I'm starting an MA in Social Anthropology in September which will hopefully lead onto a PhD. My current preoccupation is with the discontinuity between how our bodies are designed to live and how we actually live. We were designed to live in a hunter-gatherer society and we are forcing our bodies and our emotions to fit into a societal model that is only a few hundred years old. It may take another thousand for our bodies to adapt and the adaptations that are already taking place (e.g. obesity, unhappy daycare/latchkey children) seem only to be negative. There must be a way to take the best of modern life and adapt it to the physiological and emotional needs of our hunter-gatherer instincts.

Women@Work_ A major break through for British Council Pakistan British Council Pakistan wins cash pound 700 sponsorship from APNA Arts UK. Women@work, an exhibition of working women by the British Council Pakistan will be exhibited in Nottingham, UK during the month of March 2005 with the launch event taking place on International Women's Day. The first showing in Nottingham will be followed by a regional and a national tour with educational workshops within the UK. This dual language exhibition, English and Urdu, portrays Pakistani women in non-traditional areas of work and challenges outdated stereotype preconceptions about women's role in Pakistani society and the wider Diaspora. It was designed to increase public awareness of the positive contributions that women make in Pakistan and around the world outside of traditional areas of work. The posters focus specifically on women working in less 'traditionally' female professions, such as, engineers, judges, pilots, taxi drivers, politician's etc. The images demonstrate that women are often in positions of control and authority in their work environments. Similarly, they have line-management responsibility for the work of men as well as women. The posters are attractive and reflect working women of Pakistan background in a real life situation. Apna Arts working in partnership with other UK based arts and educational organizations would like to take the exhibition around schools and community organisations in Nottingham, Birmingham, Manchester and Bradford areas, using the exhibition and an accompanying education pack as a catalyst to improve educational achievements among young British Pakistani children, who have traditionally under achieved. The British Pakistani community as a whole ends up in very low grade jobs and women still are under achieving in education and other progressive activities. These portrayals of women as positive role models will be used to encourage young children in schools as well as their mothers in the community to reach higher goals through improved confidence and new insights into wider possibilities for future employment. Apna Arts are also interested in linking the exhibition with 'Roti, Kapra or Makaan', an education pack being developed for key stages 3 and 4. To accompany the education pack a series of workshops with schools in Nottingham will be held over a period of six weeks. Experienced artists within the UK will be appointed to work with a group of 15-17 year olds in various schools using the working environment as the focus of learning. This is the first ever collaboration between British Council Pakistan, Human Rights Education Programme Pakistan, APNA Arts, the Arts Council of England and Nottingham City Council. The project has been evolved as a strong connecting future project addressing the issues of identity, changing places and achieving mutuality in full spirit. APNA Arts through support from the Arts Council of England and Nottingham City Council have given sterling 700 cash sponsorship towards the re-designing of the project so it is suitable to be shown in the UK. This is the first ever sponsorship British Council Pakistan has got directly from a UK based organisations. The women@work will be available for showing at other venues across the country and APNA Arts will actively promote its availability to regional and national galleries and organisations. Look out for more information on http://www.britishcouncil.org/pakistan

Should our society endorse lap dancing? If you purport to respect women, you don't go to lapdancing clubs because they treat women as sexual objects *only*. And to treat a woman as a sex toy only is not respectful and should not be endorsed by a civilised society. Men who go to lapdancing clubs should be offered counselling because they clearly have a disfunctional relationship with women.

Thinkingwomen in Manchester last night explored who is 21st century woman? Using words as mind joggers, we discussed the different challenges facing women today, from Western and developing world perspectives. The choice of words demonstrate our preoccupations, from water, education, children and business to prostitution, celebrity, frailty and responsibility. Our conversation kept returning to the interconnection of our planet, the impact of our behaviour on each other and the extent to which we are ignoring basic needs. As a society, we are making assumptions and imposing standards that seem distorted, focused less on what is actually happening and what needs to happen and more on what we think should happen. We stifle then under targets don’t seem to deliver what we really need. We celebrated women’s strength, both physical and mental and we wondered why the role models in our society are celebrities, feted for beauty and wealth. We considered whether we are raising our children with the values of equality and fairness that we demand from our adult life. We speculated that the one-dimensional nature of the media, feeding us stories on appearance and gossip, is filling a void left by the reduction of hardship. Is there an anti-intellectualism snobbery that prohibits discussion and entertainment in discussing the more serious issues of our planet’s future or what kind of society we actually want? Is there an expectation of authority or deep knowledge when someone speaks on a matter, rather than just an opinion. Are we too embarrassed to talk? Topics to talk about at future thinkingwomen in Manchester events: - Religion and spirituality and its role in government - Responsibility: to what and to whom? - Women in politics: are we there yet and if not, why not? - Basic needs: what are they and are they being satisfied? - What are our expectations of life? The structure of the sessions will be: an expert in a particular field will give a talk and then there will be a group discussion on the issues raised. Anyone is invited to submit suggestions for topics or experts, including themselves, if there is something they would like to share with the group. Most of all, we aim to have fun while we talk about these issues. It is possible to have a laugh and be serious at the same time! If you would like to know more about the Manchester events, contact jessicasymons@yahoo.com

Here's something to think about: On 19th April, thinkingwomen are asking Should the government regulate nudity in the mainstream press. Dr Petra Boynton, Sex and Relationship psychologist will outline her research into the effect of nudity in the press on men and women followed by a group discussion. We need to consider the parameters of the discussion: - Would it be easier to debate this issue if we focused solely on sexualised nudity i.e. nakedness that is intended to titillate? Where would the boundaries be? - Should we focus just on nudity in advertising (note that Page 3 is not advertising..) - 'Mainstream press' does not include bra and knicker clad models in Triumph adverts on the back of buses, should the debate cover nudity in the public arena, rather than just in mainstream press? Our challenge is to stay sufficiently wide to cover the issue - tits on display - and tangible enough to propose a clear practical framework for managing it/them.