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?

At the extreme risk of seeming like I am defending Boris (I am not, he is the lowest of the low) much of the justification and backup for the policies came from the Saintly and Much Revered Chris Whitty. He was Following the Hallowed and Holy Science.

Boris didn't follow the science. He said that as a shield but it was not true.

Bitter as I am, it would make my entire fucking year if one of the total fuckwits who argued that starving the elderly of support and company until they died of sheer despair was 'necessary' would have the tiniest bit of integrity and courage and admit they were wrong.

I just want one of them to say 'yes you had a point' rather than acting now like they didn't spend 2020 shouting and roaring about people taking two walks a day like a mindless arsehole.

One supposed friend of mine argued that I shouldn't go and support my severely depressed relative after the birth of her baby. She argued that I had a duty not to spread covid, essentially saying that it didn't matter if the baby was neglected or my relative descended into a pit of hopeless despair as long as I followed Bojo's rule to the letter. I don't talk to that 'friend' any more but I can just about guarantee that she's criticising Bojo with full voice. ARSEHOLE.

Do you genuinely think 'following the science' is an actual thing? It would actually make me feel better if the level of general ignorance was that low, it would explain a lot.

I’d take one admission on here from the shouters demanding restrictions, and who scoffed, belittled any suggestions of harms to women and children.

It’s not bloody rocket science. If you close down childcare, support networks, keep vulnerable with abusers wtf did they think would happen

But yeh I’ll take an admission of being wrong.

I honestly think that more women making the decisions would have had a huge impact. It was very clear, both during the pandemic and even now, that decisions were being taken almost solely by those who had somebody else to do the 'wifework' - whether this was an actual wife, a nanny, staff etc, they were never, ever going to be impacted, or even hardly need to think about the consequences of the decisions that were made.

WFH while homeschooling for months and months with no defined end date quite honestly was hell. My DC were 6 & 8 at the time, good kids and neurotypical, it was an absolute nightmare and has done almost irreversible damage to my mental health. I cannot even imagine how awful it must have been for others. My very first thought was 'but what about the kids, how are we going to make that work?' I don't for a second think it crossed the mind of any of the decision-makers, they were too busy doing Important Man Things, and never more than during the pandemic was this more apparent.

I think following the guidance of your advisory panel, which will include scientific advice, is a good idea.

I think following confirmed advice based on scientific knowledge (e.g. don't shake hands on a visit to a hospital you stupid arse) is a good idea.

I think capitalised Following The Science was a meaningless slogan like everything else that came out of Johnson's mouth.

He hid his real views IMO and then flip flopped endlessly.

It's worth pointing out too that a lot of what the government did aligned with advice from the World Health Organisation (also a very male dominated organisation) and that Sweden, who didn't throw children under the bus, was heavily criticised by the WHO.

I hope people learn from this that you should always question what you're being told and look at the evidence in front of your eyes rather than believing some made up story being told for someone else's benefit.

I agree with you on the harms. We needed anyone to recognise it, and many female politicians were pro harsher restrictions anyway. That’s what caused the damage.

I want top level representation for children and young people and something should be in place for women. Idk on their sex, just a realisation of the damage caused.

Just from the point of view of reflecting the actual real world, I think more women should have been involved in the decision making process around covid but I really don't think it'd have made much difference. The world was gripped with a narrative, which was covid matters, fuck everything else, and it was almost impossible to speak out against that - people who tried were largely drowned out or actively silenced. That wasn't really to do with a male/female divide.

Sweden comes out better for women and children

It was derided on here though, by many continuously

The government ignored plenty of WHO advice too.

The problem really was the government didn't know who to listen to or what they wanted to do because their guiding principle was not 'how can we minimise harm to the general population' but 'how can we benefit from this politically'. With a little side order of dodgy contracting.

Not true, you mean YOU wouldn't have thought of these things 🤷‍♀️

This.

What I want to know is, why are so many people pretending they didn't see this fallout coming? I predicted every single inch of this, everything, from day one. I'm not a soothsayer, it was all totally obvious. You close schools, children suffer. That is just plain logic. What the fuck was going on with people that they wouldn't see that in 2020?

Yep: so much this.

I’m with you. What the fuck happened?

I don’t know if you saw on here but this site was a prime example, and it’s female dominated.

It was a horror show and posters could not deal with harms to women and children being talked about.

I probably would have @Firebug007 but "women" are as disparate as any other group with a vast range of experiences and opinions. So it's safe to say some would have but not all.

I agree to a certain extent, but only in the sense that the Tories knew for example that they should reopen schools in January 2021, because keeping schools closed for months is very plainly and obviously a bad thing, but they didn't do that because members of the public objected so strongly. If they had been trying to minimise harm, they would have pushed the reopening through regardless of attitudes, but they were too cowardly to do that.

Maternity care restrictions. Remember when pubs opened before women could have birth partners?

That said, I do agree with the poster above who sa8: that this site is female-dominated and contained the most savage baying for continued and more stringent restrictions I read anywhere - and any tentative suggestions that restrictions could maybe, possibly, cause harm in other ways was absolutely shut down and anyone who wasn’t wholly supportive of lockdowns was a MURDERER.

But I have a suspicion that people who were being paid not to work and really enjoying it were overrepresented on here.

If they cared at all about children they would have had consistent policies focused on school protection. But they did not care.

We were arguing all the time on here between government lockdown (which obviously had insufficient thought and mitigation) and the 'open everything up who cares if loads of elderly people die' stuff which was also mad.

A proper government would have done the WHOLE thinking process from Jan 2020 differently, meaning every step would have been different.

We had the worst government at the worst time. They'd already hollowed out every agency - the NHS, civil service, local government, etc. Then they managed our inadequate resources with callousness and incompetence.

Mumsnet was mad back in February/March 2020... women were many of people shouting for schools to be shut.

Hindsight is brilliant. I would have felt totally different 3.5 years ago if I knew it was only this week I would start to think my then 6yo, now 10yo, is fully over the anxiety she developed. She actually has a proper friend again.

A lot of women dying from blood clots or suffering from long covid might have been prevented had the government taken hrt / birth control into account

Yes but I think it was not just those not working, probably included posters with childcare through ‘keyworker’ places

The fact that you saw it as a discussion between lockdown and 'open everything up and who cares if loads of elderly people die' actually sums up the entire problem as far as I'm concerned.

Elderly people died from lockdown, so the distinction between lockdown and elderly people dying is a complete nonsense.

The fact that anybody saw it as one or the other shows how little people are able to actually think things through.

Oh, I'm sure you're able to think things through with far higher levels of sophistication than me

Some people have amazing hindsight, it's a genuine talent.