Madrid Fashion Week

Madrid Fashion Week is coming to an end but it doesn't seem to have made the international headlines. The only time that it was in the news was a couple of years ago, when the decision was made to ban ultra-skinny models from taking part.

Skinniest models are banned from catwalk

The organisers of Madrid Fashion Week have announced that they are banning skinny women to develop a more healthy image for the event this month. If any very skinny models do *turn up, they will be classed as unhealthy and in need of medical help.

The move has been heralded as good news for younger and lesser-known models, who often force themselves to become thin in the battle to secure a place among the top flight. But pear-shaped females should not celebrate too heartily, for the leading names of world fashion are showing no sign of following in the Spaniards’ footsteps. The Pasarela Cibeles trade fair in Madrid is a minnow compared with the big fish of Milan, Paris, New York and London fashion weeks.

Madrid city council, which sponsors the fashion week, has ordered that every model on show must have a body mass index (BMI) of at least 18. Models who are 5ft 9in (1.75m) tall must weigh a minimum of 8st 11oz (56 kg).

Esther Cañadas, Spain’s best-known model, does not qualify under the new rules as she is said to have a BMI of only 14. Almost a third of the women lined up appear to have been barred. The council promised that a nutritional expert would be on hand to check every model taking part in the shows, and that any woman found to have a BMI of below 16 would receive medical treatment.

The ban comes amid a row in Spain about the trend for extreme thinness on the catwalks and in high street shop windows. Cuca Solana, the organiser of the Pasarela Cibeles, was hauled before the country’s parliamentary commission for youth in April to defend the event against criticism that it pressures young women into losing weight.

According to the World Health Organisation, a woman is underweight if her BMI is less than 18.5, but Jesús del Pozo, vice-president of the Spanish Association of Fashion Designers, said that up to 40 per cent of the models who took part in last year’s event would have fallen foul of the new rules.

The organisers of London Fashion Week, which begins on September 18, said that they would not be introducing a similar rule. According to the leading agency Models 1, the models with the biggest pulling power are likely to be those with the smallest waistlines. “We have changed a lot in that there have been many more requests for bigger models, but on the catwalk long dresses do look lovely on tall, thin girls,” the agency said. “Girls who model at 15 or 16 tend to be thin girls, whose mums are thin, it’s part of their genetics, and obviously they look great in clothes.”

However, Lisa Armstrong, the Times fashion editor, asked: “Why do casting agents persist in using 15 and 16-year-olds to sell clothes to women in their thirties and upwards?” She added that the Madrid rules might have positive consequences for young British unknowns: “Madrid is a small fashion week and so this move will make very little difference to the bigger names, but younger and more inexperienced British models are sometimes sent to the smaller shows, effectively to practise.”

Sarah Doukas, Kate Moss’s agent, said that her agency, Storm, did not employ unhealthily thin women. “It’s useless to talk about body mass indexes. Who knows what that means apart from your doctor? It depends on different body types. Some people have different muscle density. I believe that girls should just eat healthily, exercise and just be normal. We just wouldn’t use someone who was really underweight or too thin.”

Source: The Times

*Phrasal verbs with turn

1. He's always turning up late for work.
2. She turned down his marriage proposal because she thought it too soon to make such an important commitment.
3. Don't worry - things will turn out alright.
4. You can always turn to her if you need any help.
5. The suspect in the murder case turned himself in last night.
6. Hundreds of people turned out to see the stars arrive for the premiere in spite of the rain.
7. They turned away anyone who wasn't dressed in the appropriate attire.
8. He was given six months to turn the fortunes of the company around.

Can you guess the meanings of the above phrasal verbs? Then check in your dicitionaries and write some examples of your own.

Too pink or too macho?

Two of Italy's new cabinet members. Photo: The First Post

The following is an article comparing the politics and attitudes in Italy and Spain after the recent general elections in both countries. Read the full article by clicking on the main title ("Too pink or too macho?") to this post.

There has been a lot of talk about gender equality in the run-up to Italy's recent general election, but as is all to clear from the line-up of TV magnate Silvio Berlusconi's new cabinet, men still rule here.

Out of 21 ministers in the new right-wing administration there are only four women, all given lightweight roles.

Most of them have so far won distinction more for their looks rather than for their political prowess.

The glamorous new Minister for Equal Opportunities, 32-year-old Mara Carfagna, is a former showgirl from one of Mr Berlusconi's television networks.

She also came sixth in the 1997 Miss Italy contest.

"You are simply gorgeous," an admirer posted on the new minister's website on her first day in office.

An MP since 2006, she lists her main hobby as "collecting pens" according to one of her profiles.

Environment Minister Stefania Prestagiacomo, 41, is a lawyer and a former co-ordinator of Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party in Lombardy.

Fresh faces

Her good looks won for her the title of "Miss Parliament" when she was first elected as MP for Syracuse, in Sicily, 14 years ago.

A popular comedian once described her as: "the best thing in Italian politics".

Mr Berlusconi, now 71, who has described Spain's new government as "too pink" prides himself on being a ladies' man.

He cultivates a playboy image and makes off-colour jokes about his fondness for glamorous women, sometimes earning him public reprimands from his estranged second wife.

He once said that, if he were single, he would marry Ms Carfagna.

Another woman chosen for a cabinet post by Mr Berlusconi is Giorgia Meloni, the new youth minister. At 31, she is one of the youngest people ever to reach ministerial rank in Italy.

The 'grey quota'

She comes from a traditionally leftist Roman suburb where she worked successfully as a youth organiser for the post-fascist National Alliance party.

Maria Stella Gelmini, 34, also a lawyer, from Lombardy, is the new minister of education.

"I don't believe in the 'pink quota', rather the 'grey quota'," she is quoted as saying.

"Now we shall have the opportunity to find out how much 'grey matter' she has," was the somewhat tart comment of the left-wing daily La Repubblica.

Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who went into right-wing politics in the early 1990s after an earlier career as a model and minor actress, setting up a small right splinter party of her own, has been left out in the cold by Mr Berlusconi.

"I don't really think there is a future for me with the new government," she petulantly remarked.

Italian women tend to be discriminated against in the workplace despite some timid recent gender equality legislation.

Employment of women in the cultural labour market is gradually improving, according to the latest Italian government statistics, but Italian women still tend to get lesser-paid jobs - as librarians, archaeologists or historians, for example.

With female employment in Italy almost at the bottom of the EU ladder - at 46% - Ms Carfagna is going to have her work cut out* to try to change prevailing Italian macho mentalities.

Source: BBC News

Vocabulary Focus
:

* if you have your work cut out to do something, then you face a challenging job.

• You will have your work cut out to convince him of your ideas.
• I had my work cut out to get the class ready for the exams.
  

No footie or totty for army

Minister orders military internet ban

Spain's new defence minister, Carme Chacon, has caused an outcry after ordering her staff to stop browsing sports and entertainment websites while on duty.

Military personnel who check football results and surf for nude celebrities have been blamed for clogging up the ministry's computer system and bringing it close to collapse.

The ban was introduced within 10 days of the controversial appointment of Ms Chacon, 37, who is Spain's first female defence minister and is seven months pregnant.

A furious Mariano Casado, the secretary general of AUEM, the military's professional association, said: "It seems that the military is to be treated like children with filters placed on computers to control access."

Source: Telegraph

Pregnant minister

Foto: Bernat Armangue / AP

Spain's Pregnant Defense Minister


When Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's new cabinet members took their oath of office before King Juan Carlos on Monday, one of them, the recently-appointed Defense Minister, stood out from the rest. Literally. Carme Chacón, 37, is not only the first woman to head Spain's armed forces. She is also seven months pregnant.

By now, no one should be surprised by Zapatero's commitment to gender equality. In his first term, he passed a sweeping law against domestic violence, legalized gay marriage, eased divorce laws, and required political parties to practice gender parity. He also appointed equal numbers of men and women to cabinet positions, and named María Teresa Fernández de la Vega as his deputy prime minister.

This time around, the prime minister, who was re-elected on March 9, appointed more women than men to his cabinet. He also created a new Equality Ministry, charged with ensuring fairness in the workplace and continuing the fight against domestic violence. "For the Socialists, gender equality has become a sign of identity," says Maribel Montaño, secretary for equality during the previous administration.

But for all the preparation, the sight of Chacón inspecting troops on her first day in office, with her rounded belly covered in a stylish maternity blouse, came as a jolt. After walking firmly past a line of erect soldiers in their dress uniforms, the minister gave a brief, adulatory speech, then led the troops in a rousing cheer of "Viva España!"

For Spanish feminists, the small shock of that moment is exactly the point. "It's an important image precisely because it conveys normality," says Marisa Sotelo, president of the Madrid' based Women's Foundation. "It serves a pedagogic function: it shows that women can be and are everywhere."

And that's not the only lesson. By appointing Chacón (who lacks military training), Zapatero may also be making a kinder, gentler statement about the armed forces. The Prime Minister has been under pressure from NATO to add to the roughly 750 Spanish troops now deployed in Afghanistan, though at the recent NATO summit in Bucharest he maintained that current levels were sufficient. Among the largely pacificist Spanish population, support for military participation in combat is weak (over 50% of Spaniards support withdrawing their troops from Afghanistan altogether). But humanitarian and peace-keeping missions are another story: a 2005 poll by the Madrid-based Center for Sociological Research puts public support for those military efforts at more than 90%. The figure of a pregnant woman — "a woman in full womanhood," as Montaño puts it — only drives home that distinction. "It shows that the army doesn't just have to fulfill this masculine role of force," she says. "It can be more feminine, more humanitarian."

Although one conservative military organization, comprised largely of retired soldiers, lambasted Zapatero's choice as a display of "contempt," the armed forces' hierarchy itself has been characteristically circumspect. "We will receive her with the same respect as her predecessors," one high-ranking officer anonymously told El País newspaper, "and perhaps a little more delicacy."

Delicacy indeed, For now, the most pressing question is what Chacón will do when she gives birth in June. Thanks to Zapatero's efforts, Spanish women are entitled to 16 weeks paid maternity leave. But can a defense minister — especially a female one — afford to take four months off? Although the Socialist government recently increased paternity leaves to 15 days, it may soon find itself under internal pressure to extend those breaks for fathers as well.

Source: Time magazine

Vocabulary Focus

* if something stands out it is noticeable; easily seen.

• She stands out from others in the class. Her English is much better.
• He is so good looking that he always stands out in a crowd.
• The bright colours really make the heading stand out.

Other phrasal verbs with stand:

if you stand up for someone you defend them

• My colleagues never stand up for me even when they know that the boss is being unfair with me.
• You should stand up for your girlfriend. Don't let them talk like that about her!

if you stand in for someone you replace them in their job/task

• Ms. Campbell will be standing in for Anne while she is on maternity leave.
• The Prime Minister is unable to deliver the speech due to illness so his deputy will stand in for him.

International Women's Day

You're fired!

Imagine you're one of the 13 men on this all-male board of a large company and are told five of you must go to be replaced by women. Unlikely? Not in Norway, where they're enforcing a law that 40% of directors must be female.

Rolf Dammann, the co-owner of a Norwegian bank, recently had his skiing holiday interrupted by some unwelcome news. The government had published a list of 12 companies accused of breaking the law by failing to appoint women to 40% of their non-executive board directorships. His company, Netfonds Holding ASA, was one of the dirty dozen - attracting international attention.

"I work in a man's world. I don't come across many women and that's the challenge," Dammann says. "The law says a non-executive director has to be experienced, and experience is difficult to find in women in my sector. People have had to sack board members they've worked with and trusted for 20 or 30 years, and replace them with someone unknown. That's hard."

This month, Norway set a new global record. It now has, at 40%, the highest proportion of female non-executive directors in the world, an achievement engineered by the introduction of a compulsory quota. Two years ago, after several years of voluntary compliance had failed to lead to a sufficient number of female board members, 463 "ASAs" - publicly listed companies over a certain size - were told to change the composition of their boards or risk dissolution.

"A woman comes in, a man goes out. That's how the quota works; that's the law," says Kjell Erik Øie, deputy minister of children and equality, in the centre-left "Red-Green" coalition government in Oslo. "Very seldom do men let go of power easily. But when you start using the half of the talent you have previously ignored, then everybody gains."

In 2002, only 7.1% of non-executive directors of ASAs were female. When they introduced the 40% quota, the government had expected a widespread rebellion, but by the final deadline for compliance - February 22 this year - only a handful of companies had failed to meet it. Most ASA boards have acquired between two and four new women in the past several months. It is not exactly an army on the march, but it is a step in the right direction and has allowed Norway to buck an international trend; in Britain, women fill only 14.5% of non-executive board positions and one in four of the FTSE 100 boards still has no women at all. The number of women holding executive directorships in FTSE 100 companies actually fell last year to the lowest level for nine years, according to research by Cranfield business school. And the picture is similar all over Europe. Only 2% of boardroom posts in Italy are held by women, and in Spain the figure is 4%.

According to the Norwegian government, the quota is not simply a strike for equality; it makes sound economic sense, too. Last year, Goldman Sachs, the global investment company, published a paper in which it outlined the economic reasons for reducing gender inequality and using female talent fully. Not only would this increase growth, the paper said, it would "play a key role in addressing the twin problems of population ageing and pension stability".

So what is stopping companies from appointing women to their boards? Catalyst, an influential New York thinktank, has published a list of the barriers to female advancement to board level. Top of the list is women's lack of management experience, closely followed by women's exclusion from informal networks; stereotypes about women's abilities; a lack of role models; a failure of male leadership; family responsibilities; and naivety when it comes to company politics.

Source: The Guardian

International Women's Day (IWD) is marked on March 8 every year. It is a major day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Started as a political event, the holiday blended in the culture of many countries (primarily Russia and the countries of former Soviet bloc).In some celebrations, the day lost its political flavour, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love to the women around them in a way somewhat similar to Mother's Day and St Valentine's Day mixed together. In others, however, the political and human rights theme as designated by the United Nations runs strong, and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

History

The first IWD was observed on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration by the Socialist Party of America. Among other relevant historic events, it commemorates the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (New York, 1911), where over 140 women lost their lives. The idea of having an international women's day was first put forward at the turn of the 20th century amid rapid world industrialization and economic expansion that led to protests over working conditions. By urban legend,women from clothing and textile factories staged one such protest on 8 March 1857 in New York City.The garment workers were protesting against very poor working conditions and low wages. The protesters were attacked and dispersed by police. These women established their first labor union in the same month two years later.

More protests followed on 8 March in subsequent years, most notably in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights[citation needed]. In 1910 the first international women's conference was held in Copenhagen (in the labour-movement building located at Jagtvej 69, which until recently housed Ungdomshuset) by the Second International and an 'International Women's Day' was established, which was submitted by the important German Socialist Clara Zetkin, although no date was specified. The following year, IWD was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. However, soon thereafter, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City killed over 140 garment workers. A lack of safety measures was blamed for the high death toll. Furthermore, on the eve of World War I, women across Europe held peace rallies on 8 March 1913. In the West, International Women's Day was commemorated during the 1910s and 1920s, but dwindled. It was revived by the rise of feminism in the 1960s.

Demonstrations marking International Women's Day in Russia proved to be the first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai persuaded Lenin to make it an official holiday in Russia, and it was established, but was a working day until 1965. On May 8, 1965 by the decree of the USSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet International Women's Day was declared as a non working day in the USSR "in commemoration of outstanding merits of the Soviet women in communistic construction, in the defense of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and selflessness at the front and in rear, and also marking the big contribution of women to strengthening friendship between peoples and struggle for the peace."

Source: Wikipedia