Barriers to women advocating for their rights/ being involved in politics

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

What do you think are the barriers and what could remove them? I was thinking of:

• Social media usage. It's a much more aggressive sphere for women than for men so many women (myself included) just don't use it. But this removes the chance to interact directly with MPs. An example is the CoL nonsultation which was originally only circulated on Twitter, to Ed's followers. Both Ed and Twitter disproportionately block/ ban women.

• Lack of knowledge or resources to bring legal action. Strategic litigation is a well known tactic in political warfare, but when it's abused by well funded lobby groups/ captured orgs like the EHRC women have very little ability to fight back. Not only do we not have the money for legal action, many of us have too many caring responsibilities for it to be possible. Thinking again of the CoL thing where a judicial review/ legal challenge would set such an important precedent but is just beyond the resources of many women.

• Protests/ meetings. I would love to attend the WPUK meetings or protest the Stonewall event, but I have 2 under 2, one of whom is EBF, and no childcare options, so it just isn't possible atm. Almost certainly the same for a lot of women.

• Lots of women, but single mothers certainly, don't have the time/ head space to be checking the gov website for consultations to respond to. Discussions affecting women's rights need to be advertised to us, like WPUK did with the Metro ad.

• Even small things like the Holyrood debate happening during the school run. Not deliberate I'm sure, but obviously stopped a lot of women attending.

What other barriers can anyone think of that make it harder for women to defend/ lobby for their rights? This isn't the last big challenge we'll see, so I want to try and future proof our ability to respond quickly!

Being responsible for minors/being a carer for another adult.

Cost of transport/cost of non-working day.

Inflexible work hours/school hours.

Socialized feelings of lack of competence.

Traumatic to be under potential abuse when already have a history of living with abuse.

Obv not all apply to all women. Those are my barriers.

Right now, the stigma and vilification of women wanting to preserve women's rights is enough to put anyone off.
Words like "Terf" were designed to, and work to, demonize any woman who wants to keep in place rights that were granted to women by previous generations. That is the biggest barrier.

Personal circumstances wrt caring responsibilities. Cost factors as I work to make ends meet, and travel to meetings is an issue, as I rely on public transport. I am 'time poor' and I don't have more than a spare half hour here and there, so reading enormous consultation documents etc. is prohibitive.

I think aside from the fear element, I think the biggest problem facing women who are trying to stand for their rights and being engaged on all levels is funding.

AWAs have bare dolla as my kids say, and mounting challenges and campaigns that will achieve things to counter their power plays requires pots of money that we currently don't have.

I think setting up some kind of foundation with the specific aim of protecting and winning the rights of cunty women with some financial clout would be a useful thing. But I ain't got the necessary, which is probably making the point for me,too.

I was thinking of the same Floral some kind of dedicated fund to fight for women's rights. But it'd be hard to do I think. A personal fund yes, but a group one would be very vulnerable to ideological differences.

Also yes to the vilification and violence. I think we need a campaign to challenge some of these things so that we/ future gens can fight without fear for our rights.

Great thread.

Agree about all the factors you have mentioned so far.

For me personally, I perceive that the women I meet day to day at baby groups, community events and the school run etc are self censoring. I try to steer the convo around to sex stereotyping, or politics, or ethics or similar, but often people look at you as if you have farted...

I feel very isolated.

The anti-women stance of most political parties. I’ve looked into getting involved as a councillor in my local area but it’s exceedingly difficult to start as an independent and I couldn’t honestly put my name to any of the parties right now. It’s hard enough to vote for one.

And then you get councils being commandeered by the likes of Edward Lord.

Plus knowing you’ve got such men as representatives makes it very difficult to start to make a stand on issues.

Women are conditioned by society to be nice and to appease people. Telling men they are wrong, especially when said men become threatening in response, is bloody hard. I'm seen in real life as someone outspoken who speaks her mind and isn't afraid to "speak truth to power". If only people knew how much I self-censor. I'm too afraid to be GC in real life.

Yes it's easy to feel demotivated when you have the likes of Jonson, Hunt, Fields, Lord etc crapping all over politics. And tbh most of the women in politics don't seem to give a shit either. What's the point in increasing representation if the women that make it to the top are equally willing to throw women under the bus?

At my baby groups no one cares about politics fill stop. I talk about this gender stuff and they're shocked once the hear about it, they promise to take a closer look at what their kids schools are teaching, but they don't watch the news or vote and they'd sooner die than join any activism. I live in a very poor socially deprived area, huge number of single parents, people on benefits or earning min wage, and I get a real sense that they just don't think politics has anything to do with them. But of course that's the group hit hardest by bad policy.

I love that MN has MPs on to do webchats, I think that's absolutely fantastic. I wish they'd do more. And netmum's too, I don't think they do it but they should.

netmums*

I remember being chided for being bossy, and reminded to be "ladylike", and told off about my "tone" as a girl....that really helped my confidence! Not.

By Grabthar... I am actually in a very comfortable area where many women are graduates...but still nothing!

I think people in general are extremely disenfranchised with politics atm. Picking who to vote for is (to misquote another poster) like choosing your favourite venereal disease, even for the non GC. Funnily enough (and not trying to turn this into a trans thread) but I lurk on the trans uk reddit and recently someone was asking who is the most trans friendly party to vote for, and every answer was "none on them, they all hate trans people, spoil your ballot". It was a real wtf moment for me. I guess everyone of every political stripe is just super unhappy with politics atm.

Maybe we should have some sort of "women's policy watch" group which takes it in turns to keep an eye out for gov consultations that affect women, summarise the documentation for the time poor, and ask MN to organise a campaign making women aware of it. Maybe Netmums too if they'd have us.

Being disabled and on benefits. You will lose benefits if you are found to be too active.
www.disabilitynewsservice.com/tory-conference-police-force-admits-sharing-information-on-protesters-with-dwp/

Bloody hell that's awful!

Ikr. I've tried to discuss it with my local Labour councilors and got shouted down. They don't know its a problem and they don't care.

For me personally it's probably worry that I'll be vilified. I'm a member of one of our national parties, for about three years now, which doesn't come naturally to me but at one point I realised that part of the reason no parties seem to represent or even talk about things I think are important might be because people like me don't join parties much.

I recently was asked to come to a meeting to set up a constituency group for my area, and that would be an opportunity to become more involved in a personal way where my thoughts could have some impact - but I just am not in the cultural zeitgeist at the moment, I'm kind of scared about the confrontation. I'm good at writing my thoughts down clearly, not so much in person when the environment is hostile. Not just about women either, about a lot of the things that are gospel now on the left.

When there is a cultural conflict being waged it is the one with the stronger psychological frame that tends to win out. Not necessarily the one with truth on its side. As long as people are too frightened to speak out on what is important to them you’ll find you’ll lose by default. Be the change you wish to see.

Maybe we should have some sort of "women's policy watch" group which takes it in turns to keep an eye out for gov consultations that affect women, summarise the documentation for the time poor

For what it is worth, I think this is a good idea ... we need to keep a very close eye on parliamentary activity [in Commons and Lords] from now on ... plus much closer monitoring of the activity of the MP in our constituencies.

Ditto for local authority activity and councillors.

It is clear we should not trust any of them now.

Jumping on to mention the government consultations out at the moment are:

Heathrow expansion (affects everyone)
Surrogacy laws change (obviously affects women, specifically poor and vulnerable ones)
Online harms (I think this refers to hate speech or freedom of speech but it's very hidden)

We all await news on the promised consultation over PSHE lessons from Dept of Ed and results of the GRA and the investigation into the 4000% increase in girls wanting to 'become' boys.

Similar to fascinated and others I don't speak to my NCT group as much as between the climate crisis and the gender ideology they think I'm mad and I'm also feeling isolated so I'm seeking out people in real life to meet and talk with. Real life conversations can't be censored like it can be here or on any internet forum, work and childcare makes it difficult but doesn't prevent it completely.

Great thread. massive fear is holding me back. Working in an area of work that is super woke is a scary place at the moment.
Other than that the usual lack of time- never mind getting to a meeting IRL, just writing a letter can take a week- while trying to meet everyone’s needs at home and at work. Another thing is not always knowing where to start tactically or what to do/ask for, for the best.

The successful political movements (short of revolution ) seem to work through entryism and assimilating into institutional power. That’s self evidently hard to do when you have a female face and body and female responsibilities outside of work - just one of the obvious ironies of the ‘my gender identification is everything’ bullshit.

I try to email my MP regularly which doesn’t take too long and I know I am not the only one because the MP has told me so. so that is something.

I really agree about responding to government consultations: always worth in even if you don’t/can’t answer all the questions.

To add to the list: there is this one at the moment on surrogacy which raises very important questions for women about pregnancy, motherhood and legal power: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3606313-The-Rumplestiltskin-Law

There’s a link to the consultation in the OP.

I'm the same chatty although I am GC at work I have been told to be careful (which I take to mean, keep your mouth shut).

Thanks for the surrogacy law consultation link - filling this in takes time, I think they design them to be deliberately impenetrable to discourage people from completing them. It's a complex issue so I understand the need for detail but each time I read one I feel I could do with a crib sheet or guide. I'm determined not to be put off though, but it is a time and head space thief.

I intend to complete it this weekend whilst catching up on Handmaids Tale

Fear of losing my job and lack of support from unions.

Work ‘bullying’ policies makes it very clear that not following Stonewall imposed recommendations and behaviour will mean disciplinary action.

Forced belief systems and behaviour related to employment is a huge barrier for me.

I think a lot of women who know what’s going on are afraid to speak up for fear of being shouted down, ridiculed, and worse.

There are also a lot of women have absolutely no idea what’s going on, because nobody is telling them.

Men will not prioritise the protection of women’s rights because (a) it doesn’t affect them and (b) they are often blind to the issues that affect only women and girls. Women in power think twice about standing up for women’s rights because they are immediately targeted for abuse.

Men have always used the tactics of wearing us down, bullying and minimizing our concerns.

Meanwhile women are doing the unpaid work – caring, child-rearing, domestic drudgery – and are expected to have a job, being paid less, and picking up everyone else’s slack. Who is it who takes time off when the kids are sick or an elderly parent has had a fall? And then we have to activise and protest too? It’s easier to turn a blind eye and hope that someone else will step up.

Too many women are laboring under the misapprehension that their sex-based rights are safe and sacrosanct.

We need to activate. To do anything we can think of with the little time and resources that we have. And teach our daughters, our mothers, our friends, our neighbours what’s going on and why they cannot ignore it.

But stay safe and be careful out there. There are some very nasty people around.