More Women

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Feeling very ropey indeed, so this shall be brief. But there must be some more women of the year. I am all about the women, now.

Baroness Trumpington – who, at the age of 89, flicked Lord King the V-sign as he was making a speech in the House of Lords, when he looked at her and said something about 'some of us getting pretty old'. The fuck-you look on her face was beyond price. She served at Bletchley during the war, which I always think one of the noblest and loneliest of callings. It has been calculated that the work at Bletchley shortened the war by two years, but the people who worked there were not allowed even to admit of its existence until quite recently. They are getting some of their due now, but not enough.

The women of the Military Wives Choir – I watched the brilliant documentary about them on the BBC, and it made me cry. Here was a group of stoical, rather overlooked women. Their job was just to get on with it, as they counted the days until their beloveds came home from Afghanistan. Then a miraculous choirmaster took them and made them into a shining entity that took the Albert Hall by storm, and beat all the boybands and manufactured X Factor nonsense to have the Christmas number one. In fact, on the strength of that, I'm going to nominate Gareth Malone too, as my honorary woman of the year, even though he, of course, a gentleman.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – I've always been a huge admirer of hers, ever since I saw a programme on the BBC in which she featured. She is one of those women who is almost too wonderful to be true. Nothing seems to faze her. She has brought good governance to Liberia, and is the first women ever to be elected head of state in Africa. This year, along with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakel Karman, two other remarkable women, she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Elizabeth Warren – I love her for so many reasons I cannot count the ways. I love her calm intelligence and her coolness and grace. But this year, most of all, I love her for her stirring defence of the social contract, which you may see here.

 

All right. That's enough now. My head feels like it's about to fall off. No pictures today, except for one of another tremendous female, without whom no day would be complete: