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ZOE WILLIAMS, GUARDIAN - So help me, I have no interest in a deputy
leadership election that has already happened. I have no interest in
whether Harriet Harman has been attacked more because she's female or
less. I don't agree with Sarah Sands, writing on these pages yesterday,
that the "most striking characteristic of leftwing middle-class
feminists is their self-importance", but only because she seems to think
you could separate middle-class lefties from middle-class rightists via
their self-importance, when actually, on that score, it would be harder
than telling two ducks apart. I am just interested in the first
principle, which is wrong. Westminster does not need more women in it.
It needs more feminists in it, and the first principle of feminism is
that you don't need to be a woman to be one.
Sands gives us mistake one, that the rabid possessive individualism
characterized by Margaret Thatcher is a truer "feminism" than Harman's.
The sine qua non of feminism is battling for collective rights, anything
else is just capitalism with tits. She gives us mistake two, that any
discussion of the cause of women generally has to be plotted around
prominent females in parliament, standing or falling by their personal
successes or failures.
Mistake three comes via Harman, who said while campaigning for the
deputy leadership: "Wouldn't it be galling if Cameron chose the first
female deputy, when we're the party of equality!" Well, that didn't
happen, but something worse did - Gordon Brown has five women in his
cabinet, David Cameron has seven. This makes the Tories 40% more equal
than Labor. . .
If we're going to call female appointments de facto groundbreaking, that
in itself is a daft enough position. If such appointments are
groundbreaking, but only on the left, while on the right they are a sign
of weakness, that has stretched into the realm of totally daft. Ryan
illustrates mistake four, that a simple female presence, like a flash of
fuscia on a grey background, will stimulate female engagement and
emulation among the wider population. Women in politics only operate as
role models when they say admirable things. . .
The honest feminist has to stop counting. Look instead at the conditions
keeping women out of politics, which are the same as those keeping women
at the bottom of any heap. The pay gap, the career gap, the maternity
drain, all the ossified iniquities that fence women into hardship.
That's what closes down opportunities. Scratch anyone who uses the word
"role model" and you'll find they're either avoiding solutions which are
ultimately fiscal, or they've given no thought to gender politics at
all.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2117971,00.html
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ZOE WILLIAMS, GUARDIAN - So help me, I have no interest in a deputy
leadership election that has already happened. I have no interest in
whether Harriet Harman has been attacked more because she's female or
less. I don't agree with Sarah Sands, writing on these pages yesterday,
that the "most striking characteristic of leftwing middle-class
feminists is their self-importance", but only because she seems to think
you could separate middle-class lefties from middle-class rightists via
their self-importance, when actually, on that score, it would be harder
than telling two ducks apart. I am just interested in the first
principle, which is wrong. Westminster does not need more women in it.
It needs more feminists in it, and the first principle of feminism is
that you don't need to be a woman to be one.
Sands gives us mistake one, that the rabid possessive individualism
characterized by Margaret Thatcher is a truer "feminism" than Harman's.
The sine qua non of feminism is battling for collective rights, anything
else is just capitalism with tits. She gives us mistake two, that any
discussion of the cause of women generally has to be plotted around
prominent females in parliament, standing or falling by their personal
successes or failures.
Mistake three comes via Harman, who said while campaigning for the
deputy leadership: "Wouldn't it be galling if Cameron chose the first
female deputy, when we're the party of equality!" Well, that didn't
happen, but something worse did - Gordon Brown has five women in his
cabinet, David Cameron has seven. This makes the Tories 40% more equal
than Labor. . .
If we're going to call female appointments de facto groundbreaking, that
in itself is a daft enough position. If such appointments are
groundbreaking, but only on the left, while on the right they are a sign
of weakness, that has stretched into the realm of totally daft. Ryan
illustrates mistake four, that a simple female presence, like a flash of
fuscia on a grey background, will stimulate female engagement and
emulation among the wider population. Women in politics only operate as
role models when they say admirable things. . .
The honest feminist has to stop counting. Look instead at the conditions
keeping women out of politics, which are the same as those keeping women
at the bottom of any heap. The pay gap, the career gap, the maternity
drain, all the ossified iniquities that fence women into hardship.
That's what closes down opportunities. Scratch anyone who uses the word
"role model" and you'll find they're either avoiding solutions which are
ultimately fiscal, or they've given no thought to gender politics at
all.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2117971,00.html
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