Webchat about women/mums in politics with Stella Creasy and Caroline Nokes - 1st February

[JuliaMumsnet]

Hello,

We're delighted to announce a webchat on the 1st February, from 12.30 to 1.30pm with Caroline Nokes MP and Stella Creasy MP about women and mothers in politics. We know that women - and particularly mums - are underrepresented in politics, and that the makeup of those walking the corridors of power affects the decisions that are made. The webchat is part of the work we’re doing to explore the barriers for women and mums and see what can be done to encourage more of them to get involved.

Caroline Nokes is the conservative party MP for Romsey and Southampton North and the current Chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee in Parliament, where she is leading an inquiry into menopause in the workplace. Since her election in 2010 she has served as a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, the Cabinet Office and was Minister of State for Immigration in Theresa May’s Cabinet.

Stella Creasy is the Labour and Co-operative MP for Walthamstow in North East London. She’s worked on legal loan sharks, legalising abortion in Northern Ireland, to tackle tax evasion and the impact of the private sector on the NHS and for stronger action on violence against women and girls. Following the birth of her first child in 2019, she became the first MP to appoint a locum while she took maternity leave.

Please join us here on Tuesday 1st February at 12.30pm. If you can’t join us on the day, please leave your question here in advance.

As always, please remember our webchat guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil. Also if one topic is dominating a thread, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. (We may suspend the accounts of anyone who continues after we've posted to ask people to stop, so please take note.) Rest assured we will ALWAYS let the guest know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Many thanks,
MNHQ

If woman means anything it means nothing.

So no point in discussing.

Are you really so blind you cannot see basic the logic fail? And the consequences?

Be Kind allows weak people to do bad things.

Do the right thing needs strength.

@DoubleTweenQueen

Just popped in to register my great concern and disappointment at the focus and output of the ‘Women’ and Equalities Select Committee.

Women are not a subset.

Have I ever said they are?

Should the Suffragettes have been kinder? Discuss.

@Akela64

I think "be kind" the current equivalent of "know your place".

Adds nothing in terms of policy or resolution.

Perhaps you need to be kind to girls and tell them that they are fully human and not ideas in the minds of men.

not sure if that's aimed at me- no 'be kind' isn't 'know your place'. Being heard is harder for women because of all the systemic sexism and macho nonsense - 'be kind' is lets have a different kind of open, iterative discourse all together which doesn't start from the place that debating is about 'killing' the other persons argument!

@StellaCreasy

fwiw think there's agreement across parliament that so often women aren't in the room - or expected to be quiet when in the room, or ONLY talk about children- so that we're seen not as equal representatives but lobbyists for particular causes. Want to put on record how strong Caroline has been in calling that out and that it happens in all parties!

Telling women to "be kind" will only exacerbate this.

@Blessex

Do you think we are dinosaurs trying to hoard our rights?

No

What do you think about Pips Bunce receiving an award for women in Finance when they are at best, a dilettante in the field of womanhood?

You define women in a way that includes lots of people who simply don't have - and aren't perceived by employers to have - the barriers you then go on to discuss - maternity, childcare etc.

Can you really not see how that doesn't work??

So to rephrase my earlier question. If that quad of decision makers working on behalf of an incapacitated PM had been made up of two men and two males who identify as women, as opposed to the female variety of women, would that have been tickety boo then?

Wow, this chat was supposed to be about empowering women and mothers to take part in politics and its turned into a debate about what is a women, spiraling into the discourse of cys/trans etc which is a great debate but unfortunately is spoiling what this chat was supposed to be about. I don't think the aim was to trigger any one on the topics of gender/id but to include a group that is under represented in politics. What a shame.

Personally wanted to ask about finding balance and strength, how can you be committed to your family and also have a political career? Would you agree that in this type of work women supporting women is a lifeline? I imagine that so populated by men the path isn't welcoming to women in general or is that just an impression? Is the door open or is it reluctantly open? are there politicians who are men who actively work to include women...?

Can either of you tell me: Do the police have the right to "question our thinking "?

Caroline: you say we all need to be a bit kinder, but do we, really?

JK Rowling strikes me as one of the kindest women in public life I have ever come across, and yet she is constantly bombarded with death threats and rape threats, as well as threats of cancellation. Why aren't you telling the people who send her death threats to be kinder?

Let's not forget the man who assaulted Maria Maclachlan, the men who stand outside Woman's Place UK meetings shouting misogynistic and racist abuse, the Stonewall executives who had barrister Allison Bailey removed from her job, the people who post "Die TERF c*s" on Twitter, the activists who bullied Rachel Rooney and Gillian Philip out of their publishing contracts. Why is no one telling them to be kind?

Hi Caroline and Stella. My name is Graham Linehan. I have been visited by police three times, banned from Twitter, lost much of my livelihood, because I think the question "What is a woman?" is actually a very good one. Here is my single question, which I believe can be answered by a simple yes or no.

Is Eddie Izzard a woman?

The honest answer to the question around appetite is, in my view, no. And that is part of the problem, when terms get conflated you get confusion.

Well exactly. But the Blair government legislated to give male people the right to be female and vice versa. That is not scientifically possible, since humans cannot change sex.

The GRA refers to the words "male" and "female" as genders, despite these words having an actual scientific meaning relating to reproductive role in all animal species, not just humans. The Act does not explain what a gender actually is.

As you correctly say, when terms get conflated you get confusion. But proponents of gender identity theory chose to use the words "woman" and "man", and later "female" and "male" for their gender identities, despite those words already existing to refer to biological sex. They deliberately created that confusion because they want to replace the concept of sex in law with the much woolier concept of gender. As a result, we no longer have words in the English language to accurately identify the two biological sexes.

And yet according to the Labour Party, it is "transphobic" to point this out.

If we don’t know what a woman is. Useless having these discussions

Be kind be kinder be kinder than kind 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

What the heck is this

@viques

What are the priorities the police should be following to secure women’s safety?

Aggressively policing a meeting to commemorate a woman murdered by a police colleague?

Arresting a disabled woman in her home and questioning her about stickers highlighting the importance of women only spaces?

Ensuring that men who are charged with violence and assault against their partner are detained when they fail to appear for a bail hearing so that they then don’t attack and kill their partner several weeks later?

I am horrified that not every Police force has Domestic Abuse as one of their top three priorities, they all should and I hope Maggie Blyth as the new national policing lead on violence against women and girls will bring real change and focus. I want to see more being done to address the cultures underpinning male violence against women, highlighting that it absolutely is a gendered crime.

I also think there has been a huge omission in the PCSC Bill - it is all very well and good to seek to lock up violent and repeat offenders for longer. But I want to see the offender journey interrupted. Public Sexual harassment as a specific crime, so that the rapist is identified when he is a flasher and before he has committed a violent crime.

Disappointed in Caroline nokes. So disappointed

🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

@FOJN

Do you think the treatment of MP's such as Rosie Duffield and Joanna Cherry, by their own parties, will put some women off standing for political office?

yes. No women in public life should face abuse nor abandonment and all parties have to change the way they engage with women because public life has become a very toxic place. That doesn't mean we have to agree with what any other woman says, but we do have to recognise that the space for women has been driven by different rules. My unpopular opinion for mumsnet is that women can be complicit in that too by using the same tactics of generalising and dismissing- we don't have to agree on everything to be able to make progress on something if we talk about it. Like asking why there are so few mums in our political spaces!

@SFabios

Wow, this chat was supposed to be about empowering women and mothers to take part in politics and its turned into a debate about what is a women, spiraling into the discourse of cys/trans etc which is a great debate but unfortunately is spoiling what this chat was supposed to be about. I don't think the aim was to trigger any one on the topics of gender/id but to include a group that is under represented in politics. What a shame.

Personally wanted to ask about finding balance and strength, how can you be committed to your family and also have a political career? Would you agree that in this type of work women supporting women is a lifeline? I imagine that so populated by men the path isn't welcoming to women in general or is that just an impression? Is the door open or is it reluctantly open? are there politicians who are men who actively work to include women...?

Agreed - we're going to delete any further questions re trans debate - there are plenty enough on the chat already.

Stella and Caroline. What are your top three issues to resolve in order to get more women and mothers into politics?

@RoyalCorgi

Caroline: you say we all need to be a bit kinder, but do we, really?

JK Rowling strikes me as one of the kindest women in public life I have ever come across, and yet she is constantly bombarded with death threats and rape threats, as well as threats of cancellation. Why aren't you telling the people who send her death threats to be kinder?

Let's not forget the man who assaulted Maria Maclachlan, the men who stand outside Woman's Place UK meetings shouting misogynistic and racist abuse, the Stonewall executives who had barrister Allison Bailey removed from her job, the people who post "Die TERF c*s" on Twitter, the activists who bullied Rachel Rooney and Gillian Philip out of their publishing contracts. Why is no one telling them to be kind?

I don't think at any point I have said there is not fault on both sides. In fact I have repeatedly said we need to raise the level of debate.

My question seems to have been overlooked.

So I’ll just say that, when women calmly set out well researched, evidence based and heartfelt views and are told that they should ‘be kind’ instead, we are not seeing high quality scrutiny by out political representatives. Being a well informed woman is not ‘shouting’.

For what it’s worth I no longer advise my dcs to be kind. I tell them to always be fair, and have firm boundaries.

@JustineMumsnet

"the trans debate"

THIS is part of the problem. It is not the "trans" debate, it is a debate about women's rights and how they are being eroded because the word woman has become meaningless now that it includes everyone!!!!

What are Labour doing about how women feel unsafe with the current state of policing in the UK?

You're not raising the level of debate by refusing to answer completely reasonable questions. You are avoiding a debate.