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What About Women? Election Campaign Launches– add your name to the call for answers and start spreading the word! Welcome to first of the weekly What About Women election campaign updates we'll be sending from now until polling day. |
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Last Week's round up What About Women? Election
Campaign Launch Last Sunday saw the opening shot of the WAW campaign with a slot on the BBC Politics show that profiled new Fawcett polling on women (and men’s) pre election views on key campaign themes. Fawcett’s Ceri Goddard, Ipsos Mori’s Ben Page
and 3 female parliamentary candidates from the main 3 parties also discussed women’s vote and policies on women’s equality. Ceri was also interviewed on the Politics show Southeast which focused on the Brighton
constituency where all the candidates are women . This is one of 10 constituencies where the candidates are all women as compared to 205 where the slate is entirely men only!
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On Monday 8th International Women’s Day Fawcett wrote to all the party leaders to ask them what about women? and for answers to the key questions of the WAW campaign. In the letter we emphasised:
“a serious response by you
and your party to our questions will go a long way in shifting the status of women and women’s equality from the margins to the mainstream of current political and public debate. It will also reaffirm the important message that women’s equality
is not and should not be the preserve of any one political party, or indeed gender, but is in fact, as our founder Millicent Fawcett said, “a common cause”. We await their responses...
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This week's debate on women and representation in the House of Commons gave us a flavour of their thinking. Harriet Harman, Minister for
Women and Equality, opened the debate, speaking about the Equality Bill and "the massive change in public attitudes to equality". She praised the Equality Bill saying that she felt it would pass before the General Election. She highlighted the equal pay
provisions in the Bill which would require companies to publish their pay data. She also mentioned that the Equality Bill extended the power for political parties to have all-women shortlists.
Theresa May, Conservative Shadow Minister
for Women, spoke on behalf of the Conservatives. She made it clear that she wanted the Equality Bill on the statute book, but would prefer to see Conservative proposals on the gender pay gap enacted. These would include stricter enforcement of equal pay
in public services. She said that a significant problem was that a large number of Labour women MPs represent marginal seats, so that whatever happens at the next election the overall number of women in the House may not change much.
Lynne
Featherstone, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Women, acknowledged that the number of MPs was only the result of "forcing mechanisms", and said that "for Liberals, there is a contradiction in terms between forcing mechanisms, localism and
liberalism". She was critical of the Conservative's proposed marriage tax break.
The Solicitor-General Vera Baird summed up for the Government, concluding,
“We have fought, and will fight, for an equal chance for women at
work; for employers to acknowledge caring and family responsibilities; and-this is particularly close to my heart-for domestic violence, violence against women and rape to be taken very seriously indeed: in fact, to be taken deadly
seriously.” |
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Women’s representation and shortlists also came up on the first ever BBC Question Time to feature a women only audience. Fawcett was delighted to see the
visual of a room full of women asking questions but also the answers from all the political parties that they thought the women’s question time and more women in politics’ was a good thing. Also see Ceri Goddard's
article on the Guardian’s Comment is Free which attracted a lot comments which
remind us why the work of the Fawcett is so important including:
“An all women audience is a fine idea, as long as most of them look like Myleene Klass and none of them are drawn from the participants in "How to Look Good Naked".
Like
to reply? then visit the Comment is Free website.
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To mark the start of the What About Women? campaign, Fawcett bedecked a lorry to
publicise this momentous occasion. The story was covered by politics.co.uk and the van's visit to Westminster can be seen here. |
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Million Women Rise was held on the 6th March in London. Women travelled from all over the UK to march through London demanding justice and freedom from violence for women across the world. Violence against women is one
of the key areas of the What About Women campaign. |
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LSE Women’s week – London School of Economics staff members and students adorned the Fawcett ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ t-shirts and What About Women badges to celebrate women’s week.
LSE SU Feminist Society also organised an all student cast performance of the Vagina Monologues. |
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Next week sees the deadline for the parties initial answers to our questions. We have started to get these and will post them as soon as we can. Eaves Housing for Women - a London-based charity that provides high quality housing and support to vulnerable women and campaigns to prevent all forms of violence against women is holding a Women’s
Question Time. The will give women a chance to question all potential Women's Ministers on their manifestos for women and girls before the General Election.
The panellists are Vera Baird QC MP (Labour), Theresa May MP
(Conservative), Lynne Featherstone MP (Liberal Democrat) and Caroline Lucas MEP (Green). The Chair is columnist for The Independent Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.
Tuesday 16 March 2010, 7-8.30pm. Central Hall,
Westminster. See Eaves Housing for Women website for more information
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Radio 4 Woman’s Hour is interviewing Gordon Brown next week as part of their Winning Women’s Votes Campaign and are encouraging women to submit questions on their site – click here to ask Gordon Brown What About Women? |
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Thank you for your support, Fawcett |
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Established in 1866, Fawcett is the UK’s leading campaign for equality between women and men. Our vision is of a society in which women and men enjoy
equality at work, at home and in public life. We campaign on women’s representation in politics and public life; pay, pensions and poverty; valuing caring work; and the treatment of women in the justice system. We make real differences in
women’s lives by creating awareness, leading debate and driving change and we have real lobbying power. Our successes range from a change in the law to allow political parties to use all-women shortlists to increase the number of women MPs, to reform
of the rape law, to a new duty on public bodies to promote equality between women and men. As a campaigning charity, we need your voices
behind us and we are always in need of financial support. Join us today! |
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