Miriam Cates under investigation

[Arealnumber]

Why has Miriam Cates suddenly gone under investigation? The comments in The Times are usually highly supportive of the MPs that speak out against Gender Ideology but they're properly railing against her. What has been her downfall?

True. For some reason FOM within the EU has made some people view migration as easy for all. We didn’t have that anyway, many countries were excluded.

There are much better ways to support mothers than what Cates is suggesting.

Making child benefit universal again would be a good start. Use it or lose it paternity leave for men. Some other ways of incentivising men to do more child care. More affordable child care.

The answer is not to hark backwards to some mistaken golden age where the men earned the money and the women stayed at home.

The answer is not to hark backwards to some mistaken golden age where the men earned the money and the women stayed at home.

When did she say this?

You can go and read what she said and interpret it how you like.

I don't think it is about " harking back", I see it more as a recognition that there is value to be found in more traditional family units and set ups; and that women often would like to work P/T or stay and make home when the child/ren are younger. Denying that many women would like to spend more time at home is not feminist or progressive.

Many people are now having to work simply to pay for the nursery fees which allow them to go to work. Policies designed to make looking after home and family more achievable for those that would like that, or choose that cannot be a bad thing.

With the rise of working from home, more people are now able to combine childcare and domestic duties with a career/job. There will always be trade offs in life. We cannot have it all - but the idea that having a full on ladder climbing career is the only way to go is also a but retro, maybe?

Also, whilst a few people may manage to achieve a perfectly balanced 50/50 task share between women and men, most don't - and I do think there is a certain inevitability about this. Women and men are different in certain ways, and these differences can and do effect choices/motivations/ instinctive responses.

Sometimes we accidentally throw the baby out with the bathwater in the bid to create some brave new world, and it can be a healthy thing to do to occasionally take stock. Society does not move in a linear fashion towards some perfect state; instead history and patterns keep on repeating themselves in slightly different contexts. Conserving things that work and have been arrived at through time, trial and error can be a worthwhile occupation and it can be a skill to recognise that,

”It's hardly a stretch to read/listen to someone talking about how women who graduate are less likely to have children, how education makes it hard to "find the right time" and that they think the low uk birth rate is the biggest crisis facing this country and conclude that person thinks that women should give up on education and have babies instead (and in fact be incentivised to do so).”

Yes. It is a stretch. And it is coming from a prejudiced position to start with.

She has not said that women should give up on education and have babies instead of being educated. That is some major twisting of words that you have taken.

She didn’t. She discussed the realities of any student’s debt and how it particularly then impacts women and how the decision to have children then adds an additional layer of complexity. This is the reality for any person with a student debt, but it is materially realistic for women.

This statement has made no judgement on women, it has not said that women should be less educated. In fact, I read it as an MP who acknowledges that there is an issue and that it needs to be recognised and discussed to understand if anything can be done.

Just for readers, ie not for you OC as I know very well you have read it, i have posted the comment below. This is the statement some posters on this thread are trying to convince others is Cates saying women should be less educated. Her comment on raising the birth rate is not controversial either. It is one echoed by many western countries and not as a negative response to immigration although people wishing to be purely reactionary seem to like to position it that way.

“Many graduates are saddled with debt, and so are unable to afford to buy a house and start a family. Spending so much time and money on education also makes it much more difficult, particularly for women, to decide when is a good time to pause and have children.”

I think I will go and see if I can find a transcript for the whole speech. Because there are a whole lot of bad takes that seem to be rolled out on this thread. It all feels very familiar to the slicing and splicing people do animed at other women people disagree with. It is lazy and it feels dishonest to read such twisted interpretations. If I find a transcript I will post it. I don’t have time today to transcribe anything if I find a video. But over Christmas I might because this seems to be going to be one of those repeated bad takes that will always be best served posting a transcript so people can see the entire speech and judge it for themselves so will be worth the time for those future threads too.

The video and transcript are here @Helleofabore.

https://www.miriamcates.org.uk/news/our-declining-birth-rate

Also this speech from October which covers some of the same themes.

https://www.miriamcates.org.uk/news/our-fraying-social-fabric

I think it would be useful if those like @AdamRyan who insist that all she's saying is "women shouldn't be educated and should stay home and have babies" listen to or read these and discuss what she actually said, not what they have misinterpreted her as saying.

Although it seems Adam isn't the only one to misinterpret what she's saying. From the second link:

Part of my speech references the dramatic rise in children who go to school wearing nappies, and the toll this will have on the children affected. Many misreporting me by suggesting that working mothers are to blame - that is clearly not what I said.

Thank you OC. I have just sat down at my desktop to go and search and you have saved me the effort. Thank you!

This speech needs to be read to get the full context. However, I think those reading it will very clearly see that Miriam Cates is discussing the complexities that feed into the birth rate. And she is right, low birth rates are a major issue for the stability of a country's economic future. Any person who believes that immigration can fill the gap, is obviously not really seeing what happens with immigration sometimes. That people come, they get their experience and then they leave and don't come back. It means that we are left with significant deficits in essential services such as health care.

Either way, there is a much larger discussion to be had about the value of large immigration numbers vs natural birth rates in already established population.

However, this is the section of the speech where that single statement has been snipped out:

"Tony Blair’s plan to expand the middle class has resulted in nearly 50% of our young people going to University.

Our labour market is now so saturated with graduates that over a third of them can’t find a graduate job, meanwhile our manufacturers and technical sector can’t recruit young people with the technical skills they require.

Of course we need - and want - world class higher education institutions, but what are the social and economic impacts - including the impacts on family formation - of sending half of the emerging generation to university?

Many young graduates are saddled with debt, and so less able to afford to buy a house, and start a family.

Spending so much time and money on education also makes it much more difficult - especially for women - to decide when is a good time to pause a career to have children.

For many women, delaying having children means never having children at all, and for many young men, going to University can result in lower earnings than alternative pathways.

Unusually, in Britain, Higher Education is almost always residential, which is an expensive model and often results in young people moving away from home permanently. This breaks up the network of extended family that can offer so much support to young couples with children.

Hardly surprising, then, that some estimates suggest graduates are 50% more likely to remain childless."

It is very clear from early on that she also has mentioned how financial stress impacts all families who are under that stressor. She also posits that the policies that have developed over time have shown that society does not value families (by removing support) and that this has also shaped the perception that families are not something that many people then aspire to have through indirect communication.

She also has a very valid point about this push to have university education when it may not be necessary for jobs . For instance that the education debt for some sectors such as nursing is counter productive to filling the desperate need for nurses in this country. She is pointing out rightly that we are encouraging a population to go into to such debt and there is more supply for university graduates than there is demand at the moment.

But, no. She is definitely not saying that women should be 'less educated'.

I would absolutely love to see some in depth discussion about what she did say though. Because I am not at all confident that either party has the answer.

I am intrigued by the idea of attending ones local university. The local university to where I live is Wolverhamtpon Uni. If I set off from home at 7.20am, I could get the 7.30am bus to the next town, arrive an hour later. Change to train, assuming the bus was on time, I could get the 8.40 train, arriving in Wolverhampton at 9.30. So as long as lectures don't start until 10am I should be ok, unless the bus is delayed,, in which case I would arrive at Wolverhampton station at 10.10am.

On the return journing the last bus leaves at 17.40.
So would have to get the 16.41 train.

This means that as long as the univeristy day is from 10 until 4pm that would be fine. For those 6 hours at uni each day, I would have done at least 4 hours travelling.

Obviously she is talking about where practical. If it not practical, it is not practical and that is a choice that everyone makes in choosing their future. In fact, we as a family are going through these choices right now.

However, in saying that, I travelled that sort of timing to get to my university lectures. Sometimes for one lecture of 3 hours. I know quite a few of my friends who did as well. I also know quite a number of people who do this regularly for work. What is your point? That you would not do it? Great. Others do. And often the choice is a financial consideration, sometimes it is for other reasons such as caring roles.

And secondly, there are other models of lecture delivery now available. I also have done part of my university education and other diplomas via distance education. It does exist and it has for many years. Flexible learning is now also becoming a very important necessity for some universities to provide.

It would be interesting to see some more concrete policy ideas.

The one concrete idea I saw was incentivising childbirth through the tax system. In Hungary you receive a lifelong exemption from taxation if you have 4 or more children. This has increased their fertility rate, but only from 1.2 to 1.6- roughly the same as the UK and below replacement levels.

Also no mention of how the lost tax would be made up.

Again, have you deliberately chosen to try to highlight her point as being about 'residency' rather than an uncontroversial statement about the delivery mechanism for university courses? Was this an attempt to portray her as being elitist or something, that she was out of touch because she assumed people lived conveniently close to a university?

Rather than a point that today many other countries have adopted flexible delivery for their university educations, yet the UK has not been as quick to adapt? So that those studying can choose the best financial option for them, which might be to do a distance education option and still live with parents rather than having to pay for additional residential accommodation.

You can choose to interpret what she said however you wish. But don't be surprised when others point out that there is a totally uncontroversial interpretation that is more likely to suit the context of the speech in its entirety.

Stop saying I'm "prejudiced". This is the definition:
preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

I dislike Miriam Cates because I dislike the nat con approach and I disagree with her proposed policies on a whole range of things. That is not "prejudice". That is my opinion which I'm fully entitled to hold and post on a public board.

No one is saying you are not allowed to post. But you are not allowed to expect to have people point out that your interpretation of this speech won’t be rejected based on the context of the entire speech.

Would you prefer me to use the term ‘bad faith’ or ‘poorly interpreted’ instead?

So you dislike the ‘nat con’ approach? How the fuck is that a reason to attempt to poorly portray this MP’s words? I think you have just proven my point.

She's not got any evidence for what she says, just lots of anecdotes and random hypotheses.
Things like this are just rubbish:
The creation of no fault divorce has removed any value at all in the eyes of the law for getting married, a risky move when marriage is objectively the most successful institution for the raising of children.

Legally, whether there is fault or not doesn't affect the settlement or division of assets when a marriage ends. So I'm not sure what she's talking about, unless she means people should be forced to stay in an unhappy marriage under certain conditions.

Having children is risky and costly - why take the risk when society places so little value on your endeavour?
Do people only have children for external validation and social approval? That certainly wasn't the case for me.

Anyway. She's not for me. Will be interested to see what this investigation is about though.

Eh?

"Not allowed" what? I don't care if people point out they disagree with my interpretation.
My problem is you repeatedly saying I'm "prejudiced", as if I'm being motivated by some kind of irrational dislike. It's just rubbish.

And yet you have repeated a bad faith interpretation of what she said. You say it is not prejudice motivating that bad faith interpretation, that is fine. Whatever you have that is motivating what I consider a dishonest interpretation doesn’t matter in the end. The fact remains, you doubled down on it, when it is clearly a bad faith interpretation when the entire context is considered.

I think that you are distorting what Cates has said by viewing it through a certain prism, though - one which puts a very negative slant on it; and in doing so making hyperbolic and inaccurate representations of what she has actually said and what she actually means.

I think this is the wider issue when subjects become far too polarised, and one can only see those who have a different take or a certain level of disagreement through a 'right wing' 'evil' filter. We miss the nuance, truth and validity of that person's perspctive.

Have you read any Mary Harrington? She is another woman taking a new look at an old issue.

Your considering it dishonest doesn't mean it is dishonest.

People can draw whatever conclusions they like from her waffle. To me, saying the birth rate is a crisis, that spending so much time and money on education is stopping women from "knowing when to pause" to have babies, and saying that no fault divorce and family breakdown is causing societal breakdown, suggests that she has a very traditional view of gender roles and thinks given the choice, women want to stay home and have babies.

She also seems to be strongly arguing for government incentives to show that "society values motherhood", e.g. further encouragement for women to stay at home and have babies.

Usually, feminists would argue that gender roles are bullshit and that we should be aiming for a more equal ability for people to choose whether or not to have children, whether they are mothers or fathers, married or unmarried, gay, straight whatever.

It's also a common feminist position that the pressure for women to provide unpaid care work to keep society going is one of the reasons women are still disadvantaged compared to men.

Miriam Cates is not proposing anything that aligns with this feminist thinking, quite the opposite so as a feminist I'm not a fan.

You of course can disagree with my interpretation of her position however your opinion is no more or less valid than mine so there is no need to get personal with your replies.

@AdamRyan
Do you believe that any women exist who might choose to stay at home with their children rather than pursue a career or be compelled to take paid work outside the home?

Have you ever considered that it is possible to be automatically oppositional and negative at the slightest hint of 'traditional gender roles' or of many women's desire to have a home and family or to prioritise that?

Personally, I probably used to be like that: very rebellious and determined to show that being female was in no way an inevitable kind of fate; but have now moved on and perceive the matter differently. Life's experiences can often teach you to recogise that everyday reality most often rubs against idealism or political ideology. That's why I, personally, no longer talk about 'feminism' or relate to 'being a feminist', rather I'm now more interested in women's rights, unique perspectives, realities and experiences

There is no escaping sex, no matter how far we manage to flatten out the differences and enshrine equal rights in law ( all a good thing, obviously). For me being a feminist is now not so much about political ideology but about profiling, and raising women's voices. I guess we have the luxury of being able to do that in the West - because we have probably come as far as we can in implementing equality.

When you have equality then differences start to re-assert themsleves.

How interesting. You know Labour Party governments in other countries have incentivised the birth rate before and one of the governments who did this had a major policy influencer MP that is considered very 'feminist' by many.

Again though. adamryan you are putting intentions in her words that have been clarified by Miriam Cates as being not true. You really have tried to frame this according to your own bias and you can try to call it whatever you wish, but it remains a bad faith interpretation when viewed in the context on the entire speech AND in view of what other countries around the world have also done.

Of course women have children. And it is not unfeminist to state that women have children. They can, however, in the modern era choose whether that child is cared for by them, by the father or other parent of the child, or by someone else in a variety of solutions.

It seems to be you interpreting what she has said with this consistent bias that remains the issue. Great, it is interesting to see the twisting of her words but we will simply keep pointing out the inconsistencies in your interpretation.

Even in societies in which most women are in piad employment, most women are still heavily over-represented in roles in caring for and/or nurturing other people. The Denmark studies show this. Denmark was considered to be the highest manifestation of gender equality. Yet even here, divorce rates are through the roof and women still bear the brunt of childcare. The studies also showed that women were still choosing more 'traditionally female' roles and occupations - often ones that fitted around family life.

This is not to say that women should all work as nurses, teachers, social workers, carers, hairdressers, childcare workers, beauticians or retail sales assistants etc - but that even given equal education and opportunities many still do.