What Labour women should know about feminism

A friend of mine, a couple of years ago, when asked what she would like for Christmas, requested some books on feminism. It was time, she decided, to get up to speed with what feminism meant in today’s society. The present giver looked for such books and could find none, just works from the seventies and eighties.

If you are interested in feminist and cultural history, these are great. But if you want a look at feminism in the noughties, they are not much help. For although we have much to thank previous generations of feminists for – our great grandmothers secured the vote, our grandmothers made it normal to go out to work, our mothers could have the contraceptive pill, have an abortion if they needed one and own property without a male signatory – feminism has moved on somewhat. We need books that help us understand our place in today’s world, where women are free to behave badly, but are judged more harshly than men for doing so, where ‘having it all’ when it comes to work and the family, is possible, but at a price, and where dungarees are out and yummy mummies are in.

So I started thinking about what feminism means to me and my friends. Some of us, for example, have married, and some have not. Of the married ones some have changed our names upon marriage and some have not. I am a Ms, others kept Miss for as long as possible and others use Mrs with pride. We all work, some have children. We are financially independent. Some of us share our money with our partner, others don’t. Some of us wear high heels, some of us refuse to. The same goes for short skirts and strappy tops. Some of us do all the washing and cleaning in the household. Others of us share it. Some of us pay someone else to do it. But the more I thought about this the more I realised how much we had in common. After all, we all want to be treated equally, to be able to make our own decisions about life, to be able to feel safe walking down the street, to enjoy our careers and not to be judged by our marital status. And I realised that whatever decisions we make in our own lives, as long as we make them freely then we are all feminists, whether we use that word or not.

And in fact there are good books for my generation out there. Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs is excellent. So are Manifesta by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards and Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti. But these are all by Americans. I wanted to do the same from a British perspective.

The result is my book, published this month, The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism. It looks at areas that occur in our everyday lives and ponders upon what this means from a feminist perspective – from who washes the underwear to what jobs you apply for, from whether vibrators should be shaped like a penis to why we need more public toilets.

The issue of feminism is hugely political, but it is not necessarily party political. My Labour politics inform my thinking, and therefore the book, at all times. And my definition of feminism is largely focussed on the concept of choice, a key New Labour concept (and of course a key Thatcher one, though I reject her use of it). But one of the problems with Labour is that it gets bogged down in thinking about feminism as being just about childcare, working hours, health and carers, and in thinking about feminism in terms of the dungarees and placard that typified British feminism thirty years ago. But as all noughtie girls know, women’s live are about far more than that. Those issues are important, of course, but we also care about defence, about transport, about farming and about foreign affairs. And we no longer conform to the dungaree stereotype.

I’m hoping my book helps bring together feminists from across the political spectrum. But above all I am hoping that Labour women, and men, read it, and realise that in feminism, like in Labour politics, although there are disagreements and factions, we ultimately have more in common than we have apart, and that by accepting this we form some common goals to work towards.

La Burqa

In 2004, the government made school uniform, truly "uniform" when it prohibited the wearing of any religious symbols (including headscarves, turbans and skullcaps) in all state schools. A large number of students who defied the ban and continued to wear such items were subsequently expelled and forced to pay for private tuition instead. The law excluded and isolated the very people that it intended to liberate. I think we are about to experience a severe case of deja vu.

Just what France needs: a commission to "study the extent of burkha-wearing." President Sarkozy isn't going to wait around for the results though, announcing yesterday that "burkhas are not welcome here."

This move by Sarkozy is not entirely surprising, considering the decision of the Conseil d'Etat last year to deny French citizenship to a Moroccan woman on the grounds that she insisted on wearing a burkha. Whilst praising the decision, minister Fadela Amara described the burkha as a "prison." Yesterday, Mr Sarkozy went further to describe such women as "prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity" -- an insult to the fashionistas methinks, lots of women spend absolute fortunes on their "netting."

When I first moved to the Middle East, I was shocked when I first saw women wearing a niqab with an eye veil so that the entire face is covered, even the eyes. It was difficult for me to imagine that there was a human being underneath the black chiffon. It was certainly very strange to be browsing through the clothes in TopShop alongside women in burkhas.

After 4 months living here, the burkha now seems very normal to me and I find it very beautiful. I met with one of our client's key business representatives a few weeks ago -- she is a woman and of course, she wears a burkha.

My message to Mr Sarkozy: you cannot change someone else's culture for them and you certainly cannot change it overnight. By banning the burkha, you may well be taking away the one thing that actually liberates Muslim women in France. Without the burkha, some women may not leave their homes at all.

Labour Women's Network training

It's great to see LWN have put an event together to give women training for parliamentary selections. Full details from their recent newsletter are below.

LWN Training & Personal Development Opportunity
We are running a training weekend from the evening of Friday 10 July to the morning of Sunday 12 July. This is for women who are serious about wanting to be selected to fight a parliamentary seat and are prepared to invest time and effort in achieving it. We will be looking at a whole range of actvities, including personal planning, media skills and CV writing, and you will also be able to meet like-minded women for a great weekend of politics and personal development.

LWN is financing most of the costs of the weekend, and is therefore able to offer it to participants for only £50 - which includes 2 nights' accomodation, meals, and all materials for the course. (You will have to pay your own travel to and from the venue, which is in Leominster, and is accessible by train.) Please note that the training is only open to members of Labour Women's Network.

This is an unmissable opportunity for any woman who really wants to win, and places are limited. If you would like to apply for one, please email our Training Co-ordinator, Ann Leedham-Smith, at annleedham@hotmail.co.uk explaining why you want to do the training, whether or not you have done any previous LWN training, whether you have stood as a candidate before, and what your ambitions are. We hope you get a place and look forward to seeing you there!

Parliamentary Selections
As you will know, a number of MPs have recently announced that, for one reason or another, they will not be standing at the next General Election. Labour-held seats include Elmet & Rothwell (notional majority 6,078), Wirral South (notional maj 3,538), Barrow & Furness (notional maj 4,843), Makerfield (notional maj 17,903), Carlisle (notional maj 5,085), Luton South (notional maj 5,698) and Reading West (notional maj 4,931). There are also vacancies in marginal seats and in seats held by the Tories and Liberal Democrats - and we need good candidates in all of them!

At this stage we don't know which will be all-women shortlists and which open, but we do know that we will need good women candidates to seek selection. If you would like to sign up for our special selection alert service (currently being developed) please let us know by emailing us at lwn@lwn.org.uk. And if you know good Labour women who should be encouraged to stand, get them to join LWN, attend training, and go for it!

Finally, the earlier the information we have about selections, the better. If you know of vacancies which are coming up, please let us know so that we can let other women know. And if you get selected for a seat, let us know so that we can celebrate your success!