Incredulous

So this week the Women’s Equality Party have been ecstatically celebrating a critical victory that they have been fighting for since 2017. And they well deserve to celebrate as many of their members have worked extremely hard for this. Thanks to them, Parliament has voted to pass critical changes which mean that MPs found to have abused or harassed women can be fired by their constituents and withdrawn.

This is, of course, a very good and right thing but what makes me absolutely incredulous is how on earth did it take until October 2021 for this to be true? How is it possible that, until last week, sexual abusers and harassers were permitted to continue in their job and contribute to key discussions and decisions in Parliament influencing how our society is run?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - we are way, way too positive, patient and polite about gender inequality issues. Why do we as women sit so quietly and stay so silent in the face of these things, why do we accept them? No we don’t (yet) have enough of us represented in leadership in this world, but we nonetheless have enormous power that we could leverage if we chose to. Over dinner last night a friend and I had a serious discussion about calling a ‘Woman strike’ with a list of equality demands that need to be met. This happened in Iceland, 46 years ago this week in fact, and in just one day the country was totally paralyzed. If women truly realized the power we have we would stop quietly accepting any of the equality issues we face.

It also has to be said - again - that the most obvious route to progress would be to have 50% representation of women in every room where decisions are being made. I’m pretty sure that a Parliament made up of 50% women would have voted to fire its sexual abusers and harassers a lot sooner than this week…

Thanks you to the Women’s Equality Party for not staying quiet and making some serious noise until you were heard and action was taken. We all need to be more like you.