Sisters.. are doing an injustice to their own

Hostesses and F1 grid girls have lost work TORY MP Chris HeatonHarris tweets: I simply can’t believe I’ve been nominated for this year’s Scepticism Award.”

A HUNDRED years ago on Tuesday, women who were householders had good reason to celebrate if they were aged over 29 years and three months.

On February 6, 1918 the Representation of the People Act gave all those over 30 with property the vote.

And they got to use it when Britain went to the polls that December.

Constance Markiewicz became the first woman to be elected an MP.

But as she represented Sinn Fein, she wouldn’t take her seat.

Some things never change. And many women argue they still haven’t.

Glamour

The equal pay battle is still to be won, and sexual harassment banished from the workplace. Which is why I support sentiments behind the #TimesUp and #MeToo campaigns.

Yet elsewhere militant feminism has done women a disservice. Take attempts to ban topless Page 3 girls by Labour’s Clare Short, Harriet Harman and Green leader Caroline Lucas.

They claimed it demeaned women. Yet when Colin Firth, Daniel Craig and that geezer from Poldark displayed their nipples on screen no one suggested it diminished men.

I never met a glamour model doing this kind of work who felt exploited by i t . They had assets to capitalise on much as Premier League footballers make a mint out of a pair of legs. And their career lifespans were similar.

To hound them out of work was a restraint on trade, and it is an odd sort of sisterhood that would deny women employment.

Page 3 is now in the dustbin of history, not because campaigners won but because the public appetite for it was lost. Formula One grid girls, and walk-ons used by the Professional Darts Corporation are the latest victims of this nonsense.

No longer escorting players to the stage will cost them dearly.

Charlotte Wood said she’d lose 60 per cent of her income, adding: “My rights are being taken away.” I’m with you, Charlie. It’s sex discrimination.

Women battled for 164 years to legalise abortion. It gave them the control they were demanding over their own bodies.

And if that principle is accepted then they must also have the right to show those bodies off if they freely choose to do so.