All change (and five other stories)
Reads on the backlash against feminism and gender (in)equality to end your week.
It’s been raining almost constantly since Friday morning, when the results of Britain’s general election were declared. There has been little joy, since then, at least for me. Instead my overwhelming feeling has been one of flatness (as
articulated it perfectly in the New Statesman), alongside unease that Reform, a small, destructive populist party is now a force in parliament, with five MPs.And yet, there is a new government. After 14 years of Conservative rule, during which time a policy of austerity eroded the state and apparent disdain for the electorate eroded standards of public office, there is a dawning sense of relief. Whatever some of their critics on the left might say, the new government’s members are markedly different in outlook, and in background, to the ones who have just vacated the ship. For one, Labour’s cabinet is the most state-educated since 1945 (compare that, say, to Liz Truss’ short-lived cabinet: two-thirds attended private schools; almost half went to Oxbridge).
Parliament itself is more diverse, with the largest number of independent, Green, and Lib Dem MPs ever, as well as the largest proportion of women and minority ethnic members. And Labour’s cabinet will have the most female ministers in history. Two bright spots around the table are Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves. The latter is Britain’s first-ever woman chancellor. The former, Keir Starmer’s deputy prime minister and the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, had a child at 16, worked as an agency carer, and has lived in social housing. She is a grandmother aged 44 and the first Housing Secretary to have lived in a social home. I am more moved than I expected to be by her political success. Last year, I saw Rayner address the British Kebab Awards (yes, these really are a thing). She was charismatic, clever, clearly a natural leader—and very funny, sharing her penchant for waking up after a night out and munching on a left-over kebab. Frances Ryan profiled Rayner for Vogue last year and it’s well worth a read.
More women around the table, and more diversity in parliament, ought to be good news for feminism and for equality. As Lyanne Nicholl, CEO of 50:50 Parliament, a pressure group, points out, however:
….264 women were elected to parliament, marking a jump of 6% from 35% women MPs to over 40%. This is a record high.
In the 96 years since the Equal Franchise Act (when women were given the vote on the same terms as men) we have never got so close to a gender balanced Parliament. Which is wild, if you think about it. In a country where 51% of the population are women – the fact it has taken decades to inch toward a 50:50 Parliament is truly a democratic disgrace.
There is so much more to say about what this government could do to address the many problems that affect women disproportionately, including the impacts of austerity, but I’ll stop here and share this post by
. She writes about what it’s like to be on the winning side of politics for once—and what the victors can do to shift the balance for women.And now for the reads….
1) Economic growth is a poor argument for childcare reform
Childcare reform became a burning political issue in Britain in recent years. Long before Labour won its landslide, the party had promised policy that would mend the UK’s broken system of early years education. Last year, the now former Conservative government beat Labour to it, announcing at least some change. For both parties, the main argument for making childcare actually affordable and accessible was economic. Better childcare would get more parents (particularly mothers) back to work. In The Spectator, Arabella Byrne writes beautifully about why this argument for childcare provision is a poor one. Such policy, she writes, should be about ensuring parents (though mostly women, who on average do the bulk of the care in heterosexual couples) don’t lose it completely between their paid and unpaid work:
As a working mother of two children, aged six years and nine months, the entire narrative feels confused. Instead of asking whether I should work or look after my children – a binary I long ago accepted as one of feminism’s unforgiveable failures – I wonder if there might be a case for affordable, state-funded childcare to improve maternal mental health. It would stop women feeling like they might go mad.
Women deserve help with childcare, but without the grinding rhetoric of ‘productivity’ or ‘increased GDP’. We need childcare that tries to allay some of the damage of what Adrienne Rich has termed ‘the institution of intensive motherhood’, which she described in Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. We need childcare as a form of social infrastructure that acts as a way of preserving mental stability.
2) Video emerges of activist raped in Taliban jail
Ahead of the UN’s Afghanistan meeting on 30th June and 1st July (see the last edition of this newsletter), reports were emerging of women arrested by the Taliban for improper veiling being sexually assaulted in detention. This week, video emerged of a woman being gang-raped by armed men in a Taliban jail. The rape was filmed, and the victim, a human rights activist, says she was sent the footage afterwards and threatened with its release if she continued criticising the regime. Here is a link (and a trigger warning for the article).
3) Child marriage banned in Sierra Leone
On 2nd July, Sierra Leone’s president, Julius Maada Bio, signed into law the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act 2024. In the Guardian, Josephine Kamara welcomes the development, but argues that, without action on female genital mutilation, the legislation will fail to protect women and girls. She writes:
Sierra Leone has 800,000 child brides – and of those more than half were married before the age of 15, so there is no question that this is groundbreaking legislation. It repeals previous ambiguous laws to explicitly name child marriage as illegal and underscores a clear commitment to girls’ rights. The legislation also establishes mechanisms for enforcement, ensuring that perpetrators – including the husband and those who enable the marriage such as parents and the person officiating – are held accountable by up to 15 years’ imprisonment, with survivors now able to seek justice and compensation.
Yet, despite these advances, the law falls short by missing the vital component in enacting the urgent reform needed to eradicate FGM, viewed by many as a precursor to marriage, regardless of age. Child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) are deeply interwoven, yet an amended Child Rights Act of 2024, laid out to protect girls from all forms of violence, including FGM, is still awaiting parliamentary approval. Girls’ rights campaigners and feminist activists are concerned about the move to separate these fundamental human rights issues from each other.
4) Don’t listen to Taylor
I hate to give him even more clicks for this, but John Mac Ghlionn recently argued that Taylor Swift’s influence on her legions of young, female fans is far from positive—and not, as some of her critics claim, because she represents some form of girl-boss capitalism. Cue much fury on social media. If you were looking for something to get annoyed about, here’s a snippet:
Although her economic impact is extremely beneficial, it's worth asking if Swift's influence extends positively to other areas. More specifically, is she a good role model for young girls in the U.S. and beyond? Numerous pieces have been written explaining why she is; I would like to offer some pushback.
Swift is now the most influential celebrity in America. Her popularity is staggering, and her position as a cultural colossus is unquestionable.
At 34, Swift remains unmarried and childless, a fact that some might argue is irrelevant to her status as a role model. But, I suggest, it's crucial to consider what kind of example this sets for young girls. A role model, by definition, is someone worthy of imitation. While Swift's musical talent and business acumen are certainly admirable, even laudable, we must ask if her personal life choices are ones we want our sisters and daughters to emulate. This might sound like pearl-clutching preaching, but it's a concern rooted in sound reasoning.
Mac Ghlionn goes on to cite (in some detail) Swift’s various relationships, as well as her questioning of patriarchal structures, as matters for concern.
5) “Though sad at heart, always sing joyfully”
On her Substack,
imagines “the writer, poet, intellectual and one of the earliest women’s rights advocates, Christine de Pizan” stepping out of a painting and speaking with her about our “Age of Angst”. Shafak writes:Born in 1364 in Venice, Pizan wrote mainly in her adoptive tongue, French. An avid reader of philosophy, literature and ancient history. A sharp-eyed observant of her times and a careful listener of the words of balladeers and troubadours. She produced extensively across various disciplines, her talent culminating in The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of the Three Virtues. Through her fiction she challenged misogyny, sexism and discrimination and inequality at a time when it was almost unthinkable to do so! Today she is hailed as Europe’s first female author to earn a living by actively doing what she loved best: writing.
And also:
I don’t want her to ask me any questions. But of course, she does. She has a most curious, agile mind, after all. She wants to know which year it is and she wants to find out whether things have improved considerably and the values that she bravely upheld have all been neatly and securely reached and achieved. Gender equality? Women’s rights? A more egalitarian and peaceful world where no one is mistreated as ‘the Other’?
Bonus: The grief of ageing | An all-woman race for Tokyo governor
Thank you so much for reading. See you next time.