Today is International Women’s Day and the theme is ‘Choose to Challenge’.  I’m afraid this will be rather longer than my usual posts, but if you’ll bear with me, it gives me the opportunity to talk about the philosophy behind the ‘Saltbury Chronicles’.

One thing I’ve always tried to do apart, obviously, from challenging perceptions of the LGBTQ community, is to challenge gender stereotypes.  I don’t tend to be a great flag waver, that isn’t in the nature of a basically rather shy soul.  I also try not to be preachy.  But in my books there is nothing a woman can’t do and perhaps as important, there is no surprise when she does it.  My characters will never be heard gasping: “Oh my god a woman pilot.”  She’s just there doing her job like anyone else.  In fact the pronoun might not even appear for some time after we meet a character as if their gender is purely incidental.  If you’ve read the first of my Tina Burns sub-series, ‘Red’, for example, you will see I lead you to think it’s a man narrating for the first few pages.  And I have women in many positions where a patriarchal society might expect a man: from Dr. Diane, the workaholic cardiac specialist, to Chantel the Thames tug captain, Sgt Edwards, the forensics expert, genius Rock guitarist, Debbie Stewart (she was deliberately a guitarist not a singer), Mo the Police Inspector and ultimately, Hazel’s Great Grandmother, Sofia Martínez, the Spanish Civil War humanitarian heroine who lost her life saving others.  There are many more.

But what about the men?  I’ve never been the sort of feminist that sees men as irredeemably the enemy, and here too there are stereotypes to be challenged.  I certainly have some deeply sexist male characters.  For example, brilliant as she is, Hazel finds it impossible to get a band to accept her as a female drummer.  But the worst is Debbie Stewart’s father, Joseph, who wanted a son to mould into his own likeness and take over his business someday.  He never forgives Deb for being born a girl.  It never even occurs to him that a daughter could also follow in his footsteps.  Instead he tries to use her as bait to ensnare one of his business friends’ sons into marriage.  He tells his long suffering wife Mona how honourable he is being in not divorcing her when it turns out she can’t have another child, and he eventually throws a 16 year old Deb out for wanting to choose her own career.  Her ultimate sin in his eyes though, is her huge global success, during which she out-earns the old curmudgeon many times over.  In his eyes: how dare a woman do that!?

But challenging stereotypes applies to the men as well as the woman.  Genuine male allies can be as precious to a feminist as straight allies to the gay community and some of the most nurturing characters in the Saltbury books are men who some might see as being almost maternal.  One such is Dennis Granby, the Art teacher at St. Ann’s School for girls.  He realises he has two remarkable talents in his class:  Brenda George and our own Hazel Fauld.  He is convinced that Hazel will be one of the great designers of her generation and that Brenda will become one of the century’s truly great painters.  He is almost humbled by their talent and backs them to the hilt.  Colin Redman is the man who first treats model Roisin Fauld as the keen intellect she undoubtedly is.  Most important of all though, are two wonderful fathers, Gordon Baxter and Desmond Burns.  Gordon is a sports coach and former Olympic athlete.  He has a son Garry, with no interest in sport, and a younger daughter, Carol, who’s keen as mustard.  A lot of fathers would be disappointed and might see the daughter as second best.  Not Gordon, though.  He dedicates himself to being the very best trainer for her that he knows how to be.  The result is a father and daughter team ready, quite literally, to take on the world.

Desmond Burns has a steeper learning curve.  His daughter, Tina, is the light of his life.  It’s not for nothing he calls her ‘Princess’.  But Desmond has a five year older son, Peter, who he assumes will be his successor in the family law firm.  There is a huge row when Peter says he’s not interested.  Tina tries to console her father, saying that she’s always wanted to work with him, and Desmond hurts her to the core when in an angry moment he replies “What use is a girl?”  He soon changes his tune though, and in time Tina becomes a respected colleague as well as an adored daughter.  Of course, Tina and Carol are both lesbians and here too it’s their fathers who support them from the start, where their mothers have deep reservations.