Today the Women’s Equality Party announced it’s new leader- Sophie Walker. And on Friday, I joined the organising committee of the Edinburgh branch. The Women’s Equality Party- or #WE- is a party aiming to field candidates in the next general election, and is a fully bona fide membership based, change ori entated political group. Policy is currently being developed and local branches are springing up all over. It’s VERY EXCITING
#WE believes that it’s about time that mainstream politics took equality seriously, that we need to actively end violence against women, enhance women’s representation at work, tackle shared parenting and childcare, build education for women and girls, look at how the media represent us and finally get paid for the work women do. This shouldn’t be radical- but it is. And that is why we need it.
Mainstream politics- particularly in Westminster, but let’s not kid on that Holyrood is a perfect parliament in a post feminist utopia either- is missing equality. It’s missing a core belief that women- all women- deserve to be equal. Equality is often an add on, an after thought, an impact assessment form, it is not at the heart of policy drives or legislative work. If it was, we would have ended violence against women and sorted out unstable, low paid employment, politicians wouldn’t get such cold feet around sex education and we certainly would have better paternity leave allowances from businesses. We wouldn’t see abortion clinics close and we wouldn’t see charities who support vulnerable women operate on a shoe string budget.
I’m really curious to see where this political party takes us, and to tackle head on the questions we’ll inevitably face; internally and externally. How do we represent all women? What does inclusion look like? How can such a broad church as feminism find consensus? Is equality liberation? How do we define violence? These are huge, defining questions that feminists and those who support women’s equality will probably always grapple with. We may not find the answers immediately, but the conversations and debate will keep pushing the movement forward, and slowly build consensus as to what the solutions might be.
But one thing’s for sure- women cannot afford to be left behind any longer. Austerity has had hugely negative impacts on women- particularly women with disabilities and those from migrant communities. Public services are dwindling, work is increasingly precarious and the charity sector can no longer afford to pick up where Councils have left off. In just one week I read about women’s employability charities closing, of homeless services cut. In another week I organised a drive for sanitary towels and tampons for food banks through the homeless period and started collecting nappies for Shakti Women’s Aid. These are not one off events now. This is a pattern. We cannot sit idly by and allow this to happen. Taking equality seriously means fighting for all women, it means standing our ground, it means coming together to make change. I hope you will join us.
No, but really… JOIN US!
Ellie Writes Stuff 