equal representation, not sexual division

David Cameron has pledged to give a third of jobs in his first government to women. Positive discrimination has never been particularly popular. It's sometimes been deemed anti-, not pro-, equality. The Tory MP for Shipley, said: 'If you believe in true equality, which I do, then it should be irrelevant what somebody's gender should be'.

Yes, indeed, it should be irrelevant what somebody's gender is... But if gender is an irrelevant factor of employment, why then are there so few women in parliament?? (I read somewhere last year that there are more people called David in the Tory Party than women!) Clearly gender is not irrelevant.



There is this hysteria surrounding positive discrimination that always follows this argument: positive discrimination will result in people gaining positions they are not qualified for; while those more qualified miss out. It is just another demonstration of prejudice to assume that any women applying for parliamentary places are less qualified than their male contemporaries and less deserving of the post. The point of raising the issue of unbalanced gender representation in parliament and other areas of politics is to expose how discrimination has prevented equally qualified women from gaining the same recognition and prestige as men. They have missed out not because they are less qualified, but because they are women. Cameron is intending to try to counter this by employing them because they are women.

But some of his logic is worrying: he wants more female politicians so that they can 'influence decisions affecting women's lives', devising policies 'that matter to female voters.' Women do not necessarily support female politicians, and to hand over policies deemed as 'women's issues' to women parliamentarians could effectively exclude them from authority on other subjects. If male politicians are dis-involved in so-called 'women's issues', then female politicians may be dis-involved from non-women's-issues.

Separating politics in this way can orchestrate the separation of society into male and female: women have their 'women's issues' which are dealt with by female politicians. Men have their issues dealt with by male politicians. I will not be haremised in this way. Of course there must be equal representation of men and women in parliament (if there has to be a government at all, which is perhaps the real question), but not so as they can preside over a divided society. They must co-operate equally, so that we can be a society of humans, and not forever, dis-unitedly , gendered.

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david cameron, tory party, power is the problem, and government isn't the answer, equal representation, women in parliament

the acceptable face of rape

I don’t care if it’s Cameron or Brown—I don’t care which party is going to raise the issue, just as long as somebody is, because we really can’t go on like this. It is estimated that 50,000 women a year are raped. Out of those 50,000 only 11,867 reported the crime to the police. Of those 11,867 reported cases, only 5.6% result in convictions. Rape is a low risk crime. You are more likely to get away with it than get caught, and even if you were convicted, sentences are short. (The Guardian's statistics).

In the 1970s 33% of reported rapists were convicted of the crime. We make such sweeping claims to equality and freedom from gender discrimination in this country, but have regressed 30 years in our treatment of rape, and we are failing all women if this is not addressed, because while rape remains an easy, consequence-free crime, without any deterrent, occurrences increase. If an act passes without judgement or condemnation then it becomes acceptable. It’s easy for women who have not been raped to disconnect and distance themselves from these statistics, but while these statistics exist, we have to understand that we could become one of them at any point in the future.

The BBC says the statistics suggest that 1 in 20 women is a victim of rape. I can probably name off-the-top-of-my-head at least 60 women in my life. According to the statistics 3 of them have been raped. Who knows how many will join those in the future. How many women are in your life?

I usually can’t stand scaremongering that presents all men as aggressors and all women as victims, but violent sexual crime forces this presentation of gender politics because men consistently make up the overwhelming majority of perpetrators. Personally, I’m ashamed to be part of a society that just sits back and allows this to continue. I do not see myself as a victim just because I am female, so I can only despise any perpetrator or criminal act that does. People (male and female) who bring rape injustice to the fore are not the ones making women into victims—it’s the rapists who do that.

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