“I don’t care what they Write about me as long as they spell my Name right.“

I have two first names and one surname, and I know this happy feeling when they are spelt right and put in the right order (lots of people tend to swap the first names) or when my surname is pronounced correctly (not like the English “Steve“!).

Being accurate with names only gets you halfway, because what is the point if they they something inaccurate about you or put words and opinions in your mouth in an interview that you would never say. It is also unpleasant if they get the facts right but leave out the name, if they don’t mention the people involved?

It seems to me that this happens to women more often than to men, and this influences the way we see others, our society and the world and everything happening in it. I haven’t evaluated this yet, but spending an hour with an encyclopedia or online with Wikipedia supports this impression. Not only will you find less biographical data on fewer women, but also often see that a woman’s husband or father is mentionend in her article, but she won’t me in theirs. On top of this there is the problematic linguistic phenomen called “Generisches Maskulinum” (i.e. a male noun to signify both females and males, when a female noun exists) which is used in languages like German or Spanish and leads to the disappearance of women in texts. An example: The Spanish hermanos is both brothers and siblings. A Spanish Wikipedia article on catalan anarchist Salvador Puig Antich, who had five siblings – at least three of them sisters, was translated in part for the English and German articles. There he suddenly only  had brothers. Fortunately, this has been corrected recently.

Chicken or Egg – What about Reputation? 

Last Thursday the Tagesspiegel, a Berlin newspaper, wrote on twitter: “#Facebook-Gründer #Zuckerberg & Gattin erwarten wieder Nachwuchs“ (#Facebook founder #Zuckerberg & spouse  expecting another baby). The headline of the newspaper article was similar, it talks of “Mark Zuckerberg und Frau” (Wife).

Headlines obviously stick out and they are also relevant for search results online. Unfortunately pregnant Priscilla Chan is not mentioned by name. Why, because the article is really only about her better known husband? Because of limited space? “Zuckerberg and Chan are expecing another daughter” would have been possible, Zuckerberg is quite obvious even without a first name, especially since “Facebook Founder” is mentioned prior to the headline. As far as pregnancies and deliveries are concerned I would have thought that the mothers would be more involved, and I am always a bit surprised when I see birth announcements in newspapers that mention the father first, but that is a topic for another day.

Another Tagesspiegel article (by Lars von Törne), also from March 9, announces the new weekly comic strip by Naomi Fearn about the Berlin political coalition: „Die R2G-WG“ – der Comic zur Berliner Koalition. R2G = red red green, meaning Social Democrats, The Left and The Green Party (this is not the federal government, who are also Berlin based). In Naomi’s setup the heads of the three parties, Michi (Mayor Michael Müller), Klausi (Klaus Lederer) and Poppi (Ramona Popp) share a flat, together with Der Koalitionsvertrag / the coalition agreement which is so big it needs an extra room.

Naomi Fearn, a German / US-Amercian comic artist, originally from Stuttgart now living in Berlin, published a weekly newspaper comic strip called Zuckerfish in the Stuttgarter Zeitung from 2000 to 2014. Together with Marc Seestaedt she founded the vocal duet Sticky Biscuits in 2014 (who performed at the 2-year birthday party of the blog SchspIN!). In the article in question, Naomi is not mentioned in the headline nor in the short description, but she is introduced in detail. When asked about her comic inspirations she names DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau (68) which has been published since 1970, POGO by Walt Kelley (1913-73) published between 1948 and 1975, and the web comic SCANDINAVIA AND THE WORLD by Danish female comic artist Humon.

Scandinavia and the world was not included in the  subheading “Inspired by Doonesbury and Pogo” however. Why? Lars von Törne explained when questioned on twitter: “limitation nothing to do with gender, but with the reputation of the named”. I think reputation is a strange criterion for this, especially since Humon and her comic strip have not only inspired Naomi but are also called “beloved role model”.

Insertion: It always takes me rather long to write my blog tests, I started on this one five days ago. Thus I am all the more pleased to be able to share the following:
Lars von Törne kept his promise (“will be changed as soon as possible”) and changed the subheading to Inspired by “Doonesbury”, “Pogo” and “Scandinavia and the World”. Thank you very much!

My question remains: Are there less reports on women because they are less important / less know, or are they less know because there are so few reports about them?

Give Credit Where It’s Due

Being left out and not getting enough recognition is not something confined to women, sometimes even entire professional groups are affected. British illustrator Sarah McIntyre regularly points out on twitter that even in picture books the illustrators are frequently omitted, and the hashtag #PicturesMeanBusiness clearly shows that it’s not a question of artists’ vanity but of work and money. Those seen less frequently and lesser known are spoken of less and as a consequence they can not demand as much money as might be appropiate for their work.

From a non-mention it may only be a small step to the stealing of idears, copyright infringements and plagiarism. British illustrator Gemma Correll regularly twitters about shops that offer products using her illustrations without licence, but that is another topic.

In the film industry there are professions that are at times also ignored, in Germany it’s the casting directors for example who are still fighting to be included in the opening titles of a film. Also affected are the script writers. This is what Jan Herchenröder, managing director of the German Script Writers’ Union VDD said in an interview in January:

Before people can get together on a set, a script writer will have worked on average one and a half or even two years on a film, shouldering part of the financial risk and inventing all those scenes, the realization of which will provide people from different film profesisons with an intense period of occupation. (…) As far as (non-)credits go, it’s less helpful to suffer in silence than to get legal advice for the contract negotiations to avoid being left out when it’s time for “A film by…“. Since any satisfactory solution of these questions will depend largely on the market power of the individual author, the VDD will continue to fight for the introduction of minimum standards for the nomination of authors in Germany.
from Peter Hartig: Die Filmerzähler – 30 Jahre VDD. Out-takes 20.1.17

The VDD still has a long way to go in promoting their cause within the industry, as could be seen at the Berlin Film Festival Berlinale press conference on January 31. Festival director Dieter Kosslick spoke about the “Participation of Women in the Berlinale 2017” in the divisions directing, camera and production. What about scripts, why were the authors left out? (In case you are interested, the share of women for scripts among the 18 competition entries was 25 %, four books were written by women, another book had a female and a male author. And this leads to another downside of these Berlinale statstics:

The phrase Kosslick used for this short data survey was: “you will find a list of all films where women were in charge as director, director of photography or producer” and that sounds like sole responsibility, but actually very often it’s shared. The presse release simply states e.g. “production – competition 14”. Great! Doesn’t it sound like 78 % female producers for the 18 films in competition? Or – if we add the 5 films outside the competition – at least 56 %? But actually all that we can deduce from the number 14 is that 14 female producers were involved in those 23 films in one way or the other. And furthermore, I couldn’t even reproduce this number (and so far I have received no answer from the press department of Berlinale who I asked about this). If I evaluate the information on producers for the competition films to be found on the official Berlinale website I get 11 female and 49 male producers, that’s an 18,3 % female share. By the way, no film had female producers only.

One other film: last weekend I listened to a film magazine on the radio (Deutschlandradio Kultur), to a radio feature titled “Dad loves a younger woman, from Thailand” by Patrick Wellinski, in which he interviewed director and scriptwriter Carolin Genreith about her documentary HAPPY, a film about her father and herself, and of course the thai girl-friend Tukta. At one point I noticed the absence of Carolin’s mother and I waited to find out what she might have said about her ex-partners new girl-friend, 30 years his junior. But this question was never asked. Maybe she is not alive anymore. Or she simply had been overlooked, forgotten.

The Only Constant is Change

We are living In a world where men get more attention than women. This is the normalilty in which we all grow up and live in, so we hardly notice it any more. And therefore people sometimes tend to be surprised at the consequences of this imbalance. Surprised at the effects on the self-images of girls and boys, of women and men, on their perception of others, their abilities and the working world. Something quite fitting in this context has just gone round the internet: He Swapped Email Signatures With a Female Co-Worker, and Learned a Valuable Lesson. I was not really surprised by the outcome of the experiment (customers responded more aggressive and less trusting if they thought they were communicating with a woman), however, the boss responding with a defensive attitude certainly was a disappointment.

But not everyone will react like he did, on the contrary, I regularly experiece people being quite open-minded when phenoma like these are brought to their attention (see also my recent blog article Stereotypes – Open Eyes). In a manner of speaking they can learn to spell names the right way, or to write them in the first place.

This morning I noticed this advertisment in a Berlin tube, with the photo of a young woman and a young man on top of a very high building:

The small writing at the top of the sign reads: “If fair pay, promotion prospects and varied tasks are important to you, then maybe becoming a professional roofer might just be the challenge you are looking for.” (bold highlighting by SchspIN). There you go! Times are changing. 

The Test is called Bechdel-Wallace Test

Many have heard of the Bechdel-Wallace Test (three questions regarding a film: Does it have two female characters? Do they talk to each other? And do they talk about something beside a man / men?). However, most people still call it Bechdel Test, but that’s not quite right. Comic artist Alison Bechdel (DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR) introduced these three questions in her comic strip episode THE RULE in 1985, indicating Liz Wallace as the source. In August 2005 Bechdel had it clarified on her website:

Alison would also like to add that she can’t claim credit for the actual “rule.” She stole it from a friend, Liz Wallace, whose name is on the marquee in the comic strip, reprinted below.

Bechdel repeated this in several interviews (e.g. in The Independent: Please stop calling it the Bechdel Test, says Alison Bechdel) and you can also find it in an entry in Geek Feminism Wiki.

To continue calling it the Bechdel Test is a bit like saying “Mark Zuckerberg is expecting another child”. It’s no drama, but someone is missing. What reasons could there be to ignore Liz Wallace? Because it’s shorter? Because Bechdel is better known? Because that’s what the test was called from the beginning? The world is changing and so is language. A law was passed in Germany in 1994, since then spouses don’t need to agree on a common name, and maybe 100 years prior to that wives would be called by the surname as well as the first name of their husbands – Angela Merkel would probably have been known as Mrs. Jochen Sauer in those days.

So please only use the term Bechdel-Wallace Test, everything else would be disrespectful to Liz Wallace, who invented the rule and also to Alison Bechdel, who wants to share the credit. Also:

Get the spelling right for all names, please! Don’t use the Generic Maskulin Forms! Scrutinize or even question what you find on Wikipeda (and consider becoming an author / editor for Wikipedia to help fill the gaps). And make the invisible people visible! – It doesn’t matter if they are women or men, or whether the topic is comics, illustrations, ideas, scripts, film festivals, research, sport or anything else. #MakeThemVisible #MachtSieSichtbar. Thank you.