Webchat with Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality Party and London Mayor candidate, Tuesday 19 April at noon

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to welcome Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, ahead of the London Mayoral elections, on Tuesday 19 April at 12 noon.

The Women’s Equality Party was set up in 2015 “to unite people of all genders, diverse ages, backgrounds, ethnicities, beliefs and experiences in the shared determination to see women enjoy the same rights and opportunities as men so that all can flourish.”

Sophie was elected leader of the Women's Equality Party in July 2015, and in January 2016 was voted to represent the party in the London Mayoral election. She says she is campaigning for “work that works, affordable housing, equal caregiving, equal enterprise, transport that works, affordable housing and an end to violence against women and girls.”

She worked as an international news agency journalist for nearly twenty years and is an ambassador for the National Autistic Society, campaigning for better support and understanding of autism, particularly in women and girls.

Please do join us on Tuesday at 12 noon if you can, or post a question for Sophie here in advance. And, as ever, please do remember our webchat guidelines and do be polite.

The London mayoral election will be held on 5 May and you’ll need to register to vote by 18 April, today. (Keep your eyes peeled for more mayoral candidate webchats in the next few weeks.)

Thanks
MNHQ

Right, so we should just sing kum ba ya and focus on the bigger picture?

I guess that's a valid stance in its own way, but I can't help feeling you've avoided the problem that numerous people are flagging here, namely that trans rights and women's rights have some obvious points of conflict and currently no-one - not even the Women's Equality Party - seems to be coming down on the side of women.

Your statement just reads like slightly woolly thinking. So many of the policy areas you've named, and structural challenges you've mentioned, have their roots in female biology. But you're not going to name that or think it through, because it might upset some trans women? It just doesn't make sense.

Hi Sophie, what opportunities are there for WEP members to shape policy? As with many others, I joined because of the party's stance on the Nordic model but am increasingly concerned that WEP accept gender self-definition. However those of us with vulvas define, we will still be oppressed and victimised because of our biology.

This is my follow-up question, as allowed by the rules.

You haven't defined "trans woman", Sophie. Is someone with a male body and a working penis, who has grown up with male socialisation from birth, a woman, just because they call themselves so?

(And no, this issue isn't a question of either "hating women or hating trans women" - there are some extraordinarily brave trans women who have come out in solidarity with women here, and who don't think that living as trans women means they should trample all over women's boundaries, and who don't put themselves front and centre of every discussion about women, or push into women-only spaces - and for this they've been hounded and vilified by trans activists just like many women here have. If you truly think that "women v trans women" is the current frame of the debate, then you haven't done enough reading, or you've only talked to a very narrow range of people.)

I think you've misunderstood Beauvoir Sophie and not answered the question Female become women and are oppressed as women because of their biology and their genitals.

Soz Sophie, no WEP for me. Lost this woman's vote

Have you looked at, and learned from, the #greenpartyfeminism thread on Twitter? Do you realise what problems are in store for you if you do not come down in favour of women as a definable sex-class?

@megadude

If you do become Mayor of London, what can a person do if they find themselves being treated unfairly in the workplace because of their gender, that they couldn't do before you were Mayor? I'm thinking of things they can practically do to get support.

Hello and thanks for this question. I think the Mayor should lead by example to build fairer and equal workplaces in London. Our policy would be to make every job under the Greater London Authority flexible by default and open to job-sharing unless there is a good business reason not to; publish pay with full transparency and establish equal pay for all; ensure that part-time jobs are paid at the same hourly rate as their full-time equivalents; and make gender-balanced senior appointments for all positions and boards under the Mayor's control.

WE would establish an Equal Pay kitemark and use the Mayor's commissioning power to push for equality.

I would also set up a Mayor's task force to work with employers to tackle employment discrimination and build workplaces that celebrate diversity, not only because it is the right thing to do but also because it is the smart thing to do. We will prioritise bringing down the alarming rates of pregnancy discrimination in employment.

As part of our wider UK policy, WE would lobby the government from City Hall to restore the provisions in the 2010 Equality Act to permit dual discrimination claims where, for example, a woman feels she has been discriminated against as an older woman or as a BME or disabled woman.

WE would also like to lower the fee for issuing an employment claim from the current £250 to £50 and remove the hearing fee of £950 altogether.

@slug

Hi Sophie. How's Grace doing? Lexi says hello

How lovely to hear from you! Grace is doing well, thank you. And we send lots of love to Lexi

Thank you for attempting to answer my question but I feel you have missed the key point. While I might want my husband around because the postnatal care is inadequate I do not want other men around. However that is a very much a secondary issue to the fact that there will be women on the ward who should not have to tolerate my husband on the ward and whose needs are greater.

Postnatal wards should be safe spaces for women.

@DrDreReturns

How do you propose to increase the lamentable number of women working in IT, and some other STEM fields?

WE have introduced an ambitious STEM manifesto as a part of our London policies. In short: better education and reducing stereotyping, setting up a London Venture Capital Fund for Women, strengthening investment in women and encouraging equal apprenticeships, push for tech enterprises to adapt to certified ‘tech inclusion’ accreditation schemes such as the Tech Talent Charter, appointing a female Tech Icon for London, and more.

Another voter list here, Sophie. That was a load of flim-flam and you know it. Women are discriminated against because of their biology, which they are born with (as a girl, a young female). But thanks for referring to concerned women, many of whom are mothers, and mothers of daughters, as 'vicious'.

Thank you for your honesty. My follow-up question: would "gender balance" mean that women would have to compete with transwomen & non-binary people, a la the Green Party?

Lost

Hi Sophie,
What's your opinion on Green Party Women's use of the phrase 'non-men.' Have you considered changing the name of the Women's Equality Party so as not to exclude all those oppressed groups that do not define as men? Non-Men's Equality Party?

@0phelia

I understand the WEP believe the Nordic Model on prostitution is best for women and Prostitutes. I agree with this.

Can you explain how you might lobby for this in the face of an incredibly male-led "Democracy". What are your plans to promote this?

Thank you for bringing up our position on the global sex trade, where some of the worst human rights violations of our times take place. Because you also mention democracy, we are indeed trying to change that, to make it less male-led, and I think we can.

As for how we gather support for ending demand, which I think is the only way (or the least bad answer as the Guardian put it recently!) to decrease sex trafficking and sexual exploitation, it is one of our great challenges. Because we do not only need good politicians, but also a strong civil society to push through change. And currently, parties, organisations, feminists and more are divided on the issue.

The Women’s Equality Party would like to start a national debate about these issues, including about the harms of the sex trade and the consequences of enforcing the deep rooted ideas behind the notion that men can buy access to women’s bodies. As Mayor, I would like to examine police and local authority responses to prostitution across London and put in place support and exit services for people who have been victimised by the sex trade. We are also in conversation with many of the organisations and alliances that are trying to push this issue.

Sophie, firstly thank you for your response about the post natal ward issue, However, whilst it's brilliant that you are looking at protecting space for mothers, it still doesn't seem to address the issue of the other women on the ward having to share their space with strange men. I gave birth and spent my time alone on a postnatal ward 9 years ago. It was lonely and isolating. I was dealing with lochia, being catheterised, bleeding profusely, trying to establish breastfeeding, in pain and unable to move. I was absolutely at my most vulnerable. As a rape survivor to boot, if I had to spend my time surrounded 24 hrs a day by strange men, it would have tipped me over the edge. This really needs to be looked at in terms of the needs and rights of all women on a ward, not just the individual mothers and their partners. It may be lovely for them but it has a potentially huge impact on others.

Secondly, thank you for your statement about the trans issue, I imagine it was a bit daunting coming in to that thread. Having said that, whatever your stance on women and inclusivity, the new proposed laws suggested by Maria Miller will, whilst increasing much needed rights for the trans community, have the inadvertent side effect of potentially making it easier for predatory cis men to access womens spaces. As I understand it, laws of self definition will be pretty easy to abuse - NOT by trans women, who have been sharing spaces with us for years, but by men who plan to harm women either by assaulting or just by looking at their bodies. Can you reassure me, as someone who desperately needs to have a safe space to change without being inadvertantly triggered, that the WEP would be happy to campaign for a third space, so that we have male, female AND gender neutral spaces for all, so ensuring the privacy, safety and dignity of everyone. I don't want trans people to suffer and I want them to have as much protection in law as possible, but not by reducing safe spaces for biologically born women.

Not born, but becoming a woman is a Simone de Beauvoir quote, Osmiornica, but I doubt this is what she had in mind.

"I think you've misunderstood Beauvoir Sophie and not answered the question Female become women and are oppressed as women because of their biology and their genitals.

Soz Sophie, no WEP for me. Lost this woman's vote"

Yes to this 100X

Sophie, with all due respect but your approach is BS. This is not meant in a vicious way, as you indicated above, just a simple summary of an utterly bizarre, bended, try hard approach to thinking about women and policy.

"Your statement just reads like slightly woolly thinking. "

No, not slightly woolly but utterly contrived, out of touch with women's lives and, in the end, irrelevant.

I also agree that the party for equality, all equality is the Socialist party. The Women's Equality Party is irrelevant apart for its own members.

RiverTam I, too, would be interested to know which comments here, and which of us, Sophie thinks is "vicious".

Gosh, I love Simone De B and have worked myself through most of her writing over the years. The Women's Equality Party has absolutely nothing in common with DB's thinking and intellect.

Yes I do think our biology is a great cause of our discrimination. Only women can make babies which is necessary to society but it's so often at the root of discrimination in life. And if even we don't reproduce our physicality and 2000 years of patriarchy are used to oppress us.

While I find some of the vitriol against the trans community abhorrent and I could not in good conscience discriminate or castigate another marginalised group (because I know what that feels like and it's horrible ) I find the idea we're not born women very problematic.

I do think a better position would be to support women, who are by default defined by sex which is biology, while also standing by other marginal groups and refusing to collude in their oppression.

I am old fashioned enough to believe that one is not born a woman but rather becomes one. The process of becoming a woman is a messy one, filled with contradictions and influenced by many different factors, depending on where we are born, who our parents are, if we grow up in poverty or affluence, if we are able bodied or disabled, if we live in a war zone or somewhere relatively peaceful and so on. For some reason, every society also divides us into groups, depending on the colour of our skin, the shape of our genitals and often, on the accent that we speak with and the name that we bear.

Follow up question:

Just to clarify, so the WEP is fighting for equality for all who choose to identify as women (of either sex) as opposed to all adult females who may or may not identify as women?

In your OP you state
"The Women’s Equality Party was set up in 2015 “to unite people of all genders, diverse ages, backgrounds, ethnicities, beliefs and experiences in the shared determination to see women enjoy the same rights and opportunities as men so that all can flourish.”

My understanding was that women don't enjoy the same rights and opportunities fundamentally due to the sex they were born with. Is this not the case?

Yes. I'm happy to support trans rights. Just not at the expense of women's & girls' rights.

@SpookyRachel

I'm interested in the issue of sexism and sexual harassment in schools, and I see the Women & Equalities Select Committee is going to address that. What are your views on what could and should be done?

Hello, SpookyRachel. WE have very specific policies to tackle this.

It's vital we teach the next generation to respect and protect each other. In London our proposal is to fund specialist sex and relationships classes in all London schools to help our young people form healthy relationships and understand consent. We will also work with the London Child Safeguarding Board, OFSTED and NHS England to encourage a whole-school approach to tackling violence against girls, ensuring that staff are trained to recognise and respond to signs of violence.

I think this is one of our most important tasks, because sexual harassment and sexism in schools is a major threat to equality of education for girls.