Questions for Womens’ Officers

[WhoWants2Know]

Inspired by a post by Lang Cleg on the “Lily Madigan on Channel 4 News” thread, here is a list of questions about women’s issues to tweet to the Women’s Officers of your local parties, including Lily. Please feel free to add your additional questions and feed back any responses you receive.

LangCleg

Hi Lily - what are your views about the fact that 85% of cuts under austerity have fallen on women? What priority should UK Labour give to this?

Hi Lily - what are your thoughts about the current medical scandal over vaginal mesh? What steps should be taken by UK Labour in response?

Hi Lily - full decriminalisation or Nordic model? What position should UK Labour take? And why?

Hi Lily - what are your views on exclusion zones around abortion clinics? Are there such clinics any in your constituency?

Hi Lily - how do you feel about medical gatekeeping for women who want sterilisation and/or hysterectomies? Should UK Labour take a position?

Hi Lily - what's your position on WASPI women? How high on UK Labour's priority list should this issue be?

Hi Lily - I can be here all night if you like.

Hi Lily - full decriminalisation or Nordic model? What position should UK Labour take? And why

I bet Lily would be pro-decriminalisation all they way. Most TRAs are just like their MRA bros

Hi women's officer:

What are you doing to actively promote more women getting involved in politics?

What are you going to do to address pay inequality?

Do you think that women should be entitled to have their partners stay overnight in hospital?

Do you think that PE in schools should be led by same sex or same gender teachers?

Should women get more sick days off work because they have gynaecological problems?

Do you think tampons/pads should be free?

When we leave the EU will you lead the campaign to remove VAT on sanitary products?

Do you think we should have all women shortlist for MP selection?

Do you think that the Catholic Church should accept people as priests who used to be women, but transition to be a man so they can become priests?

Should Muslim women be forced to accept doctors who are women but have male genitalia? Or should we accept that they just won't get to see a doctor?

Are you concerned about the lack of midwives?

Will you campaign for better post natal care in hospitals?

Should women be given free pads to deal with post natal lochia?

Should women's refuges accept people who have changed their gender?

Why do local branches not concern themselves with proper representation? Women of young children are perpetually missing from branch meetings, councillor nominations and other activities. You’re under utilising a highly-motivated group who just can’t commit with some more sensible thinking.

What do you think the Labour party should do in order to end medical gatekeeping for abortion in mainland Britain? What steps should the Labour party take to ensure women in N Ireland and the Isle of Man have the same rights to abortion as women elsewhere in the UK?

Do you think current legislation, police and social services action does a good enough job of preventing girls being subject to FGM? If you don't think it's good enough what improvements would you suggest to current practice?

How would you set about ending period poverty for women and girls in low income families?

I second what @Callamia has asked. I was thinking about local representation and realised that as long as I have small children I have no practical way of getting directly involved with local politics, either within my local political party or as a local councillor and so on.

What is Labour going to do about period poverty?

What are you doing to support low income mothers after the closure of sure start centres?
What impact will the cut in funding have on DV shelters in your area?

Personally I would not ask anything at all about gender related issues. Drown Lily in the minutiae of actual women's issues!

Maternity discrimination means that 54,000 women are pushed out of their jobs each year and thousands more miss out on promotion if bosses suspect they may start a family. What initiatives should UK Labour undertake to reduce these figures?

Women respond differently to medicines and yet research is known to exclude or under-represent women in medical trials, meaning women are disadvantaged when being treated for anxiety or depression, cardiovascular conditions, dementia and lung cancer. Should UK Labour look to legislate requiring sex balance in medical research studies? If not, why not?

Should entities providing only unisex toilets be required by law to include sanitary bins and wash basins inside each cubicle in order to maintain menstrual dignity for women and girls? Should UK Labour include this in its policy platform?

Women's Officers commonly hold information and consciousness raising sessions for women in their constituency. Do you have any such sessions planned? How will you reach out to Labour women in your constituency beyond the CLP committee members? And what topics will be your priority for such sessions?

(I also think sticking to questions about issues affecting actual women would hammer home the message that different issues affect different groups. Which is why we have women's caucuses in the first bloody place.)

Someone’s going to busy

I love this thread.

The vast majority of carers are women - what is Labour going to do to support them?

I have held the womens officer post in the local branch of my political party.

My role was basically trying to engage with the female membership, encouragement to get them out campaigning, ran training sessions on canvassing & our data input system.
Support for women wishing to stand for elected office.
The role is about engaging with women locally.

Surely most of those questions are for actual elected politicians.

It’s true that the issues need to be addressed by elected representatives. But they are also the issues facing the very people that a women’s officer will be trying to engage. I will want to vote or join a party based on the answers to these questions.

Support for women wishing to stand for elected office.
That would be a great question. What will you do to help encourage local women to run for office?

How have you first X days been? What events and activities to involve women of different backgrounds and ages do you have planned this week.

You are on media outlets a lot. What local steps are you taking?

How many local women have you met in your first X days in office.

Lily’s got no plan - that’s clear.

"My role was basically trying to engage with the female membership, encouragement to get them out campaigning, ran training sessions on canvassing & our data input system."

Am I the only person who finds this massively depressing? I'd always assumed that the role of the women's officer was to make sure women's issues got heard at constituency level. But no, it turns out the job of the women's officer is to co-opt women into serving the party, possibly by taking advantage of their socialisation to be nice and helpful (and thinking of data input as a typically female-gendered clerical support role, push them into typical feminine shit-work).

Pricklyball I totally agree. How fucking depressing. So the role of a Womans Officer is to engage women to do the most fucking menial jobs they can think of.
Do they have some special technique to putting leaflets through doors !
I'm just going to go and bang my head against a brick wall

Fanny, that's really interesting (in a depressing kind of way). Maybe you could say more about how the party works at the local level? Whereas I thought some of the questions were a bit 'high level' for a constituency-based officer I was of the opinion that the WO was supposed to meet with women and represent their concerns as well as 'stand up for' women at that level of the party. I also thought they'd push upwards for policy reform that was popular or relevant (coming from women in the constituency). I'm curious to know what other roles exist at that level and what their briefs are too.

Actually if the role of Womans Officer is just to get women to fill the most menial roles, then I would get rid of the post altogether

What will they be asking the party to commit to towards implementing the findings of the 2016 Femicide Census?

Sorry should have said recommendations not findings.

Lily wants to be more than WO in CLP.
Lily wants to be an MP championing women's issues.
Lily needs to be able to answer these type of questions.