Time to homeschool the GVMT?!

[CJA37]

Hi everyone,

I'm a member of WEP and on their Policy Committee for equal parenting and caregiving.

We're launching a campaign to homeschool the government as they don't seem to realise:
12 hours caring for young children + 6 hours teaching older kids + 8 hours working = >24

We're asking everyone who cares about this to take a photo/make a short clip of how you'd homeschool the government to be better for women. Share it on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #homeschooled at 3pm on Saturday 30th Jan.

We're aiming to create an impact so that we can show that there are ideas for better eg legal right to furlough for parents, nursery bailouts etc. More info: www.womensequality.org.uk/home_schooled_action

We know that Covid is having and will continue to have a massive impact on equality so we want to keep that conversation going.

Cheryl

If the WEP campaigns aren’t right for you, where will you start your own or take actions large or small to make things better?

If you look around op you can see many grassroots women's organisations working across the political parties to safeguard children and secure women's rights.

Stick around op, you might learn something
I see the frustration here. I don't think channelling it at me on behalf of the party meets your aims. It might make my day a little more unpleasant, but it doesn’t give you the goal I think you want which is change.

No one wants to make your day unpleasant,they just want to make you think.

OP, I would suggest that instead of going all “woe is me” and flouncing because we’re not being grateful enough for the small crumbs the WEP is throwing at us, you take this response back to your party and encourage them to do some serious reflection on why that might be.

Or maybe if you see dissent as unpleasantness, politics isn’t for you.

@FamilyOfAliens

OP, I would suggest that instead of going all “woe is me” and flouncing because we’re not being grateful enough for the small crumbs the WEP is throwing at us, you take this response back to your party and encourage them to do some serious reflection on why that might be.

Or maybe if you see dissent as unpleasantness, politics isn’t for you.

Maybe this was literally a ‘push notification’ that this action was happening and there is absolutely no intention of meaningful engagement by the WEP with people who post on MN.

If Cheryl is still around, I understand she did not intend to actually answer questions as a representative of WEP. However, she did indicate that she would feedback our frustration.

So here is another current thread that she might be interested in to see the depth of the disillusionment of ‘woman’ being redefined in this way that many women are now openly needing to talk about.

Over the past few days this topic is popping up away from this board and so many posters who don’t visit this Feminist Chat board are talking. And they have done their research. And they realize being constantly told they are hateful for wanting to articulate their need to have their words back, bolster safeguarding which is being weakened (a great example is the school issue I mentioned), they see problems at work they cannot discuss, everything. It is all there and it is not the ‘GC feminists’ or whatever label we are supposed fit in with.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4148778-to-ask-if-there-are-any-groups-of-reasonably-minded-women-trans-women-trying-to-meet-each-other-1-2-way-and-sort-this-whole-sorry-mess-out

And some of these other posters on these threads are asking what can they do to have impact? I think mainstream media will no longer hide the impact of women fighting against the impact of this conflict in rights behind carefully phrased text. I think they would saying very clearly why Lisa Nandy did not win the leadership of the Labour Party. They would be stating very clearly why Jo Swindon lost her seat and her leadership role. Read these threads I have linked. The answer is clear.

Surely, this is where the WEP can actually make a real difference. It has been pointed out repeatedly on this thread, this is actually one of the big issues of this time. Progressing women not redefining us.

Hi, I’ve really struggled through the lockdown 1 and 3 to keep on top of work and look after the kids.

My employer - a perfectly respectable office-based org where 90% of us have been working from home since March - has been pretty poor for parents. While it was happy to furlough staff of their choosing for ‘business need’ they did not offer that option to parents. I asked twice and got turned down.

The options, after many assuring statements that they would be flexible etc, are cut your pay and hours or work around the clock - childcare during the day and work at night.

The attitude is basically you chose to have kids as a lifestyle and now that this global pandemic is affecting you in this peculiar way, if your responsibility to manage this inconvenience to us.

No other party has come out to say parents have been affected in a particular way that has to be managed differently and this is what they’ll do. All the others have placed the onus on my ability to negotiated with an unwilling employer, and that’s a very poor position to be put into.

Our middle class jobs can, just about, be done (badly) while juggling kids and the treble mess, cleaning and washing up, but I’m exhausted! There is a limit, and I want a political party to stand up and say: this is it, you need support, and I want you to have a job and a nursery after the pandemic too, but they don’t!

Agree with much of what has been said, unfortunately.

In saying that we don't need to agree on everything, and that the small things can be tidied up for female people - while the major things the party stands behind is trying to erase female people in law, remove their sex based rights, see some of the most vulnerable females in UK society unable to access resources and spaces because they cannot use mixed sex provision, and intending to set the world in favour of the male sex to the active, knowing detriment of the female sex while at the same time naming your organisation about achieving equality for women? Words fail. Are you really serious?

No. I will not be lending your party credibility. Nor will be I helping the WEP and government to try to convince themselves that they can do this to the female sex while saying trite things implying there is no such thing as sex/it's a personal choice, and women will accept a little nod towards their sex based disadvantage very quietly around the edges while the male sex gets the lions share of time, attention, provision and political focus.

It's insult on injury.

In saying that we don't need to agree on everything, and that the small things can be tidied up for female people - while the major things the party stands behind is trying to erase female people in law, remove their sex based rights, see some of the most vulnerable females in UK society unable to access resources and spaces

This.

It's so frustrating. What do they think will actually happen if they define the actual group they say they represent?

This is an attractive idea. It is a problem women have and will always have to struggle against because everyone knows what a woman is.
However it is just window dressing.

If you campaign for and allow the word “woman” to be broken down in law, you lose any formal and legal avenue to redress inequalities that arise.

This makes the campaign toothless. It just becomes ineffective criticism.

It really feels like being asked to help the WEP create an illusion of being active for women, and also to help conceal and disguise the damage they are doing to women at the same time.

Please nicely help out with your own oppression. There's good girls.

If you campaign for and allow the word “woman” to be broken down in law, you lose any formal and legal avenue to redress inequalities that arise.

Exactly, and so well put.

OP what do you think will happen if and when women are no longer defined by biological sex, but by "feeling like" a woman whether or not you have a penis? When biological women can no longer compete on women's sports teams because all the places are taken by male "women"? When biological women suffer soaring rates of assaults in prisons, on hospital wards, in refuges? When biological women continue to suffer coercive control, rape, pay and employment discrimination etc... but you can no longer defend or organise for them because there is no such thing as a biological woman and all the statistics reflect the fact that they include men?

The biological women are still oppressed because of their sex characteristics (smaller average size and strength, reproductive biology, and sexist attitudes) but they can't say so, in life or in lawe, and the basis of their oppression will. have magically ceased to officially exist. So they just suffer in silence. Right?

Oh unless they opt out by declaring themselves men, have their bodies squished and carved up and end up basically sidelined and ignored by biological men who seem to be miraculously under far less pressure to accept trans men as heir own, despite them posing no threat, unlike men who are allowed to freely self-ID as women...

Who wants such a situation? Oh yes - the patriarchy and male interests.

Why would a women's equality party go down such a route? Purely to appease male interests, disguised as being "woke".

It's awful and it's happening right in front of us.

Please nicely help out with your own oppression. There's good girls.

Since it has been said we were making a committee member’s day unpleasant by asking for more information on just what else they were doing to drive this SM campaign to get results, I have to assume that all the group intended was to make noise and not follow through with decisive action.

And in doing so, it has the benefit of attracting new members. So a membership drive. So, yes. Michelle.

They are asking women to join them in our own oppression.

OP thanks for coming here. I think it's a good campaign, but as posts here make clear (tho I haven't read the whole thread) we do have to recognise that much of the issues that women are facing in this pandemic are because as mothers much childcare & the work of running the household (an important and v underrated job) falls to us. The problem is the situation for female people in the world.

Anyway as a wep member i acknowledge that you can't give your personal opinions on this during the consultation, but please do come back after.

I think the consultation is a positive thing and I hope other organisations look to the model and process. It is necessary because people of the opposing view to mine (& those found in this board) hold those views just as genuinely. A small political party has to find a way forward democratically. I may be naive but I think it's a process worth going through.