MNHQ here: webchat with MPs Jess Phillips and Flick Drummond

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello,

We’re pleased to announce a webchat with Jess Phillips MP and Flick Drummond MP, co-chairs of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Women and Work, on Monday 23 January at 2pm.

Monday sees the release of the APPG’s first annual report, which explores the broad theme of ‘women returners.’ It has considered ‘a range of diverse issues which impact on the ability of women to return to the workplace, particularly after taking maternity leave or fulfilling caring responsibilities.’

Jess Phillips is the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley. Before this, Jess spent five years working for Women’s Aid, and served on Birmingham City Council, where she was appointed Birmingham’s first ever Victims’ Champion. Since being elected to Parliament in 2015, Jess has served on the Women and Equalities Select Committee and the Backbench Business Committee. Last year she authored a guest post on Mumsnet in support of the Reclaim the Internet campaign.

Flick Drummond is the Conservative MP for Portsmouth South. Prior to her election in 2015, she worked as an insurance broker, Ofsted lay school inspector and was a member of the TA Intelligence Corps. Flick now sits on the Women and Equalities Select Committee, where her work has included contributing to the Gender Pay Gap inquiry, in which she called for more flexible working conditions to be offered at the start of employment. Flick cites her own experience of re-entering the jobs market after raising her children as important in giving her a first-hand account of the unique difficulties that women face in the workplace.

So if you'd like to talk to Jess and Flick about women and employment, returning to work, their experience of being women MPs (or just plain MPs), sounding off on Twitter or anything else that takes your fancy, do please join us on Monday. As always, please do keep in mind our webchat guidelines - one question each (follow-ups if there’s time) and please be polite!

Thanks
MNHQ

Jess, I was rather shocked by your trite, glib and frankly ignorant comparison of the Cologne NYE sex attacks and 'Birmingham on a Saturday night.'

Please can you explain your thinking? Or why you felt it politically expedient to minimise and dismiss these events?

I would like to ask your thoughts on transgender children.

It used to be very difficult to be offered any hormone blockers, now that is the default position, and if they are refused there is no other help available for children with gender identity disorder.

My child has the same issues now as they did before they were offered blockers, but, because we declined them as I feel my child is too young we now have no support at all.

Desperate parents who have very confused, possibly suicidal, children are being forced to take an all or nothing approach and this is impacting everyone and causing more problems than its solving.

If the new policy of self identification isn't helping women, children or people genuinely struggling with gender identity disorder then who is it helping?

I know this wasn't initially set up as a webchat on trans issues. I'd like the request that if you only answer one question in that area, it's Fish's.

Hi Prettybotanicals, I think Jess was saying how women have to put up with distressing assault all over the world, especially in crowded places. It was not a trite comment, rather one that empathized with victims of assault, drawing attention to the fact that it's a shocking widespread problem.

Jess and Flick
Will you be attending the Parliamentary debate on 27th January around #KeepKadcyla which Siobhain McDonagh MP has secured? Breast cancer is a mainly a women's issue and many of the women with Her2+ metastatic cancer are younger patients with families who would dearly like some more time.

Actually ignore my previous post, the debate is not on 27 January.

The debate is on Thursday 26 January at around 2pm. It would mean a lot to many women if you attend and if you could urge your colleagues from all sides of the House to attend as well.

molly the comment was made in direct response to a question about Cologne. The answer was facile and insulting in the extreme and showed a profound lack of empathy and research disguised as whataboutery and virtue signalling.

I disagree with that PrettyBotanicals. I agree with Molly's interpretation, that it was Jess's way of saying that British men have got nothing to be complacent about when it comes to sexual harassment.

However, Jess will no doubt clear it up tomorrow when she's here.

Yes, I would like Jess to clear that up. I watched the Question Time programme, and ,IMO, PrettyBotanicals is absolutely correct. It was facile and insulting, but she does have a record of this behaviour anyway.

Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us.

There are several barriers to women returning to work including poor healthcare provision for women with birth injuries, long waiting list for obstetric gynaecology and proctology appointments can exacerbate injuries and can have lasting effects on women's well being and confidence.

How will the committee improve access and quality of health care for women with birth injuries?

After the amazing women's marches on 21st January what next to ensure that women's rights are protected? What do you see as the challenges faced by women, particularly in America, given Trump's presidency?

We raised five kids while running a couple of eco-enterprises from home . There was a lot of flying marmalade during some client meetings around our kitchen table but all the kids (now young adults) are thriving - and so are the businesses!

Flick. Will you be speaking to Mrs May before she meets with President Trump and ensure she stands up for women's rights?

I have also asked a question about the trans-ideology, but if you are confining your answers to one question per topic, I would also like you to answer the question by FishInAWetSuitAndFlippers.

A week ago it was widely reported that Ian Huntley was considering transitioning to a female identity. While this may not be true of Huntley, other violent male criminals have been housed in women's prisons because they have stated that they are now female. Would you think Ian Huntley, or an offender with a similarly violent history, was a woman, with the right to accommodation in a female establishment, if he said he identified as a woman? If not, why not?

Hello, Flick and Jess. My question's for both of you, in light of Jess's support for the Transgender Equality Bill.

Trans rights directly conflict with women's rights in many areas, particularly regarding the privacy, safety & dignity of women and girls. The only response to date has been to say "trans women are women." This raises an interesting point:

If we cannot define 'woman' or 'female' by any biological markers, then what do we mean when we talk about women's healthcare, education, sports, life chances and so on?

If women/females can be biologically male, sex discrimination means nothing. Are you comfortable with throwing out all sex-related laws in favour of gender?

Thanks.

Hi Jess
You support the Reclaim the Internet campaign to stop online abuse especially misogyny, sexism, racism, homophobia and intimidation online. Women are being abused online and intimidated on a daily basis for simply saying male and female bodies are different. Lesbian women are now routinely shamed and abused for not considering male bodied people as sexual partners. This is clear cut misogyny and homophobia.

We as women are having our rights and protections threatened and we are being vilified for daring to stand up to those threats. It is the most vulnerable women who stand to lose the most - women in domestic violence refuges, women in homeless shelters, women in prison, who have a right to safety from rape and sexual assault by male people, however they choose to label themselves.

The Women and Equalities Commisssion is prioritising mens feelings over womens safety. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest than a man who identifies as a woman is any less of a risk of being a sexual assailant than any other man. The only evidence suggests that violent crime rates are exactly the same for men and men who identify as women.

It is well known that all systems of self declaration invite abuse.The report to the government from gender specialist regarding prison makes this consequence abundantly clear- there is a rising tide of sex offenders now claiming to be women hoping to be moved to womens prisons. How do you justify proposing a change to the law that will put the most vulnerable women in our society danger?

I suggest to you that you put it to the Women and Equalities commission that there is a third way which upholds the rights to safety of men who wish to present as women but which also upholds the rights of womens safety. In Italy there are prisons for men who identify as women. In Britain let us make similar facilities so that everyone is protected. Let us recognise in law- there is a difference between male and female. Woman is a physical reality not a feeling.

So, something like 80-90% of questions on this thread are about the impact of transactivism on women and gender non conforming kids.

This is what matters to us. Please engage with the topic today.

Hi there,

Thanks for speaking with us. I also have a question on Transgender, so I would really like you to engage on this topic today.

If I may:

Do you think Kelly (Frank) Maloney is a suitable case study to have on the NHS website? Maloney has been touted in the media as 'brave'. Maloney also fits the profile mentioned earlier in this thread of a late transitioning middle aged man. Maloney has a self confessed history of domestic abuse and has been quoted in the papers as having attempted to strangle his now ex wife. Anyone who has worked in front line Domestic Violence support will tell you (as will research done with perpetrators such as the Duluth Model) that buying into the idea that men assault women due to 'being under strain' is a myth. I'm wondering if you feel Maloney is therefore a suitable NHS case study?

Plus, if Ms Maloney did the same now, that crime would be recorded as being committed by a woman.

Secondly, I wonder what you felt about the Press Officer of Planned Parenthood tweeting yesterday that they'd spent the Women's March in Washington scolding feminists for holding up 'cissexist' placards that talked about women's bodies, women's biology, and women's reality and telling them off for being 'transphobic' and 'trans-exclusionary'?

Gender Self Identification is law in the USA. The American Midwifery guidelines have already deleted the word 'woman' as this is exclusionary to men who have babies and women who have male sex organs (although, I believe the correct line now is that the penis is a female sex organ). If women can't talk about women being the bearers of new life, and about reproduction, where does this leave us?

I appreciate you have had lots of questions on this topic, but I'd really like to see you engage with the detail of women's concerns on this issue.

If self-identification is introduced, then quotas that allocate spaces to women (on leadership programmes; on company consultation groups; on political representation programmes, etc) will be open to men who identify as women.
The young Greens have already changed their terminology to have a 'male group' and a 'non-male group'. NB not a female and non-female group. Women are losing spaces yet again.
How do you, as individual MPs, and as members of your committee plan to protect women's rights to leadership programmes, to representation, to training, to equal opportunities and equal salaries when self-identification would not only skew statistics but take such opportunities away from women?

Hi all

Thanks for your questions so far. We will certainly ask Jess and Flick to address the issue of transactivism, but do please bear in mind that the webchat marks the publication of the APPG's report on women and work, and leave space for questions on this and other issues.

Thanks

MNHQ

That's great KateMN because my question is about the impact on women in work if we lose sex based protections and our ability to name the problem

And mine was about access to training and positions earmarked for women in the workplace.

Hi Kate

The problem is that so far it's proved almost impossible to get anyone to listen to us on these issues.

Maria Miller didn't come for a webchat & has dismissed any concerns about the transgender equality report as being from "purported feminists". The BBC have produced one balanced documentary amid a swathe of pink/blue brain content. The Women's Equality Party give their opinion and then disappear.

This is the first opportunity we've actually had to discuss the erasure of sex-based protections and the fact that gender-confused children are being pushed to take chemotherapy drugs with horrific side effects with members of the Women & Equalities Committee.

Mermaids is the main organisation consulted by government and organisations about transgender issues. They often quote statistics that 59% of trans kids consider suicide and 48% go on to commit suicide and use this to strongly promote the idea that parents should support their child to transition early else they'll end up dead. However, these trans suicide stats are based on a laughably tiny sample (of 27 trans kids) and there is no statistic evidence this figure is any different from ALL KIDS (over 400 cis-gender sampled). ALL kids are having a mental health crisis, not just trans kids. Do you support the use of Mermaids statistics as a basis for transitioning children early (with the use of puberty blockers for example) or do you think more evidence is needed before society agrees on a consensus and denigrates parents that favour a supportive wait and see approach. Especially as most of these children will grow out of their transgender given the chance and simply become gay or lesbian. Jess - you are on the committee proposing changes to the Equality Act in relation to trans identity. What is your view on this please.