As the discrimination exposed by COVID gets deeper, the wait for levelling up gets longer, and the ‘red meat’ of voter-friendly policies is thrown out as appeasement for mistakes made rather than engagement in long-term change – perhaps it’s time to go back to basics.
The pandemic is going to continue to change our lives. The gaps between rich and poor keep widening. Violence against women is a national crisis. The climate emergency is intensifying. All of these require thought and creativity to solve. But most importantly, they require participation from everybody who is affected by them, from every community.
Across government and local government, the representation of our minoritised communities, those who are made vulnerable through structural inequalities, is very poor.
That is what we have to fix. If we are to level up society, we have to start by levelling up local government, and fixing skewed representation in teams of people who are designing and planning systems and services for minoritised and excluded people without understanding those experiences.
There is a particular problem with the representation of women in local government, and particularly Black, Asian and minority ethnic women, and disabled and working class women. Not only are these women’s perspectives too often overlooked, but attempts by them to participate in politics are often met with abuse. Look at the recent experience of Arooj Shah, Oldham’s first female Muslim leader, for one. If we want to stop violence and harassment of women in public places we have to fundamentally challenge the perception that women don’t have a right to be in those places. And the only way we can do that is to systematically lift the barriers to their participation.
Equal and adequate pay for local government work would be a start. Allowances don’t work to encourage people in equally. Women are much poorer than men. They’re more likely to be doing part time work around the lion’s share of caring responsibilities. They’re much less likely to have sufficient pensions and they’re much less likely to have significant savings because of a lifetime of providing unpaid social infrastructure. It is not an accident that most of the people doing local politics are older men, because they are the people who can afford to do it.
Maternity pay, parental leave and access to childcare is another vital step to full and fair representation. For councils to have none of these things is like placing a big KEEP OUT sign for women. It creates a situation where women are seen as outsiders, and then get treated as second class citizens. When a system is set up like this, we set up a ‘norm’ that looks like men of a certain age and subtly creates an idea that men are naturally constituted to be fit for politics, government and policy-making and delivery – and women aren’t. Voters come to expect their politicians and local leaders to look like men of a certain age. Women take three times longer than men to get elected, in general. And they are constantly having to answer questions such as ‘Do you know enough about this?’ and ‘Who’s going to look after your children?’
The violence and abuse which women face in their daily lives has prompted a discussion about creating misogyny as a hate crime. But consider the daily reality of creating that crime: women still have to do the work of reporting it to police forces and justice systems that consistently belittle their experiences and let them down. Rather than jumping on this bandwagon, local authorities could write their own local prevention plans and thus demonstrate far more meaningfully what they are doing to create environments where women can move and speak freely. (A little tip – it starts with changing men’s behaviour, not adding more streetlights.) Additionally, every council should have an independent system for monitoring, reporting and responding to sexual harassment and abuse.
And finally a last suggestion to every organisation preparing to get stuck into this work. The term ‘diversity and inclusion’ needs to go. It suggests that there’s the norm, and then there’s all the people who are not the norm, who have to be let into a gritted-teeth ‘it’s the right thing to do’ mantra.
That framing sets up the ‘other’ to feel they have to do the work of teaching and persuading. And it sets up the ‘normals’ to feel they are policing space, or having to give it away. If you’re setting your intention – however unconsciously – to look at how you bring one group of people into a more established group of people, you’re setting yourselves up for a whole lot of pain and in fact often the reinforcement of the kind of structural inequality that you are seeking to dismantle.
Let’s look to do this work better.
Sophie Walker is a former leader and founder of the Women’s Equality Party and founder of Activate – a movement that helps women become political candidates. She is also a journalist
@SophieRunning