Rationales For Community Leadership (And Their Outcomes)
August 12, 2008 11:04 PM
How do people come to be leaders in their communities? Are they anointed or appointed? Do they take or earn the authority to represent their peers? What are the rationales behind their belief that they should lead? Do others agree? And what are their objectives, and why? It all depends on where you're coming from, and what sort of 'community' it is. So how should those who work in regeneration with communities and their leaders approach this complex and delicate issue? ...
Today is World Population Day. On this day in 1968, world leaders proclaimed that individuals have a basic human right to determine the number and timing of their children. Forty years later, population issues remain a real challenge even in Britain, where greater cohesion is still needed for policy in action. ... 
Who inhabits the cybervillage? Mostly it seems younger people, and, in the more technological parts of that so-called village, men. But there are a few self-proclaimed women 'geeks' of a certain age out there too; and some of them are claiming a cyber-space for their own ideas. I don't profess to be a geek; but maybe I match the profile in other ways.
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The Presidential potential of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is great. So how has this embarrassment of riches for Democrats in the USA seemingly become an advantage for John McCain and the Republicans, as the ‘race’ and gender agendas compete for dominance? Do progressive politics in race and gender need to collide? ... 
Regeneration is a crowded field. It’s the market place to resolve the competing demands of social equity indicators as varied as joblessness, family health, carbon footprint, religious belief and housing. But it's obvious something isn't gelling in the way regeneration 'works'. Could that something be the almost gratuitous neglect of experiential equality and diversity? 
Senior women leaders are often criticised for being less confident than the men, and for feeling unable to delegate. Is this any wonder, when those very men don't play fair? It's time for sexist attitudes in the corridors of power to be challenged head-on - which is exactly what Margot Wallström, Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders Ministerial Initiative, has just done. ... 
Next week sees the launch in Westminster, London of the British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) Regeneration Equality and Diversity Framework.
Just 90 years ago on this date was the first time any woman in the UK was 'allowed' to vote. Some people still alive now were born when women's emancipation did not exist; and even in 1918 the Representation of the People Act permitted only specified women over 30 this privilege. It was to be another ten years before women gained equal voting rights with men. ... 
2008 sees a new location for Monday Women in Liverpool. For a few months we'll be meeting in El Rincon Latino, by Roscoe Street and Oldham Street in the new City Gate development at the top of Renshaw Street. It's free to come; all women most welcome, first Monday of every month, from about 5.45 to 7.30-ish p.m. ... 
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has told it as it is: many of us, men and especially women, are fearful of being out alone at night. Only really unimaginative or insensitive people - or perhaps some opportunist political opponents - would disagree with Ms Smith. This is not a new state of affairs. We have but to recall past feminist campaigns to 'reclaim the night' to know that. ... 
Today (30 October) is UNISON and the Fawcett Society's 'Women's No Pay Day' - i.e. the date in the U.K. year when, compared with men's average wage for a given job, women doing it cease to be paid. But there are many people, men and women alike, who are determined that things will change, and change much more quickly than to date. ... 
All regeneration and strategic planning professionals need to have excellent formal qualifications and wide experience; the job is far too important for anything less. But what other characteristics are also required to make a good regeneration official into an outstanding agent of delivery on the ground? Here is a list of such characteristics, from a rather specific observational position. ... 
Civic leadership in action requires a range of perspectives and understandings. No single 'type' of person can hold all the wisdom to take communities forward in this complex age. A range of experience is required. The overwhelmingly white, male hegemony in Liverpool's corridors of power is a civic embarrassment, demonstrating a fundamental lack of will to learn from the richly diverse insights of its citizens. ... 
An ippr report by Ioannis Kaplanis tells of increasing employment polarisation in Britain - with differences most significant amongst female employees in London. Regional economies must learn from Kaplanis's studies, looking especially at policies for the full use and retention of women's high-level skills. One emphasis must surely be on how very senior decision makers outside London (a hugely male population) respond to this challenge. ... 
Graduate retention is a serious aspect of any decent policy for regeneration. But the emphasis on new / young graduates alone is strange, when there are always also other highly qualified and more experienced people who might offer at least as much in any developing economy. ... 
Today (8 March) is International Women's Day, when women are celebrated in many parts of the world. But after more than a century of campaigning, women and men remain unequal in wealth and power. It's time for an overtly feminist, gendered approach to economics, examining the differential impacts and advantages of economic activity on women and men. ... 
Pre-school childcare is generally regarded as expensive. Even with government financial support, it stretches many household budgets. But there are now many more childcare places than hitherto. More places and higher costs, properly handled, may together be a longer-term sign of better status for women in the labour market. ... 
Recent figures confirm that girls are doing better at school (and university) than boys. Single-sex classes within co-ed schools are not however generally seen as a way to resolve this inequality. But how much do we know about the longer-term impact on men and women of single-sex or mixed gender teaching? ... 
International Women's Day is coming up on 8 March. It's an event celebrating more than half the human population but it has a perennially low profile - often like the gender it celebrates. What's International Women's Day for, and how 'should' it be celebrated? ... 
A conference supported with public money on the sustainable development of a city region is obviously a matter of considerable public interest. It needs, therefore, also to be a conference in which deliberative democracy plays a part, and in which the diversity of all those ultimately involved is acknowledged. It also needs to support easy accessibility in terms of attendance and recorded output. 
It's not just public conferences which often fail on diversity. The Bank of Scotland Corporate's advertisement today in Merseyside's Businessweek shows the distance still to go before the chaps grasp what diversity might be about - and why everyone, from banks to sub-regions like Merseyside, needs to implement it. ... 
Conferences involving public funds and public policy are still too often devised and conducted as though the vast majority of the population were white, male, able-bodied and middle class. The time has come to start measuring in some way the extent to which this limited approach offers the general public value for money. ... 
Person specifications for 'Lay' Public Appointments often require Board candidates to demonstrate 'confidence'. Increasingly I wonder whether this quality by itself enhances board members' contribution to the common good. Any confident Lay person might have a clear line and stick to it; but does this benefit the public? Or is it an obstacle to diversity in selection, continuing business as usual? ... 
All societies celebrate marriage and acknowledge it officially in one way or another. But how many acknowledge equally officially the coming of age of their young people? Conversation with young Japanese guests at a wedding today has set me thinking.... ... 
Musicians and their instruments often have a very particular relationship, almost 'human' in some respects. Here is an example of a three-way arrangement which offers even those on the side-line, in this case the notoriously long-suffering 'orchestra wife', something uniquely special and positive. ... 
There's a debate to be had about gender pay audits or reviews. To be effective, should they be compulsory and public? Do they have the desired effect on pay equality? And could they result in pay equity within given occupations, but even lower overall wages where the majority of the workforce is female? ... 
A recent survey suggests young people prefer material benefits to babies. But maybe hesitation about starting a family is more about uncertainty whether one's parenting will be good enough, than in wanting 'more' materially. And there is hope for the future of young families, not least in the support which Sure Start programmes are now beginning to deliver across the country. ... 
International Women's Day is not a huge occasion for most people; but maybe it could be if we all grasped this annual opportunity to examine and where possible to celebrate, on a year-on-year basis, what progress has been made in gender equality. A start could be made, Monday Women decided, by ensuring we learn Herstory alongside His. ... 
Cities like Liverpool still seem to have a problem about 'strong women'. On-going changes of civic leadership in the city offer an opportunity for the chaps to disprove suspicions that they continue to hold this antiquated attitude across all spheres of influence. Institutional sexism has no place in an adult and forward-looking city. ... 
Becoming a parent is something uniquely rewarding and unlike any other life experience. But does this mean that the parent who almost always shoulders the main day-to-day responsibility for family care should routinely also experience low pay and significant risk of chronic stress? ... 
The English language is rich in many respects; but it's inadequate, perhaps for very important reasons, when it comes to naming and addressing mature female people. For the foreseeable future polite society will probably continue to constrain women by the words we may properly use here. Men can also be 'Chaps' and 'Guys', whilst for women until now there's been no equivalent set of terms.... which may explain why younger people of both sexes, often themselves more consciously gender-equal, have begun to claim these names, Guys and Chaps, as inclusive terms for everyone. ... 
Choosing if and when to have a baby has never been an easy decision, especially if both partners want to continue in employment. But the debate has shifted quite a lot in the past few years, and perhaps now a deeper understanding is emerging of what 'work-life balance' is really about. ... 