By Guest Writer Sarah Crofts
Just who is standing up for women’s rights in the UK? Women – 51% of the population – are under threat. This is nothing new. This is, in fact, very old news. You don’t need to look far for depressing statistics about violence against women and girls, for example. We have the handy acronyms because we need shorthand, frankly, to list the worldwide and national daily tragedies of VAWG, FGM, DV. And that’s before we even begin on discrimination – representation, pay, healthcare even PPE, FFS. You know.
Women also have a vote. Where to put that vote has been the cause of much agonising for many of us over the years. With ‘women’s issues’ usually consigned to the last few pages of a manifesto or, memorably once, signalled by a pink bus, the choices have been underwhelming. Despite the presence of fantastic pressure groups and campaigners such as the Fawcett Society, End Violence Against Women Coalition, and UK Feminista, the pace of change has been glacial.
So when, in March 2015, the Women’s Equality Party was formed many of us punched the air with joy and couldn’t get involved quick enough. My Founding Member card sat proudly in my wallet and I was one of the first branch leaders. I was sold.
What I really loved, what really gave me a kick, was the way the founders of the party stood firm against the people who questioned the name. Some people really hated it. My branch’s social media pages would receive barbed comments reflecting those received by the Party as a whole: Why is it the Women’s Equality Party? Why not just the Equality Party? You’ll never get any votes with that name … why would you exclude half the population? And, my personal favourite, that’s just SEXIST.
The party held fast though. Equality for women is what WE want, they said. Dear Sandi Toksvig responded , “Because there is a huge issue, women are certainly not equal.”
High hopes. This felt like something momentous. Sophie Walker was appointed leader, and she was soon appearing on television and writing articles in the press. As a writer and journalist, she used her skills in the media with aplomb, and there were more air-punching moments as she took on the slouching, stuffed suits in newsroom studios. She took on their barely concealed privileged misogyny with assured feminist reasoning, punctuated by a firm smile that suggested she could take them all down with a Vulcan death grip if she chose to, but she was graciously allowing them to live so that they may return to their offices and quickly type out their formal, written repentance for their role in the perpetuation of the patriarchy.
Okay, okay. That might be a whole lot of hyperbole right there, but I can assure you that as a party member this is how it felt.
In those early days, there was just a small team coordinating branches, and communication was predominantly through a project management app that meant we were communicating directly with them and vice versa. I remember reading a note, possibly on there, that talked about the learning curve everyone was experiencing – one doesn’t set up a political party every day – and that there had been a lot of discussion about intersectional feminism. The suggestion was that this was not a familiar concept to everyone.
Fantastic, I remember thinking. WEP were already facing accusations of being too white, middle-class and middle-aged. It was heartening to see the overt efforts the Party was making, and asking branches to make, in attracting members and candidates from BAME communities, for example. Clearly they were learning from Kimberlé Crenshaw’s writings, as policies were published in October 2015 that clearly considered and sought to address the fact that barriers to equality vary according to other aspects of a woman’s identity, including her ethnicity, age, disability, and class. Proud.
Fast forward to 2020. The year we will probably never forget for many reasons. But when I haven’t been bleaching my just-delivered groceries, bemoaning the scarcity of baking paper (why?), and quietly worrying about what my friend’s children call The Big Cough, I have been getting progressively more and more cross, nay, utterly livid with the Women’s Equality Party. It’s safe to presume the love affair is over.
That’s not to say I’m not giving it one last chance. You know, that last look back in case they finally say the right thing. Those three words you’ve been longing to hear. You’ve imagined hearing them for so long. You first. No, you. Let’s say them together… Ready?
Adult human female.
That’s right. The Women’s Equality Party is a bit squeamish about the word woman. They have managed not to talk about this problem for a really long time now. For two years, in fact, they have sat silently through vitriolic and toxic Twitter storms and press spats, observed women losing their jobs for holding unpopular views, being threatened with rape and other sexualised violence for voicing an opinion, without a peep. This, they will tell you, is because they are waiting to consult their members. We’re just going to check, they say, and we’ll get back to you.
This sorry situation stems from 2018, when a group of members put forward a motion to Party Conference in support of the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act that the government was mooting at the time. These proposed changes would, in essence, enable people to self-identify as the opposite sex and obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate, meaning they would be considered legally that sex in most circumstances. I say most, because there are certain circumstances where even someone with a GRC may still be denied access to a single sex service, for example a women’s shelter. These exemptions form part of the Equality Act 2010 and can be applied where it is reasonable and proportionate, for example a women’s refuge. But this important legislation is widely misunderstood and misrepresented in the UK.
Single Sex Exemptions, amongst other things, are a crucial protection for those precious safe harbours that we hope we won’t need for ourselves, but they are needed. Violence by men against women is still very much a thing. Homophobia, still a thing. Sometimes, we need genuinely safe spaces. Not the imaginary safe spaces with bean bags, matcha tea, and hand-holding sessions or whatever it is snorting Daily Mail hacks think us ‘lefty liberal snowflakes’ need to get over the time that builder called us darlin. I mean the real, life-saving spaces. The ones you arrive at in the night with sobbing kids in tow, with only what you’re wearing and not even a toothbrush. The ‘what the hell is going to happen to us now?‘ kind of safe spaces. Those amazing, under-funded places where traumatised women go to learn what it is to live again, to face it all alone and often with nothing, maybe – we hope – to learn how to stop feeling permanently vigilant, alone, afraid. To start over.
These are the protections I want my Party to stand up for, for the services and organisations that save women’s lives, time and time again. They need them. We need them.
But, instead, there’s been an effective moratorium on discussion about sex-based rights within the Party. Branch officers have been told not to share articles that suggest a position on ‘the issue’ – although, articles that are clearly supporting gender identity seem to pass by without censure – and motions to this October’s conference will not be accepted if they relate to sex-based rights or the GRA in any way. All because of a motion submitted by some members two years ago positing that WEP should support self-ID. A motion that was debated and was not accepted, but instead referred back. The result of which is a members’ consultation.
Unfortunately, in the two years that have passed since this was first promised, many gender critical members have left the Party in frustration at the perceived inaction. So, that’s fewer gender critical voices in the consultation process which has now begun (finally!). But many of us have stayed the course and, in order to try and make space for some debate and clear information at least, came together to form a caucus. As the Women’s Equality Party Caucus for Women’s Sex-Based Rights (www.wepsbr.com), we have a collective voice and have tapped into the brilliant brains of members to produce a growing website with clear facts and information about an issue many are struggling to keep abreast of (apparently, not everyone is knee-deep in Twitter threads til 3am). We’ve also been asking for clarity and fair representation through the start of the process, and we are determined to keep women at the centre of the debate.
The members’ assembly is currently being selected, along with witnesses to provide testimony around the issue of self-ID. The Party is using an independent organisation to run this.
I have a lot of feelings about the party resources being used in this way and how this has been pitched, but this is where we are. All I can do now, as I’ve tried to do throughout the past few months and years, is be hopeful. There are times when this hope is tested, but it is the position I choose. We all must hope, because giving up isn’t an option. And there is good cause. Outside of that dark and singular world that is social media, in that bright and ever so slightly more nuanced real world, there is an unfurling sense of, well, sense. Let’s hope all the parties catch a whiff of it soon.
Praise be, JKR, praise be.