Fair deals and the fairer sex

By Judith O’Reilly

I haven’t yet seen much point adding my tuppence-worth to the punditry explaining in excruciating detail that we have exactly no idea of what’s going on, but for what it’s worth, and speaking as a Labour voter, you have to be kidding, guys, if you think a Lib-Lab pact has moral authority. It doesn’t. Suck it up. We lost. Let’s elect another leader, regroup and win – for real – next time. (And if I was a Liberal Democrat, I would help a minority Conservative government gets its Queen’s Speech through and leave it at that. Just say “No”. “No” to seats in the cabinet and “No” to a coalition. A coalition is not going to end well for the Liberal Democrats. They’d end up feeling dirty, courtesy of the unavoidable spending cuts, and just hating themselves in the morning.)

Oh, and regarding the next leader of the Labour Party, I heard Harriet Harman’s interview on Newsnight when she said she had no plans to stand – in effect, reserving her position. I’m backing Harriet. I think David Miliband is a star performer and I wouldn’t underestimate the charm of Andy Burnham, but I am outraged – I don’t say that lightly, I mean outraged – at the invisibility of women during the election. Around one in five MPs are women. Well, hurrah bloody hurrah. Are we supposed to draw comfort from that? I always presumed that time moves on and women are considered equal and it will all work out well in the longterm. How gender-stereotypically passive of me.

And it’s not just the MPs, look at the media. The BBC’s excellent Laura Kuennsberg and Sky’s Kay Burley do their bit. There’s a handful of well-known women lurking in the columns of the newspapers like Jackie Ashley, Mary Riddell and Polly Toynbee. But where is everybody else?

It’s our own fault. The talented Gaby Hinsliffe bailed out as a political editor because she wanted a life. At the point I could have gone for a political job, I put my family first and turned my back on the 60-hour-weeks.

But it is no better in the new media. Scan the recommended reads of pundits, and there’s only ever a tiny smattering of women’s names. Why is that? Do we make the presumption we are not worth listening to, so we might as well not say anything? Are we too busy tatting to blog our reaction to the changing world around us? Surprise! Women are outnumbered anywhere it counts. Today’s Guardian has six pictures of nice men – any one of whom may be the next leader of the Labour Party. Some of them are wearing suits. One has a briefcase. Two are in shirt sleeves.

Harriet Harman is obliged to stand. Cometh the hour, cometh the woman, Harriet. Now I’ll have to join the Labour party.

This post was also published at Judith’s blog, A Wife in the North.