Senior Labour MP Harriet Harman has a lot to say about sexism in the upper ranks of the country’s government, having experienced a lot of it herself. Speaking at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sex Equality yesterday, she laid into David Cameron for placing the three female members of his cabinet close to him during the televised Prime Minister’s Questions, so as to make it look like his cabinet is more equal than it is (just FYI, there are 19 men in the cabinet, which totals 22, including the PM). ‘Women must not only seen, but also be heard. It’s really a deliberate misrepresentation to have the few Tory women MPs clustered around the prime minister, so that they can be picked up by the TV cameras while the rest of the government benches are nearly exclusively men.’
But it wasn’t only Cameron who she laid into – she ruffled some feathers within her own party, saying that she felt like Gordon Brown treated her unfairly, reports The Guardian. Though she won an election to succeed John Prescott as deputy leader of the party, she wasn't allowed to succeed him in his cabinet post, and the position remained empty for three years. ‘The truth is that even getting to the top of the political structures is no guarantee of equality. Imagine my surprise when having won a hard-fought election to succeed John Prescott as deputy leader of the Labour party, I discovered that I was not to succeed him as Deputy Prime Minister.’
She added, ‘If one of the men had won the deputy leadership would that have happened? Would they have put up with it? I doubt it.’ She even went as far as to say that had something similar happened in different type of job, it would have gone to an employment tribunal.
Brown’s then-aide Damian McBride has rubbished these claims, tweeting that Brown ‘judged people on only one thing: were they useless or not’.
However, when asked to respond to this by Channel 4, Harman said, ‘Damian McBride was sacked from his position in government for denigrating women and he is doing it again. Please don’t put to me what Damian McBride’s views are on any woman.’
In her speech, she explained that, despite being an actual elected MP, her role at a G20 summit was limited to that of a leaders’ wife. ’Imagine the consternation in my office when we discovered that my involvement in the London G20 summit was inclusion at the No 10 dinner for the G20 leader’s wives.’
She was also told by male colleagues not to ‘bang on too much’ about women’s issues, and received ‘nasty’ punishment after not being able to ‘hang out’ with politicians after she had her children.
Harman added that, while there’s not ‘active opposition’ to women in parliament, there is a ‘passive resistance’ to their presence that is getting in the way of progress. ‘You don’t have to openly oppose equality to perpetuate inequality… All it takes is for those in positions of power to do nothing and the status quo prevails. Progress towards equality requires men to change as well as women. Particularly men in positions of power.’
If women can’t be represented equally, then what hope is there for minority groups, she said. ‘There are not enough women in the House of Commons, not enough people from ordinary working class backgrounds and and not enough people from black and Asian communities and it’s important that our MPs come from all walks of life and speak up on the issues they understand so that we have better parliament and better government.’
Looks like there’s much more to be done, but good on Harriet for calling politicians of all parties out on the boorish boys’ club mentality that still reigns over not only the houses of parliament, but the way our country is governed and run.
** Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson**
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.