As a Welsh expatriate, I was surprised but interested to discover that there are now more women in leadership positions in the Welsh Nationalist party Plaid Cymru than there are in the UK Cabinet.

After September’s reshuffle, Theresa May remains as Home Secretary, a role in which she has occasionally talked a good game but done little materially to endear herself to women. Maria Miller’s appointment as Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, as well as Minister for Women and Equalities, got off to a flying start when an unexacting series of anti-equality accusations against her went viral; even if the list was badly and disingenuously worded, the facts behind it still don’t exactly fill one with confidence in her. The high-profile irritant Louise Mensch, meanwhile, has given up on a parliamentary career after serving just over two years of her term. So much for ‘Tory feminism’.

The UK is currently ranked 57th here, and has never been spectacular at getting women into government. As of early 2012, women represented only 16% of Conservative MPs and 31% of Labour MPs – but what does the number of women in government mean?

Gender parity is obviously not synonymous with strategic influence or decision-making power, and, particularly after Exhibit M, it’s slightly preposterous to think that a particular demographic will vote or make policy according to gender rather than ideology.

The current government itself has provided examples of this, with some of its most prominent and media-friendly female MPs – step forward Nadine Dorries – also pushing the harshest lines on reproductive or employment rights. All of which strengthens the argument for viewing and judging the actions of female politicians on an individual basis, rather than viewing them all as an undifferentiated flash of eye candy whose political presence is considered automatically progressive. This last trope reached its probable peak, as did so much bland but deeply damaging smuggery, under Tony Blair and his insipid cohort of ‘Blair’s Babes’. In France, this year’s slightly more optimistic victory for the Socialist Party under Francois Hollande has nevertheless drawn comparisons with New Labour’s use of women MPs as relatively powerless tokens of progressiveness:

In an article entitled “The irritating photo”, Isabelle Germain asks why these highly qualified women are being treated like Hollande’s trophies. Just like the ‘Blair Babes’, Hollande’s female ministers have their own twee media nickname; the ‘Hollandettes’. Linguistically, the ‘Hollandettes’ are to Hollande what ‘Beliebers’ are to the pop star Justin Beiber – relative to their male leader and their roles determined by his authority. – Source.

Even for a place so historically rife with sniggering male privilege and suspended adolescence as the House of Commons, the language and attitudes recently faced by female MPs has been some of the most patronising for years – not least the current Prime Minister instructing Labour MP Angela Eagle to ‘Calm down, dear’ and not even bothering to acknowledge a question from the admittedly objectionable Nadine Dorries, instead dismissing her with the snide innuendo ‘I realise the honourable lady is frustrated’. Not that female parliamentarians should automatically be given an easy ride (hur hur), but neither should their opponents draw so instinctively and with quite so much entitled relish on lazy and reactionary stereotypes of hysteria and frustration as a means of avoiding the issues they wish to raise.

Perhaps of a piece with the deeply retrograde, public school and debating club roots of the present government, we seem to be seeing a renewed emphasis on the idea of politics as an adversarial, point-scoring arena in which women are ill-equipped to spar. This kind of thing is part of what The Thick Of It subverts and satirises so well. For all the show’s scattergun profanity, and the ‘violent sexual imagery’ and Freudian nightmares in its characters’ verbal volleys, the majority of humour in The Thick Of Itis derived not from the successful exercise of power but from impotence and frustration.

In addition, as Jem Bloomfield has noted elsewhere, there’s the extent to which the Lib-Dem avatars’ try-hard laddishness and awkward stabs at dick-swinging plays into their dislikeability – Roger Allam’s shire-tastic Peter Mannion MP, for all his downtrodden One Nation Tory-out-of-time woes, manages to exude more patrician authority than either of them. Overtly chauvinist or patronising attitudes are the preserve of characters, like the awkwardly overfamiliar Steve Fleming, whom the viewer is invited to regard with contempt.

Like The League of Gentlemen before it, The Thick Of It’s female grotesques are no less venal or useless or dim or inane than their male counterparts. Besides giving as good as they get, the show’s women, in the current series in particular, tend to crop up as self-possessed and efficient centres of competence within a given episode’s crisis and clusterfuck, whether it’s Terri’s brisk and matronly, almost instinctive civil servant’s professionalism, or Emma’s ruthless and steely slither up her party’s ladder of opportunity.

The exception to this is of course Rebecca Front’s portrayal of the well-meaning but hapless Nicola Murray MP, first introduced as a Minister put out to grass and now floundering as Leader of the Opposition. Chronically lacking in self-belief, ideas or ideology, beset by power-hungry underlings and colleagues, and unsupported by her offscreen husband, Murray is almost painfully unsuited for the environment in which she finds herself having to operate – but so, crucially, is Peter Mannion, and so was Murray’s forerunner, the spectacularly hangdog Hugh Abbott.

She has the odd display of offhand feminist snark (‘I love the division of labour in here – how the women do the heavy lifting and the men do the heavy sarcasm’), and the occasional pointedly gender-aware exchange with the show’s alpha male antihero Malcolm Tucker, but Murray’s incompetence and ineffectualness is never presented as a function of her being that well-worn cliché, a woman in a man’s world. It is simply the tragedy of several characters that they exist in a political and media world in which those who flourish are flavourless post-Blair clones like the largely unseen Dan Miller.

I haven’t seen a great deal written about The Thick Of It’s sexual politics – if there is any out there, do let us know in a comment. Returning to reality, it remains to be seen what effect the predominance of women in Plaid Cymru’s leadership is likely to have. Leanne Woods, Plaid’s first female leader, is refreshing enough for her unabashed socialist and republican ideals – although these principles are very much not common to the whole party.

Woods has attracted the always-dubious label of ‘outspoken’; like ‘feisty’ or the old favourite ‘pushy’, when I hear the word ‘outspoken’ used of a woman in public life I don’t exactly reach for my revolver but I certainly roll my eyes. in 2004 she was, mildly ridiculously, ordered to leave the Welsh Assembly’s debating chamber for referring to the Queen as ‘Mrs Windsor’. Even if you find a constitutional route to socialism more implausible than the idea of impending Welsh independence, Plaid are at least providing an example of how commitment to social justice can be combined with a commitment to gender representation, with both intertwined as strands of the same progressive goal.

Images © BBC

As a right-thinking feminist, or an engaged human being, or a person who occasionally glances at the news, you may recently have heard about Nadine Dorries’ proposed amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill. It would have provided something deemed ‘independent counselling’ for women seeking an abortion. It may well have made you feel irritable for a while.

It was an amendment so controversial it succeeded in distracting rather a lot of attention from the substantive bill, which could probably have borne a little scrutiny itself. The public reaction in the UK to the Dorries amendment was loud and it was largely scathing. A woman shouldn’t have to argue or debate with independent counsellors before availing herself of her legal rights, and any move towards such a position must be opposed.

The amendment was soundly defeated, and we all continued to live in a country where women are permitted to have reproductive rights without begging for them. Hurrah.

But imagine a world where Dorries’ amendment was passed, and then, if you’re brave, imagine a world where reproductive rights were rolled back entirely. It’s like a John Lennon song, but completely different. Now imagine living in a theocracy, or the remnants of one. Imagine finding out you were pregnant and knowing you didn’t want a child and having to accept that legally, the only thing you could do is leave your country and find one that could provide a safe and legal abortion, carried out by people who have had medical training. What sort of dystopia is this, you ask?

This is Ireland, of course, a one hour flight away. It’s where I grew up.

Abortion is illegal in Ireland. If you want one, you will need to obtain one in Britain. Simple as that.

It is a law, like so many, that discriminates on the basis of personal wealth and privilege. If you have options, education, confidence, access to a computer and a credit card, you can book an appointment for a private abortion in the UK and then you can book a flight. But if you don’t have these things you will struggle. Let’s be clear about this – you will require money. A return flight is the better part of one hundred pounds. An early abortion will cost about four hundred pounds. A later term abortion, all the more likely if you have struggled to access services or figure out how to book or fund an appointment without assistance or support of any kind, will cost significantly more.

My pet charity is the Abortion Support Network, which I discovered eighteen months ago during the inconvenient eruption of Eyjafjallajökull and the subsequent Great Ash Cloud of 2010. The resulting disruption of flights was a nuisance to many, but to those who had booked a private abortion in the UK, it was potentially disastrous. Forced to rebook their appointment and their flights, and in some cases forced to now book a later term – and therefore more expensive – abortion, many found themselves in desperate need of financial assistance. The Abortion Support Network supplies a non-judgemental ear, but more importantly, practical help: a place to stay in a foreign country, assistance with booking flights and appointments, and, crucially, money. It is hard, in a country with legal abortion and a national health service, free at point of delivery, to comprehend how important this can be.

I have always thought that maybe someday I will get to raise a quiet glass to Irish independence, should they choose to stop relying on Britain to supply basic medical services to Irish women. In the meantime I’ll toast the ASN. If you believe in reproductive choice and that a woman shouldn’t be
forced to pick between carrying an unwanted pregnancy and a backstreet abortion, please consider supporting them.

• http://www.abortionsupport.org.uk/
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

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• Sinead M ran away from Ireland shortly before it was eaten by a tiger, and lives in London where she continues to rant about her old country to anyone who will pretend to listen. She sporadically rants in writing at http://findesomething.wordpress.com.
]]> /2011/10/06/guest-post-a-little-begging-letter-about-reproductive-rights/feed/ 5 7676 /2011/07/11/the-pro-choice-push-back-starts-here/ /2011/07/11/the-pro-choice-push-back-starts-here/#respond Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:00:44 +0000 http://www.badreputation.org.uk/?p=6447

Abortion was legalized in the UK in 1967

Some of Team BadRep were at the pro-choice rally in Westminster on Saturday with 300+ other people including Kate Smurthwaite, Laurie Penny, Diane Abbott MP, Evan Davis MP and Jenny Jones of the Green Party to protest the attempts being made to restrict access to free, safe, legal abortion. Here’s the Guardian writeup and a great slideshow of pictures.

Why were we out in force raising our voice for choice? Here’s a quick rundown in case you’ve missed any of the grim news in recent months… What frightens me most at the moment is that ‘Right to Know’ campaign architects Nadine Dorries MP and Frank Fields MP (guess which party! Go on. Guess) have added amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill to change the law on pregnancy counselling. Their big idea is that abortion providers who offer counselling such as Marie Stopes and British Pregnancy Advisory Service have a ‘vested interest’ in persuading women to have a termination. Because abortion is such a money spinner… It’s a wonder we don’t see more people on Dragon’s Den offering an investment opportunity in a chain of pop-up abortion clinics. Anyway, here’s a post by Education for Choice explaining why this is bollocks, and Abortion Rights give the campaign a dressing down here.

Anti-choicers LIFE were invited to sit on the government’s Sexual Health Forum at the same time that BPAS got kicked off. A new Sex and Relationships Education Council of abstinence and anti-choice organisations drew praise from Secretary of State for Education / evil ventriloquist’s puppet Michael Gove. Nadine Dorries popped up again with a bill proposing abstinence education for girls which passed the first stage vote in parliament. Does abstinence education work? Short answer: no. Long answer: no. Then of course there’s the shocking situation facing women in Ireland (find out more from Abortion Support Network)

It was great to see so many angry people out on Saturday, and hear the inspiring speeches. Lisa Hallgarten of Education for Choice read out a chilling message from pro-choice activists in the US warning us not to be complacent because things are getting really bad across the Atlantic (see this and this, for example) and it all started in the same way it has here: with little laws which chip away at the right to choose.

I was particularly happy that the demo drew support from Queer Resistance, who made the vital point that we must work together cross-cause to protect bodily autonomy, reproductive rights and sexual freedom. This demo felt closer in spirit to the reproductive justice movement I believe we need to build to fight proposals which are spun as pro-woman but are in fact bad news for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to a vicious and controlling version of “family values”.

This demonstration is just the beginning of a grassroots push back against Dorries, Field, Gove and their supporters, and we’re going to need your help. Start by emailing your MP about the abortion amendments and keeping track of developments on Education For Choice’s blog.

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