Government launches inquiry over sexualised marketing to children

[CatherineHMumsnet]

We're pleased to hear today's news about the government launching an independent inquiry into the sexualised marketing of products to children, particularly because of our Let Girls Be Girls campaign. Here's the story.

BadgerPaws "However that doesn't mean that I'm in favour of a system that denies people access to jobs or political representation based upon their sex."

Now we're on the same page. Now we're talking.

How to overcome the small dilemma of the fact that women are denied access to jobs and political representation on the basis of their sex?

"I just don't have the time or inclination to go through a lot of theoretical possibilities."

But they're not theoretical.

If you have a 50:50 system then in some seats you will tell women that they cannot stand as an MP.

Equally the voters there could not choose to return a female to parliament no matter how qualified or suitable she may be.

You can't say "we need to do this but we're only going to worry about the problems once we've done it".

Any realistic proposal is going to face far harsher and more rigorous examination than I'm giving it here.

"How to overcome the small dilemma of the fact that women are denied access to jobs and political representation on the basis of their sex?"

Enshrining discrimination in law is certainly not the way to go.

Yes I believe that there is a problem where the "old boys network" of local party activists basically guarantees that a male will be selected as a candidate for a seat.

Perhaps something such as forcing political parties to put candidates up to an open vote amongst their members rather than a secretive ballot from a select few might make a difference.

In the end their are more women than men, and that's a lot of voting power. If women swamped the local XXX Party with members and then were all entitled to vote for which candidate the party put forward you might see an improvement on the pathetic 22% figure yet still not have to say to people "you cannot have this job as you are a woman/man and the law won't let you".

"What makes these 22 countries?Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Burundi, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Macedonia, Mozambique, Nepal, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Rwanda, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania and Uganda?successful is that they have each instituted changes in their electoral and parliamentary processes, recognizing the importance of equity between women and men in decision-making"

Don'T sweat it BadgersPaws.
People- men and women- first came up with ingenious excuses why women could not vote...

..then trotted out another lot of reasons why they couldn't go to uni..

...now we're facing a lot of rhetoric of supposed reasons why women should not be equally represented in parliament, why we should not have a legitimate government- a democracy...

In 100 years time, the "excuses" for not having 50% of women in parliament will be laughed at, just like today we laugh at the idea that education renders women infertile. The bureaucracy you're talking about is nothing but an excuse to keep 80% of seats for the men. And what a bunch of clowns we have there too.

Gender-based discrimination must end

IN other words, I don't think the old boys network can be overcome. It's rock solid.

"Gender-based discrimination must end"

And we're going to end it by having legally enforced gender discrimination?

"No Miss X you can't have that seat because that one is reserved for men under the 50:50 law".

I do want to see a more representative parliament rather than the 22% shambles we have at the moment. But I have a deep dislike of opening or shutting certain doors and choices to people based purely upon their gender. Just because certain party selection committees almost certainly do it does not make it right and we shouldn't have to sell out our principles of fairness and equality in order to overcome them.

Let the old boys die, and be replaced with more reasonable people. Not ideal, but better than biased laws.

"What would you do BP?"

Well one suggestion is above, open up the closed back room candidate selection processes for the political parties.

"I don't see any other viable solutions."

I don't see a 50:50 quota which will put legally binding gender discrimination back into our political system after so many fought for so long to see it removed as being "viable".

Or perhaps we halve the number of constituencies and each one returns a male and a female candidate.

"The system will not change itself."

No, but the voters can make it change. The last few generations of politicians have worked very hard to disenfranchise the electorate and to make them feel that they don't matter. Well they do. If every single woman in a constituency refused to vote for the local party chief's son Nigel Bagpuss-Faversham and demanded a female candidate then you'd see them sit up and listen pretty sharpish.

We already have biased laws- laws which allow men to continue to be overrepresented
It's time the bias, the gender discrimination ended.

LAws should be made enforcing gender equality.
I'm not willing to wait the 400 years it will take for women to be equally represented at the current rate of change

"It's time the bias, the gender discrimination ended."

And we're not going to end it by putting in place a law that says "you cannot possibly be the MP for this constituency because you are the wrong sex".

"We seem so far from that it's depressing."

Well we're not just far we're further, I'm sure previous Parliaments have done better than to have 22% of it's members as women.

I do see that there is a problem.

However as I've said putting in place a law that will blatantly slam the doors on people choices purely because of their gender to me seems wrong and a big step backwards.

But you don't want gender equality, Sakura, you want laws biased towards females - forcing a set percentage of seats to be held by women regardless of whether they oust a better male candidate.

Should we not allow the elctorate to decide who they want to represent them in Parliament instead of imposing arbitary quotas.

Under FPTP or AV a quota of a certain demograph can't be guranteed with it effectively rigging candidate selection in constituencies so its a non-starter.

male candidates will always be regarded as "better", MrManager, because under this patriarchal system whatever women do is trivialised.

We have consistently had a bunch of clowns in parliament over the last few years: evidence enough that the people only got where they did because they had penises.

That is why gender equality will only ever be reached by quotas.

Gender equality is the goal , that is what I want, and if that means riding roughshod over the old boys' networks, then so be it.

These men cannot continue to run society on behalf of women, however competent they believe themselves to be

Why not let all members of the local party vote for the candidate then? Why does it have to be a forced thing? That's undemocratic.

no, what is undemocratic is for the culture of politics to be inimical to women.
As it stands the government is illegitimate

Having 80% of one gender representing another gender, when they are only 48% of the population is the epitome undemocratic.

There is some favouritism, some elitism going on allowing this one group to persistently represent the people.

And yet they're more than happy to take women's taxes....

Completely undemocratic

If there were shortlists, quotas, more women would come forward. It's an incentive.
After equality is reached, we can piffle about who the best person for the job is.

A man is not the best person to represent women. 30% of the men in parliament right now are not the best person for the job.

Did you vote for a woman Sakura?

Yes, the gender balance is not representative of the country as a whole, but it would be far more undemocratic to literally control who can or cannot hold any given seat.

Women do not need shortlists and quotas to come forward. If they do, fuck them, they're going into it for the wrong reasons. If the desire of public service isn't enough, they'll be plenty of other people, women and men, to replace them.

"A man is not the best person to represent women". Illogical, irrational nonsense. Do you also think that women can't park, and all men love football? This 'men are from Mars, women are from Venus' bullshit that the genders are like two different species needs to stop.

They are not two different species, but they have different interests. WOmen are poorer, for example, a lot poorer than men. They carry out the majority of free care (childcare, special needs care, care of the elderly) I could go on. Women are being failed by the current system. (and don't get me started on the COndems)

It's not to far a stretch to say that men come forward more often for the role because a lot of them have got a woman at home taking up the slack. So this is a political culture that is inimical to women, especially mothers.

I hazard a guess that it has been designed that way to justify keeping power in men's hands. Meetings starting at 2p.m and going on well into the evening. Comletely unecessary and designed to exclude primary carers i.e women.

If we're going to reach equality by the means you suggest, there will have to be some serious research into how to make it more accessible to women.

You forget that the reason so many men are freed up to do the work is because women aren't.