In fact, responding to the recent London riots, current Home Secretary Theresa May said

We must never forget that the only cause of a crime is a criminal.

Given that she’s in charge of our systems to punish people and deter them from crime, she really ought to have a knowledge of the obvious pressures which make people commit it. In other words, that quote is the opposite of her job, and kinda shows she’s unfit for the post. (Also: it’s grammatically rubbish. A cause acts on a person; it can be anything except the person. Pick one! Just not the person.) Either way it’s not doing great things for the image of women in politics.

There are more women in governments globally than ever before, but whether politically left or right very few of them are behaving any differently to the men. That’s often understandable, since women at the very top are usually under double the scrutiny for any appearance of being “weak” or unsuitable.

One person I totally missed out from my previous post (which was particularly unforgivable given her kickass achievements) was Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, the Prime Minister of Iceland. She is certainly overseeing a country that is doing things very differently, and in terms of democracy also Doing It Very Right. When you see the massive extent of what’s actually going on, you’ll be amazed (bear with me, there’s some politics coming up but pretty soon we get to the flying-shark-pirate-feminist adventures! I’m not kidding, this is epic.)

The World works a certain way when countries get into debt. The International Monetary Fund turns up, tells them to privatise everything and allow foreign investors to buy it all cheap, and refuses to give out any money for loans if they don’t. (I’m simplifying here, but… wait, no I’m not.) Everyone who is still rich agrees that this is the way to go. If you try something different, you will suffer the wrath of many governments, banks and newspapers.

Iceland said no. In fact, as this excellent article points out, they had a revolution and threw out their government, which is pretty much the gold standard for saying no.

Weeks of protests and riots forced them to hold elections, and the new Government decided not to put the entire population into debt for decades by bailing out the banks. They held a referendum and 93% of the people thought they’d rather have Interpol arrest the bankers responsible instead, please. Oh, and they’re having a new Constitution, written by the public.

To write the new constitution, the people of Iceland elected twenty-five citizens from among 522 adults not belonging to any political party but recommended by at least thirty citizens. This document was not the work of a handful of politicians, but was written on the internet. The constituents’ meetings are streamed on-line, and citizens can send their comments and suggestions, witnessing the document as it takes shape.

Did you know any of this? Did you know there’s a country in Europe who threw out their government through the power of protest, elected a left-wing coalition who then asked the public what they wanted, started writing new rules with complete visibility to anyone on the net, and stood up to the banks and IMF? Because I didn’t see the headlines.

As well as being the first openly-gay head of Government in recent times (and one of the first people in Iceland to fully marry her same-sex partner instead of a civil union), Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is presiding as Prime Minister over one of the gutsiest, brass-badass, openly-defiant movements in the world. A referendum? Putting decisions in the hands of the public? None of that is ever allowed on choices which actually matter. As a friend of mine put it when she read the article: “Iceland, you rockstar “.

Feminists keep waiting for a woman in power to act in a way which differentiates her from the men. Other than being physically seen in the front row (which DOES make a difference), there’s not a lot of point getting a woman in office if she’s then invisible among the grey old guys. I’m not saying that women will govern differently just because they’re women (what? With feelings, while wearing pink? What exactly is supposed to be automatically different?) but Iceland’s Prime Minister is restoring democracy by definition – she’s giving the votes back to the people. Her government is one of the very few even considering going up against the demands of the US, UK, Europe, Asia… everybody. Whether she’s left- or right-wing doesn’t decide if she’s politically great, it’s listening to the views of her country and standing fast against furious demands from Big Money that makes her really quite awesome.

At the moment she is at the front of a government which is trying the first truly different moves in years, and finally we can see a female politician who will be famous for being liberal, fair, in touch with the public and a titanium-plated Badass in the face of pressure. By getting the people to write the new Constitution, she is directly giving a voice to the women of her country. Equal voting rights is crucial, but if that vote only affected things once every four years, and none of the parties offered what 93% of the population want, then the actual power of it would be somewhat lessened. Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir’s government is handing votes back to ordinary women and men and that’s amazing. The views of the whole population will be represented, with public debates via internet along the way.

Is increased democracy feminist? Do the majority of the public hold prejudices, and will their opinions harm women? Or by including more women, do you ensure they won’t vote against their own interests? Is it at least better than a rich, white, male elite doing all the decision-making?

In this case I’m not saying that Iceland’s policies being lefty is for the best, or that their referendum result is the correct one. After all, it might involve the UK not getting all its money back (although an article she wrote in April suggests we’ll see at least 90%). Whether the decisions are good or bad, there is a powerful, articulate woman right at the top of an incredibly exciting political force right now.

I’d just like to ask if we can have Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir over here on an exchange program for a bit please? We’ll lend Iceland Theresa May in return, it’ll be fine.

STOP PRESS: EDIT!

Since the article which brought this to our attention did the rounds online, it’s become clear that several key parts in it aren’t totally… well… accurate. At all.

Some of it is small in terms of the story: Iceland isn’t a member of the EU yet, it’s applying to join. And it didn’t go completely bankrupt, merely under lots and lots of debt.

The part about the new constitution being visible and people being able to send comments in as it goes – that one’s real, and that’s a major factor for us being excited. And regardless of whether Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was instrumental in bringing any of these changes about, or was initially for or against them, our point is that she’s being seen by the world as the PM at the head of a government which is taking huge steps. If she wasn’t in favour of all the changes, she still retains double BadAss points for defending them so stongly as the official policy now.

Many thanks to commenter latentexistence and others who have helped point out where the inaccuracies lie: we stand by our cheering of the Prime Minister, but warn our readers to take the linked article with a metric ton of salt.

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Bless the Labour government of 1997-2010. They did quite a bit of good. Minimum wage, Northern Ireland and Civil Partnerships are all some of my favourite things, behind whiskers on kittens. They did, however, invent an awful lot of tosh to appear modern and popular.

One of these inventions was the post of Minister for Women. Created in 1997 and given first to Harriet Harman (who was also the last Labour minister to hold the post in 2010), it was meant to look at gender inequality throughout Britain. The post was expanded to look at other inequalities and discrimination in 2007 and now the full title is Minister for Women and Equalities. Because women are so under-represented in Parliament (although you’ll be forgiven for not being bowled over by the number of ethnic minorities either), the specific
title ‘Minister for Women’ has been retained.

I have a few issues with this. One I would like to illustrate using Ainsley Hayes, she of the long blond hair and happy gun-toting Republican ways in Season 2 of The West Wing. When being invited back to her alma mater to debate the Equal Rights Amendment (which specifically stated that discrimination against anyone because of their gender was illegal), Sam assumes she’s all for it. She’s not, and here’s why:

It’s humiliating. A new amendment we vote on declaring that I am equal under the law to a man? I am mortified to discover there is reason to believe I wasn’t before. I am a citizen of this country; I am not a special subset in need of your protection. I do not have to have my rights handed down to me by a bunch of old white men. The same article fourteen that protects you protects me, and I went to law school just to make sure.

You can see her in quite frankly awesome action here.

Emily Proctor as associate White House counsel Ainsley Hayes in The West Wing.

I don’t understand why we are singled out for special rights as if we need protection – we’ve already passed various laws stipulating that I cannot be paid less or treated with disrespect or sexually harassed because of my gender. I’m OK with these laws. I want to see society catch up with our legislation, but I feel that having a specific Minister for people like me who have ovaries is, quite frankly, patronising.

It’s also completely redundant. If they actually did anything to stem the misogyny and discrimination faced by women every day, I’d applaud. But they don’t, because they can’t, because so much of what we face is ingrained within society. We’re slowly turning it around – another hundred years or so and we might be nearly there – but I don’t think having a specific Minister stops any employer in their tracks from giving that woman a smaller pay raise than her male counterpart, or that man over there denying his wife the right to work because he wants her to have his dinner ready every day, or that assistant from cutting and pasting his female boss’ head onto the Page 3 girl and sending it round the office.

Current incumbent Theresa May, image via Wikipedia Commons.

Finally, my huge issue with our Minister for Women and Equalities is that it’s always given to a woman, generally as an additional role to her main ministerial duties. This sends the message that gender equality is something additional, not important enough to be a main duty – and it’s certainly a woman’s issue, nothing for the men to worry about, hur hur. By placing this so predominantly in the female sphere, we are telling men that they don’t need to think about gender equality, that it’s fine for them so they shouldn’t fight for it, that it’s purely something that the discriminated against need to fight for and correct.

Our next Minister for Women and Equalities should be a man. Then they have to argue that women’s rights are a necessity that are already afforded to men without question, that gender inequality affects children of both genders by reducing financial remuneration and by encouraging stereotypes, that maybe, just maybe, men can be feminists too. Sad that having a man in the role would make other men sit up and notice, but at this point in time, I’m willing to use all my tools in my box. If they won’t listen to women’s issues when declared by a woman, then maybe it’s time for the testosterone to even things up a little and help bring gender equality into the male-dominated public sphere.

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