Social Issues – Conservatives for Liberty

International Women’s Day and the three badass women who made me

Emily Barley / Social Issues / 0 comments

08/03/2018

In case you haven’t noticed, today is International Women’s Day. Honestly, the whole thing makes me feel uncomfortable because I have only ever considered gender one part of my identity, and the way this day makes gender sound like the most important thing in the world just winds me up. But instead of allowing the feminists to have this day and to themselves to talk about how awful life is for women (#NotInMyName), I thought I’d pay tribute to three women who did not buy in to that, and have had a great influence on me.

1) My Mummy Bear.

From below the poverty line cleaning houses when I was a kid, to a senior NHS manager now, mum changed her life and mine through sheer determination and hard work. Her values around taking responsibility, working hard and being optimistic for the future are mine too, and are what make me a Conservative (I’ve written about this before: Why I am a Conservative).

Note, mum has an intense hatred of feminism, which she finds disempowering and patronising. Ask her when you see her, and expect swearing in her answer (she also taught me how creative swearing can be).

2) Granny Lynda.

Granny had her first child aged 17 and then went on to have two more (incl my mum). She trained as a nursery nurse at night school, and by the time I knew her she had risen from nursery nurse to nursery manager to being the manager of a national chain of nurseries – and designing qualifications which were the foundation of the NVQs used today. My Granny had an incredible way of making every child feel special and loved, and I always felt so lucky that she was My Granny.

I had always thought I was the first Conservative in my family, but recently learned that in 1979 my granny took a chance. She didn’t vote her usual way (Liberal) but put her faith in another great lady. I am told that not many people knew at the time or since, because it wasn’t a welcome choice in 1970s Maltby, the mining town she was from.

My granny died of brain cancer when I was 9, but I learned three things from her first:

‘Kill them with kindness, Emily’ (this does indeed work)
The importance of striking out on your own path, and while always loving your family, not being a slave to them
Don’t ever take yourself too seriously (especially when dancing to the Mr Blobby song…).

3) Great Grandma Trudy (proper name Gertrude, aka Dirty Gerty).

Grandma kept her sense of humour despite having one of the hardest lives of anyone I have known. Two dead husbands (the first in WW2 when her twin babies were just six months old), a divorce when it wasn’t overly fashionable, three children who died before her, and an epic struggle with depression.

She taught me to bake. She taught me that even the over 80s can have a cheeky sense of humour. And most of all she taught me about sheer strength and force of will to survive, which she never lost, not even at the end of her life when she defied all expectations in living for 2 weeks after she stopped drinking anything.

These are the three women who raised me.

And I have never seen or heard any excuses, any kind of victim mentality, or anything less than bloody hard work from any of them. They inspire me to do more and do better every single day.

When I was growing up they all said to me “you can do it”, “I am proud of you” and “reach for the stars”. And my hope for #IWD2018 is that every child can hear these words, including girls, and that we can replace the toxic feminism that tells girls they are fragile and need protecting from the dangerous world with words of strength, power and belief in them as individuals.

Don’t teach our girls and young women that they are weak

Emily Barley / Inter-Generational Fairness, Social Issues / 0 comments

11/11/2017

I don’t generally write about politics in the context of gender, because frankly, it doesn’t matter to me. Maybe it was a terrible oversight, but my mum simply didn’t bring me up to think about my gender in any political or economic context.

And that’s why the past year or so has been particularly frustrating for me, as issues around gender and politics, feminism and sexism (and on and on and on) have been discussed repeatedly – almost literally ad nauseum – both nationally and internationally.

But now it’s not just frustrating – it’s worrying too. I consider myself a pretty strong woman: I’ve done well against some difficult odds; I have succeeded, and am succeeding, in fields that are traditionally male dominated. It even feels strange to write that, because it’s never felt male ‘dominated’ to me and I’ve never found it harder as a woman.

I am worried, and quite angry, that the culture and atmosphere being created by a supposedly feminist, pro-women agenda is actually toxic for girls and young women. And I can’t help but compare it with my own upbringing.

My mum always said to me, pretty much every day of my childhood, that I could do and be anything I wanted to as long as I was prepared to work hard enough. But instead of being encouraged in this way, girls and women are now told time and again that they are limited by their gender. That the odds are stacked against them and that everything will be harder for them; don’t bother aiming high, because the patriarchy means you will never get to the top.

Instead of being empowered, they are told that even words are dangerous to their weak constitutions, and that they need to be shielded from opinions that are distasteful or just different. Bring back the fainting couch and smelling salts – it’s all gone a bit Victorian.

My mum always said to me, it doesn’t matter what people look like, where they come from or what they have; instead, what matters is whether they’re a good person or not. Being kind, being honest, and being responsible – they’re the things that are important.

That’s not what girls and women are told now. Instead, they are told that they will be judged every day of their lives for their gender, how they look, how they speak, and how all of this matches up to society’s expectations of ‘femininity’.

At the same time as being told that they will be judged unfairly, girls and women are encouraged to judge others – if people come from certain ‘privileged’ backgrounds, or if they say something that doesn’t fit into a narrow version of politically correct speech, they are irredeemably bad, and so must be denounced and avoided.

Every woman nowadays is encouraged to think of themselves as a victim. Whatever happens to you that isn’t exactly as you want; you are a victim of sexism and the patriarchy. If someone disagreed with or ignored you, it is because you are a woman. If you find getting a job or a promotion harder than you thought it was going to be, it is because you are a woman.

If you walk into a room where there are few women and many men, you are inevitably going to be ignored or belittled or treated unfairly – no need to wait and see, get your guard up now – all because you are a woman.

I just can’t understand it. I was a victim of a serious crime at quite a young age. I experienced all those feelings of powerlessness, confusion and shame that come with being a victim. First of all, why would you go looking for that where it doesn’t exist? And secondly, why would you belittle the suffering of real victims with your fake victimhood? Equating rape and being wolf-whistled as part of the same thing where we’re all victims of the patriarchy together absolutely disgusts me.

I am worried that all of this together will hold girls and young women back. In being told to expect everything to be a battle, are they not likely to shrink from it? In being told that the only thing holding them back is their gender (and ‘the patriarchy’), are they not likely to look at every setback as sexism rather than examining their own performance, learning and improving, and through that succeeding? In being told that they will be judged (and should judge others), on a narrow, superficial basis, is it not likely that their confidence will be undermined and their anxiety increased?

When I was growing up, my role models were my mum, my granny, and my great grandma. These are women who endured through enormous hardships and succeeded against the odds. They did so with humour, love and joy. And that’s what they taught me too; but what are the next generation of women being taught? Please, don’t let it be that they are weak, perpetual victims. Let’s make sure they learn that they are strong, and they can do and be anything they want if they are willing to work hard enough.

The Gender Pay Gap is a hazy memory, Theresa

Eva Henderson / Social Issues / 0 comments

21/05/2017

The Seventies brought us Grease, Chicago and The Equal Pay Act. Ever since then, us ladies have been bopping along to Summer Nights, All That Jazz and the sweet sound of a income that is equal to that of a male employee employed by the same company doing the same job (catchy, I know). Yes, that’s right. Much like John Travolta’s good looks, flared jeans and male perms the ‘gender pay gap’, is nothing but a hazy memory. So why, almost half a century later, does it need to be dragged out as a bribe to induce people to vote Conservative?

‘A government unafraid to confront the burning injustices of the gender pay gap’ the newly released manifesto raves, to much eye rolling from anyone who’s taken a serious interest in the subject. I’m not sure which exact issue of Cosmopolitan Theresa May has been reading, but it certainly didn’t contain any actual facts since the gender pay gap is statistically… drum roll please… not even a thing! *jazz hands*

Okay, so leaving the musical theatre jokes aside and looking at actual data, the difference in pay between a man and a woman doing the same job in the same company is exactly zero pounds and zero pence since that is in fact illegal.

What isn’t illegal however, is women choosing which job they have. Whether we as a gender on the whole earn less than men but ultimately live a more pleasant life is up to us. The Women and Equalities Select Committee, who probably hate that I’m using their own words against them, stated that women are much less likely to “spend less time commuting, are less likely to work unsociable hours, unlikely to face physical danger in work, and are less likely to work outside, or in isolated conditions”. Ten points for anyone who can guess why.

Because they don’t want to.

This isn’t a bad thing, I certainly wouldn’t want to do those jobs, but then again I’m not complaining when a man who’s risking his life has a higher wage than me when I’m cleaning a bath tub.

Lion taming, for example, is a lucrative profession. However, out of the 13 famous lion tamers listed on Wikipedia only two are women. Is this because lions are indeed sexist pigs? Probably not. What is likely though, is that woman just don’t really have much interest in sticking their head inside a lion’s mouth for a few extra pounds and instead place greater value on retaining all of their limbs.

Those less lucrative but less lethal professions do have an advantage, other than the obvious. ONS statistics show that because of women’s choices in employment, they may lose out on high earnings compared to those of typically male dominated fields, but they gain job security. Throughout the years, economically good or bad, female employment has increased at a steady rate and continues to do so. Male employment levels fluctuate year on year and dramatically fall during economic downturns. Conclusion – it’s probably better in the long run to be a woman because we usually get safer and steadier jobs. And on average we live longer too.

Further proof that it’s better to be a woman is that after having a baby, a man only gets two weeks paid paternity leave, where as a woman gets 12 months. Sure, we have to push a baby out of our bodies, but after that we get to spend an entire year with said infant, where as the father gets a measly 14 days before returning to whatever drudgery he fills his day with.

So there you have it, you can listen to the Made in Dagenham soundtrack all you want, it still won’t prove the that women are deliberately underpaid for equal work. Sorry Theresa, but I’m not hopelessly devoted to you or your half-witted manifesto.

Eva Henderson is a final year Law and English Literature student at Bangor University, Yorkshire lass, and proud former chambermaid.

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The views expressed in this article are that of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Conservatives for Liberty