Trust me, politicians must start to win over women...
TODAY is International Women’s Day, which has its roots in the socialist movement of the early 1900s. Now it seems to have morphed into one of those days marked with an inspirational quote on social media and then, duty done, quickly forgotten amid the hustle and bustle of daily life.
This year, however, the John Smith Centre based at Glasgow University is returning the focus of IWD to politics, and has published research into women’s attitudes. It makes for uncomfortable reading.
Fewer women than men trust politicians in general and their own MP in particular, while less than a quarter of women think politicians try to keep their pledges.
That is the same low number as think democracy is working well in the UK – compared with nearly a third of men who think the same way on both, displaying a pretty stark gender divide.
That trust in politics is down the toilet in this country is not news.
It is often traced back to the MPs’ expenses scandal in the late 2000s. But the idea that, as a group, politicians are a bunch of venal, lying charlatans with their snouts firmly in the trough of the public purse predates that by many decades.
‘We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office’ sounds like the sort of highbrow quote you’d get from a Lefty commentator. Actually it comes from Aesop – he of the fables – and is at least 2,500 years old.
So if it has always been the case that those who elect people to make decisions on their behalf – on vital issues such as taxation, education and health – then decide they don’t trust the people they have elected to do the job with probity and integrity, URGENT work is under way to help save the British hedgehog. Researchers, who were alarmed to find the country’s hedgehog population had dropped 30 per cent in urban areas since 2000, are now looking at traffic patterns and hedgehog tunnels to see if there’s a way to halt the decline. Experts believe the animals are struggling with lost habitats, increased competition and traffic. If this study is successful, it could be used by the next generation of town planners to make hedgehogfriendly towns, roads and green space. Mrs Tiggie-Winkle would definitely approve. why should we care that there’s a gender imbalance now?
Well, as Labour MP Stella Creasy notes, it matters ‘not least because women are more likely to use public services – and are less likely to be politicians’.
In other words, decisions are made on behalf of us all on services most often used by women, but with much less input or decisionmaking from women themselves.
If women, therefore, have less trust in the process, that is indicative of the process breaking down and politicians making decisions that don’t deliver.
I also think there may be something else at play – the coarsening of politics generally and the spaces where political issues are more regularly discussed, especially social media, are a free-for-all where it’s not just accepted, but expected, that abuse, misogyny and hate accompanies every post.
A couple of years ago, Amnesty International conducted a huge survey of hundreds of female journalists and politicians from across the world and found they were targeted by abuse on Twitter every 30 seconds.
The charity’s Milena Marin said: ‘Abuse of this kind really limits women’s freedom of expression online. It makes them withdraw, limit conversations and even remove themselves altogether.’
SHOUTING women down is as old as the hills, but being able to do so anonymously and from the comfort of your own home makes it easier than ever. And if the level of abuse is such that it makes women self-censor or withdraw from the new public square – and it does – then politics becomes ever more skewed and less representative. The absence of ‘people like me’ on the television or radio news, replaced by those loudly expounding with certainty over issues where everyone knows nothing is certain, adds to that sense of disconnect.
The kind of global leadership which means we see photographs such as US President Donald Trump passing legislation, or planning a response to the coronavirus, while surrounded by a large group consisting solely of men, makes that disconnect feel ever greater.
The macho undertones of slogans such as Make America Great Again and Take Back Control reinforce the wish for an earlier, simpler time – and the sense that even Western democracy is now in a period of thrall to strongmen figures. Where is the room for thought, for doubt, in our public discourse now?
Where is the room for compromise? Where is the intellectual honesty to say, ‘This idea won’t fix everything but it will make things a bit better, so let’s try it’, rather than the screeching of betrayal from those who see such pragmatism as not intellectually pure enough?
If we want everyone, especially women, to have more trust in politics, we must be more honest about our plans, more humble in claiming their effects and more willing to work together – even if it involves compromise. We have to under promise and over deliver.
And we have to stop attacking women online for daring to have an opinion.