When will women get the vote?

With it being census time it's somehow fitting to look back one hundred years to the 1911 census that was subject to a controversial boycott by the Suffragettes. Writing comments like “If I am intelligent enough to fill in this paper, I am intelligent enough to put a cross on a voting paper” or “No votes for women, no census” thousands of activists for women's suffrage protested the census.

My favourite story of the year is, of course, that of Emily Wilding Davison who, census night, hid herself in a House of Commons cupboard so she could legally say she resided in Parliament on the census form. Emily famously died two years later under the hooves of the King's horse.


Many struggles for women's equality have not been won but we do generally accept that women did win the vote and we don't want to go back. I don't think that's controversial is it?


So I was interested to read that in Saudi Arabia they've decided that they aren't quite prepared for women to be voting - literally. There are municipal elections due in Saudi next month and women were scheduled to be able to vote for the first time. Sadly this is not to be.


"We are not ready for the participation of women in these municipal elections," said the head of the electoral committee Abdulrahman al-Dahmash, while at the same time renewing promises that authorities would allow women to take part "in the next ballot."

He said that "Participation of women in elections took place in most advance countries gradually," which does not explain why no women will be allowed to stand or vote in these elections. There were steps along the way to, for example, equalising the age of suffrage between men and women but the first step was not cancelling the right to vote at all.

Considering Saudi troops are currently in Bahrain  keeping the democratic forces down there it seems of a piece that they should postpone any democratic reform at home too. Indeed recent decrees in the last two weeks have declared that anyone criticising senior clerics are to be 'untouchable' and must be severely punished and protests have been banned.


For most of us in this country we see votes for women as an established fact, yet in many parts of the world governments that are our business partners and friends deny the people even this basic democratic right. Of course in Saudi women can't drive let alone vote but there are nascent movements for women's equality and for democratic reform. 

Caught between the inspiration of the uprisings around the Arab world and fear of their repressive government those movements must feel themselves on the cliff edge, unsure whether to jump off and fly, or perhaps hurtle to ground.

Guest post for International Women's Day

This is guest post by Jessica Goldfinch for International Women's Day. Thanks Jessica.

How I wish that this 'day' didn't have to exist, sadly it does and it needs to exist.

Women still earn in the regions of 17% less (full time work) and 36% (part time work), than their male counterparts for the same job descriptions. My union, 'Unison', regularly sends out reminders to get you pay level checked.

Looking at our televisions women are depicted as superfluous and fickle. Like male characters, this might be alright for mutual comic or near true-to-life depiction purposes, but when it seeps into every pore, I get angry. Women are only good for dodging chocolate muffins in the street getting confused over which damn yogurt to eat, musing over pebble shaped air fresheners and also the most important job of all - holding "compare-your-shopping-receipts-parties" - I must do that next week!

I get angry at having to buffer my daughter at every turn: at the corner shop, supermarkets, petrol stations, newspaper stands - so-called Lads mags, Sunday Sport, pornography and fickle displays of women are everywhere. What are boys and girls supposed to make of this?

The first time my daughter exclaimed in a petrol station queue, she was 5 years old: "What are big jugs mummy?" The queue members looked at me as if I was some permissive lax parent. I found the courage to point out that it was the shop that was wrong and that my child and I should have a right to buy a pint of milk without having to have the producers of milk thrust in our faces. I now challenge and have managed to get numerous shops to consider their responsibilities and change to dust covers and appropriate displays.

Women's bodies are for consumption everyday and in every conceivable way. Increasingly, this is now becoming a problem for boys and men, but not any where near to the same extent. If we saw men depicted in the women are in local shops etc., there would be uproar.

Pornography: porneia - the lowest class of whore in ancient Greece; graphico/graphia - graphic depiction.

So, we have it: The Graphic Depiction of the lowest class of Whores, every day in every way. Think about what that means for a moment; it's truly horrible.

I am not so naive as to think that the porn industry or the depictions of women as fickle will disappear, but I do believe that each and everyone of us should consider our part in these depictions. Our daughters, our mothers, our girls, our women and increasingly boys - we should have their backs at every turn and demand a 'public' space in which we can all feel safe.

Sex Workers' and self organisation

In this next installment of the ABC of feminism we have a guest post from Jane Watkinson who takes a look at some of the history of how sex workers have collectively organised to protect their rights.

The sex workers’ movement really took off in the 1970s as sex workers’ within Lyon, France occupied churches in protest against police corruption and treatment against sex workers. The direct action received international coverage, propelled the French Collective of Prostitutes and the English Collective of Prostitutes to form, as well as assisting with the development of many other sex workers’ organisations and collectives around the world.

Whilst sex workers’ organisation has existed for many years, the ‘prostitutes’ right movement’ came into its own in the 1970s; as the fight for sex workers’ rights to be considered with respect and seriousness became more prominent. The 1980s AIDS’ crisis was a double edged sword, as governments provided sex workers and health officials money to help sex workers gain access to preventative treatment and services such as condoms – but it also came with a reinforcement of the negative stigma associated with sex work through legitimising the view that sex workers are the ones who require mandatory testing and health surveillance, not the clients (most likely male).

Furthermore, AIDS funding for sex workers’ organisations has often been associated with an ‘exiting’ strategy. The USA only now provide funding for these organisations on the condition that they advocate for sex workers to exit the industry. This puts a strain on resources, especially given the legal situations of countries such as France where the possession of condoms can be attributed as evidence for ‘passive soliciting’. ‘Passive soliciting’ was introduced in the Domestic Security Bill in 2003 by Sarkozy and has been seen as a human rights attack, as the police often arrest sex workers based on their attitude or dress (even though dress was removed from the legal text after an amendment).

Nevertheless, not all community health organisations have suffered from these conditions. In France, the community health organisations posed in direct conflict with the social workers who took an abolitionist line. Furthermore, in Sonagachi, Kolkata, the sex workers’ AIDS organisation has over 60,000 members, with the Durbah Mahila Samanwaya Committee that runs the project even setting up a civic bank for the sex workers.

Gregory Gall documents sex workers’ organisation. He refers to the development and sophisticated progression of the movement, as the collectives and heath organisations were later complemented by the formation of trade unions for/by sex workers. Whilst Gall refers to the disappointment of sex workers’ unionisation across the world, he states that there have been relative success stories such as in the USA where Lusty Lady’s was unionised and turned into a sex workers’ cooperative. Within the UK, we have the International Union of Sex Workers; however, whilst the union has had relative success affiliated to the GMB specifically in the context of assisting lap dancers rights, it has various controversies surrounding their membership criterion that supposedly allows related groups such as pimps to join. Furthermore, there are concessions that their level of organisation has been limited – reasons for this however are hardly uncommon in regards to the sex workers’ movement at large.

There are problems with sex workers feeling ashamed because of the strong stigma attached to their work meaning they often feel unable to show their faces at protests, covering them up with masks. The laws surrounding sex work do not help with this; our own laws in the UK are a testament to this. Whilst it is legal to have commercial sexual services, there are numerous laws surrounding the industry that make it very dangerous for the sex workers involved to work. This is largely shaped by a ‘moral’ concern for keeping the ‘public’ areas ‘safe’; in consequence sex workers are given ASBOs, pushed into dark unsafe areas and prohibited to work together outside or indoors.

Internationally there are largely calls for decriminalisation of sex work where sex work would be recognised as legitimate work to be considered under existing work laws. There is a strong movements in countries such as France against state legislated brothels, especially given France’s history re brothels and the mandatory health tests that undermine sex workers’ movement and freedom. Regardless, some sex workers’ want brothels, others want designated areas so they can work on the street (managed zones, as designed by Liverpool and as ignored by the Labour government); illustrating the diversity amongst sex workers and the need to provide them space to air their views and arguments in public.

Labour were central to moving the UK closer to a prohibitionist stance. Nevertheless, there are countries such as New Zealand who have adopted a decriminalisation position (influenced by sex workers’ organisation). However, the UK have taken their influence from Sweden and its prohibitionist legal context, as women are treated as vulnerable ‘victims’ said to be in a false consciousness unaware of their experienced ‘coercion’. Sex workers’ organisation is often isolated from the feminist movement as it is polarised by these debates surrounding choice and coercion. Regardless, most feminists and researchers into sex work come to the sensible conclusion that sex workers’ are neither forced or freely choosing sex work – there is a complex mixture of both.

Whilst the sex workers’ movement has come a long way since the Lyon sex workers’ strikes, there are still many obstacles for sex workers to be given the rightful legal, cultural, social and economic recognition they deserve. There are strong moralist forces within countries such as France and the UK that dictate their policies around sex work, making it harder for sex workers to make a living.

However, sex workers’ organisation has illustrated profound resilience. The movement has developed in sophistication and whilst unionisation may not have been as successful as hoped with many unions rejecting sex work as ‘work’; there are real building blocks that sex workers can hold on to and work in correspondence to progressive forces to counteract the negative and moralistic constructions of sex workers that undermine their rights to public space and consideration.

Kate Belgrave: Women and the cuts

Continuing my series on the ABC of feminism guest posts we have this fantastic piece from Kate Belgrave who has been interviewing women up and down the country about the impact of the cuts in their area.

There are times when I wonder if being an old woman without money will be as funny as all that. It seems likely that I'll find out first-hand in the near-ish future.

Right now, I get to watch.

I'm in a room in Gateshead with about 15 older women at a Personal Growth - Take Individual Steps session (known as PG Tips here at the Tyneside women's health centre). I wouldn't describe the group, or the session, as a touchy-feely waste of public money and focus, although I
imagine George Osborne would without looking round the door. Older and sick people aren't above criticism or suspicion in these censorious times, and hell – what would I know? Perhaps George is some kind of life-science genius. Perhaps it's unfair to give a group of unwell old girls like this a free pass for sharing a pot of tea together when they could be out on all fours in the snow cleaning something. It's not like anybody else gets to enjoy life.

These women are getting on in years, though. Two or three of them are about 40. The rest are in their 50s and 60s. Faces are lined, bodies are soft, and hair is thinning and grey.

I'm sitting with them, because I wanted to talk to Newcastle women who were likely to be affected by the coalition government's cuts. I've done well on that front, if I can put it that way. A lot of the women in this room collect incapacity benefit – a means of drawing income which the Murdoch stable would have us believe is leapfrogging politics, pimping and web paedophilia to top the list of pestilent ways to source a buck. Not that these women will be sourcing income
through incapacity for long. Their days of drawing incapacity (and perhaps any) benefit are numbered. Incapacity is being phased out, along with any notion of genuine need. Everyone who collects incapacity is being assessed for fitness for work. They're being moved to the smaller job seekers' allowance, or to the employment support allowance if they're deemed to need support to work. Some will be found ineligible for support altogether.

Nobody I've spoken to likes their chances. I've even met rightwingers who are worried about assessment. Only ten days ago, I interviewed a physically disabled woman called Mel Richards who felt that the coalition (which she generally supported) was wilfully failing to recognise people she referred to as “deserving poor.” She insisted that her good work record and national insurance contributions entitled her to support when illness struck (and was technically correct – incapacity benefit recipients must generally have paid national insurance).

She'd run a campaign called “I'm Right – but cuts are wrong.” “I still believe there is such a thing as entitlement. I paid, so I was entitled. The government is not acknowledging that.”

Most of the women in this Gateshead room worked, and paid tax and national insurance, for years – 30 years at the HMRC in one case, 20 and more years at BHS in another – before age and ill-health queered the pitch, as they do. Some say they were eased, or bullied, out of jobs and/or better places in the work hierarchy and that their problems with depression set in around then. Depression sets in for me just talking about it. I've been in the workplace long enough to know how women are rated once they've past the age of sexual attractiveness
and use. Miriam O'Reilly is, alas, not the only one. She's one of the better looking.

I wonder, too, about the likelihood of employers giving these already-discarded older women a chance.

Let's take Diana Shearer, who is 51. Her last job was in IT. She was there for about 14 years. She is incontinent and suffers from severe depression: the two problems aren't unrelated. She is furious about the pressure she's under as she waits for reassessment. “Every time there's something comes through the post, I'm wondering is it going to be that letter? It's every day for me [at the moment]. How dare these people stop my benefit? Who going to decide?”

Chris Swales is probably in her 50s, but her seamed face and thick glasses make her look elderly. She worked for 30 years the public sector before she was retired for ill health. “I got a letter and a medical assessment [when I was retired] so I rang Incapacity (the DWP) and told them that I had been ill-health retired. I still had to go for a medical (she had her assessment last week, although she struggles to recall it - the other women in the room have to remind her when I ask). I'm just concerned that I'll get a letter saying that I'm not entitled to it.”

It seems highly unlikely that employers will pick these two from Newcastle's large crop of jobless. Newcastle council is due to jettison 2000 people. There will be long queues for jobs, and old, shaky women will be at the back of them. I've worked all my life, but have never made the kind of money you need for complete security today. I look at these women and see me.

NB Names of women at the Gateshead Centre have been changed – they were concerned that publicity might affect their benefit assessments. I'll upload the audio from these interviews to my site when I get back to London next week.

Church gives women marching orders

A church in Sydney has given the organisers of the annual International Woman's Day an early Christmas present in the run up to the fortieth anniversary of the Sydney event. They've banned them from their traditional starting point. It's a timely reminder on the one hundredth anniversary of International Women's Day itself that we do not yet live in utopia.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald Anne Barber, one of the organisers said ''It's a traditional meeting point and somehow the church has right of veto.'' It's quite understandable that after forty years for the church to suddenly tell these marches to bugger off has created friction.

Another organiser, Gabe Kavanagh, was shocked. ''The rally has been held there for decades,'' she said. ''There's never been a problem with rubbish or noise.''

It's quite bizarre that this event is being banned when the square is the location of the Town Hall, a natural point for any public demonstration to focus on, and one that should not have to have to say so of the church to go ahead.

However, I'm going to make a prediction - while last year's event was on the smallish size this year will see a bumper turnout of women all determined to tell the church where they can get off.

NB People might remember the last time I spoke about the church in Sydney when the archbishop there advised against voters turning out for the Green Party who were "sweet camouflaged poison". I don't think we've heard the last of them somehow.

ABC of Feminism: women and economics

The next in my short series on the ABC of Feminism focuses on gender and economic inequality by chair of Green Party Women Natalie Bennett. She's taken the ABC thing a bit more literally than the first two pieces - but it's all good!

The A (introduction) of "women and economics" is simple and stark: men own nearly everything, women can be certainly of very little, or to put it in statistical terms, only about 1% of the world's assets are held by women. And only about 1% of the world's women have access to land - the basic foundation of survival, while 70% of the world's people living in abject poverty, on less than $1 a day, are female.

And it's not because women are lolling around, choosing the easy life. To quote The World's Women: 2010 (PDF) (a great statistical source): "In all regions, women spend at least twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work" and "when unpaid work is taken into account, women’s total work hours are longer than men’s in all regions".

So what of the B, before? Well it's not the sort of thing that was being recorded in many parts of the world until very recently, but where there are records, we know that the situation today has dramatically improved compared to the past. In Britain, it was the Married Women's Property Act of 1882 that allowed married women to own anything much more than the clothes they stood up in. It's a right (at least with regard to land) that women in, to take just one example, Swaziland, are still struggling towards.

Why? Well that's the $24,000 question I'd be answering definitively if only I could lay my hands on some cash. Many theorists posit some past golden age - a Paleolithic heaven of equality (yet modern studies suggest current such societies show a wide range of models for the sexual division of labour and status), shading into darker shadows of Neolithic child-rearing and farm work. Yet others see a worship of "Mother Earth" and mother goddess in the Neolithic, with repression arising only with more complex, and hierarchical societies.

A common everyday answer is that men are simply stronger than women, so in a world "naked in tooth and claw", they naturally come out with most of the goodies. As an answer to that read The Frailty Myth by Colette Dowling - the difference in at least potential power between men and women's bodies is minuscule.

Political and social power, however, are clearly a different issue. overwhelmingly in most of history they have been in the hands of men. why? Well the socialist/Marxist feminists will blame economic base, the radical feminists will blame patriarchy: I'm not going there today.
So what about C, change?

Clearly in the past century, women have made considerable advances in economic sphere. I was recently re-reading The Female Eunuch, and I was amazed to learn that up to the 1970s single women were regarded as a bad bet as rental tenants, their income simply was not seen as reliable. But as capitalism came to need the labour of educated middle-class women in particular, a space, and real economic opportunities became available for some.

But I'm reminded of the words of Sheila Rowbotham on her recent book tour, that in the 1970s she thought that victories once won were history, but now she understood this was only the start, and battles needed to be fought again and again.

To come close to home, just look at what's happening in the UK now with the government's savage cuts. Women, particularly poorer women, are going to suffer hugely disproportionately. As the Women's Budget Group's excellent report (PDF) outlines, lone parents are the single group worst hit in the budget and they’re overwhelmingly women (1,326,000 women to 130,000 men). The next worst-hit group are single pensioners – of whom 73% are women, who tend to be older and already poorer than male single pensioners.

But poverty, of course doesn't just relate to money. Remember those working-hour figures? The other side of the coalition's plans is the "Big Society". The state is going to step away from many services that it's now providing, and leave the community to pick up the slack. Already time-poor women are going to be asked to do more, a lot more.

Support for services such as childcare is being withdrawn. So remember Sheila Rowbotham: you don't just have to fight to win something, you have to fight to keep it too. Even if you personally have been lucky enough to have economic opportunities, there's no guarantee they're available in the future, for you, or future generations of women.

ABC of Feminism: Your body, your choice

This next piece in the ABC of Feminism series is by Haringey Green Sarah Cope, pictured here angry and shouting and at a recent NHS demonstration. Here Sarah looks at one key feminist battle ground - women's bodies.

If anyone, when asked whether or not they consider themselves to be a feminist or not, replies that they don’t think so as there really isn’t a ‘need’ for feminism anymore, I’d ask them to look at the issues around women and their bodies.

There are a myriad of issues, including the pressure on women to conform to certain standards when it comes to appearance, the over-medicalization of birth, attacks on abortion rights, the criminalisation of sex work, the condemnation of sexually active women, the low conviction rate for rape…the list is depressingly endless, and that, in part, is why I for one am a feminist.

I’m going to focus on just one of the issues here. Access to safe abortion is something we have had in this country since 1967, although the laws around access could be improved – for example, the need to obtain two doctors’ signatures is archaic and restrictive, and should be removed.

However, we are fortunate to have what women in other countries have to break the law to obtain. Indeed, it’s been reported that women in countries where abortion is illegal are just as likely to have an abortion, as there will be no shortage of people wanting to cash in on women’s desperation. However, they have to risk their lives and may face either death or imprisonment for having the temerity to attempt to take control of their own bodies.

I am seriously concerned that abortion rights will be under attack again soon, with Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who previously tried to get the time limit on abortion lowered from 24 weeks to 20 weeks, on the anti-abortion warpath again. In October, Dorries wrote on her blog:

‘If girls and women were offered counselling and information regarding other options such as, wait for it, yes, adoption. As strange as it may seem, some find that an easier option than having to deal with the consequences of a medical procedure which, somewhere in their deepest thoughts, they regard as the ending of a life.’

If any argument makes me angry, it’s this one. The idea being that going through a pregnancy and childbirth, the biggest physical and emotional thing a lot of women will ever experience, is no big deal. So let’s see, that might well involve puking every day for months, intense back and pelvic pain, extreme tiredness, and your body changing beyond recognition. Oh yes, and possibly life-threatening conditions such as eclampsia. And then there’s childbirth, which as you might have heard is a bit on the painful side (made more so by the NHS being far from up to scratch when it comes to maternity services). But that’s okay, you can just hand the baby over (no breastfeeding, I guess…) and forget about it. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

And that’s without even mentioning the effect being adopted will have on the child as it grows up. I’m sure that adoption is handled much more sensitively these days, but it’s never going to be entirely trauma-free.

I wouldn’t rely on the Lib Dems to be a moderating voice when it comes to abortion rights, either. My own MP, Lynne Featherstone – now the Equalities Minister – wrote to me a couple of years ago about abortion rights, in response to a letter I had written to her in which I expressed my concerns about the possible lowering of the time limit for abortion. Featherstone wrote that we must listen to the latest medical advice on the issue and that she wouldn’t like to see women using abortion as a form of birth control.

Wow – a woman would really have to hate herself to use a D&C as a form of birth control. “No, don’t bother using a condom – I’ll just have an abortion, like last month! I just love having my cervix dilated and my womb scraped and vacuumed!” Yes, I can just hear that conversation in bedrooms across the country. Sexy talk.

Whenever I think of the issue of abortion rights, I think back to when I was in Toronto, researching for my MA dissertation. I was in the Thomas Fisher library, looking through a box of letters from Margaret Atwood to fellow writer Gwendolyn MacEwen. One of the letters was written in a much shakier hand than usual, and reading the content it transpired that Atwood was heavily pregnant with her daughter, Jess.

She wrote of how it was affecting her and signed off by saying that there was a word in the English language for being made to have sex against your will, but there was no word for being pregnant against your will. She said that there should be, because having been pregnant, she couldn’t begin to imagine how traumatic that would be.

There is no reason why any woman should have to experience this trauma. The brilliant resurgence in feminism that we’ve seen over the last couple of years means that the moment access to safe abortion is threatened, we will be ready to fight hard to protect it. It’s just a pity that we still have to defend something that is so fundamental to our equality.

ABC of Feminism: Women's suffrage

In the first of this short series on the ABC of Feminism Louise Whittle, who blogs at HarpyMarx, writes on women’s suffrage, trade unions and the radical suffragists.

No cause can be won between dinner and tea, and most of us who were married had to work with one hand tied behind us. (Hannah Mitchell, The Hard Way Up).

Women do not want their political power to enable them to boast that they are on equal terms with the men. They want to use it for the same purpose as men – to get better conditions. Every woman in England is longing for her political freedom in order to make the lot of the worker pleasanter and to bring about reforms which are wanted. We do not want it as a mere plaything… (Selina Cooper, pictured, 1906 from Wigan Observer)

The history of the women’s suffrage movement during the 20th century has been overshadowed and dominated by the middle class suffragettes of the Pankhursts the select few, predominantly London-centric (even though Pankhursts started off the suffrage campaign based in Manchester).

What about working class women activists? Who were they? Many were active in Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. Many were campaigning around pay issues and other matters. And many of these women were active in the textile unions. Women’s suffrage wasn’t just a middle class pre-occupation, for working class women it was hand in glove with the labour movement.
Working class women trade unionists included:

Selina Cooper: textile worker from age of 10. She stood up at Labour Party conferences arguing for women’s suffrage.

Helen Silcock: She took the demand for women’s suffrage into the male dominated TUC congresses.

Sarah Reddish: She was based in Bolton, union organiser and suffragist.

Sarah Dickenson: Based in Salford, another leading Trade Union organiser.

Ada Chew: worked as a tailoress and exposed the sweated labour in her local paper. She was also a Trade Union organiser.

Women looked to the Trade Union movement, vehicles like the Women’s Trade Union Council and Women’s Trade Union League (marching, right). Petitions were organised in places like Lancashire and Blackburn. During 1900, women organised open air meetings at local guilds, Labour churches and ILP branches. They got 15,000 signatures of women cotton workers.

During the summer of 1901 woolworkers, cotton and silk workers in Cheshire organised petitions for supporting women’s suffrage. In Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire around 311,000 women (217,000 men) worked in textiles yet they were disenfranchised and therefore voiceless.

Radical suffragists rejected the aim of the traditional women’s suffrage societies led by Millicent Fawcett (National Union of Women Suffrage Societies) - a property based vote. Their demand was simple: ‘womanhood suffrage’…

Due to the coming together of radical suffragists during the 1890s, support rapidly grew, there was factory meetings, women’s suffrage motions put through union branches and trade councils.
Women suffragists encountered friction and hostility within the labour movement regarding the vote. Expectation that women were there to fulfill a function – traditional gender role as woman in the background, as Hannah Mitchell observed:

Even my Sunday leisure was gone as a wife and mother for I soon found that a lot of Socialists talk about freedom was only talk and these socialist young men expected Sunday dinners and huge teas with home made cakes potted meats and pies, exactly like their reactionary fellows.

Unfortunately groups such as the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) opposed women’s suffrage: Bourgeois fad of feminism (1884).

TUC Congress was male dominated at Congress in 1901 – suffrage motion by Helen Silcock, President of the Wigan Weavers. It was defeated. Tactics were different for 1902 Congress – Silcock seconded the motion, it was proposed by Allan Gee, Huddersfield Sec. of Wool Workers’ Union, on the national executive of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). It was defeated again.

Women’s suffrage motions (1901, 1902) were defeated at Trade Union Congress in favour of adult suffrage motions. Suffragists were accused of ‘sex prejudice’ or ‘class prejudice’…. (and to be honest, from my own political perspective, I can’t understand how fighting for basic feminist demands counter poses class. It doesn’t).

These arguments put many women in a quandary. Suffragists like Selina Cooper went to speak to a group in Tunbridge Wells and was told, not to let that class hatred and bitterness come into your heart again. The Pankhursts’ (Emmeline and Christabel) started to reject their labour movement connections and especially alienated the ILP (All belonged to the aristocracy of the Suffragettes, argued Christabel Pankhurst and Emmeline: No member of the WSPU divides her attention between suffrage and other social reforms).

Undeterred, radical suffragists carried on building the women’s suffrage movement by addressing Trade Union meetings. They asked members to be balloted on women’s suffrage. Majority support – Weavers’ union in Burnley instructed committee to bring women’s suffrage before TUC and Labour candidates supported by textile unions to introduce women’s suffrage bill if elected. This started to build up support from working class women workers – suffrage group started to shoot up. The winter of 1904-1905 4,000 people attended a meeting regarding women’s suffrage at Manchester Free Trade Hall.

The popularity of our movement gives us great hope. (Esther Roper).

The LRC Conference in 1904 passed a resolution supporting women’s suffrage but the following year conference passes an ‘adult suffrage’ motion as opposed to women’s suffrage. Not the place of the LRC to place sex first; we have to put Labour first in every case… (Harry Quelch, SDF member and Trades Council delegate)

In 1907 Labour Party conference defeated a motion on women’s suffrage. Keir Hardie spoke (as ever) in favour of it. It was in 1912 when support for women’s suffrage was eventually adopted!

Friction developed between the WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union formed in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst) and the ILP. In the 1906 Cockermouth by-election, WSPU spoke but didn’t encourage the male voters to vote for Labour candidate. The Pankhursts moved to London from Manchester in 1906.

Radical suffragists didn’t support direct action of violence and arson rather they were horrified by it. They preferred, instead, to build alliances, organise within the mass organisations of the working class. While the WSPU was London-centric had no real base outside London. At peak they had 88 branches, 34 in London. Majority of membership middle-class, with no industrial base.

A procession in Feb 1907 known as the ‘Mud March’ as it saw 3-4,000 women battle and march through the mud. In June 1908, 2,000 working women marched in Manchester demanding the vote. The aims were ‘to protect their Labour, improve their wages and defend their industrial and TU interests’.

Women eventually won the vote in 1918 (and even then it was for women over 30). Why? Because of the shortage of male workers due to the First World War, therefore women were entering the job market doing traditional male jobs. It gave women more opportunities. The suffrage movement during the war was suspended though majority of the radical suffragists opposed the war. Even after women were granted the vote – it didn’t stop the radical suffragists from campaigning for other feminist demands such as equal pay, contraception, child care, child benefits (the parallels between the demands now and then!)

How will the fight for women’s suffrage be remembered?

The direct action of the Suffragettes, brought the campaign to the forefront of consciousness, along with the dogged and courageous struggles by Trade Union women activists campaigning for women’s suffrage in the labour movement. Direct action gave it public attention but was no substitute for mass organisation and building support. Direct action does have its place, and lets not forget the appalling vicious treatment women experienced while in prison (force feeding and later, the misogynistic, Cat and Mouse Act of 1913). Even though I question the tactics, I still admire the bravery and defiance of these women at a time when behaviour like this was considered ‘unladylike’ and the pressures on these women to conform to traditional gender roles were immense.

Sheila Rowbotham makes the point as well when she writes that the direct action and violence of the suffragettes was born out of despair. It must have been soul destroying and demoralising when the labour movement consistently failing (support was fragmented) to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for universal women’s suffrage.

Hannah Mitchell puts it in perspective when she writes: When the women began to destroy letter-boxes and set fire to churches, I could not bring myself to blame them. Those who do so, should remember the long years of peaceful propaganda, the insolence of politicians, the brutality of stewards, the indifference of the police, the prison sentences, ‘forcible feeding’ with all its horrors, The Cat and Mouse Act which repeatedly sent women back to prison, and caused many to flee from this country to some freer state.

Radical Suffragists have been written out, hidden from history of the women’s suffrage movement, no recognisable trace has been left. These anonymous and invisible women had names and political spirit, activism and courage. We remember Sylvia Pankhurst but what about Hannah Mitchell, Cissy Foley, Selina Cooper, Sarah Reddish, Sarah Dickenson and Ada Chew. It is time to remember the contribution of these committed brave working class women and to give them the lasting recognition these so deserve.

In 2011 women still have an uphill struggle for true recognition, liberation and equality.

Why the gender difference in pension ages?

I was chatting to someone the other day who asked me, mid conversation, how it was that men and women retire at different ages. As a lefty my natural instinct was to assume I knew the answer and began to start pontificating when it suddenly stuck me - horror! - I actually had no idea.

Quickly stifling my urge to make something up I confessed my ignorance and set about finding the answer.

Modern universal pensions were introduced in 1946 building on far more piecemeal work that had been done by the great reforming government of 1906 - but why the gender differential? Forgive my cynicism but it seems unlikely that women were being given a little holiday as a reward for being so put upon during their working life.

Well, actually a great many women weren't even entitled to a pension initially but the most convincing explanation I've seen so far (from Maria Iacovou with additional material from others) centers around the structure of the family.

In general when getting married, men would be older than women and this was an attempt to allow couples to retire at about the same time. How romantic? Well, who would look after hubby while he was knocking around the house if the Missus wasn't retired at the same time? Who'd supply him with cups of tea and little snacks... he certainly couldn't do it himself, that would be unthinkable!

This was only achievable if women were kept financially dependent on men and so, for example, married women weren't entitled to the same state pension rights and had to rely on their husband's. This wasn't just unequal pay for equal work, it was the national reliance on the unpaid work of women reflected in the pensions system.

Now the employment and family structure has changed we have a situation that, through historical accident, slightly advantages women. Well that can't be allowed to continue can it readers? As it stands in the UK men retire at 65 and women at 60, although women's retirement age is set to gradually rise and equalise with men's and by December 2018 both will begin to rise to 66 over two years.

So this equalising of retirement age allows women to keep working in underpaid jobs longer now their services are no longer locked into the home. This means that women, who are on average paid less than men, end their working lives with less contributions and in a potentially worse position than men when they reach retirement age.

I've found this quite a hard question to find the answer to so if you have more background information - or want to disagree with my thesis - please do leave a comment as it's not an issue I know much about. Damn, I've said it again.

Thanks Mr Fry

At last someone has said it - straight men are the most oppressed out of everybody, or something. BBC2's favourite brain, Steven Fry has seen fit to let us in on his extensive knowledge of female sexuality and it bodes ill for the poor benighted straight male I can tell you.

You see, according to Fry, "The only reason women will have sex with [men] is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man". Well let's hope they don't have to pay that price too often, that would be horrible. I'm assuming this also means that lesbian relationships are mercifully sex free? Let's hope so.

Is this, perhaps, because his female friends (if any) have told him as much. Nope, quite the reverse in fact; “Of course a lot of women will deny this and say, ‘Oh, no, but I love sex, I love it!’ But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?" If by 'the way gay men do' he means with men, then yes frankly straight women *do* have sex with men. Snap!

So if women deny Fry's thesis and, as a gay man he doesn't have a huge back catalog of sexual experiences with women (no wonder as they're all frigid) what does he base this on. "If women liked sex as much as men there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas." Oh dear.

Look Fry, go to any city center on a Friday and Saturday night and behold - hundreds of ladies all out on the pull. For men. To have sex with. Preferably drunk, so they can't see them properly, ugly blighters.

The history of homophobic laws led to a culture of clandestine liaisons in shady spots where in-the-closet married men could indulge their behaviours without having to go through the 'shame' of being openly gay by having a partner actually share their life. Cottaging allowed some gay and bi-men to have sex with other men at a time when there were few other avenues, and the culture has stuck - not least because those problems have not entirely disappeared.

I'm sure cottaging is fun or whatever too so the tradition holds but because straight sex has never had the same stigma 'our' cruising areas are basically everywhere. We get to do it openly in the warm, with a glass in one hand and a fag in the other... hmmm... maybe I should rewrite that sentence... no, too lazy.

Anyway, I'd rather die than go dogging just as many gay men aren't massively interested in having sex in horrible public loos. So I think Mr Fry is wrong on this one and indulging in rather old fashioned stereotypes.

However, should he ever meet a woman on the set of QI (and I admit this is unlikely as it prefers all male panels, bless their nineteenth century cotton socks) he could at least pretend to be 'quite interested' if she cares to tell him just how ill-informed his opinions really are.

Interview: Natalie Bennett via twitter

Having seen Phil's very interesting twitter interview, I thought I'd give it a try - and who should come into my twitter sights but chair of Green Party Women Natalie Bennett. I asked pretty hard questions I think considering she had only 140 characters to reply in.

Me: Hello, are you ready to discuss feminism via twitter?
Nat: Ready and waiting...

Excellent, let's start with a light one - what should the top priorities of modern feminism be?
Both local and globally, 1. Tackling women's economic disadvantage, restriction of access to food, to land, to jobs, to benefits.
2. Ensuring all women have control of their own bodies, and access to appropriate medical care.
3. Access to democratic power and influence.

What category of feminist does that make you?
A fairly unusual "radical" one: I still see the origins of patriarchy in the family, but think addressing economic disadvantage is critical.

Radical feminist? Are those the ones that hate men?
No. Just someone who thinks women promising to "obey" in marriage vows is a very, very bad idea - and all the baggage that goes with that.

So how do we get from marriage vows to economic disadvantage and access to food, land and jobs?
A good place to start is education. Ensure women are educated about their rights, and encouraged to use their abilities.
Then laws to make it possible. In the developing world that might be basic access to jobs, here for e.g. equal paternity/maternity leave.

You mentioned the word Patriarchy earlier. What does Patriarchy mean?
In short .. men having institutionalised power over women, power that's created within family structures and reinforced by society.

How do we change that?
Women individually refusing to accept that, getting together in campaigning organisations (with sympathetic men) & changing families & laws.

Serious question, although it might look trite - based on your earlier answer, should we ban marriage?
State should not prescribe what it is, allowing a wide range of contracts, some permanent, some fixed term, leaving "marriage" to religions.

Just thinking your main focus has been on legislating for a fairer society, if marriage is the root of the problem shouldn't we abolish it?
Discourage with alternatives, and educate about dangers of assuming it is "forever", when it often isn't. But you can't stop people vowing.

How does your feminism fit with other activism that's not explicitly feminist? It must inform your work but is there a tension sometimes?
Not really: my two other main areas of work are the environment & local issues. Women are disproportionately victims of climate change & ...
... many local issues, like difficulties of pedestrian access across roads, particularly affect women also.

It's my impression that a lot of grass roots or community activists are women - but the 'higher' you go in politics they start to thin out
Very much! Go to a local consultation & the people contributing time for free will be mostly women, the people paid to be there, mostly males.

You'd have to pay me to go to some of those meetings... what can we do to make sure women are represented more fairly at a higher level?
Identify the many who'd be good at it. Ask them, ask them again, badger them, put the forms in their hands, take signed forms in for them!

So your answer to gender inequality is to bully women? :)
You're beating lifetime pressures against stepping forward & like a reluctant woman rugby player I knew, they enjoy it once they've started.

We should start to wrap up... Do you think there's an obvious question that I really should have asked you but didn't?
Perhaps not obvious, but oft asked: How did you become a feminist? A. At age 5 I was told I couldn't have a bicycle because not 'ladylike'.

I should make some sort of joke about a fish with a Brompton... but can't think of one off hand. Sorry.

Last question: if you could have just one victory - what would it be?
Access to effective contraception for every woman and girl in the world, and access to safe, legal abortion for when it fails.

Thanks. I hope it wasn't too difficult fitting your answers into 140 characters!
Thank you! And sorry, still haven't worked out a Brompton line...

I quite enjoyed that format as it flowed back and forth quite quickly (particularly when you consider I was browsing the net while waiting for replies). I tell you what - these Twitter interviews might just catch on.

If you're interested you can find me on twitter at @Jim_Jepps and Natalie at @natalieben. I wonder who I'll do next?

A level results in pictures

It's become such a cliché that A level results are always illustrated with pictures of joyous young women. In fact, it's such a cliché that I thought the papers would make a conscious effort to buck the trend.

Let's take a sample of the lead picture illustrating the A level results story in some of our national papers. (Excludes papers behind pay-walls or without lead pictures on the web)

Daily Mail:

Independent:

Guardian:


Daily Telegraph:


So, not only does the Telegraph accept that boys get A levels too, it seems to be the only paper that accepts that black people also pass exams. Shocking.

I wonder if there's some sort of law of nature that it has to be this way...

Jane Austin's Fight Club

Excellent stuff.



Via F-Word, Via Jezabel

Religion: women, know your place.

I was interested to read in Haaretz that Anat Hoffman (a leading activist for Movement for Progressive Judaism) was arrested at Jerusalem's Western Wall for holding a Torah whilst in possession of a womb.

Apparently it's not just frowned on for women to read the Torah in this holy site it's actually an imprisonable offence.

In November a woman was arrested at the same location for wearing a prayer shawl. I've heard of the fashion police but this is ridiculous.

Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz said "We must distance politics and disagreement from this sacred place," which is hilarious because in fact he means people should not disagree with him by promoting gender equality - politics that he evidently doesn't like.

I wish these people would be a little more honest. If Rabinowitz was a man of his convictions he would have said "Women should know their place and stop disagreeing with me" but he's a spineless, reactionary coward so he tries to make out women who get arrested for expressing religious freedom are just horrid troublemakers.

I wonder what Rowan Williams thinks about this?

When the General Synod, democratic institution of the Church of England, voted that it intended to allow the ordination of women bishops last week it rejected his suggestion of creating no go zones for women bishops. He argued that some parishes could opt out of the twenty first century, although he made no mention of whether they would be allowed to stone adulterers.

This comes hot on the heels of his veto of the decision of the Southwark diocese to appoint Dr Jeffrey John as their bishop. The problem with John is that he is openly gay, although he insists that he is chaste - which means Williams is practising that good old tradition of hating the sinner and not the sin.

Not that gay sex is a sin (unless you do it really well or claim it on expenses).

Of course Williams, who twice in one week has sought to over turn the democratic will of his Church, has done all this in the name of holding back progress. While the synod thought that women bishops were "theologically justified" and the bible has nothing bad to say about gay people who don't have sex Williams decided that Realpolitik trumped his God.

Wouldn't want to be him when/if he reaches the pearly gates. Some people say his god can be an angry one.

From the archives: why feminism is good for men

This article first appear last year in the lefty daily paper the Morning Star.

Whenever I hear a bloke describe himself as a feminist I reach for the sick bucket.

I certainly wouldn't describe myself that way, despite believing in equality and having right-on positions on the major issues of day.

Sometimes labels don't get us very far.

When men describe themselves as feminists they are telling us something about their politics, but that is not the same thing as actually having consistent positions on women's equality.

For every political stance you can think of there is someone who describes themselves as a feminist.

It can give an indication of how someone sees themselves but it doesn't tell us what they think about sex work, trade unions, abortion, marriage or a host of other issues.

Despite feminism's continued relevance, it has become so devalued as a term that it gets used to describe almost anything.

A recent piece in the Guardian, which should know better but never does, described fascist sympathiser Brigitte Bardot as a feminist because "she represents the power of women. What's iconic about her is her shape, the way she occupies space."

Was this what the pioneers of feminism were struggling for - to be defined by their "shape"?

There's a middle class version of feminism that focuses on language while ignoring social inequality.

I can't be the only person who has had a female manager who is more than relaxed about the all-female cleaning staff being paid a pittance and given no respect while insisting that the workplace uses bizarre jargon in order to avoid "sexist language."

It's enough to give equality a bad name.

However the feminist movement has brought enormous social advances - and not just for women.

Struggles led by feminists have brought about significant positive shifts over the decades, although no-one sensible would argue that these battles are over.

The break from the rigid moralism that kept people who didn't love each other within spitting distance provided a massive step forward in quality of life for millions of people. Divorce has saved countless couples from emotional disfigurement.

The right to an abortion, easily available contraception and sex education have not just been essential for a woman's right to control her own body but have been absolutely revolutionary in terms of how we all live our lives.

Family planning isn't just something that has enhanced people's sex lives or simply allowed them to have one, it's a social revolution allowing us to make choices about children, sexual health and orientation that simply were not open to us before.

I'm certain that the 17-year-old me would have been a pretty poor husband and father and I'm very glad that, due to the advances that feminism fought for, it never had to happen.

And feminism has broken down barriers to advancement for men and women. It may sound strange to some that allowing women to be promoted into positions previously the preserve of men should benefit both sexes, but it certainly seems that way.

When my mum was at school not only was she not allowed to take her best subject - maths - because it was not a "girl's subject," but she was all but forced to become a nurse, which did not suit her.

It was not in anyone's interest that the job of, say, a heart surgeon, did not go to the best person because gender roles forbade it.

The other side of the coin is that many men of my dad's generation simply never learned skills such as cooking because it was assumed that a woman would do it all for them. How many men have no confidence to do the simplest things around the home because they have been told it is "women's work?"

Feminism has gone a long way to making workplaces habitable too. My first job was in a lawnmower factory and I thought it was hell on Earth.

I found it difficult to cope with the constant use of the c-word, the misogynist tripe that my workmates came out with and the dull-as-ditch-water view on what was and was not "homosexual behaviour," even down to your choice of biscuit or how you wear your jacket.

These attitudes have now gone away but feminism should be heartily thanked for the progress made in workplaces in terms of how people behave with each other.

Feminism may not be about bettering men's lives but there is no question it has improved them.

Natalie Bennett: Women and fairness

Natalie Bennett, from Camden Green Party, on women and fairness.

One Dimensional Woman

I went to the book launch of Nina Power's One Dimensional Woman at Housmans tonight. Nina spoke alongside Lindsey German (who wrote Material Girls: Women, Men and Work among many other things) on feminism today. Very engaging it was too.

Stupidly I forgot to bring a pen so didn't take notes as there were a few things said that I thought were particularly interesting, but inevitably I've forgotten most of them. However, where I thought Nina's approach was very worthwhile was that she took as her starting point a wider social and economic context.

Any discussion, whether its on childcare, Hillary Clinton or the wearing of the veil can only be abstract and sterile if you separate it from everything else. We can't understand these things on their own but only when we take in the place each issue has in the world at large.

For example, does the fact that Condolezza Rice and Hillary Clinton were able to rise so high in the US government prove that the glass ceiling has vanished and discrimination is at an end? Nina used a rather neat little phrase saying that we shouldn't describe these women as tokens but rather as decoys that act to distract us from the large scale differential between men and women.

I'm tempted by this argument because it's quite true that one version of feminism essentially fights for the improvement of the lot of middle-class women without touching the lives of their nannies and cleaners. I still lean towards more representation for woman on boards, cabinets and top management positions because a) it's fairer, b) whilst women can't reach certain positions it reinforces divisions across the spectrum and c) the struggles are connected, even if some have tried to decouple them.

As a member of the audience pointed out if you simply look at lap dancing, for example, in isolation it really boils down to a purely moral question. However if we don't consider the economic options that many women face and the choices they might make when faced with those options we end up prioritising one kind of oppression over another. Essentially if lap dancing provides a better wage and better conditions it can't be seen as a simple and clear cut example of exploitation but has to be seen in a more nuanced or sophisticated way.

Anyway, it sounds like an excellent book but I don't have time to read at the moment so may never get to find out for myself. Glad I went to the launch though as it provided some excellent food for thought.

Gender equality

It's one of those stories that I read without even knowing why I'm reading it. apparently Geena Davis, the Oscar winning actress, is launching a campaign to address the way women are treated in the media. Very worthy and I definately applaud this.

She chose the UN Secretary General and the Duchess of York to accompany her on this worthy mission. However, Geena's message may have been ever so slightly uncut by Fergie's campaign.

While Geena was actively denouncing the stereo-typing of women in the media Fergie was enthusiastically embracing the same.

Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, who is divorced from Britain's Prince Andrew, said the key to equality is "good mothering" because mothers promote education.

She announced a new initiative called The Mother's Army to "harness the collective power of mothers" to enable women and girls to "dare to dream".

I'm not entirely convinced the best way to attack one stereotype is by promoting another. Oh well.

Men's Societies? Oh God, no.

There's only one men's group I've ever heard of that I actually approve of. That was set up by a serving British soldier in Italy to discuss masculinity as a way of undercutting the culture of beastings, racism and misogyny. As I recall the army hoofed him out for his trouble.

So when I heard about the rise of Men's Societies at universities I fetched the sick bucket in preparation for an extended projectile pukathon.

There are two versions of what these Societies get up to. The first, from their detractors, says they are obsessed by "Top Gear shows, gadget fairs, beer-drinking marathons and Iron Man competitions".

The very thought makes me want to bulldoze all the universities to wipe out these enclaves and then follow up with squads of flame-thrower teams to ensure the pestilence has been eradicated. That may be an over reaction though.

The second version is from the organisers themselves. Watching Alex Linsley on News 24 just now he said "It's because men are confused about what it is to be a man, we're trying to be the best men we can be... it's a celebration."

Grrr.... it makes my blood boil! In the Guardian he's quoted as saying "There is so much conflicting information for men. There is massive confusion as to what being a man means, and how to be a good man. Should you be the sensitive all-caring, perhaps the 'feminised' man? Or should you be the hard, take no crap from anybody kind of figure?"

Here's a thought, instead of worrying about what you think you 'should' be why don't you just be yourself? If you have need of virtues work hard, be polite, honest and be more forgiving of other people's faults than I am of yours. Love your friends and try to be fair to those you can't find it in yourself to like. It's not rocket science is it?

For the first and last time in my life I agree with the editor of Loaded who said "I don't think men are remotely confused about what it takes to be a man. They just get on and do it. My generation would not sit round and build a website about being confused. It's complete navel-gazing bullshit."

Sorry Alex, but can't you just get on with being yourself and not worry about what you should or should not be? Please, no-one talk to him about his feelings, it'll just encourage him.

Engel vs Sexist Tory Fool

We're told that Cameron is man of modern sensibilities. The Tory media machine tells us he understands that racism, sexism and homophobia are more than just a bit of harmless fun. It's hard not to believe it's true when you see his lovely soft haircut and elegant frowns of concern at all the right moments.

However, it looks like the Tories still have a little way to go in purging sexism from their ranks. It seems that while queuing at the Parliamentary canteen Sir Nicholas Winterton slapped Natascha Engel MP's bottom.

When later questioned about the incident Winterton replied that "I have a friendly relationship with most members of the House, male and female. Can I remember this incident? No. Can I categorically deny it? The answer is no. I'm quite a normal person."

Oddly, I believe him. Not the last bit about being normal obviously, but I suspect he doesn't remember whether or not he slapped the Labour MP's bum because it's so common place for him to do that sort of thing that it doesn't stick in his memory. Of course, Sir Nicholas said he DID remember queuing to buy soup and a doughnut, but then who doesn't remember each and every doughnut they've eaten. I certainly do.

He told the Telegraph that he might have slapped Engel but that any such gesture would have been out of "affection and regard". Hmmmm. Like for an old horse you're sending to the knackers yard, or a serving girl who's been in the family for decades.

What does Engel say of the matter? "I would rather not be slapped on the backside" by a "silly old man". This seems understandable.

While this is a small incident in many ways I do wonder how many women Tory MP's bums he'd slapped before turning to the Labour ranks. No wonder they have so few female MPs if this is an example 0f the way they treat their female political representatives let alone their less exalted activists. Further reading