Mumsnet Webchat about women/mums in politics with Stella Creasy and Caroline Nokes - 1st February

For all the 'be kind' comments and 'higher level of debate' - they both seem quite quiet about the abuse women, mums and MN is now receiving because of the webchat. I notice Stella has commented on it but this is actually the perfect opportunity for Stella, Caroline and their parties to prove they're serious about encouraging women and mums into politics.

If yesterday wasn't just lip service then they should all put out a robust statement saying women having a discussion and asking questions isn't 'radicalisation'; that the posts on Twitter completely prove our point that abuse is a barrier to women participating in public life (whether that abuse comes from MPs; MSPs; journalists; men; women).

If they're serious about anything they came to discuss yesterday then the furore has given them the perfect opportunity to step up.

And just to add, I am raging that middle class Twitter always assumes women who are articulate must be middle class and from the home counties. Lots of us are neither of those.

I have a feeling the Wiggly Baby will haunt Stella's career as it goes.

I don't really care if a woman has a wriggly baby on her lap and says so, though I can see your points about forced teaming. It's fine to try and empathise/build rapport with your audience and given that it's 'mumsnet', okay.

What I DO care about is whether a politician is willing to listen. Are you, Stella? Because if you were, I'd love to talk to you, and so would many women here.

Until they do, its a waste of time, because they have no interest in change and just pull rank and the party loyalty shit. The leaders have been doing it since the early 1980s. Ironically they are terrified of the trend locally for independents threatening their dominance and the fact they are not attracting younger people into the party locally to stand (Nimbyism hasn't exactly helped young people move to the area).

Half the problem is the party system itself tbh. People don't want to go into politics because of the bullshit of the party system.

Its Party before Country.

The HoL is interesting, because it has cross benchers and party loyalty has a tendancy to go out the window more frequently (in part because if being cross bencher is a viable option the threat of losing the whip doesn't really hold much weight).

Politicians need to address why women - much more than men - feel they aren't represented by parties, so why WOULD they want to stand for election for a party who doesn't want them to say certain things or spare your inconvenient experiences?

There are SO many reasons why women, especially women with children, aren't going into politics.

Being able to have your wiggly baby with you because Parliament is so backward it doesn't do maternity leave, really fly on the radar of most women who are politically aware but don't feel they want to work in politics...

I think the above poster has it when she said the baby line wouldn't have been used with a male 'professional' audience. Dumbing down for a really educated audience was never going to land well.

That is how it came across to me.

The juggling a wiggly baby line bugged me and I have been trying to work out why.

I'd suggest it was attempted forced teaming and that's why it made you feel uncomfortable.

Just look at the shitshow in Scotland to see what can happen without a second chamber. I'm politically homeless.

I used to rail against the HOL and the fact that those who are members are unelected. Completely changed my mind now as its become obvious that there needs to be a second house where the member's main concern isn't whether or not they'll get re-elected..

There's simply too many career politicians who've gone straight from university into politics, with no life experience. There needs to be a huge push at grassroots level to encourage people to get involved in local politics - village hall committees, community councils, local party political groups etc as well as regional and national politics.

Or that jounalists pick up on things and then ask the right questions from that.

I don't trust politicians to pay attention or listen anymore and thats the problem.

Ah yes, but they just dismiss us as a transphobic cult, and not reflective of women in general, so they don't have to engage with a tricky subject that might personally inconvenience them 🤷🏻‍♀️

Political researchers put together focus groups to see how groups respond to issues. A thread like this should be gold dust for them, in understanding what a huge number of women are saying. I hope grown up politicians will listen. Eventually they will have to.

I think there is a problem between politicians who do it for a career and those who do it out of a greater sense of duty.

If you are in your 80s,the chances are you are no longer doing things for a career if you are still working in politics...

Must admit, @RedToothBrush, I thought the Lords was a terrible establishment because it was Proper Establishment.

Then I read about Lord Hunt and wrote to him about a woman's issue. That led to me learning more and now I'm a massive fan of the HoL - if it wasn't for a very small core of sensible people women's rights would have been fucked. I can't believe how close we came to losing "mother" as a word.

I emailed Baroness Nicholson one Saturday night at 2am, I was thanking her - and I got a reply straight away. "It's far too late to be working, especially at the weekend!" One word reply, "Afghanistan". She's 80 years old, and she's up in the night working to help women and children in Afghanistan. Makes me well up.

There are people in the HoL who are actual heroes.

Thank goodness for them.

I thought Posey Parker was brilliant on this.

*@MNHQ themselves should really think about this better. Any session with politicians should really try to have a starting point which starts encouraging politicians to ask questions of the public and for THEM to be learning not posters asking questions of the politicians so they can be educated. The whole problem is that politicians shouldn't be telling, they should be listening and thats why web chats with politicians always go wrong. *

Yes! Thank you. We are not sitting here waiting to be bloody educated by politicians.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding among some in politics - they don't govern the electorate, they serve and represent the electorate. That's how it's supposed to work.

The Lords have actually done some worthwhile stuff in insisting on amendments in recent years because there are many people who were selected to become Lords based on their life and work experiences.

There is a lot of dead wood in there, but I do wish we'd perhaps value what it DOES have to offer a little more.

Well, I've long-since added you to my Dream Team, @RedToothBrush.

I do think there is a need to get back to politicians who had a career or some life experience before taking a seat in WM.

The narrow group who study Economics, Philosophy and Politics at Cambridge/Oxford and land up as career politicians worry me.

Where are the ex trade unionists, medics, businessmen, service industry, retail, carers, working class people, immigrants, women, disabled people, multi faiths and none?

Instead Stella came on to TELL us what to do. When many of us have tried to engage but have been made to feel that we are not welcome or wanted

This gets to the core of how I feel. Stella wasn't interested in what other women see as barriers she wanted to lecture on what she sees as barriers. The juggling a wiggly baby line bugged me and I have been trying to work out why. To me it felt like Stella used this as a prop to distract women from their concerns to divert themselves to Stella's concerns instead. Same as the repeated reference to this mum votes, honestly I think Stella was only here to push her own campaign she had zero interest in anything else.

But no. I really am just sat at home on my sofa lamenting the fact that I'm not an obnoxious tone deaf dickhead so not really suited to politics.

I think my biggest problem is these two clowns don't seem to have come from the starting point of going and ASKING women, what their experiences of politics have been and WHY they wouldn't go into politics or if they have tried to engage why they gave up and what would make you change your mind.

Instead Stella came on to TELL us what to do. When many of us have tried to engage but have been made to feel that we are not welcome or wanted. Thats a crucial point.

You get better debates by asking the right questions to begin with. That would have made the framework for yesterday's debate a whole lot better in the first place.

Instead it was more 'ask the experts their opinions'. The whole thing was the wrong way around and think thats where webchats are utterly flawed.

@MNHQ themselves should really think about this better. Any session with politicians should really try to have a starting point which starts encouraging politicians to ask questions of the public and for THEM to be learning not posters asking questions of the politicians so they can be educated. The whole problem is that politicians shouldn't be telling, they should be listening and thats why web chats with politicians always go wrong.

The power dynamics of this are glaring. Once you see it, you can't unsee it - you don't belong, you aren't welcome, you have the wrong beliefs.

@RedToothBrush

I really hope you are in politics, Red.

And people (many of whom are just jumping on the bandwagon, many of them sexist men) whinging and concern trolling that the web chat was "taken over" by requests to define "woman" is beside the point. They had to choose from the questions which were posted. Most of them were from GC feminist posters. No one else was bothered about the webchat enough to post questions, or their questions would have been answered to avoid the difficult ones. No one even asked for a favourite biscuit

Creasy and Nokes say that women shouldn't be gender critical and haven't had the guts to say 'I don't agree with GC women but it is essential to women in politics and democracy in general to ensure they are welcomed into politics, not demonised and actively participate in politics in a productive way within the system'.

Every time women are push out of the system by whatever bullying and marginalisation techniques (both of accident and by design), it only reinforces the message that 'politics isn't for me'.

You can't go on a webchat for encouraging women into politics and then say 'be nice, that subject is off limits and we've had enough of that now' precisely because that gives the opposite effect to the one you are trying to achieve, because it looks like a top down control which fails to listen and engage and allow women to say what they want on their own terms.

This this this. I can't understand the huge cognitive dissonance these women manage to maintain around listening to women's voices.