We need more women in power, not iron ladies (Barf alert)

Sunday Times ^ | 2nd October 2022 | Louise O'Neill

[Ennis85]

It’s an incredible time to be a woman. No, really, it is. The UK has its third female prime minister, all from the Conservative Party. As Liz Truss remarked to Theresa May: “It is quite extraordinary, isn’t it, that there doesn’t seem to be the ability in the Labour Party to find a female leader?”

The past week brought the exciting news that Italy has elected its first female prime minister. Giorgia Meloni, who was raised by a single mother in a working-class district of Rome, has been the leader of the Brothers of Italy political party since 2014, and has been president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party since 2020. What else did the suffragettes fight so bravely for but this?

It's strange, though, that none of you so-called femninists are celebrating these victories for women. The glasses ceiling has been shattered, ladies. Think of all the young girls watching these historic event unfold, and how encouraged they will be to enter politics now. I know when I was a child, watching as Margaret Thatcher - the orginal Spice Girl, according to Geri Halliwell - left office in 1990, I thought to myself: "If she can do it, so can I. Maybe some day, if I work hard enough and believe in myself, I could destroy an entire country's manufacturing industry, leading to widespread unemplyment and civic unrest. Perhaps I, too, could reduce the power of trade union, abolish free milk for schoolchildren (it is our duty to look after ourselves, remember?), and establish covert military intelligence squads in Northern Ireland to kill its citizens." It's important for little girls to dream big.

We all know that representation matters. In 2019, when Dail Eireann was celebrating a century in existence, it was calculated that just 114 women had been elected as TDs during that time, as opposed to 1,190 men. After the 2020 elections, less than a quarter of our current TDs are female. We know the barriers to entry for women into politics are still too high. A study by the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath found these barriers were both social and cultural. Women do a disproportionate amount of housework and childcare and, due to the gender pay gap, they are less likely to have the financial resources needed to fund a campaign. There are also structural and institutional barriers, such as evidence of direct and indirect discrimination against female candidates, and women being more likely to be selected for marginal seats.

This is why gender quuotas are often suggested as an - admittedly imperfect - way of levelling the playing field. We need women in poaitions of power, we need women at the table when political decisions that shape our lives are being made. The hope is that female representatives might be more cognisant of issues that directly affect women, such as gendered violence, funding for domestic abuse shekters, period poverty, reproductive rights, parental leave and affordable childcare, to mention just a few.

So far Truss has not publicly recognised that the cost of living crisis in the UK will disproportionately affect women , as all past economic recessions have, nor has she taken any steps to mitigate that threat. Thatcher froze payments of child benefit, and criticised working mothers for raising a "creche generation". Meloni - who has been called "Fascist adjacent" and "the most dangerous woman in Europe" - insists she is not a feminist, is against "pink quotas, and believes that success should come down to merit, not gender.

She is also against LGTB rights and has ties to the anti-choice movement in Italy. Meloni has denied that she wants to abolish abortion but thousands of Italian women took to the streets in protest last Wednesday, fearful she will roll back on that assurance.

Meghan McCain, a daughter of the late US senator John McCain, tweeted last week that "everyone wants a woman in power until it's a conservatives woman in power". It's as if we should be collectively thrilled that a woman whp said Benito Mussolini "was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy" is now running the show.

saying that we should be happy because our rights are being eroded by power, rather than just by the men, is some real #Girlboss nonsense. To put it bluntly, I don't think it's too much to ask that our female politicians should want to dismantle the patriarchy, not act as its foot soldiers.

[Vaduz]

News media is the socialists best form of implanting wokeness ideas in the the mind slow and steady is the easiest way to train the mind.
Remember all the changes just from the 60’s alone and how it worked.