Politically Motivation – Ask her To Stand Event

Hello. Welcome to another episode of Political Motivation here on the Women's Radio station. I'm Rosie MacLeod. This is the station that connects women all over the globe from our studio here in London. In this show, I take a look at the grassroots campaigners working to make the world a better place for women and girls. If you are a regular listener, you may have heard my episode about the 5050 parliament campaign. This episode covers the campaign's Ask Her To Stand event, held in the Houses of Parliament on November 21, 2018. That date marked 100 years since women were granted the right to stand for Parliament. So here I am speaking to the three main parties about their part in the day and what the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats are doing to increase female representation in Westminster. The to start off with, here's Fleur Butler from the Conservative Women's Organisation. I'm here at the Ask Her To Stand event in Westminster and I'm delighted to be joined by Fleur Butler, who is from the Conservative Women Campaign, Conservative Women Organisation. I'm the Deputy National Chairman. Ok, so talk to me about your work. It's getting women into public life, it's encouraging women and telling women that they have a right to stand forward as men do. We've done a lot of studies this year with the Faustus Society and other studies which show that women wait until they're 110% good enough before they go forward, whether it's in business, in other careers, but absolutely in politics, while men actually perhaps only go forward at 70% ready. So what we're saying to women is, don't wait. Start your journey now. Your political journey is a long journey. It's a building of skills. It's a building of you and your political CV so that you have the skills to go in when you're ready. But if you don't start until you're good enough, you probably will never be good enough. We find there's another the problem in that you ask a woman to stand, I go up to you and say, you're fantastic. Because you, Rosie, are fantastic. You are probably good enough to stand for Parliament. And yet you're thinking, what? I've never thought about it. I have no idea what you're talking about. And you will sit and you'll mull maybe two years, three years, four years before you even consider, well, maybe she. That's right, that funny lady. But actually, what we need to find out is you need to fill in the form tomorrow. You don't wait. Men reply within 24 hours of having the tap on their shoulder. Women wait years before they respond. So for people like me and in the Labour Party and in them, women, we need to go to women and say, listen, are you aware that you behave sometimes in a different way to the way men do it? All the parties say, we want more women, come and join us. But they don't go up to the women say, listen, come and join us. But don't wait till you're 110%. You're good enough at 70%, you can build your skills on your journey. We wait for women to, they say, what about kids? What about families? Well, why not having campaigning kids? Why do you have to only have men campaigning on the streets and women at home looking after the kids? You have a right to develop your career with your family. We need to do things in a female fronting way. And that's what conservative women organization do. It's women supporting women and helping women to do it in a female way. Yes, I think that is absolutely the crux of it is giving women the choice not to choose between the two options. But perhaps you can do both. You can do both. It's a political journey is a long time in all parties. It could take up to 10 years because you fight your losing seat and then another general election is five years later before you do your winning seat. You might have to fight two losing seats. So it could be a 15 year process. So in that time, what are you doing to develop your political skills? And so if women aren't waiting until the finished product is ready to go, then that adds to the journey, so to speak. Well, if you're going to wait until you've had your perfect career and perhaps managed to squeeze in your family, you're going to be 45 before you've started. Now we need women in the older age group. 45 is a really good time to start. But hey, why not start at 25, fight a losing seat first. Let's say you are the type who wants to have kids, have your kids for five years, go out campaigning a bit, join conservative women organization and do a cinema club for conservative women. So you're campaigning, you're engaging, you're doing stuff, your CV is alive and then as your children get older or your mother is so fantastic, they'll help look after them, move forward towards that winning seat or that losing seat. So you can run your campaign with your family on board. Men have family too, so it's no reason to be used as an excuse not to step forward, but do it in A female way that makes you feel comfortable. You don't have to do it in the way that male MPs do it. Now, as their role models, you become the role model for women to follow. How to do politics. And why do you think it is that women are waiting until they are, as you say, 110% ready, and as I say, the finished product is ready to go? Why do you think women wait that long? Is it lack of confidence or more criticism? I think it's a range of issues and without getting into whether it's nurture or nature, the barriers that women have for politics, waiting until they're good enough, waiting for someone to ask them before they put themselves forward, the time it takes so they don't move fast through their careers, they move slowly. These are the same for women in business world. These are women in educational careers, women as lecturers at all these levels, engineering women, they all wait till they're good enough. And I would explore, perhaps while women are presenting in a different way, they are much less likely to be high risk takers than men. And I think the risk of politics is high. You have losing seats, your career is on the line, your family pressures could be so great you could get divorced. Men handle these sorts of areas of concern in quite a different way. They don't protect their families quite. Some men do. But I'm saying, on average, it would appear that men take higher risks, women take lower risks. Therefore, we spend much longer protecting, hedging our bets, protecting our risk, making sure our families are safe, making sure that our careers are safe. Because if we drop out of a job, it's harder to get back in. If a man drops out of a job, it's easier to come back in. So the risks, I think, are also greater for women. So maybe we're right to take a bit longer. But all that time of waiting, all that worry about I'm not good enough, I'm actually a secret imposter syndrome. There's a real thing that women suffer from, being an imposter syndrome to a far greater extent. So it's up to the parties across the board to say, embrace your imposter. Nobody knows you're an imposter, so you step forward now, everybody else thinks you're brilliant. A conversation I had with Clare from the Labour Women's Network highlights that without all women shortlists, female representation drops off a cliff. I'm here at the Ask Her To Stand event in Westminster and I'm delighted to be joined by Claire from the Labour Women's Network. Good morning. So why are you here today? So Labour Women's Network is a membership organisation within the Labour Party and we campaign to increase women's power in the Labour Party and reduce the barriers towards women playing a full part in public life. And we also train hundreds of Labour women for public office. And we're here today because as part of the whole centenary year celebrations, we believe our Labour has got some really proud lessons that we have learned about advancing women in the Labour Party. 45% of Labour's MPs are now women. So we want to share those lessons with people in other parties. We also want to learn with our sisters from other parties what they're up to, because this is a bigger picture. There's a wider goal to be had here about increasing women's role within public life that requires people to move and work together across political parties and across different organisations. And this is a fantastic day. We've got people from across the country, we've got women of all ages and all demographics come along with a view to understanding if a political career is for them. And it's wonderful to be a part of it. Yes, because as I've been saying to a lot of other people I've been interviewing today, it takes on average three times for a lady to be asked to stand. Does that apply to political careers more generally? Actually, in the Labour Party, I'd have to say we don't have a dearth of women coming forward. That isn't our problem. We have huge numbers of women who have the skills and the ambition and the drive to become public representatives. Perhaps in years gone by, we had a problem that there were parts of the country in which it was difficult to find decent women to come forward for election. But actually, really talented women are queuing out the door to become Labour representatives. It's just about ensuring that they've got a level playing field in which to do so. So what's the sort of support that the Labour Women's Network provides? So we run inspirational events that allow women the chance to achieve clarity of thought. And we run gold standard training programs. So every year we'll train in excess of 100 women for public office. And we give them the chance to explore their resilience, to explore and what's special about them, and to become advanced in their political development, to really understand, you know, the barriers to selection and election and know how they can navigate them with ease and confidence. Now, I got into a very heated but nevertheless quite inspiring debate with Fleur over there, who's from the Conservative Ladies Association. She's a very, very inspiring lady. Our heated debate was over feminism and being left wing and being right wing. And that bled into a debate on do the right support women more than the left. And her thesis is that the left have let women down. And now I personally would say that the patriarchy is absolutely in bed with capitalism and by extension the conservative movement. You only have to look at the fact that, that women in FHM and loaded earn more than women scientists to know that. I mean, personally speaking in a personal capacity, I would say that socialism and feminism sit very closely together as bedfellows because it is, you know, the patriarchy is about structural and economic inequality. And what we see is when economic times get tough, it's women who suffer the most, as they have done through, through what I would perceive to be a conservative led austerity drive in which women both have less money in their pocket through benefits and a weaker, less stable labor market. And they're also the biggest losers when it comes to cuts to public services. If you're closing short start centers and NHS centres and swimming pools and what have you, it will be women who are disproportionately suffer from that. And also when it comes to pension inequality. We've seen the WASPY campaign and I do think the Conservative government have let down that pool of women quite badly. But Labour Women's Network is not a policy forming organisation because obviously women's views on these issues are so disparate that we wouldn't claim to club them all together and speak on behalf of all women within the Labour movement. But what I would say is that you can be a feminist in any party, but every party has now got to really put their money when their mouth is. Things aren't solved for women in the Labour Party. We've still got a lot of cultural inequality for women. I cannot guarantee, as I talk to women here today who are saying, should I join the Labour Party? How should I get involved? What are the steps I would take? I can't guarantee that every experience they have in a local Labour Party meeting will be uniformly inclusive of and empowering, which is something that Labour Women's Network actively campaigns to change and provides local parties with the tools to do it better to ensure that this sort of everyday sexism that we see is no longer a kind of constant barrier that disproportionately deters women from getting involved. And obviously the Labour Party has to take an honest look at the fact that we haven't had a woman leader yet you know, the Conservatives have now had two women prime ministers. Regardless of what you think of those women and their agendas, that in itself is an achievement that it should be to Labour's embarrassment that we are behind on. So one of the things that Labour Women's Network campaigns for is to advance women into leadership roles throughout the party. It's not just the Labour Party leadership. We have now many metro males, none of them are women because we haven't used all women shortlists as a mechanism within for those roles. And perhaps we have a particularly set idea on what a mayor is and who he looks like. So the Labour Party hasn't fixed it yet and that's why Labour Women's Network exists, to make sure that the party does better. In a little while, you can hear me talking to the Liberal Democrats. But first we're going to go for a quick break. From all the presenters and the team behind Women's Radio Station. Thank you for listening. You've been the most amazing audience with your sparkling enthusiasm and support. So from our hearts, we would like to wish you a very merry Christmas and a wonderful new year full of joy and surprises. Hi, I'm Laura Haymes, founder and designer of Lara Hames Jewelry. I make luxurious jewelry at affordable prices using silver, semi precious stones and high quality triple A cubic zirconia. It's elegant, stunning, stylish and long lasting. 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And this interview with Susannah from the Liberal Democrat Women ties all the strings from the whole day together in one conversation. I'm here at the Ask Her To Stand event in Westminster and I'm delighted to be joined by Susannah Austin. You work for the Liberal Democrat Women? Yes, I'm one of their organisers, so I do the day to day running of Liberal Democrat Women. So why are you here today? There's a wonderful event where it's trying to get women together on the centenary of having women stand for Parliament. What was your goal here today? Did you want to get more women to sign up? We always want to get more women to sign up. At the moment, our representation in Parliament isn't very good. You've got about a third and that stands roughly the same on county councils and district councils, all the way down to parish councils. The more women that stand, the better. Okay, so the more women that stand, the better. Why is that? Because if you've got more women helping make the decisions, the thinking is just a little bit different. We tend to pick up on slightly different things. So having women from all parties standing helps balance things out. You get better equality. Okay. And why can't men be sensitive to women's problems? Women's issues? They've got wives, they've got girlfriends, they've got daughters, they've got mothers. They can be sensitive to women's issues, but sometimes you're sensitive really to the issues that matter to you the most as a person. We all do it. It's the issues that are blindly obvious to you as a person. And sometimes some of our issues they just don't interact with. They just. It doesn't hit them, they don't see it. They're there, but they're just blind to them. I think you only have to look at the tampon tax. The fact that the tampon tax wasn't discussed until 2014 to know that. I think, yes, you may be on something there. So, Liberal Democrat Women, what's your membership like? It's actually pretty good. I mean we've been going since 1887, so we are the oldest of the feminist political organisations. Was that when it was the Whigs? It was the Whigs in Parliament. Yes, it was. We've had a few name changes and as anybody that's over a century old, we've had had a few facelifts over the time, but we still got a really good membership. We're heavily supported by our national party as well, which really helps, as you probably heard. I mean our MPs do a wonderful job for women and really do fight above their weight, I suppose, in Parliament. So women on councils, how's it looking for the Liberal Democrats? We stand about the same as every other party. Unfortunately we are looking at about a third. It's once you get up to the cabinet positions, you. You have a problem. So it's about a third overall of women on councils, but that includes parish councils. So what we need is more women cabinet positions on councils. Obviously Liberal Democrats had a female elected mayor until recently in Dorothy Thornton in Watford, which was very good. She was a very long standing mayor. But we need more women like her. And why do you think women aren't coming forward to stand for Parliament? I think there's a number of things. You've got social barriers in the way women tend to think about different things. I know myself, I questioned about how it would affect my family, my children. I shouldn't have done. I had to check myself and say this is stupid. I'm asking questions myself that my husband wouldn't ask of himself. But there are barriers in the way that women do have to overcome that men don't. And childcare keeps coming up. Every interview I've done, where do the Liberal Democrats stand on childcare? Unfortunately it's something that is being discussed. It's something that we would like to overcome. But it is one of those that is very much down to voluntary at the moment. Now one of the things that's come through today is that the problem, the deficit of female representation in the House of Parliament and at local council levels, is that it's a systemic problem. So it requires a systemic answer. Would you agree with. Generally there are answers that are needed. It's not a single answer because it's not a single problem. Any ideas? We have all women shortlists, very similar to labourdu. We also do gender balance training, so we have the Campaign for Gender Balance. We know that you tend to have to ask women a few times before they will stand and women need different information to guide. So it's about getting information across in different formats. It's about the mentoring, the support, the network. So it's a whole combination of things and pulling those together. And I think that's why you have these women's political organisations. They're able to provide that so that we do get the women coming through. And Claire from the Women's Labour Network said that as soon as Labour stopped having all female shortlists, their female representation just went through the floor. My worry is that when you're translating something, too much fidelity to the original text results in infidelity. Do you think there's a danger that too much equality could result in inequality and lead to positive discrimination? I think it depends how it's done. It has to be done on a short term measure to fix a problem. It has to be acknowledged why you're doing it in the first place. So you have to actually acknowledge that there is a problem. I think Labour may have felt slightly short. They did bring about women's shortlists quite a while ago, but they didn't really discuss why they were having to do it. They discussed that they were doing it. Whereas we've had the really big discussions about why we're having to do it, what we're hoping to change and how we would like to see the party looking with our elected representatives once these measures have been taken. So that, that way all of our members are taking that journey with us. Yes. You need to treat the causes, not the same symptoms. Yeah, very much. It's a two way thing really. And I think as you pointed out, it is systemic across the political sphere. Now, are there any issues that aren't being discussed in Parliament because there aren't enough women MPs for example, we have the tampon. Well, I don't know about tampon tax isn't worth knowing from my radio work. But are there any other issues that perhaps haven't come to light yet or as much because women are aren't standing up in the House of Parliament? Women aren't raising the issues because they're not standing and they're not getting elected. I don't think there's a single area in your social life where as a woman you come off better than a guy. So I think it's not a case of which things haven't been discussed as much. But where do we even start? Thank you for listening. You can listen again at www.womensradiostation.com where you'll find the links to other previous episodes including my interview with 5050 Campaign founder Francis. You can find out more about Ask her to stand@50:50 parliament.co.uk Ask her to stand on Twitter. It's AskHertoStand. My Twitter handle is Rosie McLeod4. If you want to tweet me or find out the latest updates on my radio programming, you can also listen again on my MixCloud page. Just head to www.mixcloud.com and search Rosie MacLeod. That's all for this week, but I do hope you'll tune in next time for another look at the grassroots campaigners making the world a better place for its female population. I'll leave you with a track from New York songstress Gabrielle Sturbans. This is the bridge. 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