Women in Cartoons

Three Businesswomen in the city © guingm5

Cartoons have impact. You can see an article and not really read it. You give up before the end and miss the punchline. If you see a cartoon, you see it all at once. Cartoons can puncture preconceptions and make you laugh.

Goldfish attention span
The average human attention span is said to be worse than that of a goldfish. Thanks to our smartphones our focus is now down to 8 seconds. Goldfish can focus for a full 9 seconds. 

A goldfish concentrating... ©Brian Goff

Cartoons have the ability to make a point in seconds. An ideal medium in the digital age.


Women in STEM
UCL invited 3 women cartoonists to speak about their work as part of International Women's Day. The idea evolved as part of the Athena Swan project to encourage more women into higher levels of science and academia. At lower levels, there is a 50/50 gender balance. Only 18% of women have reached professor level in biology. This is traditionally the science with the most women. Athena Swan looks at the whole culture to make positive changes for the future. 

Inspired by Charlie Hebdo
The cartoon project was the brainchild of John Martin, Professor of Cardiovascular biology at UCL. He was inspired by France's Charlie Hebdo cartoons. Eight cartoonists observed their work and drew over 80 cartoons. The aim is to display the results as a future exhibition. On the day, the work of three women present was on display:

• Ros Asquith, the Guardian
• K J Lamb, Private Eye and Spectator
• Judith Walker, New Humanist - UCL cartoonist in residence work

Inviting outsiders in to observe and comment can prove dangerous. You can inadvertently find yourself in a cartoon, as Professor Martin discovered. A number of the cartoons commented on NHS bureaucracy and the digital dependence of modern medicine.  

Women cartoonists
All three women explained their early careers. They were not necessarily good at art from an early age at school. Few cartoonists are women. Fifty-seven men and just three women worked on the Charlie Hebdo book. Women are often afraid to be funny in public. Few women are comedians. Yet many women can be very funny away from the stage.

Clarity and observation
What makes a good cartoon? The clarity of an idea. A simple outline with a minimal number of words for impact. All three cartoonists highlighted the importance of observation skills. 

No-go areas?
Given the Charlie Hebdo background, they were asked about no-go areas. Judith Walker commented that she had reflected on the issue after the Paris attacks. Some people decide to be offended. Keeping to your own sense of principles is important. Violence against women was the no-go area mentioned.

Preconceptions
Cartoonists are private people. They rarely have a public face beyond their cartoons. We know little about them. It is easy to make false assumptions. Many assume that K J Lamb is a man. 

Women in Burqas
Both Judith Walker and Kathryn Lamb have drawn women in burqa cartoons. Kathryn lived and grew up in Dubai until the age of 20. Judith has experience of working with refugees as an art therapist. She commented that the women that she has met have been very strong, bright and witty women. Under those burquas there is great humanity. There is a lot of giggling and a sense of fun.


For information about Anglicity's copywriting services, please email karen@anglicity.com.

The Education of Girls

Malala won the Nobel Peace Prize at an amazing 17. There are many unsung heroines in the world. It seems to be a very appropriate time between International Women's Day and Mother's Day to recognise such heroines. Many mothers appreciate the value of education for their daughters because it was absent from their own lives. This blog is a thank you to a very special mother.

Unsung heroine

My mother is an unsung heroine. At 15, she left school barely able to read. An endless succession of childhood illnesses and hospital stays meant that she was hardly in school to learn. She lost her first job because she couldn't spell.  At secretarial college, a kindly lady helped her to read, spell and do shorthand. It seems ironic that in her later working life, many better-educated colleagues relied on her excellent spelling and grammar. The ability must always have been there. Confidence knocked in early life can remain elusive.

Three girls

Carole Andrews (my mother) married at 17. She had three daughters while still in her twenties. She worked hard to spare us her bad school experiences. She ensured that I could read fluently at 4, before even starting school.

Achievement

My mother continued to support my education as best she could even after divorce. She recognises that education opens doors. As a single parent on a secretary's salary, she ensured that all three of her daughters benefited from a higher education. We followed the career path of our choice. So it was that I, the great-granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner, was the first member of our family ever to go to university. At one stage my mother had 3 jobs to make this possible. What she couldn't achieve for herself, she helped us to achieve. Three daughters: two scientists and one linguist. Quite an achievement.

Do your best

No "thank you" could ever be enough for some of the sacrifices she had to make. My level of success often does not appear enough by comparison. Probably becoming Britain's Prime Minister, achieving a double doctorate or winning the Nobel Peace Prize wouldn't have come near either. But then, she never expected any of that. She only ever asked that we tried our best within our abilities.

Literacy to pay forward

I cannot hope to repay her. Neither of us is particularly demonstrative. The words always seem to come out backwards, sideways or not at all.  But I can write. I use those very literacy skills that she helped me to develop. I can write using the education that she made possible to pay it forward.

My family's story illustrates what can be achieved by educating girls in just a generation.

Thank you, Mum, today and always.

As a mother of two sons, I will save my views on the education of boys for a future blog. Please check back soon.

Coding weekend at the Guardian

Last weekend, the Guardian ran a 2-day masterclass entitled: Build a website: Introduction to HTML5 and CSS3.* Carlo Rossi, our teacher, was brilliant. He assumed no previous knowledge. I had previously found website coding a difficult and frustrating skill to acquire. Carlo succeeded in taking the whole class from zero to a fully functional website by the end of the second day.

Carlo Rossi (half Italian/half British) comes from a traditional print background. He now works on ads at The Guardian. He taught himself website design from books. Endless experimenting. A lot of frustration. A lot of tears. An awful lot of tears apparently - but now he can teach coding to the previously "unteachable". People who have struggled to learn something themselves often make the best teachers. If only the British Education System could appreciate that.

Carlo described how nervous he had been teaching his first class of 16 eager students. Now after 15 such masterclasses, he can relax and be himself. He has perfected the timing and lesson plan. There was even time for questions - and a few bad jokes along the way.

Our class was a friendly group of 4 women to 3 men - so appropriate for women to be coding on International Women's Day.  It seemed like no time at all before we were able to tweet our first effort. Hello World!

Before long, I had understood elements, declarations, selectors, pseudo-elements, attributes and parent-child relationships. Having learnt the hard way himself, Carlo assumed nothing. He explained clearly and kept repeating it all. He encouraged neat coding habits. If one of our class got into difficulties, he knew instantly that we had spelt "color" the English way, or used : instead of ; etc.

The garish colours of our first efforts would not win any design prizes. There were no underachievers  in Carlo's class.

Day 1: following projected instructions

The class was conducted on modern Mac equipment. We were able to follow Carlo's instructions easily from his screen projected onto two whiteboards at the front. He fostered a friendly class environment that meant that we helped each other along too. At the end of the second day, we all felt the huge satisfaction of a job well done.

Fully functional website on my screen at the end

Lunch and coffee breaks were in the Guardian's canteen. I enjoyed the tasty vegetarian option on Saturday and roast chicken on Sunday. I loved the Guardian's location overlooking the canal. It can be reached easily from Kings Cross and St Pancras International stations. I liked the light and airy, modern glass building with its brightly coloured seating areas. The perfect place to inspire a writer.

At one point, Carlo showed us how to ensure that our own website tab remains open, despite linking to an external website.* I asked how I could ensure that my visitors were forced back to my website. Carlo frowned. He said that was "censorship". As we all know, the Guardian does not approve of censorship.

The introductory website course has my approval. It doesn't end there. There is also a more advanced web-responsive course. Carlo doesn't abandon his students, as he offers to remain in touch via email. Not all attendees go on to build their own websites. Even busy marketing managers can benefit from understanding their web designers' code.

You don't need to take my word for how good this course is. Word has already got out. One of our number flew in from Singapore - and apparently that it is not unusual for this excellent class at all.

Karen Andrews runs
Anglicity Ltd. She is an
entrepreneurial French
to English translator,
content writer and 

marketing consultant.

For further information,

email karen@anglicity.com