@Artichokeleaves
Honestly.... no. The questions will be limited to the last decimal place with strikes handed out like smarties for raising the subject at all. The questions will be pre submitted. They will be selectively responded to, and all on the subject we'd like to talk about will be avoided like the plague. They will be answered before hand probably by advisors so they carefully say nothing but repeating political lines, and by this point we could write it for them. And there will be no interaction or discussion of any kind.
So what's the point?
Its funny, i just put a bit of a rant on the thread cos i felt it merited it (whether it gets culled or not is another matter).
But my overall feeling was one of 'what's the point?'.
I feel like women are an after thought in politics and even now its a dynamic of who is allowed to speak and its not women stating what political priorities should be.
Its not lost on me that women with young children are THE single most unrepresented group at all levels of politics.
We hear about diversity of representation and i think there this MASSIVE group who are effectively continually told that they aren't important in various different ways.
I think the result is we will get wet this is what labour want or this is what the Tories have done and you'll go 'is that it?' in a sense.
In terms of representation women cannot go into politics in the same numbers as men because they are too busy in the home looking after the kids. Thats still back decades.
If you want working class single parent womeb to be represented democratically, how do you enable that at all levels? I cant help but feel for all the talk, theres a deliberate missing of the point.
We get rather patronised second class status as voters. And we get told almost that we should be grateful when ever there is the most minor acknowledgement of sex being a politically relevant issue.
I don't think any party is really actively trying to change things. Theres too much self interest involved and no political incentive to say things like 'how do women afford childcare if their wage is less than the cost of it, and what knock on effects does that have?'
Until childcare is subsided enough, all other conversations about women in politics or womens political issues pretty much come second.
Then add a nice layer of abuse, harassment and institutionalised sexism and you do just give up.
Men get encouraged to speak up. Women get berated for having opinions.
No deep debate will come of it. Its just an opportunity to virtue signal rather than engage.
I will be amazed if its anything more than superficial box ticking and presenteeism. 'oh look we went on mn and debated with women, thats how involved we are and how much we care'.