New Minister for Equalities

[poshme]

Is Nadhim Zahawi.

Copied from a previous thread:

Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi interviewed in the Telegraph

"Mr Zahawi ... asked for the definition of a woman - an issue which has stumped Labour politicians - he said: “A woman is an adult human female. My favourite subject at school was human biology. It’s a straightforward answer.”"

Sounds promising. Have they announced education yet?

Well it's a relief I must say. Biological fact.

Education not announced yet

Really hope Education is Kemi. She hasn't been announced as anything yet has she?

I'm happy to have him in this role.

Thank goodness for a straight answer from a politician, for once.

Great.

Interesting that "Women" has been dropped from the title of "Minister for Women and Equalities".

@WiseUpJanetWeiss good point.. it will be interesting to see if there will be a separate minister for women, or whether the title hasn't changed and they're just using shorthand.

Oh, interesting, I didn't notice that.

Maybe Women’s brief is being added on to whatever role Kemi gets. Kemi is going to get something good...isn't she??

I think k Zahawi also said something good regarding academic freedom in universities, if memory serves?

The GEO has updated their site and it is Minister for Equalities. At the moment there are 2 Ministers one Women and the other is LBGT. Don't know if they'll change. Amanda Sollaway replaced Mike Freer in July as Lbgt Minister.

Not sure what I think yet.

Kemi is International Trade Secretary.

No mention of Women's Minister.

It's Kit Malthouse.

I wonder why they have dropped the "women" from "women and equalities"? Is it significant? Or is it simply because they wanted to avoid the criticism they might attract by putting a man in charge of the women and equalities brief?

'Women and equalities' always sounded to me like an admission that, who are you kidding, women will never actually be equal so. I'm probably too cynical.

The title has changed several times over the past 20 or so years. There used to be an equality unit in the Cabinet Office. Then Blair created the Minister for Women post to embed equality for women across the whole remit of government. Later it changed to Women and Equality and more recently, to Women and Equalities.

Now it's changed again to just Equalities.
It's supposed to cover the whole of equality in the Equality Act. Before that we had the Sex Discrimination Act, which was intended to address disadvantages for women but of course it didn't use the word Women and it applied to any sex discrimination.

You could read the latest change in different ways. I don't know what the reason is or if it is more significant than just intending to reflect the scope of the role, without singling out one specific group, women.