For several years, even as your health faltered irreparably and rumours of your increasing fragility could no longer be denied, the world refused to release its hold.

We said prayers, sent love and held vigils until we had brought our Madiba — a man who had lived longer than most — back to life. Such was our belief in the immortality of our hero that we were incapable of relinquishing you.

But now, despite our efforts, you are gone.

I said my own private goodbye almost two years ago, when I visited Robben Island on a trip back to my homeland. As the ferry skated across Table Bay, a cold wind blew in through one of its hatches.

A young man made everyone laugh when he said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we will vote to have this door open or closed. This is a free and fair election — you will only be allowed to vote once!'

I had left the country a decade earlier, and was touched by the benign, self-deprecating tone so many black South Africans now adopted when referencing the past. The country's social undertone had transformed so radically I felt I could pluck a chunk of it from the atmosphere and take it home with me. Continue reading.

Catherine Marshall grew up in South Africa under apartheid. She is a journalist and travel writer.

Source: Eureka Street

Image: Stephen Davies

It wasn't the content — an insightful, tragic backstory about how a promising young man got drawn into a violent fundamentalist world — that had offended; indeed, most commentators seem not to have read the article at all. Rather, it was the fact that the American public, raised on a diet of reality shows and celebrity, instinctively conflated publicity with fame. It assumed Rolling Stone was glorifying Tsarnaev by placing him on its cover.

The response reflected in part the iconic status Rolling Stone holds in the collective American psyche: supplanting the usual subjects — cool, idolised, semi-clothed rock stars and actresses — with an alleged terrorist was just too distasteful for most.

But it was really the image itself which prompted such violent reaction, for it failed to mesh with people's perceptions of what a terrorist might look like: Tsarnaev wasn't sporting a long beard or wearing Islamic clothing, his eyes didn't glisten with malice, his persona didn't suggest aggression or sociopathic traits, he wasn't photographed sitting in the midst of some far-off Islamic conflict. Indeed, this image carries no hint that the subject is in fact Muslim, and an alleged terrorist. Continue reading

Sources

• Catherine Marshall in Eureka Street
• Image: Adweek

Catherine Marshall is a journalist and travel writer.

It was a statement that seemed directly at odds with her circumstances: the 37-year-old is one of the most powerful women in the technology industry, Google's first female engineer and now head of a Fortune 500 company. After the birth of her first child just months into her new role, she resolved the angst of mother-child separation by building a nursery alongside her office so that she could bring the baby to work.

Mayer might not call herself a feminist, but in smashing through the glass ceiling of a male-dominated industry she is standing, in part, on the shoulders of all those feminists from decades and centuries past who spent their lives fighting for gender equality.

While her comments have offended the women for whom the connections between modern-day female liberty and the feminist movement are still obvious and strong, they also highlight the way in which progress has transformed the feminist ideal in the western world.

Although women still earn considerably less than men for the same work, are not well-represented at senior levels in business and politics and are often valued for their youth and beauty rather than their skills and expertise, they exist in a largely egalitarian milieu when compared to women in developing countries.

In Australia, girls are outperforming boys at school, more of them are going on to university, and less of them are being discriminated against in the workplace. There is no need for militant drive and a chip on the shoulder when the fight has already been won.

Despite all this, feminism is still as relevant as ever, if only as a structure with which to maintain the advancements that have brought us to this point and to ensure that we don't regress. Continue reading

Sources

• Catherine Marshall in Eureka Street
• Image: Literatur Haus Stuttgart
  

Catherine Marshall is a journalist and travel writer.

In an opinion piece in Eureka Street, Catherine Marshall points out that while a few newspaper writers "have done much to highlight the misogyny that is inherent to this form of entertainment, they have done so against a rousing tide of public support for this seedy American import".

The league's founder is Mitchell Mortaza, who "implicitly concedes that the only way female athletes can attract attention in a saturated sports market is by taking off their clothes".

Marshall concludes that "Few women would sanction a 'sporting code' that required male athletes to run around nearly naked and unprotected on a sports field, all in the name of titillation; indeed, they would regard it as inhumane. Let's show women the same respect".

• Read Catherine Marshall's article
• Image: Zimbio

Catherine Marshall is a journalist and travel writer.