Cameron's hiring a special adviser to tell him which policies might not be great for women...

[edam]

it's obviously too tricky for all those men around the cabinet table to think about the impact of their policies on 51% of the population...

christ imagine trying to get in an advisor with a different perspective to help in an area where you've been criticised for not showing enough consideration.

damned if he does....

At least he is i suppose!

Could he not ask his wife?

There are plenty of free women advisors here though. Why doesn't he just read now and then?

and then he'd be slated for that too.

"ffs he gets hauled over the coals for his party policies and their effect on women and his reaction is what? to ask his wife as though we're all one homogenous group and that asking the little lady should appease us all? give us a pat on the head and send us off happy? get a effing specialist in like you would for any other area of government policy. Nobody would think it acceptable if his response to a claim of racially discriminating policies was to ask his one black mate..." etc

I don't support Cameron one way or the other, but griping about getting a specialist advisor in on an area he's been criticised just shows that someone is looking for something to complain about one way or the other. If he'd sought nobodies counsel on the issue I'd bet the OP would slate him for his inaction.

at the idea that anonymous posters on a website are being elevated to the position of "free women advisors"

may, there are a lot of professionals here. There are a lot of high level debates. There's a whole feminst section. Why not?

because there's also a lot of uninformed idiots.
It's no more a breeding ground for "free women advisors" than walking up and down any street asking random women their opinion, which may be helpful but I wouldn't class them as government level advisors.

I disagree. I've seen many government level advisors post here. But I do spend a lot of time in the SN section. Perhaps we're all just there.

RADICAL suggestion: why doesn't he just put more women in the Cabinet?

There may well be government level posters on here, no doubt about it.
My point was simply that the proportion on here is going to be about the same as going into any random shopping centre or office block. There's the same amount of thick or smart people on here as there is in the real world so I don't know why reading mumsnet is a more viable option than walking down the street asking women at random and I'd imagine that people who are willing to slate him for getting in a specialist advisor would just as quickly slate him for doing taking the "ask random women on the street" option

I don't think you have to be particularly smart to work in government or to advise them. Stupid decisions and policies are being written/passed regularly.

Given that ordinary women like those on mumsnet - or indeed those walking down the street - get to vote for the next govt, I'd have thought our 'ordinary' cross-section of views were a lot more relevant than some high-faluting 'government level' specialist advisor.

Govt is full of specialist advisors with not a ruddy clue about real life or how daft their policies might appear to real voters - hence the recent Steve Hilton debacles.

The govt needs a lot less specialist advisors and needs to spend a lot more time listening to the concerns of real people or 'voters' as they're otherwise known.

But focus groups aren't about finding out what people think, they are about finding evidence to support an already decided policy.

Mayor, can you not see how ridiculous it is to try to hive off 51% of the population to ONE special adviser? Cameron is supposed to be leading the country, FFS, not just the proportion of it who carry 'Y' chromosones. Every minister and official at every level should be thinking 'does this policy have a particular impact on women/men/the elderly/the young/those in the middle etc. etc. etc.

Alternatively he could just, you know, obey the fecking law and carry out the gender audits that are supposed to be compulsory. If he'd bothered doing one on his first budget, he might have noticed that it was hitting women disproportionately and not got himself into all this bother in the first place.

Mail was being v. naughty as well, in the print edition they used a big pic of the chair of the WI, to make it look as if Cameron had appointed her. Which he definitely has not.

The Fawcett Society has been talking about how his policies impact more on women then men for some time now. Even that bastion of middle class British womanhood, the WI, has said his policies are unfair to women. Did he listen? No. It's only now, when he fears he might lose votes, that he decides to appoint an advisor.

As someone else has said above, more women in his own cabinet would have been a good start.

I hope he next appoints an 'unemployed person' advisor, an 'I didn't go to public school' advisor, etc., and grows some bloody empathy!

... a disabled adviser, an elderly adviser, a child.... his policies have hit all vulnerable groups except middle and upper class men. Rather than thinking he can just tick a box for 'women' with one adviser, shouldn't he, and all the rest of his cabinet, be automatically thinking 'human being does not equal posh bloke. How does this policy affect everyone, not just People Like Me'?

I agree, the problem is not that he is finally realising he needs to listen to women: the problem is he thinks he can get away with treating it like a minority issue

as if being a woman was a rather uncommon, slightly unusual affliction that you take specialist advice on

Excellent posts edam and cory.

lol Damnyouautocorrect
DOn't be silly, he doesn'T actually want to improve the status of women. As he says, he just wants to convince women that he's doing a good job.
Two completely different things altogether.

anyway, I see his point. Women are such time-wasters. All they do is care for young children, the elderly and the disabled. You know, the type of unecessary work society can do without.

As Henry Ford said "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse". Most people don't have a clue about how to run a country for the benefit of all - hence why the Daily Mail is so popular - and very few have any genuinely innovative ideas that would work in practice. Even today, faced with the biggest financial crisis for 80 years, and with govenments going bust across Europe, there are still those that cry foul at the very thought of reducing government spending by a single penny. These people don't live in the real world and god help us if they were ever taken seriously.

Cameron has consulted an expert in her field and, somehow, that's a bad thing! WTF?

"Cameron has consulted an expert in her field..." about being a woman (?)

"Women" are not a homogenous group

an expert in her field?

what is she an expert woman then? how do you get to be an expert woman? do you have to practise everyday?