women and men working in partnership

Imaginary Email to historical women's rights campainers

by Lesley Abdela
Published in Executive Woman Magazine www.execwoman.co.uk
Millennium Edition Jan 2000

The start of the new Millennium marks the end of the first Century of women’s democracy. Here’s an imaginary e-mail from Lesley Abdela to suffrage campaigners Millicent Fawcett, Emmeline, Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst, and Nancy Astor, the first woman MP to take her seat in the House of Commons.

Dear Millicent, Emmeline, Sylvia, Christabel and Nancy,

Great to hear from you. It’s a relief to hear there’s equality somewhere but a pity so many billions of women have to die before they find it.
I am replying from my hotel room in Rabat, political capital of Morocco. I am here at a women's rights conference titled 'Siècle de Femmes', organised by a Moroccan women’s organisation and sponsored by the British Council. The majority of conference speakers and participants are female university Professors from Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. Here in Morocco, life for women is similar to that in other poor countries. There is a sharp contrast between the well educated urban elite and women in rural areas. 90% of women in rural areas are illiterate. Some still keep their faces covered by the veil.

The new King of Morocco is supporting the campaign for women's rights. Secretary of State for Family and Children, Monsieur Mohammed Saad Saadi, said at the conference, “We will face problems but we’ll fight to get the same rights for women as for men. This is a commitment that has the full support of the King. We plan to address women’s legal rights in divorce and the issue of violence against women. Literacy is a high priority. We must increase the number of young girls attending school.”

In your e-mail you ask for a summary of where women stand at the start of the new millennium. Progress in health-care and other scientific inventions have been the greatest liberators of women this century.
In Britain most households have machines to wash dishes and access to machines to wash clothes. Electric freezer cabinets keep food fresh in the hottest weather. Advances in contraception mean women have safer control over how many children they bear. At the start of this century average family size was around 6, now it’s around 2.

In the better-off countries these inventions have freed millions of women to fulfil their potential in careers, public life and politics. The other hidden asset has been the invention of comfortable disposable sanitary protection which means women can continue with their everyday work activities throughout their monthly periods.

My experiences in the past few weeks might give you a snapshot of women's progress - and lack of progress. The global situation for women is one of curious contradictions – obstacles where women might have expected progress, progress where women may not expect it.
I just spent 2 months in Kosovo as part of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) Mission, sent to help build democracy after a bloody Balkan conflict. You will remember the 1914 - 1918 War started in the Balkans and was fought between armies of men. 6 million men were killed and wounded. The nature of war has changed. You will be shocked to learn systematic rape of women is now used as a weapon of war to humiliate the enemy. Over 60,000 women have been raped in the past 7 years of conflict in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo. And many more in civil wars in East Timor, Sierra Leone and Rwanda.

The main cause of death for women aged between 15 - 44 across the globe is violence from men including domestic violence. One thing hasn’t changed. Men still hold the majority of top posts.
A Human Rights Watch report in June 1999 said: 'Women's absence from leadership positions within the OSCE - as well as the failure to include women's human rights in the OSCE’s general human rights mandate - is reflected in the lack of reporting on women's human rights flowing in from field missions in Bosnia, Croatia, Tajikistan, Macedonia and elsewhere.

Many women in these conflicts have lost male family members and find themselves heads of households for the first time. Discrimination against women during the reconstruction period is legion."

One woman told Human Rights Watch," Women came last - after everything else came women."

I found, with one exception, all senior posts in the OSCE mission in Kosovo were held by men with disastrous consequences. Kosovar women were being entirely ignored in the democratisation process. I got into trouble when I worked to include women. The male hierarchy of OSCE were especially outraged when I successfully enlisted the assistance of the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. The OSCE men responsible for democratisation and human rights told me this was an unpardonable breach of protocol.

So some things haven’t changed. Men stick to hierarchies. Women try to get results by lateral thinking - ‘doing things differently’.

Just as you did.

Back in London from Kosovo, I walked past your Nancy's home at 4 St James Square, on my way to lunch at the Reform Club in Pall Mall. Most London clubs now admit women as full members with the exception of the Garrick and the Athenaeum.

A few years ago as Founder of the 300 Group campaign to get more women elected, I attended a ceremony organised by the Astor family at 4, St James Square. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher unveiled a plaque to commemorate you, becoming the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons in 1919. Your son David told me you set up a consultative group of 40 women representing women's organisations and invited them to suggest issues you should take up in the House of Commons.

Their agenda covered: equal pay, improved housing, better education and working conditions, reform of property and divorce laws, equal franchise for women and men and the entry of women into the police force.

In 8 decades we have made progress on all these issues in Britain.

In 1995 Pauline Clare, Chief Police Constable of Lancashire became the first female to hold the post. On the railings of the garden square opposite Nancy's old home, is a poignant reminder that women have the right to serve and die in the police service. Flowers and a memorial plaque commemorate WPC Yvonne Fletcher. She was shot and killed on duty outside the neighbouring Libyan Embassy.

Girls have equal access to education. At least 50% of university graduates are women. Women and men have an equal right to vote at 18 and over. In divorce, women have fair rights to custody of their children and to a share of the value of the matrimonial home and other property.

The law says employers must pay women equal pay with men for work of equal value. In practice there is an average pay gap between women and men of on average 20%. And the Fawcett Society (yes, Millicent, named after you and getting stronger and stronger) points out that in 1999 women make up the majority of low-paid workers, many working part-time. 2/3 of women live on or below the poverty line in old age. The United Kingdom has the lowest level of publicly funded childcare for the under-3s in Europe.

In politics, with the exception of Kuwait where women still do not have the vote, we finally seem to be making progress.

The Swedish Government is the first Government to have more women than men Ministers - 10 women and 9 men. 42 % of Swedish Members of Parliament are women.

Over 30% of Members of Parliament are female in Finland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, South Africa, Iceland, Germany and New Zealand.

The Independent newspaper I picked up on the plane, has a report on the November 1999 New Zealand General Election. As the first nation to enfranchise women in 1893, it’s fitting that New Zealand enters the 21st Century after the first election in a Western democracy fought between two female Party Leaders. Political Scientist Helen Clark, Leader of the Labour Party, ousted Prime Minister Jenny Shipley’s National Party Government.

Observers noted the two women brought a change in style of political campaigning. Personal mud-slinging, a major feature of male politics, was notably absent from this women-led election campaign.

There have also been female Prime Ministers or Presidents in Norway, France, Iceland, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Republic of Ireland and Dominica and the United Kingdom.

When Margaret Thatcher was elected as Britain's first female Prime Minister in 1979 she was one of only 19 women out of 635 Members of the House of Commons. Four elections later there are 121 female MPs out of 651 MPs.

Although it means there are still 4 men to every woman MP, issues of importance to women are moving higher up the political agenda.

5 Cabinet Ministers are women. Betty Boothroyd is Speaker of the House of Commons. A few weeks ago Baroness Jay, Leader of the House of Lords piloted a reform bill through the House of Lords to abolish all but 92 hereditary peerages. This should improve the balance of women to men in the Upper House. At the start of 1999 there were 1293 Peers of whom 103 were women.

Nancy, you will be disappointed with the Conservative Party. 80 years since you were elected as Conservative Member for Plymouth Sutton and despite the fact the Conservative Party produced Britain’s first female Prime Minister, only 8% of Tory MPs are women.

Three Tory women - Rosemary Pockley, Angela Guillaume and Tessa Keswick - have just launched a new campaign to persuade their Party to select female candidates with a report titled 'Conservative Women'. The report points out there are now more female than male voters in the UK (well done, you campaigners ‘up there’ for women’s right to vote) and in the 1997 General Election the Labour Party gained a 22% lead over Conservatives among women aged 18 to 35.

My copy of The Independent, included a profile of Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of current United States President, Bill Clinton. If she wins her election race for the New York seat for the US Senate she will be on her way to potentially becoming the first female President of the most powerful nation on Earth.

In his profile, Journalist David Usborne speculates as to whether the fifty-something Hillary is looking so good because she has undergone plastic surgery as part of her pre-election preparation, or whether the real rejuvenator is her relish at the excitement of the election campaign (do male journalists speculate this way on male candidates?).

I suspect another thought is bringing a fresh bloom to those American cheeks. The thought of getting her revenge on her philandering husband for his affair with the young White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

If Hillary becomes America’s first woman President, she will have the pick of potent young male White House interns, and it will be Bill’s turn to show public loyalty to his Presidential spouse.

The 20th Century was the century that launched women’s democracy, the coming century must be when we women start to use its potential as a force for good.

This is not a safer or wiser planet, Nancy, Millicent, Sylvia, Emmeline and Christabel, since you did your work and went to the great beyond. But it’s up to us women alive now to do our very best. So let me finish this e-mail with Millicent's words,

"I am firmly convinced that justice and freedom for women are things worth securing, not only for their own sakes, but for civilisation itself."

lesley.abdela@shevolution.com

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