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With the busyness of life, I only just managed to see the Beatriz Gonzalez retrospective at the Barbican before it closed on 10th May. It happened to be the same day as the local council elections, and I was going to head off to the polling station straight after the exhibition. It is safe to say that it felt like a lot was hanging on these elections, the importance of voting had never felt so acute, so polarising. Getting the train up to London, I saw countless posts online pleading for people to get out and vote, to think carefully about what they wanted for their communities, whilst also looking out the window seeing St George’s flags scarring the sky, an unsettling expression of patriotism.

Gonzalez too was no stranger to the weight of politics, living through decades of instability, corruption and bloodshed in Columbia from the 1940s, and the consequences it had on ordinary people’s lives every day. This exhibition traces Gonzalez’s lifelong fascination with how images are circulated and reproduced, repurposing them herself to question ideas of taste, power structures and violence.
In Columbia, Gonzalez is known as “la maestra” (the teacher). However, her practice was first learnt by looking at other artists. The exhibition opens with a series of works from 1964 in which Gonzalez examines Velazquez and Vermeer. Even at the beginning of her career, she was already using lurid colours to block out her compositions with the confidence of an established painter. It is an understatement to describe these works as just copies; rather, famous paintings are pulled apart, distilled and flattened to their purest form. Then, they are humorously installed onto banal objects - Vermeer’s The Lacemaker is found on a woven picnic basket, for example. Gonzalez transforms art historical traditions into her own visual language, which projects loudly across the exhibition.

Perhaps we can also call Gonzalez “the investigator.” Along the landings between sections of the exhibition are vitrines filled with cut-outs from newspapers and magazines Gonzalez collected over her lifetime. It is like you are looking at a crime scene board, scattered with images of victims, shocking headlines and gruesome details, and the artist is trying to decipher these often poorly printed sources. This is realised in one of Gonzalez’s most famous works, The Sisga Suicides I, II and III from 1965. Following the joint suicide of a young couple in Bogota, she was inspired by the low quality portrait that circulated in the news, how their facial features were “deformed by the discrepancy.” Although the paintings could be considered rudimentary, they capture the flattening effect of the original image - the couple’s tight-lipped smiles, their fused-together hands and creaseless clothes - with remarkable precision. However, this is not just an exploration of the formal elements of art like line, shape and colour. It is an inquiry into how mass media images are reproduced as easily as they are then forgotten. Gonzalez just asks us to look for a little longer, commemorating the real people and stories captured for one day’s worth of news.

A series of work which I was less familiar with that captures this grace given to the deceased
was Murdered Woman at Lodging, (1985). Gonzalez takes as her source a photo from a newspaper of a woman lying on a floral bedspread, an arrow pointing to where she had been stabbed in the neck and a line covering her breasts. The image is sensitively replicated onto actual bedspreads found in lots of Columbian homes, but the markings made by the newspaper editor are removed. The original image is transformed from an uncomplimentary crime scene photo of femicide to a tender memorial. The woman was never identified, and yet Gonzalez treats her with dignity in her anonymity, figuratively laying her on a bed of flowers. The use of found objects as her canvases highlights the prevalence of violence in Columbia, particularly against women, as a brutal every day occurrence.

As the exhibition progresses, Gonzalez’s interrogation of systemic violence and political corruption becomes more urgent. In the central atrium we find an abundance of the artist’s sculptural pieces, in which she paints on found objects like dressing tables, bedframes and mirrors in a “kitsch” style. Most impressive is Interior Decoration (1981), a 140m long curtain referencing a newspaper photo from a gala celebrating then president Julio Cesar Turbar Ayala. The scale of the piece is grand, the use of curtain reading as a tapestry that at first it may seem to lean into the splendor of the occasion. However, there is something unnerving about the figures, with their sardonic smiles and awkward poses. Gonzalez clearly isn’t looking to flatter them. Turbar Ayala built a cult of personality at a time of increasing political unrest and conflict. In this way, Gonzalez cleverly uses the curtain as a symbol of concealment, an attempt to cover up entrenched corruption with false smiles and parties.

Moving from the monumentality of the atrium to the final room of the exhibition, the mood becomes much more sombre in Gonzalez’s most recent and final work. We are confronted with an installation, titled A Posteriori (2022), in which screenprints of graves span the walls, one on top of the other. The colour is gone, the room is quiet. In 2003, several buildings at Bogota Central Cemetery were demolished, which had housed hundreds of victims of conflict in Columbia. The installation serves as a mausoleum, a space in which people can reflect, mourn and pay their respects to the dead.

Time and time again, we see how unreserved Gonzalez was in giving grace to the marginalised. Bearing witness to the horrors committed by the State in monumental murals to tiny painted objects, she gives them a voice. As I left the exhibition to cast my vote, I felt a greater appreciation for the collective responsibility we have for each other: to stand up for the victims of injustice broadcasted across the media, and more importantly those who are not.

By Eleanor Getting

In this episode, Eleanor Getting talks about the artwork honoured by Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala. We talk about the art created by Allen Jones and how it represents women as sexual objects.

Talking with friends recently I’ve noticed quite a few of us had stories about their family hiding snacks in inconspicuous places so that their brothers wouldn’t devour it all by themselves ; or even about being forbidden certain foods their brothers were allowed to eat.

Those instances reminded me that food is a topic so intimately conditioned by gender norms ; be it who cooks the food, who serves it, who eats first, who eats what…. Our relationship with food is a reflection of the power dynamics between the genders. All in all, it can even be considered that the kitchen is a reflection and representation of the way our society works (Narayanan, 2016).

In most cultures, women are the ones with the responsibility to prepare nutritious meals that suit everyone’s taste. Yet, women hold very little control over food supplies, and they often nourish themselves the least (Allen & Sachs, 2007).

Furthermore, women suffer the most from food insecurity in the world, which has been proven to exacerbate risks of gender-based violence (Abusbaitan et al., 2026).

Cooking, a gendered practice in a heteronormative world :

Without surprise, globally, women are the ones taking care of the cooking at home (Gallup, 2023). Cooking and serving the food is not only the physical labour of preparing it and cleaning afterwards, but also the mental weight of planning meals, managing food supplies, getting everyone to eat, …

Oftentimes, women don’t even consider their own preferences in meals, and prioritise the tastes of the other members of the household. Not priorising the husband’s taste, in particular, can often be the cause of arguments, and in the worst cases, domestic abuse.

Cooking is closely linked to the notion of femininity. Indeed patriarchy has created the romanticised image of the perfect woman, who spends her time in the kitchen cooking for her husband and kids. Learning how to cook is a rite of passage for little girls, it’s what allows them to truly “become a woman”. Not knowing how to cook is a flaw that makes them unsuitable for womanhood (Mauriello & Cottino, 2022).

In contrast, while cooking is acceptable for men, it is more seen as a favour they do for others, rather than a duty. Men’s cooking is an act visible in the public sphere, showcasted on tv and praised with awards. For example, until recent years, Food & Wine Best New Chefs have always been mostly men, and on average, more than 90% of Michelin restaurants are led by men (Chef’s Pencil, 2023).

Food & Wine 2013 Best New Chefs.

On the other hand, women’s cooking is something that is confined to the private sphere, where their labour remains unrecognised.

The performance of eating :

The way we eat is not exempt from following the patterns of gender norms either. Indeed, our eating habits are impacted by what patriarchy has made us expect of femininity or masculinity, by consuming more “feminine” or “masculine” foods (McClintock, 2015).

Studies reveal that food behaviours vary depending on gender. Men tend to eat significantly larger quantities, and prefer red and processed meat, while women consume more vegetables (National Library of Medicine, 2024). This greener diet is due the fact that in a patriarchal society, women are expected to strive for thinness, in order to truly be considered feminine (Reiheld, 2012). This is why dieting and eating very little have always been associated with femininity (Cavazza, Guidetti & Butera, 2015).

Therefore what we eat is not only a question of giving our body what it needs to function, it also becomes a performance, via which we stay in line with the gender order. People are generally aware that they are part of this performance, and choose to alter their eating habits to seem more masculine or feminine in the eyes of others (Cavazza, Guidetti & Butera, 2015). In accordance to that, some people adopt alternative diets, such as veganism, as a resistance to this dichotomy.

Oppression or liberation :

While we have focused on food as a factor of oppression, it can also be seen as a tool for liberation. It is argued that being the one in charge of the meals gives non-negligeable power to women within the household (Mauriello & Cottino, 2022). It is a source of agency and gives them a place to be creative. For immigrant women, cooking also becomes a way to protect their culture by preparing meals from their home country (Allen & Sachs, 2007).

Progress made over time also needs to be noted. We are getting further and further away from the stereotypical 50s housewife. We do have to remark however that not all women are equal. In some cases, white upper class women have been able to liberate themselves from domestic chores by transferring the workload to poorer women of colour (Mauriello & Cottino, 2022). Therefore, we must not forget other factors, such as race, ethnicity or economic backgrounds, while analysing our relationship with food. Furthermore, most of the studies focus on the behaviour of heterosexual, cisgender couples, which does not reflect the realities of the people existing outside of those categories.

by Inès N'cib

Sources :

Abusbaitan, H. A., Gondwe, K. W., Pirsch, A., Eyadat, A., Alshakhshir, N. S., Vilakazi, N., Nkhoma-Mussa, Y., Hearst, M. O., Mkandawire-Valhmu, L., Lopez, A. A., Schadewald, D. M., & Dressel, A. (2026). Food insecurity and gender-based violence against women during the COVID-19 pandemic : a systematic review. BMC Public Health, 26(1), 668.

Allen, P. & Sachs, C. (2007). Women and Food Chains : The gendered politics of food. International Journal of Sociology of Food and Agriculture – Vol. 15(1).

Cavazza, N., Guidetti, M. & Butera, F. (2015). Ingredients of gender-based stereotypes about food. Indirect influence of food type, portion size and presentation on gendered intentions to eat. Elsevier. Vol. 91. 266-272.

Chef’s Pencil Staff.  (2023). About a Quarter of Chefs are Women : But Only 6 % Reach the Very Top. Chef’s Pencil.

Food & Wine Editors. (2025). Every Food & Wine Best New Chef Ever, Since 1988. Food & Wine.

Mauriello, M., & Cottino, G. (2022). Feeding genders. Anthropology Of Food, 16.

McClintock, E. (2015). What it means to eat ‘like a man’ (or woman). Psychology today.

Najeeb, H. (2023). Women Belong in the kitchen : A feminist analysis of domestic kitchen and cooking. Feminism In India.

Reiheld, A. (2012). Gender Norms and Food Behavior.

Tonkov, P. (2023). Gender Gap in Home Cooking Grows. Gallup.

V. Krishnan. (2022). Performing Heteronormative Femininity: The Embodiment of Cooking Mothers and Women Eating Onscreen. IJCRT.

As an art historian, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing all of the art historical references threaded across this year’s Met Gala carpet. The theme, “Fashion Is Art,” responds to the Costume Institute’s current exhibition, “Costume Art” that explores the embodiment of art in fashion and the dressed body.

It seems like the perfect theme for Kim Kardashian, a Met Gala regular, whose previous looks have largely focused on the body as a fashion statement. Kardashian has taken this to extremes, from 2021 where the faceless Balenciaga black dress transformed her into a silhouette, to carving her waist down to 19 inches in a Maison Margiela corset in 2024.

Certainly the American media personality hit the mark again this year, wearing a highly sculpted orange lacquer breast plate that was designed in collaboration with British Pop Artist Allen Jones. Instead of being a true representation of the celebrity’s own body, a cast was repurposed that references Jones’ earlier work like Body Armour, originally modelled by Kate Moss.

Kardashian stated that “Allen Jones would be iconic. Sexy. Classic. Cool. Innovative.” Iconic maybe, but not necessarily for the right reason. Jones is infamous for his Women As Furniture series from the 1960s, in which casts of half naked women are arranged to form tables and chairs. In a lot of the fibreglass sculptures, the women appear to wear leather and high heeled boots and are positioned subserviently on their backs or on all fours. For decades, his work has split critics as either satirised sexuality or deeply misogynistic.

His work has always been provocative, and similarly Kardashian doesn’t shy away from a statement. But in working with Allen Jones, what is she exactly trying to state? In recent years, Kardashian has moved away from being synonymous with the idealised hourglass figure of the 2010s, to also a multi-hyphenate mogul and lawyer-in-training. She is not simply a body to be manipulated and contorted, as Jones’ sculptures are, rather incredibly industrious.

However, it is unrealistic to say that Kardashian no longer capitalises on her body, something that, like the cast she adorned at the Met Gala, can be perfectly sculpted in a high gloss finish. We have not innovated beyond unrealistic beauty standards, as this look only reinforces in hardened plastic.

by Eleanor Getting, NOUS Arts Editor

Sources:

How Kent garage helped Kim Kardashian with her 2026 Met Gala look

A Kent bodyshop paints the striking orange breastplate after previously fixing its designers’ car.

BBC News

Allen Jones

Sotheby’s presents works of art by Allen Jones. Browse artwork and art for sale by Allen Jones and discover content, biographical information and recently sold works.

Sothebys.com

What is the 'online rape academy'?

In short: every woman's worst nightmare. Perhaps a nightmare you had not even thought of yet.

In 2024, Gisèle Pelicot become an icon of feminism when she waived her right to anonymity, and bravely allowed her rape trial to be public. She said she wanted everyone to see the crimes that were committed against her. What makes her trial all the more sickening is that millions of people already had. Her husband had been drugging her, raping her, and filming it over their 50 years of marriage. He had even invited over 80 men to join him (Le Monde, 2026).

Pelicot's case is horrifying, to say the least. It makes my blood run cold. But as a society, we would be naive to say that the signs were not there. The myth that rape is something that happens by a strange man in a dark alley is now dangerous to perpetuate, because it encourages women to avert their gaze from the much closer danger. 1 in 3 women worldwide are victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), meaning that their sexual assaulter was their romantic partner. This amounts to 840 million women worldwide (World Health Organisation, 2025). If the number of women who had experienced IPV across the globe gathered together and formed a country, it would be more populous than the USA or the whole of Europe (US Census Bureau, 2026; Worldometer, 2026).

In the UK, the most common perpetrator of a rape against a woman is an intimate partner (48%), and the most common perpetator of other sexual assaults is a known aquaintance (32%). In fact, after accounting for boyfriends, husbands, step-fathers, uncles, priests, teachers, family friends etc., only 9% of rapes are committed by a stranger (ONS, 2025).

In the 'Online Rape Academy', the portmanteau for a chat on an online pornography distributer called 'Motherless', more than 20,000 videos were uploaded of men drugging and raping their wives (CNN, 2026). The reason for the word 'academy', was after the testimony of French lawmaker Sandrine Josso, who was drugged by a former French senator. She called them "schools of violence", "where every subject is taught" (ibid.). Subjects like how many drugs to slip into your wife's drink, how to prove to your viewers that she is unconscious, or how to make revenue from your streams. All the examples below are real messages discovered by CNN.

The content is horrendous: men taking advice from strangers to drug and rape their wives, and the world being full of women who trust their husbands only to find themselves victims of rape and international humiliation.

But this is far from being the first time. Reddit hosted groups of up to 20,000 men selling nude or semi-dressed photographs of women along with their postcodes and contact details, with comments explicitly declaring "I want to rape this b****" (Plaha, 2022). They are blatantly self-aware. Telegram had groups of up to 200,000 men sharing deep fake pornographic images adapted from women's social media posts (Mackenzie and Choi, 2024). In fact, deep fake non-consensual pornography is so common that it represents 96% of all uses of deep fake technology, with videos amassing over 100 million views (Ajder et al., 2019). On all platforms, at all times, there are men performing these crimes and publicising them online, lauded by hundreds of thousands more.

Furthermore, streaming sex crimes do not just advertise the individual crime itself; it spawns new ones. It encourages men everywhere to commit sexual violence, and teaches them that this is acceptable, even mainstream behaviour. Elizabeth Marshall and Leigh Gilmore argue that visual media "does not merely document, it materialises" (Marshall & Gilmore, 2015). By streaming a sexual assault of a drugged wife, a woman who trusted and loved her abuser, it materialises the crime as an example to others. It tells men that not only are women objects to be treated as inanimate sex dolls, but that this is not just a hypothetical outlook; it teaches them to view the women close to them this way, and grooms them into violating their trust. In essence, it breeds a new generation of sex offenders, and will be visible in the IPV sex crime statistics of the years ahead.

The 'online rape academy' is a devastating indictment of modern society: one in which technology has expanded faster than legislation, and where men can learn how to be a sex offender as easily as learning how to hang a photo. However, it is too simple to suggest that this discovery is a unique moment of horror. These websites and chatrooms are all around us.

It is only in unlearning dangerous myths surrounding sexual assault that women can cease to be veiled from the truth, and finally shield themselves from the crime.

by Camille Saunders

Bibliography in chronological order

'Gisèle Pelicot publishes memoirs after mass rape trial', (2026), Le Monde with Agence France Press. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/global-issues/article/2026/02/11/gisele-pelicot-publishes-memoirs-after-mass-rape-trial_6750362_199.html

'Lifetime toll: 840 million women faced partner or sexual violence', (2025), World Health Organisation. https://www.who.int/news/item/19-11-2025-lifetime-toll--840-million-women-faced-partner-or-sexual-violence

'U.S. and World Population Clock', (2026), United States Census Bureau. https://www.census.gov/popclock/#:~:text=select date,Learn More | Download and Share

'Europe Population (Live)', (2026), Worldometer. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/europe-population/

'Sexual offences victim characteristics, England and Wales: year ending March 2025', (2025), Office for National Statistics. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/sexualoffencesvictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025#relationship-to-perpetrator

VANDOORNE, Saskya, FOX, Kara, KENNEDY, Niamh, STUBBS, Eleanor, CHACON, Marco, 'Exposing a global 'rape academy'', (2026), CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2026/03/world/expose-rape-assault-online-vis-intl/index.html

PLAHA, M., (2022), ‘Inside the secret world of trading nudes’, BBC, 22nd August.
Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62564028

MACKENZIE, J., CHOI, L., (2024), ‘Inside the deepfake porn crisis engulfing Korean schools’, BBC, 3rd September.
Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdlpj9zn9go

Mother’s Day has just passed on Sunday 15^th March, and while we are appreciating our mums and caregivers, it feels like a great opportunity to look at their rights: namely, maternity leave. In this article, I will explore why maternity leave is so crucial, what maternity leave means in different countries, the accessibility of paternity or parental leave, and the impact this has both on the health of the parents and child.

Maternity leave refers to the period of time a mother can recover from childbirth and supervise the survival of her newborn, without fearing unemployment. In the UK 45% of mothers give birth by C-section, a surgical procedure involving cutting open the lower abdomen, 44% by natural vaginal birth, involving high levels of pain and risks of tearing, and the remaining 11% needing intervention such as extraction by forceps, which can be both physically and emotionally traumatic (BBC, 2025). Therefore, letting the body rest postpartum is vital. In addition, 75% of all neonatal deaths worldwide occur within the first week of life, with the first month being the most vulnerable period for child survival (WHO, 2024). Therefore, new babies need constant attention and supervision for their own life expectancy. This tension between maternal and newborn health leads to exhaustion and overwhelm, and highlights some of the many reasons why women cannot be expected to return straight to work after delivery.

However, the length of that maternity leave varies hugely per country, and by company. In the UK, you can claim up to 52 weeks in total, but you must take 2 weeks at least (HM Government, 2026). Bulgaria offers the longest paid maternity leave with 58 weeks at 90% of normal pay, followed by Greece with 56 weeks at 60% pay, and the United Kingdom with 39 weeks at 29% pay. Most OECD counties offered much less time between 10 and 20 weeks, but at a higher rate of pay between 80 and 100% (OECD, 2025). In addition, some countries offer homecare leave, which varies by country, but refers to supplemental leave for a parent to remain with a child in the early months of their life, which is usually unpaid (OECD, 2025). Thus your rights as a mother can be vastly impacted by your country of residence and your employer.

In addition, offering paternity leave can encourage fathers to bond with their newborns, and to help mothers juggle postpartum recovery with new-parent responsibilities. In the UK, an employee can take up to 2 weeks, and as of April 2026, partners of mothers can also claim up to 52 weeks’ unpaid bereaved partner’s leave where needed (ACAS, 2026). Across the OECD, a maximum of 200 weeks may technically be allocated to the father: the following graph shows the combination of paternity leave and transferrable parental leave. In contrast, we can see that regarding ungendered parental leave, the vast majority of early parenting responsibilities are still undertaken by women (OECD, 2025).

Parental leave has considerable positive effects, both for the mother and the child. In research done across the USA, it was shown that access to maternity leave led to an increase in birth weight, a decrease in the likelihood of a premature birth, and a substantial decrease in the likelihood of infant mortality; the mortality risk was also heavily reduced by having a college-educated, married mother, as this was the demographic who was most likely to be economically able to take full advantage of their unpaid leave (Rossin, 2013). In a different study using global data, each additional month of paid maternity leave saw infant mortality reduce by 13% in low- and middle-income countries (Nandi et al., 2016). Furthermore, parental leave undertaken by both parents alleviates stress, including alleviating symptoms of postpartum mental health disorders (Heshmati et al., 2023). In Denmark, longer parental leave reduced the probability of a mother having a diagnosable psychiatric disorder in the child’s early years, with a particular improvement for lower-income and single women (Courtin et al., 2022). Therefore, the health benefits for both the mother and child are evident, highlighting its vital importance. It can also be inferred that without the maternity leave being paid, mothers must rely on their socio-economic background, exacerbating existing inequalities in their physical health, mental health and quality of life.

In conclusion, access to paid maternity leave is crucial for new parents and newborn babies, and should be treated as a fundamental right. Furthermore, sharing early parenting obligations with a partner has tangible health benefits both for the primary caregiver and the baby, and paid paternity leave should thus be expanded to be more accessible to all families, regardless of economic background. Finally, extending the length of paid parental leave can have direct benefits to all the family, and result in happier and healthier humans. Parental leave should thus be paid, accessible to both parents, and of a medically recommended length.

NB. This article uses heteronormative terms, but in no way seeks to undermine both the beauty and complexity of queer family structures.

by Camille Saunders

‘Maternity pay and leave’, 2025, HM Government, https://www.gov.uk/maternity-pay-leave/leave

CLEGG, R., ‘Caesarean sections overtake natural vaginal births for the first time’, 17^th Dec 2025, BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yqjezrnj4o

‘Newborn mortality’, 14^th Mar 2024, World Health Organisation, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/newborn-mortality#:~:text=Most%20neonatal%20deaths%20(75%25),10%20%E2%80%93%20in%202000%20and%202022

‘Parental Leave Systems’, 2025, OECD, https://webfs.oecd.org/els-com/Family_Database/PF2_1_Parental_leave_systems.pdf

‘Paternity Leave Rights’, 2026, ACAS, https://www.acas.org.uk/paternity-rights-leave-and-pay

‘Paid leave for fathers: Recent OECD policy trends’, 2025, OECD, https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2025/10/paid-leave-for-fathers_f7302e2e/07442bed-en.pdf

ROSSIN, M., ‘The Effects of Maternity Leave on Children's Birth and Infant Health Outcomes in the United States’, 2^nd Jul 2013, National Library of Medicine, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3698961/#:~:text=Using%20Vital%20Statistics%20data%20and,as%20across%20several%20different%20specifications

NANDI, A., HAJIZADEH, M., HARPER, S., KOSKI, A., STRUMPF, E. C., HEYMANN, J., ‘Increased Duration of Paid Maternity Leave Lowers Infant Mortality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Quasi-Experimental Study’, 29th Mar, 2016, PLOS Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001985

HESHMATI, A., HONKANIEMI, H., JUÁREZ, S. P., ‘The effect of parental leave on parents’ mental health: a systematic review’, Jan 2023, The Lancet, Public Health, Vol 8:1, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(22)00311-5/fulltext

COURTIN, E., RIECKMANN, A., BENGTSSON, J., NAFILYAN, V., MELCHIOR, M., BERKMAN, L., ROD, N. H., ‘The effect on women’s health of extending parental leave: a quasi-experimental registry-based cohort study’, Oct 2022, International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 52:4, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyac198

We’re so excited to be joined by Shiksha Teeluck for a thoughtful and energising conversation about Women in STEM. This week's episode is packed with practical insight and encouragement for anyone navigating STEM, whether you're just starting out, exploring your options, or already well established in the field.

In our discussion, Shiksha shares her perspective on topics including:

• Inspiring more young women to pursue STEM pathways
• Making STEM subjects more accessible
• Finding your place in academia, the workplace and male-dominated environments without shrinking yourself
• The value of outreach programmes in widening participation, particularly 'The Girls Into Physics Summer School'
• Self-empowerment, resilience and backing yourself in competitive spaces

by Charlie Summers

As a trans student, you can understand my hurt to learn via email that the college chose not to fly the trans flag this year. To find out through a notification on the Venn that enough students flicked through the Moodle page easily selecting the progress flag, the national flag of Wales and of Ireland, and the Tibetan prayer flag, and chose to skip over the trans flag was heartbreaking.

I understand as the new bulletin put it that "the transgender community is represented in the progress flag", but you can see how it felt that the student body was deliberately making the choice to exclude their trans peers.

Last term, I attended an event marking trans day of remembrance, in which we sat and listened to the names of every trans person who died that year be read out; the whole ceremony took well over twenty minutes. The powerpoint projected overhead which included photos and names of the dead and how it was that they died, took far longer. Unfortunately, there were members of our community who died that we did not have the names of, who died with names that were not their own. Among the causes of death were decapitation, stoning, stabbing, and lynching. I remember sitting in that hall and feeling a great fear and sorrow. I myself am grateful to have never experienced such brutality. Nevertheless, what I have experienced is a denial of care, bullying and harassment from peers as well as random men on the street, and the increased politicisation and rejection of my identity. It is for this reasons it hurt to find out the trans flag would not be flown, as I felt it was indicative of the move towards repression and intolerance that we are seeing globally in regard to trans people.

I have been a student of this college for four years, and I know its reputation. In my first year, I participated in a protest against the college’s refusal to represent its lgbt population. We each hanged pride flags from our window against college regulation, and ignored the administration’s calls to remove them. The ability to vote for student flag days was the college's compromise to this resistance, a largely unsatisfying one I have to admit.

Regardless I can tell how, after the students were allowed to finally have a say on what the college would represent, how I walked up senate’s passage swelling with pride at the sight of the trans flag flying high over the tower of Caius. It is amazing to see your community represented especially at such a difficult time politically, especially from a college with such a reputation; it is amazing to know the student body stands with you.

Now, to my point, I don't have the same personal connection as I'm sure many students do to their national flags. I stand with and did vote for the Welsh and Irish national flag, as well I appreciate and stand in solidarity with the Tibetan cause. I am glad that these students were able to see their concerns represented, and I think it is important that they are, even if it’s for something as simple as a pedestrian walking past, seeing the flag, and deciding to google it. As performative as it may be, I think flying a flag generates support and awareness that alongside activism goes a long way to helping a community. It is for this reason that I think the flag day voting should remain as it currently is.

I would love students to be given another opportunity to show their solidarity for their trans peers in future years. I would love to someone to have the same experience I did walking up senate's passage, and I would love the student body to speak up and memorialise those trans persons who have been murdered so brutally- something which, I'm afraid- the progress flag simply doesn’t do enough to commemorate.

As stated earlier, even having to have a vote on which of our communities are represented is already a compromise, I do not know why we would want to compromise any further. I understand that this proposal does allow for more flags to be voted on “should there be a growing interest” but believe that ladening this process with even more bureaucracy is unnecessarily restrictive and limiting. I think the proposal is indicative of the college wanting to restrict our ability to express ourselves; I have seen throughout my time here how they do their utmost to suppress student expression, and I truly don’t think it harms anyone by having a wide selection of choices for our flag days, besides offending the conservative sensibilities of senior administration.

by Charlie Summers

by Amber Gooding

TW: disturbing content, sexual abuse

“Pleas[e] help us. We are Korean students. No woman is safe in Korea.” [Modification by me. Find the original tweet on https://x.com/WomenLeisure/status/1828034029653840363] Late August 2024, this message was shared on Twitter by user @WomenLeisure. Like them, several accounts from South Korea have used the social media in order to alert the rest of the world to the dreadful issue that plagues their country: the New Nth Room scandal.

The scandal refers to a sprawling web of Telegram chat rooms, some with more than 200.000 members, dedicated to sharing AI generated pornographic images of unsuspecting women. The way the chat rooms work is quite simple and methodical: A person wishing to be added to a room first needs to send a certain number of pictures of a woman or girl they know. A quick scroll through her Instagram account usually gets them what they need. In addition to the pictures, they have to share her personal information, such as the school she goes to, her first and last name, her phone number… Finally, the group will use an artificial intelligence software to generate deepfake pornographic images with that woman’s face on it. The same process is repeated with as many women as they can think of. The targets are usually classmates, teachers or even family members.

The chat rooms were recently discovered by journalist Ms Ko. It appears they tend to be organised by school, ranging from middle schools to universities. More than 500 of them have been identified, although the actual number remains unknown. Even if a chat room is deleted, a new one will easily emerge.

This scandal has been titled the “New Nth Room” deepfake scandal in reference to the first Nth Room scandal. In 2019, Telegram's chat rooms blackmailing women into sharing sexually explicit pictures were discovered. The leader of the sex ring was sentenced to 42 years of jail time.

A deep sense of fear has overtaken the women of South Korea ever since the deepfake chat rooms were discovered. A lot of them have decided to erase all of their pictures from the internet, going as far as disabling all their social media accounts. Each of them is terrified of becoming a target for the men in their lives. They also lack faith in their government in its ability to protect them. Although current President Yoon Suk Yeol has pledged to “eradicate” the “digital sex crimes”, South Korean women doubt him for his anti-feminist positions and his disbelief in structural sexism.

Indeed, gender inequality is an acute issue in South Korea. In 2022, its gender pay gap was the worst one out of all the countries of the OECD. At the same time, anti-feminist ideology is gaining more and more importance, especially in online spaces where men decry feminism as a form of discrimination against them. The fact that most of the suspected perpetrators of the chat rooms are teenage boys further illustrate the severe lack of proper education for men when it comes to women’s rights.

In the meantime, South Korean women have taken to the street to protest against the country’s culture of misogyny and the sexual exploitation of women. On September 21st 2024, an estimated 6.000 women gathered at Hyehwa Station in Seoul to call for the punishment of the perpetrators and users of the deepfake chat rooms.

by Inès N'Cib

Bibliography

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https://tribune.com.pk/story/2492316/south-korean-women-protest-against-new-nth-room-de epfake-scandal/

Barr, H. (2024, August 30). South Korea’s digital sex crime deepfake crisis. Human Rights Watch.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/08/29/south-koreas-digital-sex-crime-deepfake-crisis

Chae-woon, K. (2024, September, 23). ‘Punish those who make, sell and watch it’: Korean women rally against deepfake abuse. Hankyoreh. https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/1159340.html

Delhaye, C. (2023, January 23). President Yoon Suk Yeol’s decision to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality: a reflection of a South Korean society plagued by growing anti-feminism. Institut Du Genre En Géopolitique.

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South Korea faces deepfake porn ‘emergency’

The president has addressed the growing epidemic after Telegram users were found exchanging doctored photos of underage girls.

BBC NewsJean MackenzieSeoul correspondentReporting fromSeoulNick MarshBBC News

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Rashid, R., & McCurry, J. (2024, September 13). From spy cams to deepfake porn: fury in South Korea as women targeted again. The Guardian.

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