to not know what difference a female perspective would have made?

[icewoman]

Covid enquiry.

Helen McNamara, deputy cabinet secretary says women were being ignored and disregarded and the female point of view was missing from most decision making

I have no difficulty believing that our revered leaders behaved like a bunch or ignorant arrogant chauvinistic pigs but I do wonder what, if anything, a female point of view would have changed about the decision making?

"it’d all very class-inflected too - ‘I have a cleaner so the gendered division of labour is no longer a thing "

Absolutely, crap DH? Pay a woman to do what he can't be bothered doing.

Yes all of this.

Not being able to exercise with someone outside your household -not so much of an issue during the first lockdown when there was plenty of daylight, but not so great during the January 2021 lockdown, especially with the restrictive rules in Wales and Scotland.

The lockdown did have a greater negative impact on women.

There were times it was glaringly obvious no woman had been involved in decision making. The supermarkets that hazard taped off the tampons aisle as non essential, when barbers were planned to reopen before beauty salons, despite involving similar levels of closeness...

And as above all of the decisions that showed no-one in the room had to worry about their safety being out after dark, or how much more important leaving the house is when it's a tiny flat with no outside space or you live with a violent person, or how the fuck to educate your kids and keep your job.

Women were definitely missing in a lot of those conversations but so were a lot of other groups.

Remember how men could go to the barbers but women's beauty salons remained shut.

Yeah. That.

FFS.

It would have meant women's views were included.

So when they heard that PPE didn't fit women they might not have just shrugged and ignored it.

Diversity is a strength. Group think is shit - Johnson's government was an echo chamber full of muppets.

Nothing. The Little Boys' Trublu club doesn't pay any attention to things that can actually help women (although any second now the Billy Goats Gruff's mates will undoubtedly be along to bleat that it's only the Tories who know what a woman is).

If you read the entirety of this here thread that you've started instead of just digging into your position with no real justification for your opinion, you might find the answers are staring you in the face. 🧐

what an odd post. I started this thread feeling that surely there must be a huge advantage to having women involved in the decision making, although unable to articulate why. I have read this thread very carefully, and come to the conclusion that no one else can coherently articulate why either, so far from not reading, and digging in, I have read everything, and changed my opinion completely.

Lots of people from this thread have coherently articulated the answer to your query. Over 50 people, in fact.

No reason a man couldn’t have thought of all of those.

The issue is that the people in power didn’t give a fuck about ordinary people. Still don’t. Carrie Johnson was supposedly pulling all the strings (according to Dominic Cummings), seems her “female perspective” didn’t help much.

Never mind, I am sure you are good at other stuff.

That sounds like a policy made on the fly by the then director of communications or some man in a similar role.

I only remember when they closed schools down again, they couldn't work out what boroughs were actually in London as some London Boroughs are "Royal Borough of". They also didn't work out that children in London can end up in a school in a neighbouring borough because the neighbouring borough is across the road.

I also remember when they did their tiers they forgot that if you live in some London boroughs you can walk to the Home Counties. Some attractions that were in the Home Counties e.g. temporary ice skating rinks, christmas farms closed because the owners knew while they could legally stay open they would end up with people walking up to 5 miles or cycling up to 20 miles to get to them from London.

Well, I was hoping they would, but I am not seeing that really, just quite a lot of quite inaccurate and very sexist responses. I am going to read that book invisible women though, and have already downloaded it

The policies are still being complained about by those who previously hadn't done, and didn't want to do, their own childcare!

The policies are still being complained about by those who previously hadn't done, and didn't want to do, their own childcare!

Are you suggesting I either hadn't previously looked after my child or didn't want to......

It wasn't that I didn't want to look after my child, the issue was trying to look after my child, homeschool and work full time.

Think of the way our world is structured when it comes to men and women. Then think about what it may mean if only men input into decisions such as pandemic response. Can you not see you need diversity of view? Women make up over 50% of the population.

Women in politics have had to fight hard to get there and I think are harsher than some of their male counterparts. But they do tend to have a clearer vision of what they want (thinking Liz Truss, Margaret Thatcher) whether it is good or bad. Either way Boris was just the show pony for the party, Carrie was really in charge which I think reflects some of the decision making.

But really you need a good mix in any situation. Volvo only started using female crash test dummies in car development when women engineers started coming through and pointing women were not just small men but there are some fundamental differences which impact safety.

This. The "stay at home" narrative was written by people with lovely spacious homes to stay in. Without any regard for those in very different circumstances.

Invisible Women is very interesting on this and I imagine will change your perspective OP. The main point being we are all wired to see our experience as the ‘default’. And in general in society to see white middle class male as the ultimate default.

If you don’t have diverse people around the table, you don’t even understand that there are differences from your own experience.

In the book there’s an example about snowploughs - when men were making the decision they cleared the main roads first because that’s what they needed to get to their important office jobs. Injuries reduced when they switched to clearing side roads first - because women were carrying on with their caring responsibilities (generally involving side roads) - taking dc to school, checking on elderly relatives, doing the shopping - regardless of the weather. They couldn’t just not do those things. But it didn’t matter in the slightest if everyone had to wait an extra 30 minutes before leaving for their office job.

Ultimately the more diverse the decision making group - and open to recognising we all experience things differently - the better.

A female perspective that men in power actually listened to would make a significant difference. But sadly we don't live in an unimaginable fantasy world.

It makes a difference because men, especially very privileged ones, don't understand how things impact differently on women. They just assume everyone's needs and problems are like theirs.

I read 'Invisible Women' during Covid and there was a section about disaster recovery that sadly reminded me how our government would make every error of omission described by that chapter in how we endured and came out of the Pandemic. And sure enough, they did.

This is basic biology. Do you not want to understand? Surely.

Helen McNamara gave done examples in her contemporaneous email.

Another recommendation for Invisible Women! It should be compulsory reading!

There's no point sobbing over the lack of women in the room if the actual women who would have been in the room were as shit as the men. And Carrie didn't exactly do much did she, despite apparently being the power behind the throne.

We could have done with a bunch of sensible women making key decisions but they weren't in government at the time

Here you go. Click the drop-down in the article for her statement on this:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/nov/01/covid-inquiry-boris-johnson-leadership-criticism-oliver-dowden-uk-politics-latest