Gadding about

This week I have spent two nights on sleeper trains and two nights in Manchester -- one with N&D, which was lovely, and one at the very strange Luther King House in Rusholme. I was not having theological education, despite the venue's raison d'etre. No, I was having gender training.

And a very odd experience it was. When I was at university, I would have given my eye teeth to get a job involving gender training. My feminist sensibilities were at their sharpest, and if my personal and sexual identity was a little confused (and I daresay confusing), my politics were very clear.

But I didn't get such a job, in fact the first job I did get was in the kind of place where they asked me to wear a skirt when going to meetings. To this I responded by changing into the skirt just before the meeting and changing out of it immediately afterwards. Not exactly challenging the foundations of patriarchal capitalism, but I was only 23 and I needed the money.

And life gets muddier, doesn't it. Now I own two skirts and three dresses, and wear them when the occasion demands. If it's a posh one, I shave my armpits too.

But I digress. My gender training was based in the realities of life for people living on low incomes in the UK. We learned about gender budgeting from a very cool feminist economist, looked at gender-disaggregated statistics and practised lobbying policymakers about the gender dimension of debt and financial exclusion.

It was interesting and challenging. The most challenging thing for me was that we were focusing on what men and women actually do with their lives, and how important it is to take that into account in policymaking and practice, and never mind the unfairness of the system in the first place. That's a different battle, and one that needs to be fought in a different place.

It's acres more complicated and sophisticated as an approach than anything I had previously come into detailed contact with, even if it does feel weird to be talking in what feel like gender stereotypes. It might help me throw some light on the pink pants issue.

joella