Yes, this is what women want

By Grace Fletcher-Hackwood / @msgracefh

OK comrades. A quick scroll through Twitter yesterday afternoon revealed a lot of shouting about this ‘What Women Want’ event at Conference in a few weeks’ time. Ten points to bear in mind:

One. We came a little closer to losing our NHS last week. Keep your eyes on the ball or Claire Rayner’s gonna come for you in the night.

Two. The Independent article that kicked off all this fuss is terrible. The headline appears to be trying to make two different jokes and failing at both. And this sentence –

“The move is likely to be controversial among some members who believe that the party’s policy development should not be drawn up along gender lines, but that all members should have a say”

– is Daily Mail-worthy in its attempt to create outrage. It’s like those ‘surveys’ we write for the back of leaflets. ‘Do you think [your local hospital] is important, or do you agree with [your local Lib Dem MP] who voted last week for the entire National Health Service to be stripped down to its component parts and sold off for scrap?’

Three. If you can find me anyone in the Labour Party who read that sentence in the Independent and thought “This sounds like an excellent idea, because I’ve always thought too many members have a say in the party’s policy development”, I will spend the entirety of conference on roller-blades. I am entirely serious about this. I will purchase roller-blades and go through security on them and wear them to the Labour Students disco.

Four. Policy development? Conference? What? ‘Decisions about key issues’ are not going to be made at this event. Resolutions will be put forward on behalf of Labour’s women. That’s it. If you think the biggest problem with Labour Party democracy is the attempts we make to address gender imbalance, find someone who’s been a member for twenty years or so and ask them about the role of conference in policy development. You might not want to do this when they’ve got a mouthful of food.

Five. We’ve had a women’s section of conference for four years or so. It has been getting bigger every year: last year, in Manchester, it was a triumph. Having the party leader in the room seems kinda like common sense, and unless we want to wait a few years until the party leader is Yvette or Stella or Lisa Nandy or Tracey Cheetham, we might just have to put up with one man in the room.

Six. Are you wondering why we have a women’s section of conference? OK, here’s the thing. The gender roles in our society cause some disadvantages for everyone, but a disproportionately high number for women. There are some examples here and here and here and here and here. We’re still underpaid compared to men. We’re still victims of the vast majority of rape and domestic violence. We’re still only one parliamentary vote away from backstreet abortions. These things are not the case because we like them or have agreed to them. They are the case because there are things that are wrong with our society and they have not yet been put right.

Seven. This government are, of course, putting them wronger. I’m not talking about Cameron making crap jokes at Nadine Dorries’ expense (although I think that comes under Caitlin Moran’s feminist version of the broken windows theory). I’m talking about the comprehensive spending review. I’m talking about Ken Clarke on rape. I’m talking about the unfair acceleration in the rise of the state pension age for women. I’m talking about how the NHS ‘reforms’ are going to disproportionately affect the high percentage of NHS staff that are women; how their cuts to local authority budgets and resulting cuts to adult social care nationwide will disproportionately affect the 58% of carers who are women; how the totality of their welfare cuts will hit single parents, 92% of whom are women, harder than anyone else.

Eight. In the face of all of this, women make up around a fifth of the Cabinet, around a fifth of MPs and around a third of local councillors. We still make up half the population, remember. If you’ve ever said “why does it matter whether any of the cabinet members/MPs/councillors/party officers/people who speak at party events are women as long as they’re good”, I’m afraid you missed the point. The point is that while women are overrepresented in the victims of coalition policies, we are underrepresented in the positions of power we need to be in to be able to do anything about it.

That underrepresentation is not a coincidence. It’s not because women are a different species that is biologically programmed to be less interested in politics. It’s not because we’re still getting used to having the vote. It’s been 93 years. It’s not because we get distracted by cupcakes in the shape of kittens on the way to selection meetings and trip up in our heels. (OK, that does sound like the kind of thing I might do, but, y’know, I’d get up again.) It is because there are still some things that are wrong with society, and with politics, and with the Labour Party; and events like this are a small part of the process of putting that right. Shouting “but but but DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MEN!” about measures taken to redress the widespread societal discrimination against women…honestly, it’s just a bit thick.

Nine. One of the many barriers to women’s participation in politics is the matter of what politics looks like. A study conducted in 1999 (have a read, it’s better than the Independent) looked at ‘stereotype threat’, found that women underperform against equally qualified men when they perceive a gender stereotype that implies they will, and suggested this may contribute to the career choices women make. The study was looking at the stereotype that girls can’t do maths, but what’s the stereotype of a politician? A man. In a suit. Spending an hour or two showing woman after woman stand up and talk to a large audience about politics sounds like a bloody good idea to me. As does the inclusion of a woman in the leadership team. We do it in Manchester. If we didn’t, there’d currently be no women on our executive.

Ten. You know why else it’s a bloody good idea for Labour, in opposition, to devote a specific session to discussing the things the coalition are doing to make life disproportionately harder for half of the population? Well…remember when I said women have had votes for 93 years? How do we want those votes to be used?