Men outnumber women in honours list
Celebrating one of her birthdays, Queen has announced her annual honours list, amid murmurings of gender inequality.
It’s the Queen’s birthday, well one of them at least. Unlike the rest of us “ordinary folk”, Queen Elizabeth actually has two birthdays; the actual day she was born on the 21 April, and her “official birthday” that is held on a Saturday in June, “when there was a greater likelihood of good weather for the Birthday Parade, also known as Trooping the Colour.”
There’s also another tradition for the day, the Queen’s birthday honours list. As her official website explains, “an honour, decoration or medal is a public way of illustrating that the recipient has done something worthy of recognition. As the 'fountain of honour' in the United Kingdom, The Queen has the sole right of conferring all titles of honour, including life peerages, knighthoods and gallantry awards.”
In 2015, 1,163 people, from 17 to 103 years old are recognised, but there’s been a little controversy that the lady at the top isn’t honouring women.
Now, actually on the surface, it’s a good year for women, because for only the second time in history more women actually received honours than men this year. But even though 51% of all recipients in the 2015 edition are women, just seven get the highest honour, becoming a “dame” compared with 33 men given “knighthoods”. Men outnumber women by almost five to one.
Laura Bates, 28, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, who receives a BEM [British Empire Medal] for services to gender equality, said: “I think it’s probably broadly representative of the problem that we see across different areas of society. You see the same thing, for example in business where you’ll often see women appointed to non-executive roles but it doesn’t necessarily mean the balance is being addressed at the very top. This is a massive problem across society, but obviously I would like to see the [honours list] balance redressed at the top, it’s important.”
Some would like to see more gender equality in the honours, others don’t want to receive them at all. Every year about 2 percent of honours are refused.
Sometimes they become high profile. In 2003, prominent black poet Benjamin Zephaniah was offered an honour and publicy rejected it. At the time he wrote in an article, "Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought. I get angry when I hear that word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised...Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire”
NM/MH
Two Palestine Action hunger strikers hospitalized amid rising health concerns
UK doctor arrested under pressure from Israel lobby over ‘anti-genocide posts’
British protestors arrested for chanting ‘globalize the Intifada’
'Security a red line': Iran vows 'decisive' response to threats
Iran not afraid of enemy, will not submit to US domination: IRGC
Iran foils foreign-linked sedition network, arrests armed suspects
UK acting as US vassal state on Venezuela
VIDEO | US kidnapping of Maduro, and the 'Donroe' Doctrine
US drops cartel claims against Maduro after invasion, kidnap
Israeli forces raid Quneitra countryside in new violation of Syria’s sovereignty
US oil firms reluctant to return to Venezuela despite Trump avarice: Report
PressTV NEWSLETTER
now
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website
