I went to see the film Suffragette last week. I won’t lie, even as someone with a lifelong interest in suffrage who is happy to describe herself as a feminist, I didn’t have high hopes for it. I thought it would be a middle class, rather worthy affair, full of stuff I already knew. How wrong I was.
This film is a searing, often shocking account of how working class women fought to be recognised as full human beings. It’s about the lengths they were prepared to go to ensure women could have a say in the laws that were making their lives a misery, and the lengths the state, the established order, was prepared to go to resist them. This was a far more unsettling and visceral film than I expected, and I came out of the cinema feeling both angry and inspired.
It made me think of my grandmothers and great grandmothers, working class women with even fewer choices in their lives than their menfolk, and of my female friends and I, the beneficiaries of education and the ability to vote, but still too often lagging behind our husbands and brothers in terms of pay and opportunity.
The film also made me think of the women still chained to their homes and barred from the workplace because of a lack of affordable childcare. And it made me think of the millions of women who will soon struggle disproportionately if the Tories’ latest plan to slash working tax credits goes through.
Interestingly, it also made me rethink my initial concerns about the Women’s Equality Party (WEP), which has just announced it intends to field candidates at next year’s Holyrood election. For those of you who haven’t heard of the UK’s newest political force, it’s the reason Sandi Toksvig is no longer hosting the News Quiz on Radio 4. Led by Scots journalist and author Sophie Walker, it makes predictable and rather polite demands for equality across public life and calls for shared responsibilities between men and women in the home. It also talks about the need for equal opportunities in the classroom and equal treatment of women in the media.
These are things all right-thinking citizens, both male and female, should support, of course. But where to start? The mind boggles. Do we really need another single issue party, even one that is the polar opposite of Ukip? And is a pressure group working within the establishment that has failed women for so long really the best way to bring about equality?
When I watched media coverage of the launch of WEP a few months ago I wasn’t particularly enthused by the sight of all those nice, well-spoken, middle-aged, middle class women launching into platitudes. There was certainly no Mhairi Black figure here - it was more like the Great British Bake Off does politics.
But over the last few weeks I’ve been increasingly impressed by WEP’s contributions to the political debate. It is gaining more traction in the media, and as a result we are seeing more discussion of the items on its agenda. The party’s purpose is becoming clearer: keep banging on about equality in the public sphere and eventually a couple of policies might find their way into mainstream manifestos. Make promoting gender equality the norm, rather than a “feminist” issue.
Six months after formation, the party has 45,000 members and 65 branches across the UK, including in Glasgow and Edinburgh. That's not bad. Women for Independence got there first, of course, as a positive – and albeit more radical - place to discuss the role of women in public and political life, but a cross-UK platform can surely only be a good thing. Policies including free childcare for all children over nine months and quotas to achieve a gender balanced Westminster parliament by 2025 seem to me eminently sensible.
With this in mind, I’m surprised to hear some of Scotland’s main political parties appear less than keen to accept an open invitation from WEP for their candidates to stand on a joint ticket.
The SNP, which has dodged the issue by saying its selections have already been made, has no real need to allow itself to be borrowed in this way, of course. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon – a supporter of female quotas in some areas of public life including her own cabinet - has made it clear equality is high up on her party’s agenda. No doubt Ms Sturgeon, whose popularity levels are already as high as any politician could hope for, feels there would be nothing to gain at this point by joining forces with WEP, particularly since Walker’s UK-wide party clearly has no intention of supporting independence. Ms Sturgeon feels on solid ground when it comes to equality, though it will be interesting to see how she frames this in terms of policy in the coming years. Her party’s new members – many of whom are supporters of Women for Independence – will expect real progress. And, as all governments know, equality can be a hard concept to influence and measure. That said, Ms Sturgeon could do worse than showing a bit of sisterhood by welcoming WEP’s efforts.
As for the Tories, let’s be realistic. Would WEP really want to share a platform with a party that is currently pummelling women disproportionately with its barrage of austerity policies? I think not. Despite moves to decrease the gender pay gap by including bonuses in published salaries (a move that will typically help those already at the top of the tree, but will affect few women in the real world), Tory doctrine always seems to me to require you to believe that all are born equal already, that success is simply down to works the “hardest”.
No, it’s Labour and the LibDems I’m most surprised at. The LibDems, in particular, should be biting the hand off any potentially progressive partner, if only to share the cost of all those looming lost deposits.
And if any organisation could do with a dose of Sandi Tokvig’s wit, surely it’s Scottish Labour, which has already dismissed any hook-up. Leader Kezia Dugdale, cheery as she outwardly remains, is clearly struggling to make any impact on her party’s fortunes or act as an effective opposition.
This situation is only been made worse due to media obsession with her UK counterpart, Jeremy Corbyn. Despite early hopes for Corbynism and its “new politics”, it’s becoming increasingly obvious the man himself is a damp squib.
And, to top it all off, I get the impression many women don’t really get him – or is it the other way around? Maybe it’s the fact he’s been married three times (he is purported to have left one marriage due to an ideological disagreement over education. What, really?), perhaps it’s that humourless shell, but conversations with female colleagues and friends reveal Jez is proving a big turn off.
Maybe a hook-up with WEP could bring a new sense of purpose to Ms Dugdale’s Holyrood campaign, and start attracting the female voters who left in their droves to join Team Nicola back “home” to Labour? If I was Kezia, I’d seriously consider the WEP invitation - at this stage surely anything is worth a go.
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