Opinion

Women still have a way to go in equality fight

The film 'Suffragette', starring Anne-Marie Duff and Carey Mulligan, has got people talking about women's rights and equality
The film 'Suffragette', starring Anne-Marie Duff and Carey Mulligan, has got people talking about women's rights and equality The film 'Suffragette', starring Anne-Marie Duff and Carey Mulligan, has got people talking about women's rights and equality

IT'S been a big week for women who lived over a century ago.

Tuesday was Ada Lovelace Day and a day earlier period drama 'Suffragette' was released in cinemas.

Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago and, mind-bogglingly, was a mathematician who wrote what is recognised as the first computer programme.

It boggles my mind because I'm old enough to remember the ZX Spectrum as the dawn of computers.

Obviously there was the Enigma machine and the code-breaking genius of World War Two, but that was still the 20th Century, not the Regency period of dandies, carriages and cotillions. The idea that someone had devised a computer programme in the same era that saw Elizabeth Bennet get down with Fitzwilliam Darcy seems barely conceivable.

But devise it she did. Collaborating with Charles Babbage, a mechanical engineer and polymath, who originated the concept of a programmable computer with his 'analytical engine', her notes include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine.

The work predicted the potential of computers to perform tasks more complex than simple industrial arithmetic.

Ada Lovelace Day has been going since 2009, when blogger Suw Charman-Anderson hit on it as a means of raising the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire.

Meanwhile, the film 'Suffragette' has got people talking about women's rights and equality more generally.

The Oscar-tipped film follows the story of Maud, played by Carey Mulligan, a foot soldier of the early feminist movement, a working woman fighting for the right of other women to vote.

It might be coming out in 2015 rather than 1915, but it is still an unusual film with its predominately female leading roles.

In fact, screenwriter Abi Morgan has claimed that "many" male actors turned down parts in the film because there weren’t enough starring male roles.

"When we came to cast this film it was very difficult, because we kept getting calls from agents saying the male parts weren't big enough," she said at the BFI London Film Festival.

"So it's a huge tribute to Brendan Gleeson, Ben Whishaw, Samuel West and Finbar Lynch that they took on these parts. One of the things that I really wanted to try and do was, although they are smaller and supporting roles, they are complex.”

And so superstar Meryl Streep joins Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne-Marie Duff in the film’s lead roles.

Despite this positivity for women, the London premiere was the focus of protests by... women.

Demonstrators were using it as an opportunity to draw attention to domestic violence and cuts to women’s services, waving banners in Leicester Square reading among other things “dead women can’t vote”.

Of course it was more of an homage to the film than an actual protest against it, with demonstrators from feminist group 'Sisters Uncut' letting off smoke in the purple and green colours adopted by the suffragette’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU).

One protester, who did not give her name, told startled showbiz correspondents: "We aren't going to move, we're the modern suffragettes and domestic violence cuts are demonstrating that little has changed for us 97 years later."

Bonham Carter, whose great-grandfather Herbert Asquith was British Prime Minister during the prime years of the suffrage movement, which he opposed, said the protesters had the "perfect response" to the film.

"If you feel strongly enough about something and there's an injustice there you can speak out and try to get something changed," she said.

Mulligan called the protest "awesome".

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, the Daily Mail faithfully reported that "Carey Mulligan showed off her impossibly petite post-baby body on Monday, as she attended the premiere of her new film Suffragette".

Because that's what it's all about for women, isn't it? What you look like at the premiere of a film where you're getting rave reviews for your portrayal of women who put their reputations, health and even lives on the line in the fight for equality. And how quickly you "lost your baby weight", obvs...

One can only imagine how Ada Lovelace's work would have been described at the time - 'Babbage machine link to daughter of incestuous poet'.

Oh, did I not mention she was Lord Byron's daughter? Sorry. I didn't think it was relevant.

@BimpeIN

b.archer@irishnews.com