider that she has had to form an unholy alliance with the sexist, homophobic DUP to cling to power. Or maybe you might want to think about her terrible tenure as Home Secretary, where the Windrush scandal happened on her watch. 

Or perhaps you haven't noticed her complete lack of authority as Prime Minister. She can bang on about her "Chequers deal" all she likes but it's not a deal for post-Brexit Britain. It's a pie-in-the-sky laundry list of wishes made of unicorn guano and pixie dust, a list that the EU will never agree to in its current form, a list that has angered the hard Brexiters and led remainers to shrug and ask why we're bothering to leave.

So frankly, who cares if she dances? Who cares if she doesn't dance? Who cares if her moves make her look like the arrhythmic lovechild of a praying mantis and an ironing board?

None of it will matter if a catastrophe unfolds between now and March.

        

International Women's Day. International. The clue is in the name, people.

I spent International Women's Day flying from Abu Dhabi to London, The simplistic metaphor for that journey is that I flew from a backwards, sexist society to a place where women are free. But it's not that simple. 

The reality is that I flew from one country where feminism is still necessary to another country where feminism is still necessary. I flew from one ally of Saudi Arabia to, er, another ally of Saudi Arabia. 

Theresa May might have won the exchange during Prime Ministers's questions in which she was able to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of mansplaining feminism when he asked her about meeting Saudi's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman on International Women's Day, but let's be realistic. For all Theresa May's bragging about being a female PM meeting the Saudi Crown Prince and challenging him on human rights, only the terminally naive believe that her meeting yesterday will make a difference to women. 

Britain will still sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and these will be used in Yemen, a truly appalling place for women. The bombardment of Yemen is pushing the impoverished country even further backwards, doing nothing to empower Yemeni women. Just 55% of women aged 15 and above in Yemen can read and write. This is a country where a woman who was campaigning to improve female literacy rates was shot dead last year.

I was in Abu Dhabi covering a security conference, before drafting this blog post in longhand on the flight home. At the conference, I led an all-women editorial team representing Australia, Britain, India and Slovakia. We covered the news from a male-dominated industry event where female speakers were scarce.

But the conference's awards for student innovation offered hope. In the university students' category, all three prizes were won by all-female teams. In the school students' category, the prize for the best security invention was won by a girl. This should come as no real surprise - in the UAE, way more women than men are at university. More than 70% of Emirati university students are women. Record numbers of women are going to university in Britain too. 

But then there are terrible similarities for women in the UAE and Britain, with serious issues in regard to how rape cases are dealt with by justice systems. Rapes are certainly under-reported in both countries. In the UAE this is often because victims are worried that if the defendant is acquitted, she could face adultery charges for consensual sex with a man to whom she is not married. In the UK, many rapes are not reported for fear of a truly appalling experience at the hands of the system. Here, it is a place where women are, with depressing frequency, made to feel as if they were asking for it, for daring to walk alone at night, dress a certain way, drink alcohol, go on a date, be in a relationship, not be a blushing virgin and so on. 

Neither country's situation is acceptable. This is not an either/or thing. The issue of justice for rape victims is a genuinely international issue that affects women all over the world. And there is the crux of International Women's Day. It's a day for girls and women across the whole world. The clue is in the name.

There are issues which are universal for girls and women everywhere and there are issues which pertain more to some countries than others. And they are all important.

International Women's Day is not a day for sneering mansplainers to tell western women that we should shut up and be grateful that we are not under bombardment in Yemen, enslaved by Daesh in Syria, restricted by the guardianship system in Saudi Arabia or risking being kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria or threatened with the horrors of female genital mutilation.

Our little ladybrains are more than capable of caring about more than one issue in more than one country.

We are capable of rising up in support of our sisters all over the world. We are capable of doing things to make a real difference to the lives of girls and women everywhere. 

And we are doing this. We are angry. We are not going to be sidelined because of our biology. We are not going away. We will not be quiet. We will fight our battles great and small. We will celebrate our victories. And it won't just be on International Women's Day. This happens every day in every country in the world. Deal with it, sexists. This is our time.

Photography by jooleah_stahkey/Flickr

NEWSFLASH! BRITISH TAXPAYERS ARE NOT FUNDING THE ETHIOPIAN SPICE GIRLS!

This week's right-wing fauxrage was all about British foreign aid funding Yegna, "the Ethiopian Spice Girls". Unsurprisingly. the hate-fuelled, ill-informed charge was led by the Daily Mail and The Sun, with much smug crowing after Priti Patel, the hard right populist excuse for an International Development Secretary, a woman now leading a department she wanted to abolish, announced the £5.2m grant would be withdrawn.

OK, a few things...

1. The only thing Yegna has in common with the Spice Girls is that it is a five-member, all-female group. The Spice Girls was set up to as a moneymaking venture. Sure, the "girl power" message may well have inspired plenty of girls and women to take an interest in their own empowerment, and it'd be churlish of me to dismiss that, but the "girl power" slogan was a marketing tool, first and foremost.

2. Yegna is part of a bigger project called Girl Effect. Girl Effect works in multiple ways to empower girls and young women in Ethiopia as well as other parts of Africa. Since 2013, Yegna has reached millions of girls through music, drama, a radio talk show and online platforms, discussing issues such as child marriage, forced marriage, violence against girls and women, female genital mutilation and ensuring girls complete their education. Ending child marriage, forced marriage, violence, FGM and girls not completing their education are all essential not only for their own safety and empowerment, but to fight poverty.

3. As well as Yegna, the Girl Effect projects include Ni Nyampinga, which educates girls and their communities on education, sexual health and violence prevention, online youth clubs and mobile platforms allowing girls to communicate with each other and share ideas, job creation in the fields of research and data collection, and a programme to encourage girls to study in the field of technology in Nigeria, soon to expand to Rwanda, Ethiopia, India and Indonesia.

4. Sadly, "UK foreign aid helps a broad-based project that empowers girls and women to finish their education, not marry as children and not be subjected to FGM, all of which helps fight the root causes of poverty in Africa" does not make for as snappy a headline as "ETHIOPIAN SPICE GIRLS AND YOU'RE PAYING FOR IT!".

5. A common howl from the outraged right was "FOREIGN AID SHOULD BE FOOD DROPS!". The problem with limiting aid to food drops is that food gets eaten. And then more food is required. But with food drops, nothing is done to create jobs that enable people to buy food, or to improve agricultural methods so food can be successfully grown, or to ensure kids are going to school so they can go on to work in skilled and professional jobs, or to stop girls from marrying young and never reaching their full potential. Food drops are like putting a sticking plaster on a compound fracture.

6. Anyone who watched TV in the 1980s saw the harrowing scenes of famine in countries such as Ethiopia and this helped create two false narratives. The first was an inaccurate image of Africa as a homogenous blur of parched landscapes full of starving children, when it is a diverse continent of varied landscapes and climates and differing levels of poverty in different nations, many of which have a growing middle class. The second was a mentality that food drops equal effective aid. As per my fifth point, it is not effective in addressing the root causes of poverty. Creative ways to bring people out of poverty need to be explored and supported.

7. It is naive to think all aid funding goes to projects that help people and that none of it ends up in the coffers of corrupt governments. But by directly funding projects such as Girl Effect and Yegna, the money has a much better chance of being used constructively rather than funding some dictator's new Bentley, again another stereotype when democracy is becoming widespread across African countries.

8. There was the additional fauxrage in the last couple of weeks about, according to the increasingly parodic Daily Express, "UK foreign aid spews out of cash machines in Pakistan". This created inaccurate images of every Pakistani simply rocking up to their nearest ATM to greedily hoover up thousands of our British pounds. Again, it was hateful, inaccurate reporting on the Benazir Income Support Programme which helps people living on less than a dollar per day - it has enabled children to stay in school, empowered marginalised women to earn a living, improved healthcare and enabled people to start saving money. Educated, empowered people who are earning an income are less likely to be radicalised. It is a hand-up rather than a hand-out and it is working effectively. The aid is distributed via ATMs as this is a cost-effective, ensures it goes to the people who need it, and prevents fraud.

9. It is also naive to think that the motive for spending money on foreign aid is entirely altruistic. In the long term, there are additional trade and investment benefits for countries that get involved in aid projects. Indeed, foreign investment, when done properly is a win for all parties and often more effective than traditional forms of foreign aid. Multiple African countries, for example, benefit from foreign investment in energy, construction and infrastructure projects, especially in countries such as Nigeria and Ghana where local content laws require employers to hire local people and use local companies and suppliers wherever possible.

10. The UK spends 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid. We can afford this and we should continue to ensure our money is being spent responsibly on projects that address the root causes of poverty across the world. Unfortunately, Priti Patel is the wrong person to be in charge of this budget as she demonstrated this week by letting inaccurate, hateful headlines that pander to racists sway her decision-making. She has thrown girls and young women in poverty under a bus with her latest hard right populist stunt. Yes, this is where we are in 2017 and it is shameful.




Photography: US Embassy Addis Ababa/Flickr