Five top tips for female Labour activists, from Women’s Conference

Today at Labour Women’s Conference, panellist and author Melissa Benn summed up the Everyday Sexism session with a set of great tips for female – and feminist – activists who want to make change and make a difference. Here they are:

1. Act together  and share strategies with each other.
2. Don’t burn out – and if you do, make sure you have Stella Creasy MP on your side so you don’t give up! She told the audience, “You will always find people to share the load. Never doubt that.”
3. Elect Ed Miliband and get a pro-women Labour government in in 2015.
4. Join a union, who can provide you and your campaign with support.
5. Laugh when you can, because otherwise the bad times will just get you down.

And here are some more top tips on being a female activist, from other Labour women throughout the day:

6. Learn from your ancestors. At Conference, former Labour MP Maria Fyffe told Labour women they could learn a lot from figures like Mary Barbour. Ms Barbour was a Labour activist in Opposition during WW1, who protested against landlords raising the rent during the war and generated so much coverage that she forced the government of the day to take action. This is a lesson learned by modern Labour MPs like Stella Creasy, who set the agenda even when in Opposition and force government ministers to respond to Labour-led issues such as food banks, loan sharks and compulsory sex education.

7. Get a platform. As Kirsty Mitchell, Labour PPC, put it, “get in peoples’ faces. Find Mark Ferguson [ahem – LabourList editor] and get in his face. Get a platform.” And if Mark won’t accept your submission, LabourList contributor Emma Burnell has said she’s happy to publish feminist-inspired guest posts on her blog, Scarlet Standard.

8. Use the power of women’s voices online. During Labour Women’s Conference, Caroline Creado-Perez explained how her online campaign to get women on the banknote succeeded, and how she tackled sexist  trolling on Twitter. Panellist Melissa Benn described how Mumsnet’s online campaign Let Girls Be Girls had forced shops to remove sexualised girls’ clothing from stores. Acquiring followers online is an effective way to snowball for change.

9. Stand together with women around the world. Harriet Harman, Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, said we should stop seeing class, race and sexism as competing oppressions that divide the women’s movement, and start standing together to form broad coalitions that call for equality – in the UK and abroad.

10. Challenge sexism and don’t see female under-representation or victimisation as women’s fault. As a Labour activist put it, “don”t change the sisters, change the system!”