For today’s women “motherhood, not sexism, is the issue”. So says The Economist (“We Did It”, 30 December 2009), noting that “women who prosper in high-pressure companies in their 20s drop out in dramatic numbers in their 30s and then find it almost impossible to regain earlier momentum”.
Could the same be true in politics?
Nearly 80% of current male Lib Dem MPs first entered Parliament in their 30s and 40s. Yet our female MPs were overwhelmingly elected in their 20s or 50s, and not one was first elected while raising young children. Achieving the same age spread as the men could …
Congratulations to Lib Dem MPs Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson for helping to organise a panel debate this afternoon in Parliament – to coincide with International Women’s Day – on measures to tackle the harm caused by pressure to conform to unrealistic and unhealthy body image ideals. The event marked the launch of the Campaign for Body Confidence.
The panel featured Lynne (the party’s shadow equalities minister), Clothes Show presenter Caryn Franklin, psychotherapist Susie Orbach and Dr Helga Dittmar of the University of Sussex. Other attendees included Girlguides, Linda Papadopoulous and the world’s leading body image experts.
Here’s what Lynne had …
The Home Office has published an independent review into the sexualisation of young people, conducted by psychologist Linda Papadopoulos.
The report warns that children are being increasingly exposed to sexual imagery through advertising, music videos, computer games, magazines and some children’s clothing lines.
From the BBC:
Unless sexualisation is accepted as harmful, we will miss an important opportunity… to broaden young people’s beliefs about where their values lies,” said Dr Papadopoulos, a psychologist. The report’s 36 recommendations include calling for games consoles, mobile phones and some computers to be sold with parental controls already switched on.”
Other recommendations include banning “sexualised” music videos before the TV watershed, making digital literacy a compulsory part of the curriculum from age 5, and labelling airbrushed images:
Evidence suggests that even brief exposure to airbrushed images can lead to acute body dissatisfaction. To help combat this, efforts to raise levels of media literacy should be accompanied by initiatives aimed at encouraging society to take a more critical and questioning approach to the harmful perpetuation of unrealistic ideals. I therefore recommend the introduction of a system of ratings symbols for photographs to show the extent to which they have been altered. This is particularly critical in magazines targeting teen and pre-teen audiences.
[Sexualisation of Young People Review by Dr Linda Papadopoulos, page 83]
The BBC, in reporting the findings, indulges in a little airbrushing of its own:
From a party news release ahead of Jo Swinson and Lynne Featherstone meeting with representatives of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA):
Commenting on today’s report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists calling for airbrushed images to be ‘kitemarked’, Liberal Democrat MP, Jo Swinson said:
“The Royal College of Psychiatrists makes it crystal clear that airbrushing plays a harmful role when it comes to negative body image and eating disorders.
“Airbrushing has a really damaging impact on people’s self-esteem and that’s why we’ve called for a labelling system.
“Making sure children are taught to be media-savvy and getting ads which feature unrealistic, unattainable images to …
We’ve covered before the campaign by Jo Swinson and others to change the antiquated Parliamentary rules which ban MPs (and in theory other people too) from placing footage from Parliament on YouTube.
Here’s the latest from Jo Swinson about the campaign (via an update sent to fans of the campaign on Facebook):
Happy birthday to Jo Swinson, Lib Dem MP for East Dunbartonshire!
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
How many people have had theirs taken under the Terrorism Act 2000, and how successful have they been at getting the samples destroyed? Lord Eric Avebury has put down a Parliamentary Question.
Jonathan Calder wants libertarian bloggers to widen their repertoire beyond “Get out of my room Mom!”
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
Liberal Democrat MEP celebrates French equality win
Since August 2007, French couples in a Pacte Civil de Solidarité (PAC) have enjoyed the same rights in relation to tax and inheritance laws which had previously only applied to married couples. However, due to a legal anomaly, British civil partnerships were not recognised under French law, meaning couples living in France were liable for a 60% inheritance tax and were treated like any other unmarried couple.
Graham Watson pointed out the ridiculous situation that many people faced: “Up until now, the practicality of French law has meant that British civil partners living in France would have to dissolve their partnership and enter into a PAC in order to secure the same rights as French couples. This violated the idea of European citizenship and equality, and something had to be done.”
Watson asked the European Commission to press the French Government on the issue.
Ministers have now announced that British civil partnerships are recognised as equal to PACs, and reimbursements will be made to individuals who have made undue tax payments since August 2007. [PinkPaper.com]
A couple of years back, I was moved to write to the BBC complaining about Question Time’s pro-Tory bias, regularly featuring Tory-supporting journalists alongside Tory MPs.
Well, that’ll learn me to be careful what you wish for. Because what do we have to look forward to on tonight’s QT panel? The following: an official Labour representative (Lord Falconer), and two former Labour MPs (Clare Short and George Galloway); and, for balance, an official Tory representative (Theresa May), and professional right-wing agitpropette (Melanie Phillips). Deep joy.
As Love and Liberty’s Alex Wilcock acerbically notes:
It’s not as if the Liberal Democrats have
…
Our ‘Britain’s Best MP’ competition has come to a close with Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Harwich, a clear winner. The final results are:
Douglas Carswell 47%
Gisela Stuart 16%
Tom Harris 12%
Lynne Featherstone 9%
Bob Russell 6%
Jo Swinson 6%
David Howarth 2%
Chris Mullin 2%
I appreciate that the results do not make happy reading for visitors to this site and the results of online polls cannot be taken too seriously, but please don’t dismiss this competition just yet.
Whilst acknowledging that our hope of getting people to listen to the MPs answers and then vote for their ‘best MP’ based on what they heard probably …
You may remember that back at the beginning of December we launched our ‘Best MP’ campaign to highlight the fact that not all MPs should be tarred with the same brush as the ‘expenses cheats.’
We asked users of our website – Yoosk - to send in their nominations for Best MP and to send us the questions they would like to put to the nominees. All eight nominated MPs agreed to answer and you can compare what they said on our website now and cast your vote in our Poll, which will be ‘live’ until the 31st December.
Here …
From a party press release:
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled against an Olay advert containing a heavily airbrushed image of the model Twiggy on the grounds that it was misleading following a campaign led by the Liberal Democrats.
The Liberal Democrats have called for airbrushed ads to be clearly labelled, and for airbrushing to be banned in adverts aimed at children.
Commenting, Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson, who has led the campaign, said:
“I hope this decision marks the first step in really getting airbrushing in advertising under control.
“If advertisers think that someone as beautiful as Twiggy needs to be so heavily airbrushed, …
We’ll update this post as new info comes in.
Lib Dem gain from Conservatives
The results of this STV election in full:
Well, there has been plenty in the news recently about what makes a ‘bad’ MP so we at Yoosk thought that it might be a good idea to focus for a while on the qualities of a ‘good’ MP. End the year on a positive note.
And that is why we started our ‘Britain’s Best MP’ campaign two weeks ago. We want to find out who the good MPs are and what differentiates them from the rest. We asked our users at Yoosk to nominate their candidates and these are the people they put forward:
Gisela Stuart (Lab)
Lynne …
Last Saturday at the Bloggers’ Unconference, our final interview of the day was with Jo Swinson MP – which was particularly kind of her, since she’d flown back from New York the day before, and must have been jet-lagged.
Falling at the end of the day, the discussion we had with Jo was one of the most informal of the day, but was all the better for that. Her enthusiasm for finding new ways of communicating really shone through, and she talked to us about creating the video below. In particular, she was really keen to show us her new …
A group of 44 academics is lobbying the Advertising Standards Authority to change the rules on ads featuring airbrushed models, following the publication of a research paper which says that such ads encourage eating disorders and self-harm.
The paper was organised by the Liberal Democrats as part of their Real Women campaign, which calls for a ban on airbrushed advertising images aimed at children, and for ads aimed at adults to carry a disclaimer.
At our 2001 party conference I donned a shocking pink t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “I am not a token woman” and spoke in opposition to all-women shortlists.
Eight years on, I am still opposed to the use of single gender shortlists, but I wonder if I was then taking aim at the wrong target.
Research done by the party in advance of Nick Clegg’s recent appearance before the Speaker’s Conference showed, as I argued back in 2001, no evidence that our party discriminates against women in candidate selections.
Far from it: analysis of 237 selections shows that two thirds of the time where a woman is on the shortlist, a woman is selected.
Just under three weeks to go now – but there’s still time to register for the feast of blogging talent and advice that is the Lib Dem Bloggers’ Unconference.
I’m pleased to announce that Tavish Scott, Leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, has agreed to give a Bloggers’ Interview around lunchtime.
Also joining us: Jo Swinson MP, John Barrett MP, Mike Crockart (newly-selected PPC for Edinburgh West), leading Scottish bloggers, Andrew Reeves (prolific blogger and Deputy Director of Campaigns for Scotland) as well as Lib Dem Blogfather Jonathan Calder and members of the Lib Dem Voice team.
Jo Swinson MP has called for less talk and more action from the Conservative Party on proposals for public involvement in making laws.
Speaking at the Conservative Conference this week, William Hague announced his plans for a ‘Public Reading Stage’ for proposed legislation. The idea is that this would enable the public to become involved in the process of making laws by using an online system to make comments and spot potential problems. And it’s all a part of the Tory “Google Government” idea that I’ve covered for the Voice in a review of Cameron’s speech to the LGA …
There’s no prize at stake – just the opportunity to prove you’re wittier than any other LDV reader …
Here’s Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson putting across her point – but what might she be thinking / saying?
Image: Alex Folkes/ Fishnik Photography
Below, you will find our final fringe event at conference, Beyond Twitter. MP Jo Swinson joined LDV regular Mark Pack and MySociety’s Richard Pope to debate the future of public online engagement with politics.
We still have one more fringe event in the cans ready for sound processing, but I won’t be able to bring that to you just yet.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:06:07 — 60.5MB)
Whilst the LDV team is out tonight enjoying, in our various abstemious ways, the Liberal Drinks event at Bournemouth’s Goat and Tricycle tonight, we thought we’d bring you the tape of last night’s BOTY ceremony.
Sadly the audio version can not to justice to the range of visual feasts the evening provided. Stephen’s milliner will be most disappointed; the ice sculptors know their art is fleeting; and we have really only just rounded up all the flamingoes.
But it was a striking evening for a number of reasons, as we hope the …
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:14 — 29.5MB)
What's going on with BBC online?
That was the week
Federation of Small Businesses - debate report
A failure of scrutiny on digital bill
Day 3365: Daddy's Letter to Labour
LibLink: Could Nick Clegg be next Imperial Commander?
Cameron copies another LibDem policy - where are our press team?
Leaders, not victims
Four Lib Dem MPs censured over second home allowances
King George Hospital Consultation
