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Now, more than ever, we must push for women’s rights | Letters
Mar 14th
During a week with women’s issues unusually high up the agenda, the lack of progress for millions is frustrating
During a week when women’s issues have featured unusually high on the agenda, culminating in Mother’s Day and encompassing both International Women’s Day and the 54th UN Commission on the Status of Women, we feel compelled to point out the lack of progress for millions of our sisters across the developing world who are denied basic human rights.
Two-thirds of all children denied school are girls. Of the world’s 876 million illiterate adults, 75% are women. Women earn only 10% of the world’s income, yet work two-thirds of the world’s working hours.
Domestic violence is the biggest cause of injury and death to women worldwide. Women hold only 14% of the world’s parliamentary seats.
While we join in the celebrations for Mother’s Day today we can’t forget the women dying needlessly in childbirth, or as the first and last victims of conflict, watching their daughters grow up without hope of change and suffering unpunished abuse at the hands of men who are charged to protect them.
We urge men and women for whom such circumstances are unimaginable to challenge their governments to make a priority of the lives of these silent millions, by linking development money with gender empowerment and holding leaders to account for denying 50% of their populations the basic rights we take for granted. It’s to our communal shame that the Beijing Platform for Action, Millennium Development Goal No 3, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and the African Union Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa all remain largely unfulfilled. The AU has declared 2010-2020 “the African women’s decade”. Join us in our fight to ensure that in 10 years these aren’t more redundant slogans that leave suffering women’s lives untouched.
Without the liberation of women in the developing world there can be no end to the cycle of violence and extreme poverty. The greatest asset of emerging nations is its female workforce. Our mission is to ensure they are given the tools with which to achieve their ambitions.
Colin and Livia Firth; Samantha Cameron; Sandra Kamen; Emma Freud; Esther Freud; Rupert Friend; Miriam Gonzalez; Noreena Hertz; Damon Albarn; Beverley Knight; Richard and Ruth Rogers; Keira Knightley; Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; Mishal Hussein; Henry Porter; Mirella Ricciardi; Lucy Siegle; Melanie Chisolm; Dr Scilla Elworthy; Jendaye Frazer; Kate Allen, Amnesty; Hadeel Ibrahim Mo Ibrahim Foundation; Brigid McConville White Ribbon Alliance UK; Marie Louise Baricako; Vanessa Branson; Pilar Brennan; Naomi Campbell; Marc Carter; Jo Cox; Nathalie Delapalme; Bineta Diop; Mariella Frostrup; Glenys Kinnock; Annie Lennox; Jason McCue; Elle MacPherson; Angelique Kidjo; Brigitte Lacombe; Karen ‘Duff’ Lambros; Ticky Monekosso; Thandi Orleyn; Karen Ruimy; Daphne Trimble; Shriti Vadera; Jasmine Whitbread – all Femme Africa Solidarité Trust (Fast)
No, affairs do not help marriage
How can it be “acceptable” for people to have affairs behind their partner’s backs? (‘Is anyone faithful any more?’ Magazine, ). Esther Perel believes it makes people happier and it causes them to act differently towards their partners. She hasn’t considered the repercussions of a cheating partner on the innocent party. I can tell you from experience, it hurts. If you’re unable to commit to one person, you shouldn’t be in a relationship. Those who think they are being “nicer” to their partners (and even their children) due to cheating are being deceitful. Say the other party in the affair brings the cheating into the open. They tear apart a family. It will ruin relationships once the cheated partner learns the truth – then nobody will be happy, and there will be nobody to blame but the cheater.
Sarah Harding-Roberts
Cardiff
So wrong about Paul Scott
Robert McCrum writes that “Paul Scott did not even bother to come back from America to collect his cheque” for the Booker prize in 1977 (“Last year was sheer hell for the novelist Paul Bailey. Better times may be here“, In Focus). In fact, my father would have loved to do just that – but he was undergoing major and extensive surgery for the cancer that was to kill him barely four months later.
Winning the Booker was a major event for him, and not only would he have leapt at the chance to attend in person, had he been able, but the prize money, too (£5,000 – the last year at that rate before it went up to £10,000), would have been a godsend had he lived to benefit from it. His dire financial situation during most of his writing life, and especially the last years, had been the main reason for accepting the teaching post in the US. He simply could not afford to turn down the dollars on offer for two semesters there.
Sally Scott
Eye, Suffolk
Take it in the right spirit
I must defend Arthur Koestler from the various charges of entertaining increasingly “crackpot theories” that have recently been quoted in the press with the release of his latest biography. He and his wife visited some relatives of my husband’s who were experiencing “paranormal” events. During their short visit Arthur and Cynthia, (with Prof Arthur Ellison from City university) soon put the family at their ease. Because he had enough intellectual curiosity to travel to a northern town to investigate these phenomena, and then to bequeath money for a chair in parapsychology at Edinburgh university, he is to be admired rather than insulted. A few eminent scientists are now working in the field and I hope such studies will uncover the laws of physics which give rise to such rare phenomena.
name and address supplied
Oh, what a tangled web
Britain is the target of 300 significant cyber-attacks on government computer systems annually according to Lord West of Spithead, who fears that hackers could disable our infrastructure (“Britain fends off flood of foreign cyber-attacks”, News). Our government responds by setting up the “Office of Cyber Security”. Wouldn’t it be better to admit: “Come back, Gary McKinnon, your country needs you!”
Lesley Kay
London NW1
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Public sector job cuts hit women first
Mar 13th
With four in 10 working women in public sector jobs, redundancies will make a work-life balance even harder to attain
The key election debate will be about the speed, scale and scope of spending cuts. This is a bit strange. It is the recovery of growth that will make the biggest contribution to reducing the deficit by getting tax revenues flowing again. Polls report just as much support for tax rises as spending cuts. But the test of economic virility has become the size of your spending cuts.
And virility is the right word here as spending cuts will hit women harder than men. So far men have been bigger losers in the recession job-loss stakes. This is not because women’s jobs are inherently more secure – indeed the chances of losing your job are about the same for men and women in hard-hit sectors such as retail, manufacturing or finance. But because those sectors that have suffered the most redundancies employ more men than women, the net result has been more male job losses.
But the public sector is different. Big spending cuts and job losses here will hit women, as they are twice as likely as men to work in the public sector. Indeed four in 10 women work in public-sector occupations. This has been particularly important in areas hit hard by private-sector unemployment such as the North East, Yorkshire and Humber and the West Midlands. In these regions male unemployment is more than 10%, and many families will now depend on a public-sector woman’s wage. If public-sector jobs are axed, many families could find themselves without anyone in work.
Women often work in the public sector because it offers relatively secure work, flexible working patterns and a chance to build up a decent income in retirement. The gender pay gap is smaller and the public sector offers more opportunities to combine a proper career with caring responsibilities. Spending cuts would inevitably threaten this – and thus set back the cause of gender equality.
Women’s pensions would be hit particularly hard. Those public-sector pensions of tabloid fury go largely to women. Two thirds of current public-sector pensions are being built up by women.
Cuts would also make the public sector a less woman-friendly place to work. While it is right to look to increase public-sector efficiency, unplanned job cuts will mean fewer workers doing the same amount of work, leading to stress and pressure to work even longer hours.
Politicians will battle hard for women’s votes during the election. Child tax credits already look set to be a battleground and both parties are keen to show their flexible working credentials. But it will be a policy that perhaps few would immediately associate with gender that will make the biggest difference to working women. The size and shape of the parties’ cuts packages does matter.
• An different article by was mistakenly published yesterday under the author’s name and subsequently removed. Comments on the original piece have been lost – apologies to those concerned
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A patronising Question Time | Libby Brooks
Mar 12th
If the calibre of panellists on the women-only Question Time said anything, it’s that the main parties aren’t bothered about women
Now seriously, David, where was the dry white wine? If last night’s women-only Question Time was genuinely supposed to appeal to those mainstream mums and West Lothian women persistently referenced by Gordon Brown, David Cameron – or is it Nick Griffin? My lady brain finds it hard to distinguish, they all wear such smart suits after all – then surely it would have been more appropriate to stage the whole exercise around a kitchen table. That way, it could have served a dual purpose by morphing with those similarly targeted public health ads that portray two girl pals chatting about after-school schedules over a bottle of chardonnay while rendering themselves significantly more at risk of a stroke.
In many ways, Question Time with an audience solely comprised of women was just the same as Question Time with an audience solely comprised of people who want to be in the audience of Question Time. There was precisely the same proportion of people reading out their queries from notes in a shaky voice, shouty Daily Mail platitudes and comments that sank like a stone. (I always feel bad for those folk – wouldn’t it be friendlier to clap everyone?) And there was, inevitably, a panellist who found it taxing to speak in sentences, but at least this week – for the sisterhood – it wasn’t Carol Vorderman.
The audience certainly appeared diverse, if you’re happy to take the quotient of headscarves as a measure. Though, notably, it was never declared how many had logged on to Mumsnet in the past 24 hours. And the panel was, much as I love Jo Swinson, exceedingly low-rent. Surely they could have drafted in Harriet Harman at the very least? Or is this evidence that when push comes to panellist, the main parties aren’t so concerned about women after all, while Kelvin MacKenzie exists as a placatory cipher for all that’s wrong with the known universe?
My initial concern about a women-only audience was that it would ringfence certain discussions as purely pertinent to ladies. In the end, I wound up frustrated that the debate that could have been had – about the numbers of women in parliament, the ethics of women-only shortlists – was squeezed into the final 10 minutes.
David Dimbleby, clearly channelling Alastair Sim in Blue Murder at St Trinian’s, spent most of the evening baiting Caroline Flint about her window-dressing critique of Brown’s premiership. But Flint, whose copious hair begs for a L’Oréal contract, wouldn’t play, which was annoying – because if there was anything that merited discussion in a women-only space it was surely that.
The final questioner, who testified to the difficulty of any ethnic minority or working-class woman reaching parliament, was greeted with a neuralgic rah-rah from Swinson, who seems to believe that shouting at the telly is a serious qualification for selection. Monty Don, otherwise impenetrable in his artfully crumpled jerkin, said he’d like to see an all-woman parliament, while MacKenzie insisted this was the hardest and most lively Question Time he’d ever experienced. Patronising? Yup. Significant? I don’t think so. All the political ladies, all the political ladies, put your hands up – Beyoncé-style. But the most I learned from the experience was that a structured jacket looks better on the telly than a single-note top (thanks Caroline!).
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Public sector job cuts hit women first | Brendan Barber
Mar 12th
With four in 10 working women in public sector jobs, redundancies will make a work-life balance even harder to attain
Political “common sense” says that we need swingeing public-sector cuts. But what we are not told by their advocates is that they would quickly lead to significant job losses for women.
Up to now this recession has hit men’s jobs harder than women’s (although the gender difference in unemployment increases has been less than in the 1980s or 1990s downturns).
But this is not because women have intrinsically higher job security. In many sectors, such as manufacturing, finance and hotels and restaurants, men and women have been equally likely to lose their jobs. The reason is that women are more likely to work in the public sector, and so far there have been fewer job losses in the public sector than the private.
Indeed women make up the majority of the public-sector workforce, with around four in 10 working women having public sector jobs.
Widespread public-sector job losses would have a disproportionate affect on female employees, and on their families. The effects would be worse in the regions that already have high male unemployment rates – the three regions where over 10% of working-age men are out of work (North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and the West Midlands) are also all areas where over 40% of female employees work in public-sector jobs.
Pensioner poverty is far more prevalent among women than men, with women’s average income in retirement just 62% the level that the average retired man will have to live on. However public-sector pensions improve women’s overall level of pension provision. Because more women than men work in the public sector they have nearly two-thirds of public-sector defined benefit schemes (not all of which are final salary). Large-scale redundancies, as well as attempts to level down public-sector pensions, would increase the number of women facing poverty in retirement.
While no one can oppose improving public-sector efficiency, public-sector job cuts are more likely to be unplanned job reductions that leave the same amount of work to be done by fewer people, leading to stress and pressures to do unpaid overtime. As women are much more likely to be carers – with many facing a double burden of care, housework and paid employment – they have much less scope to absorb these extra demands and are more likely to pay the price as services are reduced.
Thanks to bold action by government and the Bank of England, both women and men have seen their employment rates fall by far less than in previous downturns, and as yet levels of inactivity have hardly risen (with what rises there have been mainly due to an increase in the numbers of students).
But real challenges also remain. Involuntary part-time work is an increasing problem for women and men. We can be pretty sure that the recession will not lead to positive changes in our working culture that will give employees more choice of working hours through more flexible working schemes and the creation of high-quality part-time vacancies. It is more likely that a better than expected headline rate of unemployment hides continuing underemployment and consequent low wages.
The alternative would be positive action to create a fairer post-recession labour market. But sweeping cuts, with consequent rising female unemployment rates, higher pensioner poverty, and even more pressure on women trying to juggle work with other responsibilities, is no place to start.
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The battle for women’s votes | Yvonne Roberts
Mar 12th
With working-class women abandoning Labour and political apathy on the rise, who will win women over in the election?
Thirteen years ago, many working-class women with a couple of children, a husband in a poorly paid full-time job, and a need to earn some extra money were wooed and won over by New Labour. During Blair’s reign, their bounty included a minimum wage, a national childcare strategy and better parental and part-time workers’ rights. Now we’re heading for another election, why are those same working-class women deserting Labour in droves?
The sociologist Geoff Dench, in a Centre for Policy Studies report published next week, believes he has the answer. Working-class woman have deserted Labourbecause their views, as mothers who “prioritise family life”, have been marginalised by a sisterhood of sharp-suited middle-class career women, whose outlook can apparently best be summed up in two words: Harriet Harman.
Anyone who lobs a stink bomb at the sisterhood has a certain audience on side immediately. However, when you look at Dench’s argument, drawing on statistics from the British Social Attitudes study, an alternative interpretation is that it’s not gender but class that’s at issue – and money, or rather the lack of it, not middle-class madams that might be causing many women to walk away from the charms of Gordon Brown.
Dench argues that over the past 20 years there has been a steady growth in the proportion of people who support no political party. Among men, the rate of support for “no party” has nearly doubled from 8% in 1986 to 15% in 2006 . (They have presumably been betrayed by the brotherhood). Among women who describe their occupation as looking after the home, the proportion describing themselves as “no party” has tripled from 8% in 1986 to 24% in 2006. Among working-age single mothers, the increase for the same period has been from 7% to 25%.
In 1986, 52% of working age working-class housewives said they supported Labour. This support had dropped to 27% in 2008. And they haven’t drifted to the Tories. Dench then leaps to the following conclusion:
“Women who value home and family life are becoming disenfranchised. The feminist ’sisterhood’ has clearly failed them, and the result is that they are withdrawing their support from the mainstream parties. Politicians of all parties should be concerned about this… because… the proportion of young women who prioritise home and family has been growing steadily in recent years, and so their votes matter.”
Home and hearth and women in pinnies gently rocking the cradle with one hand while they stir the pot with the other while their man does the “real” work in the outside world is an image that has long fuelled nationalist propaganda – as has a particular choice of language. Take, for instance, Dench’s “disenfranchised”. We are living in the age of the consumer and politics isn’t immune. Describing oneself as “no party” does not necessarily mean disenfranchisement – the deprivation of choice – on the contrary, it could be read as a signal that choice rules supreme. These voters intend to “shop around”.
“No party” could also mean that no party conveys the values, goals and vision of a society in which these voters can believe. This isn’t about the sisterhood. It’s about neglect of the white working class and the death of a clear Labour ideology. Or, to put it another way, perhaps some of those 52% of working class women who voted for Labour during a bad case of the blues under Margaret Thatcher now believe the party has become too posh for its own good – reflected in a House of Commons stuffed with white male bankers, lecturers and management consultants.
In this scenario, the small band of Labour women, including Harman, who could have done more have at least done something, including achieving a reduction in child poverty, changes to women’s pensions and improved rights for carers, all impacting on women who are full-time mothers (who have increasingly powerful voices via the classless Mumsnet, Netmums and the Women’s Institute).
Dench’s arguments patronise women at home, insult women in paid work and do no service to men. Once there is equality in earning power, more men can opt out of the straitjacket of being the main breadwinner and play a greater role in care. Once care is given its proper value, inside and outside the home (and research tells us that more involved the dad, the better the child), and paid work ceases to be the only coin with currency, the whole of society benefits.
A recent paper by the TUC gives a further set of reasons for working-class women’s disillusionment with Labour – that underline that far from wishing to stay at home full time, many women are frustrated in their inability to get a secure full-time or part-time job – and once the cuts in the public sector hit home (the public sector accounts for 40% of all jobs held by women), the situation will get very much tougher.
The latest YouGov poll says that women are split 37% to 29% in favour of the Tories, and that’s before Sam Cam, the Conservatives’ secret weapon, and the classic working mother, has been fully launched. Labour’s election strategy will apparently be underpinned by claims that “middle-class mainstream” mums will suffer most if the Tories win and launch spending cuts. That’s how far the party has drifted from its roots. And ironically, what there is of the sisterhood in the House is probably trying to tell it so.
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Letters: What about women?
Mar 12th
I’m heartened that Labour’s election strategy will target “middle-class mainstream mums”, although I hope they extend this to all women (Report, 11 March). Fawcett polling shows that 49% of women don’t think politicians are considering their view on key issues such as the economy, though they are more likely to vote for a party with a women’s equality plan. But tackling women’s equality is still too often seen as a fringe issue, even while the gender gap in voting intention is likely to be key to the election result. On the big issues like the economy and crime, policies can have a significantly different impact on women. If there are to be drastic cuts to the public sector, women are more likely to lose their jobs, as they make up 65% of the workforce and also make greater use of public services. This is why we’ve launched our What About Women? campaign, calling on politicians to explain what their policies would mean for women.
Ceri Goddard
Chief executive, Fawcett Society
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Is Question Time’s all-women audience a good idea? | Ceri Goddard
Mar 11th
Critics complain that it’s unfair, but an all-women audience on Question Time will redress an imbalance in our political arena
The BBC’s decision to run with a women-only audience on tonight’s Question Time should be commended for many reasons. The show will give ordinary women, whose all-important vote the parties have been falling over themselves to court, the chance to question if there’s any policy substance behind their “female-friendly” spin.
The Fawcett Society, which this week challenged all parties to answer the question “what about women?”, is not yet convinced that there is. With the parties’ leadership and key policymakers still overwhelmingly male and in a week when polls showed 49% of women don’t feel politicians are listening to their views on the economy, this programme can only be a good thing. Of course, women are not all the same – but I’m sure nearly all of us, women and men, can agree it’s not good for anyone that we still have such an unequal position in the media and politics.
Despite this there have been some grumbles about the programme.First, there’s the accusation that it’s unbalanced to hear more from women as this is not reflective of the make-up of the population. I couldn’t agree more. Public debates that are skewed towards one group or another have less general value. Unless, of course, it’s about redressing an imbalance – in this case, by creating an exception to the usual rule of men’s dominance in political broadcasts as guests or contributors.
Although you can just turn on the TV and observe this phenomenon, there is more formal evidence. A study released earlier this week highlighted that women are only used as major contributors on factually based programmes on 34% of occasions and when it comes to general vox pops, women are canvassed for their opinion only a third as frequently as men. The same research showed that men were much more likely to discuss so-called “harder” items, such as politics, international affairs, science and the economy on our screens, while women were more likely to be asked to give their views on education, environment, cooking, health and culture. Which brings me to the next critique I have heard: that it’s wrong that the show should be skewed towards a prescribed set of “women’s issues”.
If this were true, there would be cause for complaint. But as the Question Time producers have pointed out, apart from the composition of the audience it will be an “ordinary” episode in every way. In other words, it will involve hearing women’s questions and perspectives on the big issues of the day or the week. These will be as diverse as the women who take part. Of course, it’s entirely possible that, just as happened in parliament when women’s numbers increased, there might be more questions asked on issues that tend to impact more on women’s lives and equality, such as childcare, public services funding cuts and low and unequal pay.
And that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Question Time plays a key role in shaping debates and supporting participation in our democracy. You only have to look at the recent furore over Nick Griffin’s appearance to see its influence on public and political opinion. As such, it is as important that women are equally heard and have equal chance to hold politicians to account on its platform as it is in the wider political arena. And because both female and male politicians need to be held to account by women, I also think it’s right that men will be on the panel tonight – though the rationale behind asking Monty Don – though he seems very nice – evades me.
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Rat on a sinking ship
Mar 10th
The annual women’s day row got off to an early start with me saying that if anyone’s got to mingle at the all-girl moanfest it ought to be Diane
Nestyn, Monday pm. The annual women’s day row got off to an early start, with me saying that if anyone’s got to mingle at Nestyn’s all-girl moanfest it ought to bloody well be Diane, then Diane whingeing she always has her first post-Christmas leg-wax on international women’s day, don’t I want her to look nice, etc etc. Bet Alastair Campbell never has this bloody trouble. It’s all feminism AND depilation round his place, from what you gather. Lovely girl, Fiona. Wonder if it’s natural? Just reminding Diane there’s an election on when a glimpse of her legs gets me weighing up half an hour with the sad sacks v domestic life with a captive bonobo, so send her to fetch my smart-casual, sharpish – not forgetting that pink-ribbon cancer tie I’ve been saving up for a feminist occasion. Assuming Britain’s most useless helpmeet can remember where I put it before she heads for the strimmer’s.
Striding into the town hall, best smirk forward, I imagine this is how a terrier, or some other manly kind of dog – black lab? – must feel, when it scampers all happy and excited into a field of deeply pissed-off cows. What’s their problem? Not as if they haven’t got the vote. No plans to remove it, either, so far as I know. A point I stress in my tribute to all the ladies in the world, specially, “My amazing mum”, not forgetting “all the super feminists who’ve led us on this journey (Ron’s not complacent!) towards equality”. A hand goes up. Yes? Too late: it’s the hag from the Nestyn Gazette.
Me: “Marvellous! What would you like to celebrate today?”
Hag: “What’s your view on first-class travel for MPs?”
Me: “Ha ha! Later, surely! Aren’t we here to celebrate equality?”
Hag: “Yeah, ’snot just men who care about your exes!” Murmurs of assent.
Me: “Fair enough! Don’t you ladies sometimes feel safer, when it’s late, in a first-class carriage?”
Hag (looking around suspiciously): “Yeah. So?”
Me: “Well, because of equality, we men sometimes feel the same!”
With that (brilliant) riposte I’m out of the door – but not before a fellow member of the Nestyn coven has landed a carrot fancy on my best suede blouson.
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A pledge of support for women | Theresa May
Mar 8th
The Conservatives aim to raise every woman’s aspirations at home and abroad
International Women’s Day is being celebrated for the 99th time this year, having started in 1911 when women in the UK did not have the vote and equality was a distant glimmer on the horizon. Since then, we have passed many milestones, but women still face many challenges both at home and abroad. From the gender pay gap of over 16%, to the shocking numbers of women being raped, we as a society still have a long way to go before women feel safe and have choice over their own lives.
Of the many challenges that will face an incoming government after the next election, the persistence of various forms of violence against women will be among the most serious. Three million women experience violence each year in the UK, through domestic violence, rape, trafficking, “honour”-based violence and other forms.
One of the most extreme forms of violence against women – that of female genital mutilation (FGM) or “cutting” – shows the stark reality too many women face. This practice is illegal in the UK, yet latest research gives a conservative estimate that 77,000 women and young girls in the UK have been mutilated, and around 24,000 young girls are at risk.
Furthermore, the number of women being forced into marriage is on the increase. The government’s Forced Marriage Unit received over 5,000 calls for help in 2008 from women who feared for their freedom, and nearly half of the cases they handled involved repatriation to the UK. In response to these figures, David Cameron and I launched our policy paper Ending Violence Against Women in 2008, which outlines the measures that a Conservative government would introduce and affirms our commitment to ensuring a cross-government approach to tackling violence which placed prevention at the heart of our strategy.
In November, the government produced its own long-awaited paper on tackling all forms of violence against women. There has been an urgent need for ministers to take a more coordinated approach to this issue, and I regret that this strategy has been so slow in coming. I was disappointed, too, that they failed to take up some of the specific measures we proposed.
A Conservative government will increase the number of health visitors, who give valued support to women who have just given birth – the time at which domestic violence can often begin. We will explore New York City’s example of proactive policing against domestic violence, which has seen domestic murder rates fall significantly. And we will end the early release of prisoners, which has seen domestic violence offenders released without any risk assessment and allowed to return to their partner’s home.
I am pleased that the government had already accepted our call to safeguard benefit payments for women with children when they are first forced to seek safety in a refuge centre – payments that could have been cut under their original plans.
As modern Conservatives, we want to support women in every role they play. Help for vulnerable women, support for working women and choice for families are key to our domestic policies, and above all, we want to raise the aspirations of every woman – from here at home in Britain to women abroad in the developing world.
It is still the case that women bear the overwhelming burden of extreme poverty and deprivation in the developing world. Over 70% of the world’s 1.3 billion poorest people are women, and this appalling situation is getting worse as we speak. Currently, girls constitute over two-thirds of the 130 million children who have no access to basic education.
David Cameron has therefore reaffirmed our commitment to meet the internationally agreed goal of 0.7% of gross national income spent on aid by 2013. He has set out some bold and radical ideas that will help women in their fight against poverty. Using women as recipients of aid would be an important step in improving development and ensuring equality, and a commitment to primary education for all would help lower birth rates and promote female choice over marriage. More than anything else, ensuring equal participation of women across all spheres of society is crucial to economic growth and development.
These are just some of the policies that we have announced as part of our five-point plan for “Women in the World Today”. With these proposals, we want to follow a joined-up, common-sense approach to women’s issues and make our modern world a fairer place for everybody.
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Why I’ve gone from porn to politics | Anna Arrowsmith
Mar 14th
Posted by Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk in Politics
No comments
I started making pornography for women because there was a need. And now I want to do something about the need for more female MPs
I’m Anna Arrowsmith, the Liberal Democrat PPC for Gravesend or, as many will know me, Anna Span, the UK’s first female porn director. Take your pick.
Since news of my selection broke on Thursday, many people have asked me why I want to be an MP. The answer is: for exactly the same reason I decided to start making pornography for women more than 12 years ago. Someone had to do it and it didn’t look like anyone else was going to – at least not with the drive, enthusiasm and determination that I could offer. The unfortunate truth is that there are far too few female MPs in this country compared to the rest of the world.
Did you know that Rwanda has the highest number of female MPs of all countries at 53%? Imagine living in a country with a female majority! Well, here I am again thinking that another male-dominated field needs challenging.
Back in 1998 I was in the final year of my degree, studying film at Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design. I had decided to write my dissertation on what fundamental changes would need to be made to mainstream pornography in order for it to be enjoyed by women. I called it Towards a New Pornography, intending it to sound like a manifesto, more for my own amusement than anything else. Then came lesson one in the British psyche. Even the so-called experimental filmmaker lecturers at this outstanding college were actually conservative with a small ‘c’.
My adverts for performers to appear in my graduation film were defaced and torn down by members of staff and my final film was refused a public airing “for fear of upsetting people’s grandparents”, according to the head of the department. All this for a film where the sex was actually simulated due to lead actor issues.
Twelve years later I have won many awards, including Indie Porn Pioneer at the international Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto and best director for two years in the UK.
I have fought long and hard for women’s right to sexual expression and consumption, as well as for freedom of speech. I have long since felt vindicated about my choices back at college and know my pro-sex feminist argument is based on sound principles and logic.
So why don’t I stay in my industry and continue to reap the rewards of my efforts? Because I am the type of person who needs a challenge. I achieved much in my last career and now I want to broaden my campaign to other pressing issues such as why this or previous governments don’t think they have a responsibility to give young people something productive and engaging to do with their spare time. I lived on a council estate in Bermondsey and saw first hand why the kids were taking drugs, fighting and committing crimes.
They are simply bored. I want to campaign to give young people in Gravesham the help they deserve.
To do this I have to fight yet another old man’s club – only this time without the dirty raincoats. Some won’t like it; they’ll assume that my selection means the world is going to hell. I’ve been here before; last time I changed my industry for ever.
That, among other issues, is why I am making the transition from porn to Parliament.
Watch this space; I’ve got a lot of – for want of a better word – balls.