Linnéa Sandström reviews last night’s British Government@LSE and Fawcett Society pre-election mayoral debate: what about women

Sandström, Linnéa

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LSE Research Online

blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/04/24/london-mayoral-election-women-sandstrom/Addressing women’s issues and devising helpful policysolutions requires that women are not seen as separatefrom the rest of societyApr 24 2012Linnéa Sandström reviews last night’s British Government@LSE and FawcettSociety pre-election mayoral debate: What About Women?On Monday April 23rd, three mayoral hopefuls and Conservative campaignerVictoria Borwick arrived at the LSE to debate the topic “what about women?”. Thediscussion ranged  from gender budgeting to women’s security on the streets.Boris Johnson, the current mayor standing for re-election, was missing from thedebate – a fact that did not go unnoticed in the Twitterverse where several people seemedconfounded by his absence. Victoria Borick acted as Boris’s substitute which may haveactually appeased some women who, like women in the US, are increasingly annoyed by havingonly men discuss women’s issues.With London recently having been named the worst place in the UK to be a woman it would certainlyhave been interesting to hear Johnson’s ideas on how to change the city’s reputation. UnfortunatelyBorwick was restricted to highlighting what had been done in the past and could not make anydefinitive statements or promises. She did give some insight into the policy priorities of LondonConservatives but her perspectives are not the ones standing in line at the ballot box.Questions had been submitted in advance and ranged from the commitment to publishing andgender assessing the Mayor’s budget to quotas, violence against women, objectification in themedia and work-life balance. While there were many issues that the candidates agreed on such astransparency, access to abortion and reproductive health care, and the urgency of providing betterservices to survivors of rape and domestic violence, there were also issues they disagreed on suchas the necessity for gender quotas in various institutions.Given the current economic climate, some topics stood out as more interesting than others,particularly those that involved policies directly affecting women’s employment. While all candidatesagreed that access to part-time jobs and flexibility of working times needed to be increased, the thereal gender implications could be seen when the issue of childcare was raised. In the UK, as well asacross Europe, women are far more likely to be in part-time jobs than men and they are more likelyto cite childcare as a reason for why they choose to work part-time.Although the candidates respected women’s autonomy and freedom to choose their employment, itseemed very odd that none of the candidates once asked why women chose to trade their higherpaid jobs for lower paid, lower status jobs. Instead, Borwick continued to refer to women as carersand, while women certainly do take on the larger part of caring within the household, theunderpinning logic was never questioned. The role was assumed to be a given in the experience ofbeing a woman. It was noticeable that both Jenny Jones (Green Party) and Borwick, the two femaledebaters on the panel, kept on talking about a ‘sisterhood’ as if women and their issues can behomogenised.The logic then followed that reaching a critical mass of women within institutions would without doubtlead to a ‘woman-friendly’ world where more part-time jobs and more flexible work schedules wouldbe made available. Anyone who attended the debate arranged by the European Parliament inLondon on  2nd March this year, would know that this is not necessarily the case.  BusinesswomanHeather McGregor argued that the reason why a lot of women are not represented on boards isbecause they are not willing to make the tough choices necessary to have a successful career.Meanwhile, Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat, argued that ‘daddy months’ (a month or severalreserved just for the father, or as in Sweden’s gender neutral legislation, for each parent) should notbe included in parental leave because the family needs to be able to make those choicesthemselves. By comparison Swedish parental leave guarantees that each parent is entitled to halfthe parental leave and 60 non-transferrable days. Despite this, women in Sweden still take 75 percent of the total parental leave even though 85 per cent of fathers take some parental leave. Thelack of willingness on Paddick’s part to lobby for policies targeted at men’s parenting practiceswould seem to do little to bring gender equality into lives of women.Labour candidate Ken Livingstone discussed the difficulties of working women in London to undertake childcare responsibilities while also having to travel on average 40 minutes to work. Heargued, along with all the other candidates, that childcare needs to be more accessible. If combinedwith Paddick’s promise to introduce a part-time travel card for part-time workers, the situation mayat least be improved. However, it does nothing to challenge the role of women as primarycaretakers, which is what leads them to take on lower paid part-time jobs in the first place.The seeming unwillingness to include men in the debate put the candidates in a position where theytried to address one half of the issues they spoke about while completely neglecting the other.Trying to frame working mothers and women in part-time as the issue does little to address theunderlying structures in society that continue to put women, rather than men, in the position in part-time, low status and low earning jobs. In order to fully address women’s issues and come withhelpful policy suggestions the candidates need to address women not as separate from the rest ofsociety, but as a part of the structure in which men and women co-exist.Please read our comments policy before posting.Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the British Politics andPolicy blog, nor of the London School of Economics. About the authorLinnéa Sandström is an MSc student in Gender, Policy and Inequalities at the Gender Institute inthe LSE. She is also a member of the Engenderings blog editorial team.  You may also be interested in the following posts (automatically generated):1. Spending cuts will increase inequalities between women and men and may seriously harm thehuman rights of some women2. Slammed by government cuts and sidelined by the Occupy movements, women face an uphillbattle to challenge patriarchy in 20123. The government’s economic policy ignores the gendered effects of its ‘competitive’ growthstrategy4. Book Review: A Critical Woman: Barbara Wootton, Social Science and Public Policy in theTwentieth Century by Ann Oakley

Addressing women’s issues and devising helpful policy solutions requires that women are not seen as separate from the rest of society

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