I opposed black sections in the Labour Party. I oppose all-women short lists. In any union or party election where I am given a vote and my choice of candidate has been pre-determined by race or sex I make a point of spoiling my ballot paper. There are no exceptions to my anti-racism and anti-sexism.
I’ve been a member and/or supporter for a long time, but whatever the “local factors” in Blaenau Gwent, the Labour Party thoroughly deserves the kickings it has received from the people of that constituency because it treated them with contempt and because it attempted to pervert democracy.
Whisper it quietly Damien, whisper it quietly.
http://kerroncross.blogspot.com/2006/06/is-it-something-i-said-part-2.html
You would say that because you are a…er…white…er…middle class…er…MAN! (And you wnet to Oxbridge!)
Just you watch out for the pro-AWS female blogging community. That’s all I’m saying. 😉
PS Some of the above statement may be deliberately incorrect! 🙂
Oh give it a rest, Kerron. This is getting quite boring and petty.
I’ve just followed this one up on the relevant blogs, so please correct me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. And I write as the sort of party member who is only prepared to stand for election if someone guarantees that there is absolutely no chance of a Labour victory.
As far as I can tell, Kerron made a flip comment on Antonia’s blog about his being unable to even apply for a job for which he was perfectly well qualified because the Labour Party had decided that his having a penis made him unsuitable.
In response to this, Antonia wrote a new post titled “Poor Little Men” and responding to Kerron’s complaints with the thoughtful words “My heart bleeds for you”.
I’m old enough to remember when women who were being discriminated against at work were treated in exactly the same way: “Don’t be so boring and petty,” the men would say as they carved up the jobs for themselves. I doubt that Kerron is old enough to have been one of them.
Now that women get to be as objectionable as men once were and can deploy the same patronising, logic-free clichés in defence of sex discrimination, I suppose we can call it progress.
“please correct me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick”
Doesn’t look like it to me, having also read up on this unsavoury little blog spat….
Yep, right on the money.
Except the original comment about AWS was on my website – not Antonia’s – and that inspired Antonia to write her “poor little men” post attacking me!
I’ll have to watch what I say in future! 🙂
“My heart bleeds for you” invites a very rude reply. I trust that you were gentleman enough not to make it, Kerron?
Damian, don’t fall for the Independent hype. Sure, the party could have dealt with the all-women shortlist better, but that’s not the same as some of the “We don’t need a *woman* round here” attitude which some in the area have displayed, which I know you would deplore with the same vigour you oppose all-women shortlists. Maybe Labour needs to ‘reconnect’ with its heartlands, but it’s not the party which will suffer from having these inexperienced losers in Cardiff Bay and Westminster – it’s the people of the area.
Incidentally, I don’t like all-women shortlists either on an intellectual level, but we tried it the other way for years and nothing changed – indeed, attitudes like those which may still be festering in the valleys would have still held sway today. We have to balance the unattractiveness of exclusivity on shortlists with the change in the political agenda which has been so obvious in the last few years – would childcare and carers’ issues, for instance, have been so high up on the Government’s agenda without so many more women in Parliament?
I’ve no interest at all in anything the Independents have said; I’m only interested in the facts.
By not having one.
Bloody sheepshaggers, eh?
Maybe Labour needs to respect basic democratic principles.
What they need is some “winners”: good, solid party insiders to show them what’s best for them.
That’s alright then.
I don’t like all-women shortlists on a moral level. When you’re not being intellectual, what part of “sex discrimination is wrong” do you not understand?
We tried to do things the right way and didn’t get the outcome we wanted so we’re now trying to do things the wrong way.
Bloody sheepshaggers, eh?
By “unattractiveness” I think you mean “wrongness”.
Rob, this is desperate stuff.
It’s not about liking or disliking. It’s not about intellectual and practical. It’s about right and wrong. Systematic sex discrimination is wrong. No excuses. That’s how principles work. You don’t trade them in for a quick fix.
The only time I’ve ever stood in an election I wanted to win was twenty years ago when my platform was opposition to a list rigged by insiders. I lost of course, but the practice ended. Occasionally I’m proud of it. The Labour Party should be ashamed of this.
Whoa. Look, I don’t dissent from the fact that all-women shortlists are discriminatory. But you say “systematic sex discrimination is wrong” – which is exactly what we have in Parliament where barely 20% of MPs are women. If not all-women shortlists, what’s your idea for redressing that balance?
Without wishing to provoke you further, I really don’t think that the “bloody sheepshaggers” comment is necessary. I have nothing whatsoever against the Welsh – I’ve lived in Wales for the last 6 years, for Christ’s sake – and if I find any attitude of that kind anywhere be it in Wales or otherwise I’ll attack it. Just because I pointed out that I’d come across it in Blaenau Gwent doesn’t make me a sodding racist.
I used to be in a band where half the members were non-white. Given that less than 5% of the population was non-white was that systematic race discrimination?
When I went to medical school, exactly half of my year consisted of women. Today, most medical students are women. Why? Because they are chosen on merit and because women want to be doctors. Most women don’t want to be politicians. Being an MP is a bloody awful job. I don’t want to be an MP. (And this is good reason to make being an MP a job women might want to do of course.)
The answer to the “problem” of women not wanting to be MPs isn’t social engineering. Every attempt at social engineering is exploited by elites. Affirmative action favours rich blacks over poor whites. Comprehensive schools favour rich homeowners over poor ones (and the offspring of school teachers over the offspring of manual workers, and privately educated children over state educated ones). Lists favour party insiders over locals.
I’m no Marxist, but I know that in Britain privilege is almost always about class—though not always class as Marx would have recognised it. This is no exception.
It was necessary because you made unsupported accusations about the people of the area to distract attention from the matter at hand. (Even if they are true, I find it hard to believe that they constitute the views of the majority.) I grew up in the north Midlands where racism was endemic for decades. There were constituencies there that (re-)elected openly racist MPs. Would the answer have been to impose blacks-only lists of candidates?
Your implication that this policy is needed because the locals are sexist might carry more weight if the policy you are advocating to deal with it weren’t itself explicitly sexist.
I have to say that the band analogy is a pretty poor one. You were in a band, you weren’t in a body which legislates for the governance of the country. I would hazard a guess that it’s slightly more important that Parliament is representative of the population than a band.
I really must take issue too with the sweeping generalisation that “most women don’t want to be politicians,” not only because I sincerely doubt whether it’s true but also because that itself panders to the stereotype that being an MP is a man’s job. Incidentally, there’s research which shows that women are more likely to be interested in politics and want to become involved themselves when they have female elected representatives – so part of making the job of an MP more attractive to women is to have women MPs in the first place.
And with respect, you still haven’t answered the question of what you would do to make Parliament more representative of the population it serves. It’s all very well to say that all-women shortlists are profoundly anti-democratic, but as democrats we have to address what is a deficit in parliamentary legitimacy. If not shortlists of this kind – then how?
You don’t force public bodies to be representative. You ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to be part of them. The answer to unequal representation isn’t unequal treatment of those who legitimately seek to be representatives.
Do you take issue with it enough to match my hundred pounds bet that the ratio of randomly questioned men to women who would express an interest in becoming an MP is greater than the ratio of men to women in Parliament? I’ve got the stack of twenties and the clipboard if you’re game.
I don’t have to answer your question. Summary street executions would massively reduce shoplifting. Opposing that approach to fighting crime doesn’t oblige me to devise an answer to theft.
I think it would benefit the Labour Party electorally, in terms of the quality of our decision making and for getting more people involved if our representatives and candidates were broadly representative of the wider society. I imagine most Labour supporters would agree with this.
As a result, I don’t agree that all that is needed is to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to put themselves forward, when the outcome of this is demonstrably not the one which we want to achieve. The Labour Party was, after all, set up because the ‘equal opportunity’ for working-class men to stand for parliament didn’t prevent working-class people from being massively under represented in parliament.
Take care
Dan xxx
I agree with all of this. None of it justifies sex discrimination.
Foolish of me to step into a budding flamewar, I know, but can someone please explain to me why it is so important that there is a group of people in Parliament who are directly similar to the people in the country?
Is it impossible for a black man to represent a white one or for a woman to represent a man? In most cases, any particular constituency probably contains both male and female voters – so whoever the winning candidate is, do we consider the other gender to have been disenfranchised?
As someone once said – “think about how stupid the average person is – then realize 50% of people are stupider than that” – should we also elect a lot of stupid people so that we are adequately represented?
“should we also elect a lot of stupid people so that we are adequately represented?”
Though we already had……
Just a quick re-intervention to make it perfectly clear that I was *not* flaming.
I’ll second that. Rob wasn’t flaming.
I hesitate to contribute to this discussion, being a woman, and not particularly keen to have a label stuck on me (will it be anti-man, “pro-AWS female blogging community” – not a problem when not used with contempt – or just anti-democratic?)
But I don’t really see what the problem is, unless you disagree with the fundamental concept that Parliament should be more or less 50/50 representative, which seems obvious, both on grounds of fairness of opportunity and because it is morally right. There isn’t a single democracy in the world which has achieved this without some form of legislation to even out representation and give women a base to start from. Legislation is necessary in the short term to achieve the desired outcome. I don’t think it is beside the point to ask what Damian would do otherwise as there are simply no other suggestions for alternative solutions. Using your analogy, crime must be reduced nevertheless (although comparing AWS to execution is a bit drama queen), so the best solution must be found.
It also seems a bit churlish that blokes are getting their knickers in a twist because they perceive that their opportunities are being reduced. More than 70% of Labour MPs are still men despite AWS, and not all those 30% of women have been elected by AWS by any means. So if you want to get into Westminster, the odds are still heavily stacked in your favour if you are male. If this is positive discrimination towards women, I hate to ask what you would consider to be postive discrimination towards men. Yes it sucks that Kerron can’t stand in his constituency. Neither can I – the incumbent is a minister. That’s the luck of the draw.
Oo, you said it’s obvious. Well, that proves it, then.
Lists are the opposite of fairness of opportunity. That’s their whole point. If they gave fair opportunities, they would be redundant. That’s obvious.
Any explication of which moral code you’re using?
For the record I utterly disagree with the “fundamental” concept that Parliament should be more or less 50/50 representative. Apart from anything else, belief in that sort of idea reinforces the erroneous belief that men can only be properly represented by male MPs, black people can only be properly represented by black MPs, lesbians can only be properly represented by lesbian MPs, children can only be properly represented by a special youth parliament, et bloody cetera. Contrary to your entirely hypothetical obvious fundamental principle, we can see real solid historial facts which demonstrate just how wrong that is: slavery was not repealed by slaves; an all-male parliament voted to give women the vote; child labour was outlawed by adults; maternity leave was given legal protection by a majority-male (and, come to that, majority non-baby) parliament; homosexuality was decriminalised by mostly straight MPs; Chris Mullin, non-Irish MP, campaigned to get the Birmingham 6 freed.
And, by the way, when was the last time you heard a left-wing woman talk about how brilliant Thatcher was for British women?
You talk about fundamental principles, moral rightness, and then this quick switch to morals-and-principles-be-damned ends-justifies-the-means pragmatism.
There are in fact lots of other suggestions. Damian’s right that he needn’t make them, but he did actually make one anyway.
That’s a gross misrepresentation. Damian has said repeatedly that he’d hate to be an MP, yet you imply that his opposition to discriminatory lists is that his opportunity to be an MP is reduced by them.
You mean women can be elected on merit? Gosh. So why are you insisting on legislation that is based on the assumption that they can’t?
Results and odds are not the same thing. Not even remotely. In fact, I’m sorry, but it really looks like you’re aware of that and are being deliberately disingenuous here. I mean, do you really mean to say that Labour’s current system stacks the odds in favour of men and that’s why we need Labour’s current system, which stacks the odds in favour of women?
You’ve just been defending it on the grounds that we need positive discrimination in favour of women and this is it, and you now imply that it isn’t.
Nonsense. Since your incumbent is a minister, neither you nor anyone else can stand. Can you genuinely not see any difference between that situation and the situation Kerron’s in?
This is one reason why I couldn’t bear to be an MP. So far the arguments that have been deployed in support of the insupportable have been so shoddily constructed that they wouldn’t even make it past the first skim read of a decent scientific journal’s managing editor.
(On second thoughts, perhaps this means I could go from being a not-exactly-world-beating scientist to being an outstandingly good politician.)
This kind of rubbish is also why I can’t bear listening to Any Questions?: so many of the party hacks who appear on it produce such flimsy twaddle—and they do it so shamelessly.
I don’t care what sex you are. That’s my point.
The award for the most spectacular non sequitur of the week goes to…
And the best solution isn’t all-women lists.
I’m getting my knickers in a twist because I oppose sexism.
And another entry for the non sequitur competition.
No it’s not; it’s a direct result of party policy.
Look. Here are a couple of hints for those of you in favour of sexist selection policies:
You could possibly make your case for discarding your supposedly fundamental values if you said you’d only do it just for a couple of terms because the current situation is so terrible that it really is worth selling out. I don’t think it is, but you might at least try to persuade me otherwise.
You could possibly make your case on the grounds that your undemocratic policy had been voted for democratically by members of the party.
The catch with the latter of course, to return to the original subject of this post, is that the vastly more representative general electorate might notice that your undemocratic policy is also unprincipled and corrupt and use their votes to say exactly what they think of it. In this case they did. How right they were.
To come back to one of Squander’s points from a slightly different direction, perhaps one of the supporters of AWS could explain precisely in what respect the like of Patricia Hewitt, Ruth Kelly, Tessa Jowell and Kitty Ussher – to name but four examples – are in any substantive repects ‘representative’ of the female population of the UK in its totality and diversity. Since when did the mere possession of two X chromosomes provide a former management consultant or a paid up member of Opus Dei with an innate and superior insight into the concerns and aspirations of a lone parent living on a council estate in Tower Hamlets.
Squander’s right to note the absurdity of the ‘representation’ argument when take to its logical conclusion – which CLP get’s the selection contest in which the only permitted candidates are one-legged South Asian transexual foster parents?
If ‘legislation is necessary in the short term to achieve the desired outcome’ then why not simply advocate that selection constents be put on the same footing as already exists in employment law and campaign for the removal of the exemptions that politicians wrote into SDA 1975 and RRA 1976 which keep such contests outside the purview of both Acts.
“Every attempt at social engineering is exploited by elites…Comprehensive schools favour rich homeowners over poor ones”
This seems true enough, but then again everything is exploited by elites, which is partly why they are elites. It’s even worse when the State actively supports that exploitation, which is of course what happened before the comprehensive system, when it used to take 10-20% of pupils, the vast majority of whom were from rich (in this context) families, and gave them much greater funding and other resources.
As I always say when someone makes this kind of claim, I don’t support a return to an unreconstructed grammar school system. In fact I’d argue that we should spend more money on those students who are less academic.
But right now in Northern Ireland, students from lower-income families at both secondary moderns and grammar schools out-perform their socially matched peers on the mainland. This result of this simple controlled experiment alone is enough to demonstrate how shockingly badly comprehensives fail, even in their stated goal.
Statistics are irrelevant to the supporters of comprehensivation. There was never any evidence that comprehensives would work. Their creation was never about equality, or fairness, or the life chances of the poor. They were set up to make an ideological point—at the expense of real children’s educations.
“They were set up to make an ideological point—at the expense of children’s educations.”
That just isn’t true. Multilateral schools – which were the forerunners of comprehensives – had quite wide support across the political spectrum. The Assistant Masters’ Association and the NUT, along with the Times Education Supplement, were all in favour in the 1930s. The pre-war Spens committee was sympathetic. They weren’t all making ideological points, indeed most of the opposition was by those who believed that certain types of children wouldn’t benefit from an ‘academic’ education, which really is an ideological point at the expense of a child’s education.
Incidentally why don’t secondary moderns favour rich home owners over poor ones?
So did the construction of tower blocks for social housing. Ideologies can exsist independently of political parties. It’s often, and accurately said, that Margaret Thatcher was directly responsible for the creation of more comprehensives than any other minister. When she saw the effects she changed her views on them, but, in a way, their results were of a piece of the rest of her policies towards the working classes.
I’m not sure that this is an example of an ideological statement, but it might indeed be a belief that was held without sufficient supporting evidence. Of course there were and are ideologues opposed to comprehensivisation, but most of the actual evidence is on their side.
Who said they didn’t? They just outperform comprehensives.
“Who said they didn’t? They just outperform comprehensives.”
Well all this talk about comprehensives being selection by house prices does seem to ignore the fact that so are secondary moderns. Indeed if (as we are often told, though I’m not claiming you have) comprehensives have led to greater use of private schools and a return to a secondary modern system would see this reversed, then it might even lead to more selection by house price.
One final point. I wouldn’t agree that tower blocks were built to ‘to make an ideological point’. I think that’s a misreading of their history.
Certainly there were people who saw tower blocks as an ideological statement, but very few of them actually managed to get that statement built as they wished. Most of those that were built ein Britain were built as a cheap way of housing people quickly, often ignoring the guidelines that had been set, or taking as maximum sizes and qualities that were meant as minimums.
Good to feel justified – I make the same arguments as “Rob”, but guess which one of us gets the misquoting, the “ooo” and the “Gosh!”, and which one of us doesn’t get patronised?
The problem is, you feel that this is sexist because you assume that we live in a world of equal opportunity and all women’s battles have been won, at least in the political domain.
The fact that a self-declared non-sexist believes that when women are still asked what their husbands think about them standing, and told that people enjoy watching them speak because they can imagine what knickers they have on, shows how far we have to go.
Do you really think that women don’t stand because they don’t want to be MPs? So hardly any Tory women want to be MPs, a few more Lib Dems, and about the same number of Labour women until 1997 when there was suddenly a huge leap in interest (must have been our pin-up, Tony). But in countries that have achieved equal representation, the desire to be elected evens out across the political spectrum for some reason.
It is all about opportunity. I’m sorry if you consider that opinion well-grounded in fact to be a non-sequitur (is that another way of saying “I’m right and you’re wrong, therefore your assertions are illogical”?)
Can you manage to reply without being aggressive or condescending? I’m not going to go through your post taking it to pieces or being sarcastic (and there’s lots of material), and I’d appreciate it if you could grant me the same respect.
Here’s a couple of facts to add to the anecdotes above. Parties without AWS, women candidates, 2005:
Conservative: Winnable 5% 2. Winnable 10% 7. Unwinnable 93. Total women candidates: 118.
LibDem: Winnable 5% 2. Winnable 10% 5. Unwinnable 114, Total women candidates 125.
Do you appreciate the situation?
Catherine, go back and read my response to you, you’ll see that despite your best efforts to attack individuals—
—I consistently addressed your arguments, not your person. Your original response here was exactly like Antonia’s response to Kerron, exactly the sort of “don’t be such a girly whiner” rubbish that old male chauvinists used to aim at women. Despite your getting personal with me first, I treated you, if anything, better than Rob.
Your current line seems to be that it’s okay for a woman to be directly insulting to men (as you were), but if a man attacks your arguments (as I did) he must be doing it in a sexist way because you’re a woman and that this somehow justifies your view that the odds are “stacked against” you. Perhaps the rigorous application of logic is an act of oppression.
TEACHER: What does 2 + 2 equal?
POOTERGEEK: It’s five, whiteboy.
TEACHER: No, Damian 2 + 2 does not equal 5.
POOTERGEEK: It’s because I is black, innit?
Given that I cut-and-pasted your text into my reply I’m dying to know how I managed to misquote you.
As for Squander, trust me, he’s just as withering (if not more) when faulty reasoning is displayed by males, but I’ve not known any of them to complain that they are being given an especially hard time because they are men.
And even your arguments got better than they deserved. To pitch up here with a sackload of identity politics, bitchy remarks, and broken justifications and then complain that you have been “patronised” when their blatant flaws are pointed out takes a special kind of chutzpah.
And you’re at it again. How dare you presume to know what I “assume”? My arguments don’t rest on any assumptions. Yours do. “The problem is” that I feel that all-women lists are sexist because they are, in fact, sexist.
Oh, and this is what a non-sequitur is.
If you can tell me how one gets directly from believing “Parliament should be 50/50 representative”—I don’t—to “there should be all-women lists” with no intervening steps then, fine, I treated you harshly
If you can tell me how one gets from “more than 70% percent of MPs are male” to “women have the odds stacked against them” with no intervening steps then, fine, I treated you harshly.
You might also want to check out “ad hominem” and “correlation implies causation” while you’re over at Wikipedia.
> I make the same arguments as ‘Rob’, but guess which one of us gets the misquoting, the ‘ooo’ and the ‘Gosh!’, and which one of us doesn’t get patronised?
Rob had already been patronised by the time I got here. If you think I’m not sarcastic, insulting, condescending, and obnoxious towards men, I can only suggest (and I know I’m going to regret this) that you browse the comments on my blog.
> I’m sorry if you consider that opinion well-grounded in fact to be a non-sequitur (is that another way of saying ‘I’m right and you’re wrong, therefore your assertions are illogical’?)
Assertions are always illogical, by definition. Your presentation of assertions as conclusions is, I suspect, what leads you to make so many non-sequiturs.
So your initial problem with me is that I used the expressions “blokes getting their knickers in a twist” and “drama queen”.
Let me rephrase them.
Blokes getting upset.
Over the top.
I’ve used those particular common phrases plenty of times to refer to both men and women, and I assure you I was using them to criticise people’s actions, not who that person is (I’m not sure why they’re insulting anyway unless you see them as a jibe at your sexuality… which would just be bizarre) When I said “blokes getting their knickers in a twist”, I wasn’t even referring to a person, just to a few examples of people I know who have taken AWS badly, so I don’t see how it could have been construed as a personal attack – especially not at you because I have no idea if you are on the list or not! Perhaps I should have said “misunderstood” rather than “misquoted” – you understood “blokes” to mean “ME ME ME”. I would have verified that before getting snotty.
Please don’t take my second post as being personally addressed to you either – there were about 3 people I was replying to at once, Damien.
Look, I’d like to have a chat, but can we have less of the “why don’t you look this up in a dictionary”? and be a bit grown-up? I know it’s easy to be a jerk when you’re typing at someone you don’t know – god knows I’ve got exasperated with people (US Marines are really nice people to have a discussion with…!) I’m 28, I live in Exeter, I graduated from Durham, I support Sunderland AFC and I work at Exeter Uni. Married, no kids, no pets. I like sushi. Does that make me a bit less anonymous? As for you, I wouldn’t read your blog if I wasn’t interested in what you’re writing, so does that convince you that I’m not out to get you?
I don’t have a problem with you pointing out flaws in my arguments (or incomplete information which needs to be filled in or justified – I don’t know what kind of blog you think you run but I tend to assume I’m not writing in a “scientific journal”) 🙂 – but I do have a problem with the tone.
So now that’s cleared up, let’s take one of your points. I didn’t just “assume” anything about you. You wrote in a post above that more med students are female because it is merit-based and because women want to be doctors. Whereas women just don’t want to be MPs. You’ve assumed a level playing field in both professions, with the only difference being volition. That’s what my statement was based on. Apologies for daring to presume that what you write is based on what you think. That’s why I took the opportunity to explain (with some figures which demonstrate it rather clearly, I think) that your argument is based on a false premise. Which also clears up why I believe the odds are stacked against women.
Please let me know if I have misunderstood. If there is anything you don’t understand, I’d appreciate it if you give me the opportunity to make it clearer before you point and laugh at me – it also means it won’t backfire on you.
By the way, I didn’t say at any point “Parliament should be 50/50 representative therefore there should be all-women lists”, and I’m not even sure where that came from.
I did say “There isn’t a single democracy in the world which has achieved this without some form of legislation to even out representation and give women a base to start from. Legislation is necessary in the short term to achieve the desired outcome.”, which is quite different. Assume “has been shown to be” after “legislation” to completely avoid confusion!
Add straw men to your list?
Please don’t argue based on things I didn’t say – it really confuses the issue and leads to extremely long responses!
Talk about missing the point.
My initial problem with you was that your arguments were broken. I only quoted these phrases of yours because, when the brokenness of your arguments was pointed out, you accused your critics (Squander and me) of behaving unfairly towards you because you are a woman.
I took “blokes” to mean “blokes”—as you can see by reading what I wrote directly above and below that quotation:
Flame wars start because people address people instead of issues. When you write
the implication is that the debate here is not “grown up” and that I am “behaving like a jerk” because I don’t know you. I’m not going to rise to either of these insinuations.
There is a simple way to avoid such perceptions: deal with the matter at hand and put identities to one side. That‘s what growing up is about.
If, as you write, you have a “problem with the tone” here, then fair enough, complain about that. Don’t accuse people of discriminating against you without evidence.
The matter at hand is not your sex or mine. It is not whether men are getting their knickers in a twist or not.
The matter at hand is whether it is right to discriminate against men in the selection of candidates for elections.
I cited the example of medicine because it is a similarly well-paid, demanding, and public profession which used to be exclusively and aggressively male and because I have direct experience of it. I used it to show that it is possible for women to break into such a profession (indeed to become the majority of its practitioners) without the introduction of a policy of systematic sex discrimination.
Since you are advocating a policy of sex discrimination, the burden is upon you to demonstrate that such a policy is necessary, and that the outcome you seek to obtain through it is sufficiently desirable to justify breaking a fundamental liberal principle. You have yet to do this.
I have assumed no such thing. I have argued that most women are far less likely to want to be MPs than men and that this fact far better explains the relative numbers of male and female MPs than sexism. That the ratio of men to women applying to be MPs is almost certainly higher than the ratio of men to women becoming MPs further suggests that sexism is not the problem here.
But it’s not for me to demonstrate that sexism isn’t the problem. It’s for you to demonstrate that sexism is the solution. (Worse, it’s for you to demonstrate that there is a problem in the first place.)
You don’t have to apologise for presuming that what I write is based on what I think, but you do have to apologise for presuming what those thoughts are and then attacking them instead of my stated arguments.
Your figures demonstrate that parties that don’t adopt policies discriminating in favour of women candidates have fewer women candidates. How this undermines any of my arguments I don’t know. I wouldn’t even be arguing with you if I didn’t believe this to be the case.
I’m not pointing and laughing. I understand perfectly well what you are saying. It just that what you are saying doesn’t make sense.
By the way….
Speaking as someone brought up with one repeatedly-standing-for-Parliament parent, I have to say that that’s an entirely reasonable question, and should be asked of both male and female candidates. And they should be asked what their children think about it, too.
“I have argued that most women are far less likely to want to be MPs than men.”
As I think Catherine pointed out, this is something which can change, with the help of legislation. I’d imagine that many more women want to be MPs than did thirty years ago, and in countries where 50% of the representatives are women, more women would be interested in considering politics as a career. Until recently, the timing of parliamentary business was arranged for the convenience of people with no other evening commitments rather than people who want to combine their work with the chance to spend time with their family.
Since no one is arguing that men are in any way intrinsically better at being MPs than women, then if the Labour Party were able to get the same proportion of women as men interested in standing to be MPs, we would benefit from having a wider selection of potential candidates. There are other benefits to this, the last few years have seen much greater emphasis on issues which are rated as more important by women, on issues such as childcare and tackling domestic violence.
Whether you support all women shortlists or not, Parliamentary procedures designed for men with few or no family commitments do discriminate against women, and help to explain why more men than women want to be MPs and why many people in selection meetings assume that their candidate should be a man.
I think this discrimination is a much bigger problem then men being discriminated against by having the chance to seek selection in 500-odd constituencies rather than 650. There is a positive loop where more women in parliament means more women interested in becoming MPs and more choice and better candidates for the Labour Party.
Take care
Dan xxx
It would be very, very sad if this were true. Sadly, I suspect it is.
Where would we be if the first female doctors, university undergraduates, pilots, suffragettes, etc had all decided that they didn’t fancy it because there weren’t any other women already doing it? In fact, isn’t it rather condescending to suppose that (even if it is true)? You wouldn’t want to be an MP, dear. No-one else in Parliament for you to discuss knitting and wallpaper with.
I think it’s unlikely that male candidates will ever be asked about their husbands, but I take your point 😉 In my opinion, and I’m speaking as someone whose parent has been an MP, it’s not really any of the panel’s business – that’s up to the candidate to discuss with their family, not for a panel to make value judgements on. But as the situation stands, it’s not really a question that the boys are asked, is it? whereas some panellists consider it quite a normal thing to ask women, with the subtext that they need “permission”. It’s also quite common in job interviews unfortunately.
About me complaining that people aren’t being fair to me because I’m a woman, it may suit you to give me that persona but I haven’t made any complaint, only a remark that I was concerned about Kerron’s comment about the “pro-AWS female blogging community” and that I would get a hard time as a result. I rather wish I hadn’t as you’ve now defined me as “complaining woman” and keep harking back to it, but I did state my misgivings in my first post, inviting you to prove me wrong. You’re still welcome to do so by losing the defensiveness and sarcasm.
I did say that your tone was patronising, which it was, and it was actually completely unnecessary. Consider that a complaint against your rudeness – and please note that I’m not suggesting that you’re being rude to me because I’m a woman or a northerner, or because I have sushi breath or any of these things! As I suggested above, if I haven’t expressed myself properly or you need something clarifying, then you can just ask. If you don’t agree with me then you can tell me. There is no need to be rude, however much you disagree with me.
Damien, from now on I’m not going to argue back about the tone of your posts. It stops here. I really don’t like people being high-handed though – it will encourage me to cut you up, and it doesn’t do your argument any favours.
1. You say you haven’t assumed a level playing field, but then say that it’s up to me to demonstrate that there’s a problem in the first place?! Either there is a problem or there isn’t – which is it? Again, I have to assume that you believe that there is equality of opportunity, as you’re calling on me to demonstrate otherwise.
2. “Your figures demonstrate that parties that don’t adopt policies discriminating in favour of women candidates have fewer women candidates.” Erm… if I had claimed that for my figures then I think you would have been hopping up and down shouting “NON SEQUITUR! NON SEQUITUR!” (As it is, I don’t care that you made a mistake, so please don’t bother to defend yourself). Those figures demonstrate nothing of the sort. They don’t even show figures of women candidates from a party with a system to ensure greater numbers to compare, so how can you draw that conclusion?
What they do show is that the tories and dirty lib dems fielded a number of women candidates. So far so good. Almost all, however, were fighting unwinnable seats. I’m inviting you to consider why that would be, and my proposition is that it is not down to chance.
Out of interest, what those figures don’t show is that even though the tories and lib dems had classed seats as unwinnable, a very small number of women candidates actually won them. The proportion of female candidates winning “unwinnable seats” was actually higher than the proportion of male candidates winning “unwinnable seats”. So there is no question over the calibre of the women involved. (Although plenty you can say about Labour complacency)
Note, I’m not even on to AWS yet, or any type of legislation, so don’t let that distract you for now. Just establishing the issue. I’d appreciate your response to the two above. In fact it might be more helpful not to define me as “pro-AWS”, because it’s only one issue in a broad debate about giving women the same opportunities as men, and enough encouragement to stand for Parliament. In fact, I can see disadvantages to AWS. But my reasons are not the same as yours.
Voila:
[“justified” presumably referring to the previously mentioned hesitation]
It never ceases to amaze me in these comment-box discussions how many people assert false things about what they’ve said and trust that no-one will bother reading back.
No, he didn’t say that at all.
By the way, Catherine, your blog has done a hell of a lot to put me off ever voting Labour again. But not as much as Antonia Bance.
Now the debate is getting a bit more interesting.
We all agree that the proportion of women in Parliament and on party shortlists is smaller than the proportion of women in the general population.
We don’t all agree that this is inherently a problem for representative democracy or for women in general.
We don’t all agree that the principal cause of this phenomenon is sex discrimination by parties or by society.
I happen to think that, yes, this “imbalance” is unhealthy, but that setting a target of of fifty-fifty representation is wrong. I think that sex discrimination (in favour of men) almost certainly plays a part in some constituency parties, but it’s difficult to measure this, and it is likely these days that there is also, even in the absence of AWS, sex discrimination in favour of women in some constituencies.
Even so, things have to be much worse than “unhealthy” before you try any policy of positive discrimination (which means negative discrimination against members of any supposedly privileged group), not only because it is wrong to fight sexism with sexism, but because, as we have seen, you can end up in some cases making things worse than they were before.
Because it is inherently wrong to discriminate between people on the basis of their sex, it is necessary to show that your justification for doing so is serious and that the consequences of not discriminating are worse than those of discriminating. I might agree with you that “under-representation” of women is a Bad Thing, and, because of this, I would support many policies that might fix it. But my or your feeling that something is bad is not enough to justify AWS. There has to be solid—not circumstantial—evidence of gross injustices.
Okay, you got me there: I was over-interpreting the data. And your hypothesis is intriguing. One non-random and non-sexist explanation could be that women are disproportionately represented amongst newer candidates and newer candidates are more likely to get unwinnable seats. Another is that ministers are disproportionately male so those in safe seats are also disproportionately male. (In a way, these are just opposite ends of the same continuum.)
I agree that something probably ought to be done about this and think the most effective approach would be to make the job more attractive to women. This is pretty feeble, I know, but at least it’s not wrong. I’m certainly open to other non-evil ideas. Going back to medicine, to quote Hippocrates:
Actually, I did, but mainly because I was under the impression that Catherine believed that AWS was a solution.
Dan, thanks for your considered response. I am really concerned that there are young people of my generation who don’t support equal representation as a fundamental principle (and feel fit to mock those who meekly suggest it would be nice), and who don’t acknowledge that there are obstacles to women getting elected. I hope that my post above has made these obstacles somewhat more stark.
The problem is not that women don’t want to stand. Although funnily enough, the reduced opportunities for women do put women off – lack of volition is an effect more than it is a cause, and it is a red herring to tackle anything but the cause when it is such a big beast.
The question is, what to do about it? As I mentioned above, positive discrimination is the only thing that is shown to work. As you say, short-term reduced ability of men to stand for their first choice seat (and AWS is not the only limiting factor by any means) is minor in comparison to the situation that women are faced with, and the problems caused by unequal representation. Which is why I can understand Antonia Bance when she writes a snippy post about it – if we understand that, it does come over as selfish and petty to complain about your lot.
So it’s the better of two evils – rather than PD being “sexist”, the current situation is discriminatory and it would be wrong not to act, as other democracies have, to amend it. The problem seems to be persuading people that the big evil exists, and that it’s in our interests to do something about it, especially when they see themselves as being inconvenienced.
Oh, so you did. Oops. In my defense, I didn’t see it because it was in parentheses.
I didn’t say it was a good defense.
Trouble is, your proposed solution involves leaving the existing sexism in place and adding some more.
What didn’t you like, Squander – was it the bit about getting more young people involved in politics, or the slagging the local Lib Dems, or my support for the Human Rights Act, or your jealousy that I got World Cup tickets – or was it just that you can never vote for a party which has a member that links to Antonia’s website?
Because that’s a strong statement considering how inoffensive my blog is – and especially as I hardly talk about Labour policy at all!
As a ‘bloody sheepshagger’ from Blaenau-way, I thought I might intervene….
Blaenau’s rejection of the Labour candidate had nothing to do with their opinion of AWSs either way. It had everything to do with having a candidate imposed upon them from ‘on high’.
Labour, in its arrogance, believed the peasants would vote for whomosever they chose to stick a red rosette on. SO, they imposed an AWS. They were wrong. Please do not demonise us; we are not knuckle-dragging wifebeaters. We simply will not put up with Tony’s sh*t any more, and we wanted to send him a message that he cannot take Labour’s core support for granted any more.
[dismounts from soapbox]