sick of sexism in politics

[sophiap]

Last year I stood as a Labour candidate in the local elections here in Wandsworth. My daughter was 10 weeks old when i got selected, and 5 months by the time of the election. I narrowly missed out but the experience confirmed to me that I really, truly believe we need more mums in politics, but the system makes it so difficult for us to get involved.

So maybe I'm overly sensitive to jibes towards women juggling parenthood and politics. But i saw a twitter spat this morning that really made my blood boil. Some of the local Tories are suggesting that Cllr Rachael Stokes, a Labour councillor in Earlsfield who is expecting a baby soon, isn't up to the job. Of course they're not stupid enough to directly challenge her for having a baby while in office. But it's telling that when taken to task on the right of elected women to take maternity leave, their comment was 'we're all sympathetic, but the need for representation doesn't go away'. On top of patronisingly caling her 'Stokesy', 'nondescript', and 'poor'.

One of the reasons this makes me so cross is that it's part of a bigger picture. Rachel Reeves, Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, is also expecting a baby. Her commitment to the job has been repeatedly questioned, as has her ability to do the job. Would new dads be subjected to this kind of challenge? On the other hand, the Tories up in Walthamstow have suggested the local Labour MP, Stella Creasy, is somehow not up to the job because she doesn't have children and therefore lacks some kind of life experience.

This kind of rubbish is exactly the thing that puts people off politics. But I really think we desperately need more mums involved, both locally and nationally. Seems like there's still a massive culture shift required to get over the attitudes some people have to women daring to have children while in elected office.

Anyway, rant over (for now). Is it just me who feels this??

Makes my blood boil too - there is far too much of this sort of thing in politics across the board. Was it just one specific local conservative - quite a few of our local councillor's seem to be of advancing age so may hold some outdated beliefs. I'd be surprised if the local tories as a whole thought this though - surely some of their councillors must be young mothers too.

Hmmm "sympathetic BUT" is a bit like prefacing something 'with all due respect' = disagreement!

I just had a look and the Council had the grand total of 7 Council meetings last year - all are in the evening so it's about the most parent friendly job you can get. How ridiculous to suggest having a baby could in any way impair ability to do that.

Thatcher had children, both David Cameron and Tony Blair had babies while serving as PMs.

In case you haven't already seen it - have a look at the 50:50 parliament site campaigning for more women in parliament and sign their petition to end this sort of thing.

The local tories have form for this even with women in their own party. Have a look at this story about how they refused to let a female conservative councillor carry on after she took compassionate leave for depression.

www.wandsworthguardian.co.uk/news/9522871.Tory_councillor_stands_down/

By the way, I do know that councillors plural has no apostrophe - I am a useless typist not a grammatical incompetent honest .

Hadn't heard the story about Lucy Allan, shocking if true and surely illegal too?

I'm just sick of our local politicians full stop. Not in a Russell Brand 'not going to votey-wote' kind of way but the campaigning is getting too aggressive and is really off-putting.

My kids were given balloons with the Tory logo on the other day even though I'd said no to the offer. Have you ever tried getting a balloon back from a 4 year old - not happening - so we were stuck with it all bloody week.

This morning Labour were canvassing outside schools! Talk about out of touch with mothers - who's got time to discuss the global economy, education policy, immigration or foreign aid whilst trying to combine school runs to 2 different schools. This time the kids got stickers.

They're children not mobile advertising boards - mine won't be able to vote for another 6 and 10 years!

If this is what it's like here where I don't think any of the seats are expected to change hands.

What makes me cross is lazy politics attributing sexist slurs to a party in the interests of electioneering. I've looked on Twitter and nobody has suggested that Rachel Stokes can't do her job. Please feel free to post all of the tweets if I am wrong.

This sort of negative campaigning doesn't help the case for more women in politics (which I fully support) because it masks real issues that exist. Im sure there are a minority of Tories who are sexist and I'm equally sure that there are Labour, Green,SNP etc supporters who are too. For example I'm a lifelong Labour supporter and I was appalled by Labour's 'male, pale and stale' campaign last time round because that is pretty bigoted in my book. I can think of at least one local Tory councillor who is standing to be an MP and who is a mum to young children. I don't think they would have selected her if they were all as sexist as is claimed.

As a mum who works, runs her own business, runs a charity and is very involved in her community I feel really strongly about this. Don't claim sexism unless it's truly present. Sorry but all this political posturing based on fibs really pees me off. In the last few weeks I've seen people of both major parties accused of sexism and racism without true foundation and it leaves a really nasty taste in my mouth.

Agree flowersandbirds. No idea if this allegation has foundation as still struggle to deal with Facebook so Twitter is well beyond me,
but I'm sure there are dinosaurs of all colours so it's not really a party politics issue even if true.

Where's the tory councillor standing by the way? Good luck to her as I do think we need more women in parliament regardless of what party they stand for. It has always pleased me that 2 out of our 3 wands MPs are women, maybe we can make it 3 for 3!

Sophia, you didn't get elected in Bedford ward because you alienated a lot of people. I was there when you gatecrashed Little Angels at St Anselm's - presumably as part of your attempts to raise your profile before the election. You're a perfect example of someone who wants to be elected but doesn't really have strong views as to what you want to achieve. I note that ALL of the three councillors elected in Bedford ward are mothers (one of them of a baby, one of a gaggle of primary school age children, and one of secondary school age children) and the two councillors who lost their seats were gay men. Is 100% representation of mothers in a ward insufficient for you? Did us voters in the ward complain about the lack of diversity in Labour running three women and zero men? No.

My wife was told that it will be another 14 weeks before HMRC deigns to deal with our child benefit application that HMRC acknowledge receiving on 2 February. According to the person on the HMRC child benefit line that's because my wife and I are not UK citizens but citizens of another EU member state, even though we have lived in the UK for 10 years and I have paid tax and NI on a continuous basis for that period and my wife for over half of it and our previous child benefit application only took 3 weeks to be processed. This is now a standard practice of HMRC - delay payment of child benefit to EU citizens for no good reason - our applications are just put to one side while those of UK citizens are processed ahead of them. Were Sadiq Khan or any of our councillors interested in doing anything about it? Not at all. Next time you show up at Trinity Church at 12.15 p.m. remember there are other parents there who are having to deal with real issues like discrimination by government services not just whining because we are upset by things people said.