Gender balancing will not tackle issues of inequality

During the NUS National Conference 2013 earlier this week, a controversial topic was brought up and deliberated by delegates from universities across the UK. The issue was on ‘Gender Balancing’, and whether the NUS should adopt a policy where at least 50% of its executive and 50% of its student delegates are made up by women.

Motion 701 was being whispered around conference like a dirty word, one which was not spoken aloud for fear of debate and outcry. The debate itself lasted nearly an hour, with the delegates voting on the controversial motion to be decided by a secret ballot. In a narrow victory, delegates decided to vote against the motion.

There was no applause by the audience, in fact the situation in Sheffield City Hall was so hostile you felt like you were sitting in the middle of a Coalition cabinet meeting. People moaned about the result, others complained that the result was bad for women and female students.

If anything, I think the result was a good thing. The problem with gender balancing is that it does not solve anything. It just coats over the problem of gender inequality with a whitewash.

For those that don’t understand what gender balancing means, it’s the idea that we should set a quota for the number of women in an executive panel like the NUS, to make it more equal and fair for women. The subject has cropped up in the world of business, where efforts have been made to increase the number of women in company boardrooms.

Although I do believe that in this society, the hegemonic views of men in society have oppressed women for far too long, gender balancing in my view just isn’t the answer. We seem to be content on using women as a number, objectifying females to boost a figure on a spreadsheet in the name of equality.

The idea that selecting female candidates for roles such as the NUS on the basis that they’re a woman and not for their ideas is degrading. It doesn’t represent anything, it just proves that people are naïve about the benefits of gender balancing.

The arguments for motion 701 were that “discrimination and oppression in society often means women students are underrepresented”. This argument seems slightly ambiguous. If the argument is that society is oppressing women, surely we should be attacking society and the government to do more, rather than focus on putting more women in the boardroom. You need to get to the core of the problem to resolve it; voting for at least 50% of candidates to be women will only exacerbate the issue.

20^th century society has often put the man at the top of the food chain. But that is changing, the 21^st century is becoming more equal. Think about education results; more girls are consistently achieving higher marks then boys at school and college. During the Olympics, it was thefor their sporting triumphs and presenting styles. Over the last decade, women in politics have had a much bigger voice – Harriet Harman, Theresa May etc; all showing how women can achieve through their hard work and determination alone.

Even the NUS proved that their concerns about gender inequality are unfounded, a union where more than 50% of students are women. 3 out of the 6 executive members from the NUS elected by students this week were women, including our new NUS president Toni Pearce. They were picked for their policies and pledges, not to meet a quota. They were elected on merit, not sex.

Inequality is still apparent in our society, I certainly don’t deny that, but voting to elect people on their gender and not their policies is unequal. Voting for gender balancing by the NUS would have been a case of ‘ten steps back’ for women.

Lets look at raising the profile of women in society by working with businesses, in government and in education together, but also focusing on minority groups; ethnic minorities, disabled groups and the LGBT community. Positive change and campaigning will always prove more pivotal than a token woman sitting at the boardroom table.

Is Vince Cable the only honest politician in Cabinet?

I feel rather sorry for Vince Cable. Throughout the recent Leveson inquiry, Mr Cable has remained quiet. A defeated champion of the people, he was one of the first people to criticise the Murdoch's, yet was hastily condemned by ministers and the newspapers over his actions.

It was way back in late 2010 that Cable's honesty got the better of him. Only six months into his role as Business Secretary for the coalition government, the Liberal Democrat was set up by journalists from The Daily Telegraph who posed as his constituents and arranged a meeting with Mr Cable. Undercover, the journalists asked questions which Mr Cable answered openly and honestly.

One of the questions Cable answered regarded the current bid by News Corporation, founded and chaired by Rupert Murdoch, to takeover the satellite broadcaster BSkyB, for which it has a stake in. Mr Cable's role as Business Secretary means that he is in charge of takeover's, including media affairs. Offering an un-bias review into the takeover, the Business Secretary is meant to examine all the evidence for/ against the takeover, with an objective stance.

Which is where Mr Cable's views got in the way, jeopardising his objectivity. Speaking to whom he thought were his constituents, Mr Cable told the undercover journalists that he had "declared war on Mr Murdoch", and that "I think we are going to win."

The resulting furore over his comments resulted in him losing his responsibility for media affairs, with the review into the BSkyB takeover being referred to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. There were even calls for him to be sacked from his position as Business Secretary.

Now fast-forward to April 2012 and it seems similar circumstances are occurring again, this time with Jeremy Hunt. Before the takeover was abandoned following revelations of phone hacking at News International (the owners of titles including The Sun and the now defunct News of the World), it was rumoured that Jeremy Hunt would accept the takeover. The Conservative party have always been firm friends with the Murdoch's, as the Leveson inquiry has revealed, and with Mr Hunt's strong stance against the BBC, it would seem appropriate to accept the takeover. After all, BSkyB is creating billions of pounds for the UK economy, whereas the government are pumping money into the BBC. If it wasn't for the phone hacking allegations and calls from Ofcom for the review to be delayed, he would probably have accepted the takeover.

So the revelations that Jeremy Hunt was said to have an 'improper realtionship' with News Corporation following a series of leaked emails between the Mr Hunt's adviser and a PR adviser for News Corp came at no surprise. This is the man who didn't bother sending the BSkyB bid to the Competition Commission or listen to the calls from Ofcom to abandon the bid. In fact, it wasn't until after the phone hacking scandal came to light that the bid was rejected by the government, despite many years of allegations surrounding phone hacking being public knowledge.

It's fair to say his incompetence and bias in favour of the Murdoch empire has significantly damaged his reputation, and yes calls have been made by the opposition for Mr Hunt to resign. Yet not to the same extent as when calls were made for the resignation of Mr Cable.

Now I don't tend to think that two wrongs make a right, but in this case, wasn't Vince Cable right all along? He was cornered into admitting what he really thought, which in a situation like a constituency meeting, is perfectly acceptable. It's the public's right to hear the truth, and that's exactly what Vince Cable gave them.

In fact, the Press Complaints Commission agreed. They found that the Daily Telegraph had not acted in the public interest. It later emerged that the two undercover journalist's had been links to News International. A coincidence perhaps?

Vince Cable merely told the truth. Maybe it did undermine his objectivity, but I commend him. He had the guts to speak the truth to stand up against Mr Murdoch. Fast forward to 2012, and now all the politicians are doing it.

So following an interview with Sky this weekend, where he said he feels 'vindicated by BSkyB', maybe we should be praising Mr Cable for being an honest politician. He was right all along.

Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia

Not another "bad decision by the NHS" story....

Now if you have been watching and reading the news recently, one matter, which just will not work out for the coalition, is the reforms planned for the NHS. Even today, the British Medical Association has revealed that in a recent survey conducted by its members, 2/3 of the association would strike over pension reform. This adds to the latest patient waiting-time figures, which revealed that 43% of patients were not being seen in the designated waiting-times set by the government.

So you can understand my uncertainty about meeting my doctor for the first time. Since I have moved to university, I have had to change doctor’s surgery. The registration process was simple; sign on the dotted line, and you will have a new doctor waiting for whenever you need a tickly throat inspected.

Yet the brand new surgery, conveniently opened inside Boots the Chemist, looked the part as I walked in. And contrary to the new waiting room figures, I had barely made myself comfortable in my seat before the nurse called my name, and I was escorted into a dull office and sat down tentatively opposite a woman who looked the spitting image of Jo Brand in Getting On (how ironic!)

But it was once we got down to business that the whole thing started to unravel. You see, the NHS prefers not to share your information with other surgeries in other counties. So rather than her educating me about my asthmatic problems, it was more the other way round. However, oh no, she did not stop there. Within the space of 15 minutes, she had me recounting all my past medical history, along with the rest of my family’s problems, with elicit detail and description. And for someone that has never really paid attention to that kind of thing, I was left frantically searching my memory for any past medical history she may require. I felt less intimidated in my GCSE Biology exam!

Then I was prodded, probed and measured for all sorts of things I had never been asked to do before. She used the old imperial system for telling me my weight and height, which unless you are Albert Einstein, means very little anymore. She interrogated me repeatedly about drugs and smoking, (I have done neither), and then told me my blood pressure was too high for my age, and so did it again so that she could just check. Surprise surprise, she then said it must have been wrong the first time where I had walked in. You can see where my breathing problems start to come from!

So not only was the whole experience unprofessional and unnecessary, considering how quick and easy it could be in an ideal world where councils could share patients medical records with each other, but I had not even got my inhaler yet!

And what a drama that was. On my part, probably my fault for telling her it was green, not blue. After we had gone through Google images and checked various websites, with her pointing and me giving her a yes/ no answer for each one with no success, she then produced one out from under her desk. Bingo! “Yes, that’s the one!” “It’s blue, not green. You said it was green.” “It’s a bluey kind of green.”

I quickly ran off after that, wanting to forget the whole ordeal. But that is just it; it was such an ordeal that it made me think about buying the inhaler from some drug-dealer at the back of Co-op in future, which would have been a lot less stressful. Was it incompetence on her part? Probably not. What it comes down to is just another reason why the NHS in England needs to take itself seriously for once. Granted, it is an essential institution in Britain that we cannot live without. But we can pull a few strings and make a few sacrifices if needs be. Because at the moment, it really is a joke which is just not funny anymore.

Picture Courtesy of Wikipedia.