04 April 2005
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From the Editor…
Welcome to the New Statesman website. Whether you are a new reader or an existing one - online or via the magazine - I hope you'll enjoy the great writing, fresh ideas and provocative debate that make the New Statesman Britain's award-winning current affairs weekly
Cover story
Is there any such thing as the women's vote?
Politicians address female voters as exotic, mysterious beings whose interests start and end with health and childcare. This alienates women much more effectively than if Westminster forgot about them altogether, argues Zoe Williams
Features
Voicemail
Interviews by Alice O'Keeffe
The most important election ever
Black and Asian women tell Yasmin Alibhai-Brown whom they'll vote for - and why this time it really matters
Who would Great Aunt Gittel go for?
Linda Grant is trying to make up her mind between two Jewish women candidates
Glasgow girls against Iraq
In the bars of the city centre, there's a Bacardi Breezer backlash against Blair . . . Lucy Sweet reports
The best that they can do?
With much fanfare, the main parties are presenting their policies for women. Sandra Barwick takes a good hard look at what it all adds up to
Porn again
It may have had a fashionable make-over and acquired arty pretensions, but "modern porn" is really no different from the dirty magazine variety
They don't know how we do it, and they don't care either
Financial pressure and guilt are driving middle-class working mothers out of their careers, to become increasingly desperate housewives. Viv Groskop reports
A matter of opinion
There's no shortage of women writing in the British press, but their picture bylines say it all
Antisocial behaviour brings out the worst in me
The teenage boys who terrorise my street are probably neglected and abused. I know I should care. But a little demon inside tells me I don't
Deeds, not words
Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragette leader, dragged votes for women on to the national agenda. Her legacy is a lesson to us all
Interview
NS interview - Catherine McCartney
"We're not the bravest women in Ireland. That's just media stuff. The only way to restore the value of a life is through justice". Catherine McCartney interviewed
NS interview - Tessa Jowell
Macho politics has had its day: it's time for a new type of politician. Mary Riddell talks to Tessa Jowell
Regulars
Mark Kermode - Problem child
An Asian frightmaster saves Hollywood from itself. By Mark Kermode The Ring Two (15)
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Camera angels
Film is one of the most powerful tools, or weapons, we have to shape views and lives. As long as directors are mainly men, this will be a man's world. Rachel Millward focuses on the exceptional women in a dangerously unbalanced culture
Thrill of the chase
Art collecting - Who is the first to go for the kill on the auction floor? Rosie Millard on the primacy of the hunter-gatherer
Sitting down
First person - The transition from desperate stand-up to sophisticated author was all Jenny Eclair hoped it would be. Until she got a cab home
Theatre
Michael Portillo - Generation gap
Theatre - The young are sexy but not gripping in a soap-like play, writes Michael Portillo The Girl With Red Hair Hampstead Theatre, London NW3
Television
Andrew Billen - Women in love
Television - The Victorian heroine is given backbone in a tale full of twists. By Andrew Billen Fingersmith (BBC1)
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies laments the FA's attitude to women
In 1920, Goodison Park had 53,000 fans for a women's football match
Books
The flight of the mind. Virginia Woolf is now known as much for her political radicalism as for her explorations of feminine spaces. Frances Spalding on a novelist who sought change from within
Virginia Woolf: an inner life Julia Briggs Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 528pp, £30 ISBN 0713996633
Ethical vacuum
The Moral State We're In: a manifesto for a 21st-century society Julia Neuberger HarperCollins, 347pp, £16.99 ISBN 0007181671
Just say no
Born to Buy: the commercialised child and the new consumer culture Juliet B Schor Simon & Schuster, 256pp, £17.99 ISBN 068487055X
Material girl
The World of Coco Chanel: friends, fashion, fame Edmonde Charles-Roux Thames & Hudson, 383pp, £29.95 ISBN 0500512167
In cold blood
Making Sense of Suicide Missions Edited by Diego Gambetta Oxford University Press, 400pp, £25 ISBN 0199276994
Fiction - Border crossing
The Bear Boy Cynthia Ozick Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 320pp, £12.99 ISBN 0297848089
Commentary
The wives of successful novelists once played a subordinate role to their often restless and self-absorbed husbands. Today, writes Jason Cowley, the roles are just as likely to be reversed
