There’s plenty of photo-op feminism in politics — but it’s what you do, not say, that matters

Natasha Pszenicki
WEST END FINAL

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Allegra Stratton, press secretary to the Prime Minister, has said Boris Johnson describes himself a feminist. Blustering bravos all round — Boris has passed the supposed litmus test for the “women’s vote”. Except that these days — with the exception of Dominic Raab’s barb about feminists being “obnoxious bigots”—every politician, Left, Right and Lib Dem, seems to “self-identify” as a feminist — thus rendering the term meaningless, bubblegum-pink frothery.

These vacuous, slogan T-shirt statements remind me of the “this is what a feminist looks like” tops worn by Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, which turned out to be made by Mauritian women paid 62p an hour; the sentiment is very nice, but feels about as unqualified as a four-year-old holding a toy stethoscope and saying they’re a doctor.

Many laugh at the idea of Boris as a feminist because of his “woman problem” — from Petronella Wyatt to Jennifer Arcuri. Yet us feminists have set an odd precedent here through supporting the likes of women’s-lib Bill Clinton. The moral seems to be that personal feminism can be sacrificed for professional; our right to choose is more important than that of Monica Lewinsky’s — the 22-year-old was condemned to a life of slut-shame so Ruth Bader Ginsburg might rise to the Supreme Court. So what, then, of Boris’s policy achievements? Nimco Ali argued that Johnson is a “true feminist”, unlike many on the Left, because of his determination to stop female genital mutilation. Opinion is divided, however, on the likes of his suspension of gender pay gap reporting.

For me, it is most telling that Stratton said Johnson would like to improve gender balance in his Cabinet — which only served to highlight the fact it’s currently 25 per cent women. The common retort to these sorts of stubborn, statistical realities is “well, I’ve never not promoted someone because they’re a woman”. Yet the point is, of course, that these things happen in the silent subconscious — we believe our female colleagues are too softly spoken, too conciliatory to be a good fit (if they do fit then “a bit aggressive”). Men might not notice, mid-chortle and back-slapping, the “boys’ club” Amber Rudd saw in No10 — but women certainly do.

The main thing International Women’s Day achieved was to show there’s plenty of photo-op feminism around: Boris tweeted about his gal-dem Kate Bingham and co — and in turn millennials like myself Instagrammed ourselves with female friends. I found that people quietly getting on with doing feminism —volunteering for Women’s Aid or simply pausing mid-conversation to question whether they might be mansplaining — were not the ones talking about being feminists. While the rest of us catch up with them, we might do better to describe ourselves as feminists-in-progress.

The Pet Shop Boys are being invoked in a smart motorway safety campaign — telling motorists to “go left” rather than west (with the grand aspiration of reaching the lay-by in the event of vehicle faults). It is only the latest in the natural collaboration between Highways England and Nineties pop songs — when tasked with an assembly on road safety my Year Nine class sang Stop by the Spice Girls as “Stop right there, can’t you see the bus — it’s coming right at you and you’re gonna get cru-uushed”. The Department for Transport probably has a Now That’s What I Call Caution catalogue, purged of  Don’t Stop Me Now.

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