to think that out of four houses in a school, two could carry the names of women and they needn't all be white?

[DrSeuss]

The secondary school I teach in is in one of the least diverse areas of Britain. Folk here can be very insular. Nice but insular. The area has one of the lowest take ups of Languages in the country. For some, a trip to the city five miles away is a big adventure. You get the idea.

Our school needed four new names for its four new houses. We now have three dead white males and one dead white female as names. None of them is in themselves objectionable and they have to be dead so as to avoid a situation where a house winds up carrying the name of someone we would rather it did not.

However, three men, one woman? All white? Surely we can split the genders two and two and surely we can have someone who wasn't a WASP?

Nicetabard
Do not let the English home counties be your only guide to what I say ....

Just because there are not any black names up there doesn't make it racist! Stop bloody complaining

I think you've contradicted yourself there when you say 'she took her 30 strong, male , research team with her'.

Why no women researchers in that team? Rather than see that as a sign of female success I'd see it as a failure to pass the baton.

Flatpackhamster - for someone who hates MN and its prevailing ideology (as you see it) you seem to spend an awful lot of time on here.

talkinpeace if you went to an all girls school then obviously you will struggle more to see the problem. As at an all girls school there is a desire to see the girls do well, to encourage them, there are no bars to them studying a range of subjects, female role models will be abundant.

it is well known that girls do better in an all female school environment, and are more likely to study sciences and other "traditional" male subjects, than in a mixed environment.

In your analysis, had you not factored this in?

My old school was founded by a Shakespearean actor, and our eight day houses were named after distinguished Englishmen of the Elizabethan period. All white males. I never noticed it till now, and I still don't think it makes a blind bit of difference. You're seeking a problem where there isn't one, OP.

Do you think it would have adversely affected you if one of the eight had been female, austen?

Interestingly many of our public institutions are taking the topic of female visibility seriously - most notably the BBC. After the accusations of institutional sexism and ageism I think it is noticeable (on the progs I watch anyway) that when "expert" opinions are required the expert is much more likely to be a female than used to be.

I think this is a good thing, and I do think it benefits girls and young women to see other females talking about matters, surrounding the economy or politics or science or whatever, and being treated as interesting because of what they have to say and not how they look.

My school has four dead women as house emblems. Three white and one black. I'm in the latter house so that, of course, is the best!

At least you have humans. We have 3 houses two of which are vermim (foxes and squirrels) and the other isn't even a mammal (owls)

lovecat
the fact that her team is almost all male is a fluke - and very unusual in her field - hence why the national press mentioned it when I saw her name mentioned.

nicetabard
my primary school was training us to marry dukes

my secondary school tried to get us all to become teachers or secretaries : until a younger group of (by coincidence lesbian) teachers told us to reach for the skies
my brothers were at all boys schools : we all did comparable degrees

my DCs at a mixed comp have higher aspirations than I did : but the times have changed

I guess my point is that to get annoyed about the house names of schools is to fight yesterday's battles
when the energy should go into tomorrows

currywurst you say that historical women have not "earned their place" in these types of situations.

No I do not say that. I am saying that if somebody is only selected from a pool of candidates because they are female in order to fill a quota, and keeping out a male who is more worthy of selection on the criteria, the female has not earned their place. If the female is selected purely because they are the best candidate based on non-gender/race criteria, great. If the pool of candidates for selection is majority male, on average most of the selected candidates will be male. Trying to pervert this law of mathematics in the name of positive discrimination is not helpful.

There seems to be an objection to recognising the achievements of notable women. There aren't as many notable women as notable men but they exist. So where they do, what's the big problem with recognising their achievements?

Nobody objects to recognising the achievements of notable women. They object to recognising the achievements of notable women by displacing men who achieved more, by discriminating on gender. Nobody is saying notable women should not be recognised, but they should not have their status artificially inflated to pretend historical gender inequality didn't exist.

Lovecat

Flatpackhamster - for someone who hates MN and its prevailing ideology (as you see it) you seem to spend an awful lot of time on here.

Just fighting the good fight for decent, right-thinking individuals.

I'm here pretty rarely, in fact. Work and baby keep me very busy, but I've had a few days to post.

Still, feel free to judge. I don't mind. I had someone making death threats earlier.

It's not interviewing someone for a job, curry

If the criteria for being a "person of note" were fixed then everything, from stamps to banknotes to articles on the BBC to exhibitions in museums would be dedicated to the same small group of people, over and over and over again.

That sound pretty stagnant to me.

talkinpeace

"my secondary school tried to get us all to become teachers or secretaries : until a younger group of (by coincidence lesbian) teachers told us to reach for the skies"

Sounds like some feminist teachers in your school changed things for the better for many of the girls.

Most schools don't have groups of change-orientated feminist teachers to shake things up and teach the girls that they are second to no-one. You are really struggling with this, aren't you If all schools had gangs of feminist teachers to really get the girls going, then you're right, the influence of images around them would matter less. Probably the teachers would say to the girls, these people on the are all men, there is a historical reason for this, here are some women from that time who have been overlooked etc. point is most girls don't have gangs of feminist teachers. And if they did, and it was a mixed environment, the teachers wouldn't be allowed to do that anyway. Because it would be discriminatory towards the boys.

Nicetabard
That is as may be, but today's kids - like mine - are taught and shown and expected that everything is on merit, irrelevant of creed, colour and sex.

And yes, there is still a surfeit of Eton at the top of politics for now, but outside politics, things are changing. A lot faster than might be realised because lots of groundbreakers are more interested in getting on with the job than shouting about it.

In today's society, the old fracture line are breaking down and the next generations will just work round our neuroses.

We haven't got to equality yet, the house names do really bug me, it bugs me that no one thought that it was important to have women represented. It bugged me that I witnessed a history teacher telling her class how Cromwell was for 'the people'

But what bugged me most today was the deputy head telling me about the vocational skills program he'd put together for next year, including plumbing, brick laying etc. saying he wasn't planning on including the one girl in the target group, how next year he wanted to add to the provision with hairdressing and beauty. Girls can learn bricklaying! I said. He smiled, like I was joking! I also took someone to task about it being as important for boys to learn childcare as girls. I have had many conversations with girls about the importance of financial independence when they've told me their long term plan is marriage. Strangely I've never had a boy tell me his ambition is to get married.

We put girls in the hair & beauty, childcare get married box. We put boys in the great achievements, plumbing, computers, experts, leaders box.

We will inevitably use the men the houses are named from in some way, we'll put pictures up, we'll set home works asking the kids to find out about them. We could have decided to take the opportunity to highlight that there are also women who have achieved.

talkinpeace that is nonsense.

Really.

Everything is not on merit - stats show that social mobility has been stalling for a couple of decades at least, selective schools are packed full of middle class children, fewer children from poorer backgrounds are going to university. These things are happening now and are getting worse, not better. Women's rights are being rolled back all over the globe, restrictive religious groups are gaining ground. UK universities are reported as running groups and events that are hostile to females. Children in the playground are, as much as ever and possibly more than in the 70s/80s, well aware of what is "for boys" and what is "for girls".

I could go on. I like it in your world, where everyone has the same opportunities and everything is on merit. But that's not how it works, and you have your eyes shut if you think it is.

Good post wonderstuff.

Our houses were all named after royal dynasties. It was a bit dull. The boys' school had various local heroes, some of whom had been to the school.

We had:
Bronte (3 sisters, writers)
Cook (Captain James, explorer)
Johnson (Amy, aviator)
Priestley (JB, writer)

The women outnumbered the men