Want to be a female politician? Mum’s still the word
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Version 0 of 1. Is parenting more important than politics? Yes, according to Helen Goodman, the shadow media minister and MP for Bishop Auckland, who said in the Huffington Post that she was supporting Yvette Cooper’s bid to become Labour leader because of Cooper’s credentials as a “working mum”. “Much more important to me than being an MP and shadow minister is that I am a mum,” Goodman wrote on Monday. “As a working mum, [Cooper] understands the pressures on modern family life.” It was only a matter of time before the maternal card was played, as it invariably is when women dare to venture into politics. And the higher the position you hold, the more likely a motherhood-related barb will be thrown your way. Consider Julia Gillard, the former Australian prime minister, who in 2012 was called “deliberately barren” by one political opponent and accused by the then opposition leader, Tony Abbott, of running a government that “lacks experience in raising children”. Women of working age find ourselves in uncomfortably familiar territory: stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand society assumes that our natural place is in the home with a baby attached to our breast. I was asked to challenge that view on Newsnight last year after the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp floated the idea that young women should delay going to university in order to pop out some babies while they were still fertile. The implicit message was that “career women” come to regret their unnatural choice, and that the childless over-40s must be tragic, regretful figures, steadily accruing cats, trussed up in onesies, and crying themselves to sleep about their foolishness in “leaving it all too late”. Who would trust that unstable, embittered spinster with the future of a nation? Not Tony Abbott, that’s for sure. Women who don’t prioritise children are seen as dangerous, untrustworthy, going against their nature On the other hand, pregnant women or mothers with children are assumed to be soppy, distracted, unreliable employees with “baby brains”, who bleed the system dry with their incessant demands for fairly paid maternity leave and reasonably priced childcare. Who, indeed, would employ that sort of a person – they probably can’t sit through a meeting on monthly targets without whipping out their Facebook page and demanding that the CEO agree that little Archie looks cute in his new bootees? Supporters of child-free Liz Kendall have claimed that Goodman’s article was a veiled attack on their candidate, and perhaps they’re right. When running for prominent positions in politics, women are often encouraged to position themselves as protectors of “family values”, people concerned about childcare and flexible working hours rather than the housing crisis or the nuances of microeconomics. Sarah Palin’s usefulness to John McCain was due to her self-identifying “hockey mom” status rather than due to any of her (woefully undeveloped) political or geographical knowledge. If we as women are only trusted in this context, and expected to capitalise on it, then subtly suggesting that other female candidates in a race won’t understand “family” issues is tantamount to suggesting that they aren’t up to the job at all. Although the parenthood paradox isn’t such a problem for male candidates, it is worth mentioning that plenty of male politicians have made “family man” claims central to campaigns in the past. Why exactly we need our political figures to be mothers and fathers, however, remains totally unclear and logically absurd. The tone has been set for generations: women who don’t prioritise children are dangerous, untrustworthy, going against their nature. It may well be far more important to Helen Goodman – or perhaps even to Yvette Cooper – to be a mum than to be a politician, but somehow I doubt it. I think she’s a smart and savvy politician who knows how to play the game – and she’s well aware that if you want to get anywhere, you’d better act like you’d rather be a mummy. |