What would benefit women most?

[Annalouisa]

There have been some interesting feminist campaigns recently - from #metoo to everyone's invited and Reclaim the Streets following Sarah Everard's murder. All three campaigns had some initial impact and enjoyed five minutes in the public eye. It got me thinking: what grassroots campaign could be organised that would actually make this a better place for women, or make women better equipped to 'live strong'. I had some initial ideas, but would be keen to have other people's perspectives, please:

a) self-defence bootcamps for women
b) a women's university (there are two women-only colleges in the UK, but there are Oxbridge ones, so not accessible to most, and no women's colleges at all in Europe)
c) a coaching, mentoring or MBA type programme specifically targeted at female middle managers, to get them to want to step up to senior positions so they can then have a bigger say in corporate settings and provide role models for the next generation of women
d) work placement scheme/careers talks targeting 14-16 year old girls to encourage them to consider all the various career options available to them, and provide a first placement in that career, so they get a taste and can use that experience in UCAS applications, apprenticeship applications etc.

e) financial planning workshops for women, covering all those things that are specific to women: best financial savings/investments products to save up money for maternity leave(s) or saving up for IVF, the need to have some sort of job even if it's at minimum wage to keep up national insurance, the basics around mortgages, working freelance/contracting, setting up your own business and so on... I'm stunned by the number of women on MN but also IRL who make themselves utterly financially dependent on men, usually after having a child without being married, with no financial safety net or Plan B.
f) something totally different - whatever that may be.

By the way, I know some people say cheaper childcare would make a huge different to women's ability to 'lean in' but if you think about, childcare is already provided by poorly paid women, not sure how paying them less than minimum wage would advance the feminist cause, unless of course the government started paying (more) for childcare directly to the nursery nurses/childminders, increasing their wages while parents paid less or nothing. But that seems rather utopian.

So which of the above would make the biggest difference to "advance the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes", in your view?

We need men to step up. If they won't contribute to the burden of unpaid labour physically then taxation should pay for child care and social care to allow women greater access to paid employment. I think in Norway even employing cleaners is tax deductible. Properly paid parental leave, affordable childcare, working conditions that don't penalise parents needing to get home for kids or having time off when kids are sick, properly funded social care and emergency leave rights so workers can take time out to tend to elder relatives when needed.

I vote to reopen nominations. All of these put the onus on women to fix themselves as the 'problem'. Men to be required to take paternity leave, enforce the results of pay audits, wholesale reform of the police etc

"Economic/financial independence is the only way forwards for women, in reality."
So, a working basic income or the old unrestricted dole system and council housing. Or something even older, like the right to grow at least some of our own food with allotment land. Either we all, men and women, need more ability to work out of the home with less pressure on being unavailable for children, or subsidised childcare. It is so much cheaper on the continent it is difficult to believe.
I also wonder about a male contraceptive pill, to give men more control /responsibility for children - however looking at the female pill it may be used to put yet more pressure on women to have non-reproductive sex.

One male and one female MP in every constituency?

Completely stamping out sexism in schools. Girls need to be free to learn without sexual harassment and assault. Boys need to learn from an early age that it is unacceptable.

Globally, easy access to clean water.

I tend to agree that at the moment retaining the sense of women as a group defined by material reality - biology - is the most important. So much else falls from that.

I also think a significant look into sexual assaults and rape in the justice system, but with a different focus than what people tend to think about. There is a tendency to say, we want x number of reported rapes prosecuted, or we want to see so many win.

Obviously what we want is, when crimes happen, for them to be appropriately punished. But there are a lot of questions about how best to achieve that, and I think we need a systematic look at what makes these cases difficult to prosecute and win. Not with some pre-conceived idea about the outcome we want, or what we think should be true. Or with the idea that disparities always mean there is some sort of unfairness. But a really unvarnished look at how these cases work and the outcomes.

I tend not to think education is a specially needed initiative for women - they are not worse off than men. While better education access would be great it should be across the board.

I am also not so inclined to be very enthusiastic about efforts to get more women into the workforce or into more highly trained jobs. This will of course be helpful for some individuals, but there will always be many jobs and people which aren't about a lot of training. Many women will still be in jobs like that. And there is a conundrum involved in making childcare very cheap or free - it tends to take away choices around staying home with children. Both because as a woman or family, it becomes too much of a cost to give up the second income when childcare isn't weighed in the balance, even if she would rather not. And because when two income families become the norm, it changes the economic environment.

My list:

1. stop allowing men to call themselves women
2. a complete overhaul of the system to combat VAWG - from the approach of the police and courts, to penalties for men who harass, stalk and abuse women, ending domestic violence, porn, prostitution, teaching about sex-based violence in schools, support for victims
3. affordable childcare
4. affordable, secure housing for lower income families
5. better, cheaper/free access to legal advice and representation, especially family courts, sex discrimination
6. an enforceable child maintenance system
7. a compulsory exam for everyone seeking election to public office, the syllabus and papers to be written by Allison Bailey, Karen Ingala Smith, Pragna Patel, Joan Smith, Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Caroline Criado Perez, Joanna Cherry, Jane Clare Jones, Rosie Duffield and Emma Hilton.

The last one might be a pipe dream...

@Summerhillsquare

I vote to reopen nominations. All of these put the onus on women to fix themselves as the 'problem'. Men to be required to take paternity leave, enforce the results of pay audits, wholesale reform of the police etc

Agree!

@Summerhillsquare

I vote to reopen nominations. All of these put the onus on women to fix themselves as the 'problem'. Men to be required to take paternity leave, enforce the results of pay audits, wholesale reform of the police etc

I like the idea of 'making' men take paternity leave. I'm sure there are downsides to it, but as long as it's not too drastic, say two weeks, it will at least normalise paternity leave, and those who want to would from there on be more likely to use shared parental leave. I guess you can't really force men to take paternity leave, because men, unlike women, don't have to report to employers, authorities etc. whether they are "expecting". Or I have got this wrong? I'm just thinking how would you enforce it? Otherwise I like it. As a side benefit, it would put the Jacob Reese-Moggses of this world (and irresponsible men generally) off having a dozen children... Just imagine, they'd have a child and actually take care of it

@PickUpAPepper

One male and one female MP in every constituency?

This is the sort of idea the Daily Mail would love to hate, but I think it actually has merit in addition to the obvious gender equality/equal gender representation, namely...:

I read that women are less likely to be want to be in top management because women (generally speaking) prefer a different type of working. They (we) are less likely to crave that 'absolute' power and the isolation that being top of the pyramid brings, and women generally are more likely to prefer collaborative working. Okay, maybe it;'s a bunch of stereotypes, but there are studies to support it.

Anyways, so having one male, one female MP would be good because:

1. women would actually apply for and want to do the job
2. it would bring more people into politics that actually want to get work done, and not just posture, fan their egos and prance about in parliament and employ their wife as secretary
3. Two MPs, one male, one female, working collaboratively are more likely to be truly represent their constituency
4. finally, there is merit to compromise. Certainly, there'd be a better quality of debate and reasoning when two people of equal position have to agree on something.

Regarding requiring a female MP in each constituency, that doesn't do anything to remove or improve the barriers that exist to women standing as MPs currently. Why don't more women stand to be MPs currently? What are the barriers? Why can't we look at removing those first?

Regarding women in higher level management, is it about personal choices based on gendered ways of working? Or are there other barriers? If it really is about women wanting to be collaborative, then what could be done to change high level management to be more collaborative? Do companies always have to be run in a rigid hierarchy in a pyramid structure?

Equal pay for similar jobs
Strict quota on equal representation in parliament and in the workplace
Misogyny is a hate crime
Funding maternity leave so it doesn't cost employers more to hire women.
Cheap childcare for pre-schoolers
More financial responsibility for children between both parents, especially absent ones
Control of online porn - age limits and type of material
More resources for schools across all areas to reduce inequality
Social housing
Free childcare for returning to education

I think the previous comment about barriers is spot on. We need to stop shoehorning women into a world designed by and for men.

This is personal but being taught about fertility. Things like the number of pregnancies that end in miscarriage and the fact that fertility drops off a cliff mid 30s. What IVF is and the failure rates. Why adoption is not an easy path. As PP mentioned financial impact of having a family taught to boys and girls. It seems like SRE is such a sacred space but we have to embrace the fact we live in a secular society and educate young people appropriately. The fact it took so long to introduce SRE in schools is one of the great embarassments and failures of the 20th century in my opinion.

@AssassinatedBeauty

Regarding requiring a female MP in each constituency, that doesn't do anything to remove or improve the barriers that exist to women standing as MPs currently. Why don't more women stand to be MPs currently? What are the barriers? Why can't we look at removing those first?

Regarding women in higher level management, is it about personal choices based on gendered ways of working? Or are there other barriers? If it really is about women wanting to be collaborative, then what could be done to change high level management to be more collaborative? Do companies always have to be run in a rigid hierarchy in a pyramid structure?

Yeah, I'm not sure this kind of approach of requiring a certain number of women works well. I'm not convinced it's done the LP, and by extension voters, any favours.

I have just finished reading Kingdom of Women, looking at a matrilineal and matriarchal tribe in China. I am beginning to think we need a wholesale change, moving away from the model that centres men at all costs.

Our society is fundamentally broken because it shunts the needs of women and children to one side. Fix that and you fix a lot of other issues at the same time.

@TheABC said "Our society is fundamentally broken because it shunts the needs of women and children to one side. Fix that and you fix a lot of other issues at the same time."

Certainly seems that societies in which women have good basic rights are more likely to be prosperous, less likely to be involved in wars etc., but not sure if that's because women's rights are a sign of a 'civilised' society.

But it's not clear to me how we can move away from a male-centred model. And now we've entered the model where being a woman is apparently a 'state of mind'. It almost sounds like a feminist concept, but somehow is the opposite.

On a related note, I heard or read somewhere that the LGBTQ+ movement is for some reason quite male-led, and that lesbians don't feature strongly. Not sure if that's true, but certainly reading related threads on mN it feels like the whole transgender debate is about men's rights (to be a woman).

The transgender rights brigade has made good headway - everyone adding pronouns to email signatures, new signs on bathrooms etc.

What can the women's rights movement (if there were one) learn from that campaign/that approach? After all, the whole email signature thing is not law, but somehow it's quite widespread now. What 'small things' along those lines could women achieve? How can we alter people's perception of reality within a short space of time... Maybe we need a cool reality show a la Drag Race to make the cause more popular and glamorous...

Rhymes your idea is brilliant!

7. a compulsory exam for everyone seeking election to public office, the syllabus and papers to be written by Allison Bailey, Karen Ingala Smith, Pragna Patel, Joan Smith, Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Caroline Criado Perez, Joanna Cherry, Jane Clare Jones, Rosie Duffield and Emma Hilton.

Pay women for care, for children and relatives. I've never understood why we advocate for paid childcare but never consider it worth paying if it's the child's own parent.

Our economy is built on women's unpaid labour.

Clearly define what a woman is in law (adult human female), it doesn’t matter what is put in place to support or promote women’s rights as long as someone with a penis can lay claim to those rights.

Imagine being more bothered by trans people having equal rights, than being concerned about the impact that cutting Universal Credit will have on hundreds of thousands of women. If you talk about male privilege, and don't acknowledge your own, then you are no better than those you criticise.

Ban on violent porn with appropriate sentences
Huge sentences for paedophiles, rapists and domestic abusers
A massive campaign to empower good men to break predatory culture - a complete culture change in men
Lessons in schools and all organisations to dismantle implicit bias against women
CMS being like council tax as pp mentioned
Rape prosecutions sorted out
Huge campaign on women's body confidence and breaking this new plastic surgery culture
Men being encouraged to take paternity leave
Extremely flexible working where possible
The definition of women being rooted in sex

Imagine being more bothered by trans people having equal rights, than being concerned about the impact that cutting Universal Credit will have on hundreds of thousands of women. If you talk about male privilege, and don't acknowledge your own, then you are no better than those you criticise.

Oh I’m unhappy with cutting universal credit, but any measures put in place for women (genuine organisational requirement for particular job roles, for example) is undermined when a man decides he will self identify and is appointed to that job. Safe spaces for women become unsafe when men are able to self identify as women and gain access to that space. A woman can train for years in her profession of choice, to watch a man then take accolades due her.

So, having a male and female MP in each constituency requires that we know what female means, having a mentoring scheme for women in business requires that we know what a woman is. Because any initiative designed to protect or promote women is rendered ineffective when men decide they’d like a bit of that too and can adjust their identity accordingly.

It’s not about trans people having equal rights, it’s about trans people eroding women’s rights, if the definition of a woman includes men.

@Jellycatspyjamas

Clearly define what a woman is in law (adult human female), it doesn’t matter what is put in place to support or promote women’s rights as long as someone with a penis can lay claim to those rights.

Absolutely. Some people might even say this was a feature of the ideology, not a bug.