Women in politics

I’m putting together a short theme of blogs on the subject of women politicians. Not least because, as usual the whole issue of under-representation of women never goes away, so the only way to address this is to keep on demanding equal numbers of women at all levels of elections.

Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics

Last night I went to see a film made in 1995 about the work of New Zealander Marilyn Waring, who at 22 in the mid 70’s was elected as an MP there. During her many years as an MP, she was effective in highlighting the detrimental effects of not counting women’s unpaid work in the GDP. She visited many developing and western countries where she sought to talk to women first hand to find out about their lives and the amount of work they did to keep their family fed and cared for. The film tracked her discussions with women in Africa where she devised methods of counting the hours women worked and compared this with the vastly smaller hours the males worked. But if no money changed hands, the drudgery of the women’s work does not count in GDP. This of course has the ongoing impact that if what you do during your working life does not count, and you are simply invisible during these years, then when you retire you have no pension so you become a ‘burden’ on the welfare of the state as happens in this country to women who have looked after children or cared for relatives (I think this may have changed a little in recent times).

Marilyn is a feminist economist and travels the world lecturing on the need to count women’s work. She spent two months at the UN in New York where the weighty tomes containing the rules for all treasuries for all countries with membership of the UN are kept. These rules were created by Keynes and some other Brit economist after the 39-45 war and were based on the framework used to rebuild the economies of the Brit Empire at that time. At the time of the film these were still the rules enforced by the World Bank, the IMF and other economic policing bodies.

Marilyn’s message is that “the system cannot respond to values it refuses to recognize.” This means that values you and I most likely share, such as peace, sustainability, non-violence and all the kinds of intangibles which cannot fit into the present madness of our economic system count for nothing in comparison the war machine of the Westminster and Washington governments. Our disgust at food being used to create fuel instead of to feed people, the lack of opportunities for girls in all countries (it varies hugely but is present everywhere) and the growth of trafficking in children and women which increases as poverty increases. All of it was brought together in this easily understood demystifying film about economics and how we can help change things.

Most creatively, Marilyn suggests that if women’s work in the home does not count, then at the next census, women whose work is unpaid should invent job titles that do not mention housewife or homemaker. I thought that mothers could describe themselves as ‘Play Directors’ for example. And anything that gets people to subvert authority even in tiny ways is empowering.

The Westminster budget and its vicious slashing cuts of Scotland’s ‘pocket money’ was announced this week, so it seems appropriate to recommend this inspiring film to anyone who has an opportunity to see it and grasp the full iniquity of our present financial mess. That is not so easily done as it is not distributed here, only in Canada. I was invited to a free showing by an organisation who had bought a copy but do not have a license to show it other than to invited guests.
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/who.html

Even though the film was made in ‘95 it is even more relevant today. It shows footage of GB Senior’s Gulf War and makes links with the pollution and devastation caused then with the impact on women and children’s lives and ever since in that area. It shows the real environmental costs of the Exxon Valdez which turned into the most economically successful tanker voyage ever because of the costs it generated in dealing with the disaster. That is just one example of the skewed nature of the global economic system.

Today, the Scottish Government talks proudly of sustainability and focuses on renewable energy which is possibly achievable and we are led by a respected economist, of whom, the Herald stated “Mr Salmond likes numbers the way some people like kittens.”
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2503944.0.Word_to_the_wise_for_Iain_Gray_when_in_a_hole_stop_digging.php
But for all that, is it likely that the Women’s Budget Group are going to be able to persuade Oor Eck to take on the campaign to include women’s unpaid work in Scotland’s GDP?
http://www.swbg.org.uk/

Marilyn's last words in the film were to exhort all women to join political parties and to bring them into line on the 50:50 representation campaign then leave and move onto the next one!