The Problem with Equalities Officers: my response.

The problem with being a feeble woman sometimes is that we're always a bit of a slave to our emotions. We are far too obvious. You all know what I mean - when something's wrong with a man, they tend to shrug it off and work through it. When something's wrong with a woman, you will know about it. You will definitely know about it.

So it's with this logic that I present to you that we all knew I'd writing this blog post the second Eleri came out and wrote a little blog post on the Students' Union website, explaining why the best change that could happen to the SU would be wrong.

But before I can continue, I need to lay down some groundwork to explain myself.
Clearly, I am female. I am a straight female. Although I don't technically affiliate myself to any political party right now (this is a point that I may explore in another blog post at some point, but only once I've had some gin and I'm angry), I'm far more leftwing than people may expect of me. I believe in big government and state provided services that support people, not punish them for being of a different class, gender or ethnic group. I believe wholeheartedly in Keynesian economics, and I'd love to have afternoon tea with Gideon Osbourne; by afternoon tea, I mean that I'd like to bash him over the face repeatedly with a brick until he learnt economics. Or his face became unrecognisable and full of mush.

What I'm trying to get at is that firstly, it is not just my peers who vote Conservative that hold this view. I come from a household where I've grown up reading The Guardian and my mother has worked in the third sector all my life, having gone to university because the state used to provide decent grants. I know how unfair the benefits system is. I know how ridiculous the laws on Legal Aid and basics like divorce are - this isn't just because I've sat there and read about it, I've dealt with it myself. This isn't a sob story, this is an explanation that sometimes, a progressive, reformist, lefty such as myself can want change that might shake things up a bit. This is particularly true of universities and students' unions, which I feel should be representative of developments within society. By maintaining the post of women's officer in place of redeveloping it into the post of equalities officer, we are failing at this.

ANYWAY.

Let's play my favourite game: Why is Eleri so wrong (again)? It's a game for all the family.

1. "During our recent Students’ Union Elections, I was disappointed to see that out of the 4 candidates standing for the position of Women’s Officer, 2 stated their wish to change the role from Women’s Officer to Equalities Officer."

GO ON MY SONS. PROGRESSIVE CHANGE THAT WE CAN ALL BELIEVE IN <3

2. "Now, this change in job title, despite what students may have been told – is not one which can be made by a single person anyway, even if they happen to be the person who wins the Election. It would be undemocratic and wrong for a single person to do so."

Oh Eleri. I understand. It's difficult to change. There's a tonne of lobbying that would need to be done. Lots of consulting. A referendum to be undertaken... But guess what? That wouldn't put me off. I'd see it as a delicious challenge, just as those two candidates would have, too. Yes, you may have support from your fellow officers, but they are also subject to our scrutiny, and should be fulfilling the wishes of the student population - for what it's worth, I'd like to request that we can have pandas on campus and some frappes from JCs that actually have coffee in. A frappe is NOT a glorified milkshake.

3. "I am currently the only Full-time Women’s Officer in Wales, and one of only 6 in the UK. This is not because the role is outdated or unnecessary, but because of the failings of our media, rife institutionalised sexism, and because unfortunately, although it is 2012 – women’s rights and their representation is under constant and continuous attack."

Arguable. Yes, the world is a sexist place; women constantly receive the short straw, but lets have some context, shall we?
It is constantly argued that women are underpaid in Britain. The main reason for this? Women perform the vast majority of care, even when we're working full time, which may require time off from work. This is unfair, but it's just what happens. Also, I'm not entirely sure if you're all aware, but women have wombs. These wombs are usually used as excuses for why we're angry for around a week a month, but they can also be used to grow babies. Having said baby is not something that you can do whilst you're in your office, so you have to take time off work for that too. Then what happens is that women decide they want to actually bond with and care for said defenceless offspring. This requires more time off. In case you hadn't all realised, you don't get different pay scales for men and women advertised in job listings, it is simply that women have fulfilled their biological criteria. I am aware that this opinion makes me sound like I don't care about this issue - I do, I just don't care for the constant battle cries of "we're underpaid!" If you take a break in your career, you can't expect to get back into it as quickly. If a man took six months off from his career, I can guarantee he'd earn less, too.

4. "One of the advantages of Students’ Unions having a Women’s Officer (especially if she is employed Full-time), is that half of their students receive proper representation. If an SU Sabbatical Team implements a Women’s Officer, they ensure that at least one member of the team leading the Union is a woman. With Equalities Officers, the role is invariably non gender-specific which means it’s more likely, statistically – to have a man in post."

I'm sorry, but am I reading this right? What I think this is trying to get across is 'we need equality!' but what I'm actually getting from this is 'men can't do it like women can!'. I can understand that it would be ridiculous to have a disabled students officer who wasn't disabled, the same way that an LGBT officer should identify as one of those categories so as to be able to relate. However, attaining equality is not gender specific, and I think it's unfair to say that women's issues would be ignored just because it may be a man in post who is also tasked with identifying issues for other students who may be discriminated against.

5. "Here at Swansea, we are lucky to have 5 Liberation Officer Positions. These include: (Full-time) Women’s Officer, (Part-time) LGBT Officer (Women’s Place), LGBT Officer (Open Place), Students with Disabilities Officer and Black Students Officer."

I, and others I have spoken to on the subject, all believe that the Students with Disabilities Officer and the Black Students Officer should not be part-time positions. If we have a full-time Women's Officer, does this not then establish that women are of more importance than these other two categories? This then brings up the argument of perhaps there should be a part-time position for men. Yes, I understand how this may be an abhorrent thought for many, but honestly, what about those men who have issues that a woman may not understand? Who are they to turn to? 

6. "Currently, only 21% of Student Union Presidents are women. Only 38% of Sabbatical Officers overall are women, despite women making up over half of University students... In our recent SU Elections, discounting the 4 women running for Women’s Officer, we were left with 4 women running in our elections, against 18 men."

 Oh why oh why is this so? Perhaps it's because a lot of us have a lot better things to do with our lives than want to get paid to get angry and write weird blogs for a living, wait... What? I have seen this argument on so many different topics; engineering and science students, the numbers of female MPs and judges... Have people realised that perhaps the problem is that we just don't want to do it? Woman are biologically, and mentally different to men, perhaps part of this issue is just that we don't feel the need to go out there and parade ourselves in the public spotlight. As for MPs - why have people not realised that attempting any semblance of family life with such a job is impossible? The second a man leaves a family for the majority of the week to work as an MP, he's applauded. If a woman does it, she's hailed as some kind of ball-breaking freak.

And lastly...

7. "Changing Women’s Officers into Equalities Officers is not only a naïve, ridiculous and sexist move, but is a giant step back for the women’s movement for equality, and reduces support for Liberation campaigns. We need Full-time Women’s Officers in every single Union, in order to support, represent and fight for the women who are so often marginalised or forgotten about entirely."

Changing the role is none of these things. We are not marginalised or forgotten about, and whilst women make up more than 50% of the university population, we won't be. However, it is incredibly unfair to discount the changes that so many of us are calling for. 

(All parts in italics were taken from http://blogs.swansea-union.co.uk/womens/2012/04/19/the-problem-with-equality-officers/)

There were several options I had for this blog post. I know of problems that have occurred doing this officer's term of office that I have chosen not to refer to in the interests of not getting too personal, especially when it comes to this country's fabulous libel laws. 

In short, I remain true to my previous post's point on this topic, whereby I established that despite my beliefs, I do not believe Eleri represents me effectively. Nor do I believe that whilst the Women's Officer post is effective, she could ever. We need to change this post, not only to represent everyone in the university to the same extent, but to represent the changes in society, and the law, that have occurred.