Labour to reveal sex-biased recession

Harriet Harman confirmed that Labour will publish the economic impact on women of future budgets. Speaking at the Fawcett Society’s hustings on Thursday, Harriet said that the Equality Act will require the Government to carry out a gender audit of its decisions, to reveal the differential impact on men and women of decisions about public spending.

Women make up a larger proportion of the public sector workforce and use more public services more regularly, so cuts in public spending are going to hit women hardest.

Harriet, along with Theresa May (Conservative) and Lynne Featherstone (Lib Dem), spoke on a wide range of issues, including the economy and how to cut the deficit, family policy and parental leave, tax breaks for married couples and work life balance, how to tackle violence against women and how to get more women into parliament.

Watch the video clip for the coverage of the event on BBC News at 10.

Book review: Living Dolls, by Natasha Walter

This is a fantastic book. Read my review, published in Fawcett’s StopGap magazine:  

“I realise that I was wrong to be so nonchalant…ten years ago.”

In a perceptive summary of modern sexism, Walter matches the pressure on women to conform to a narrow image of sexuality with a world still politically and economically unequal, and violent towards women.

From the moment of birth, women are oppressed. Toy shops sell pole dancing kits for girls. Society glorifies prostitution, tolerates sexual bullying and propagates unsubstantiated stereotypes that women are nurturers and men are innate leaders.

And myths persist. As women are pumped with propaganda that good looks trump intelligence, we are hoodwinked into thinking that this is empowerment.

This is not liberation. This is not choice. This is sex prejudice engulfing us – in an altogether more subtle and dangerous disguise. 

The leaders' debate: will someone ask about women?

My question for the leaders tomorrow: 

This is a very male-dominated election. There are many wives, but not enough female MPs (only a fifth are women).

Women of the electorate are bearing the burden of the recession, as the majority of public sector workers are female (so will suffer from cuts to public services), the pay gap between men and women is large and widening, and women still take most of the responsibility for bringing up children.

What are the parties going to do about these issues – and how can they assure us that policies such as forced pay audits and shared parental leave will not be abandoned under financial pressures? 

The feminist man

At last! A brilliantly-written and insightful article in the newspaper saying all the things that feminists say. And it’s written by a man!

David Mitchell had a witty and clever piece in the Observer yesterday, which is interesting for two reasons.

Firstly, he links the pole-dancing ‘empowerment’ myth with sexism associated with female politicians and politicians’ wives (see earlier blog post).

He has made the connection that feminists keep talking about – that the more women are portrayed as sex objects, the more women are viewed as second-class citizens in society.

Pole-dancing is not empowerment. It’s the fulfillment of male fantasy.

Female politicians want to be empowered. They don’t want to be judged for the looks, their clothes or their body parts.

The second interesting thing about this article is that the stack of comments following generally agree with him.

This is incredible – because most articles with a feminist theme are torn to bits with vicious remarks against the writer (see my earlier post).

Instead, the criticism in the comments is generally directed against the Cambridge University spokeswoman who claimed that pole-dancing was empowering – for using ‘feminism’ in the wrong way to gain her own publicity.

Could it be that feminists (women) are just too serious and need to make more jokes to be popular? This article is not only intelligent, but it is funny.

Yes, perhaps we can learn to be a bit more witty. Yes, perhaps we can laugh at ourselves more.

But ultimately, of course, the article is written by a man, so he has had a head-start; he doesn’t have to face sexism directed him before he has even put the pen on the page.

(Also, I wonder: if the Cambridge spokeperson had been a man, would he would have got the same amount of criticism?)

If you're not a feminist, why aren't you?

There was an interesting article in the Guardian last week.

Chloe Angyal of Feministing wrote that many young women believe in equal rights for women, want to vote and get an education, and feel strongly about the injustice against women abroad, from acid attacks and female genital mutilation.

And yet, if asked whether they are feminists, will answer: "I'm not a feminist, but…"

She writes: "Feminists are people who dare to imagine a world in which women are 50% of Congress, where women are paid 100% of what their male colleagues earn and where every person who violates another human being is reported, prosecuted and convicted."

The comments from readers, following the article, are telling. As always, many comments in response to feminist-themed articles are vicious.

Some of the comments after this article accuse 'feminism' of being man-hating and/or seeking world domination.

Feminism is neither. It’s simply the statement in bold above – always has been and always will be.

So why the hatred, why the myths and why the barrage of hostile responses?

Anti-feminism (slamming the whole movement with sweeping insults as opposed to rational debate) is fuelled by misogyny itself. The very discrimination that feminists are fighting is used against women who express a desire for their rights.

This is exacerbated by the media, which spread and embed the myths. And the result is that some people – including young women – are shunning feminism.

Not because they don't support its values, but because they have an inaccurate view, which is moulded by the anti-feminist streak of society, of what feminism really is. Or, they just don't want to face the vitriol.

A fortnight of feminism

Hello, I'm back, and have surfaced from my laptop and my literary endeavours.

Spring has come. It’s warm and it’s light and the white blossom is out in bunches on the trees. With a shift of the seasons, we've had an eventful fortnight in feminism and politics.

The election date’s set and we're well into the pre-election period.

(By the way, this period – which is when civil servants are restricted in what they can say – is no longer called purdah; a sexist word, meaning the practice of preventing women from being seen by men (literally meaning 'curtain' in Persian and Urdu; see image). Women! Purdah means that people are expecting us to shut up!)

Fawcett, which campaigns for equality between women and men in the UK on pay, pensions, poverty, justice and politics, continues to ask politicians 'What about Women?', publishing the answers here.

Meanwhile, a report published by the Treasury Select Committee exposes the sexism facing most women working in the City – from the 60 per cent pay gap between the sexes, to the dearth of women on boards and the failure of firms to implement successful flexible-working policies.

And Radio 4 Today editor Ceri Thomas claimed that female presenters are too thin-skinned to hack it on the show, exposing yet again the BBC's misogynistic streak.

But there is some good news. The new laws regarding prostitution and lap dancing clubs have come into effect.

And they're working.

Men have already been arrested for paying for the sexual services of a prostitute subjected to force.

As feminists have always said, sexism is not inevitable.