Remember last year…?

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Guest editing LabourList to mark International Women’s Day last year, Rowenna Davis wrote that LabourList is drowned out by ego-stroking testosterone – it’s time for a virtual feminist party.

That Rowenna’s piece was widely mocked in the comments section showed we still had a long way to go to make LabourList a more women-friendly forum. At the end of Rowenna’s tenure as guest editor, she wrote on Comment is Free:

“Moderating the comments, I developed a new-found solidarity with women on the web – particularly Harriet Harman, who had to deal with a predictable cabal of sexist comments (“Hapless Hattie”, “Harriet Harpie”, “Is it the time of the month?” to name but a few) that no male minister would have to face. As one lone female commentator put it yesterday, “it’s not surprising women don’t bother joining the debate”.

LabourList has come on a long way since then in terms of both the number of women leaving comments and the general tenor of debate, but, while we co-launched the LabourWomen blog with Jessica Asato at the end of last year’s special, a once-yearly focus is, of course, never enough. You just have to look at the number of women to the right of these words – both in “latest comments” and in the “contributors” section – to see that LabourList has nowhere near equal representation. But we are working towards it, and it’s constantly on my mind.

That said, we’ll be marking International Women’s Day again this year with another special guest editor, on Monday. Who that will be is still a secret for now, but I’m really excited to see people’s reaction to the brilliant work she’s commissioned, and equally excited to have her on board in the first place. Things will be a little different here on Monday.

In the meantime, here’s a document that many of Labour’s 63 women MPs – and the men – will proudly be campaigning on over the weekend: