Jo Swinson takes part in Marie Claire election debate

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 11th February 2015 - 10:01 pm

I had fully intended to keep tabs on Jo Swinson and four women from the other parties taking part in Marie Claire magazine’s election debate. However, life had other ideas and I spent the morning at A & E instead. Handily, Marie Claire have put everything together in a Storify thingy which you can read below to catch up on the events.

It seemed remarkably civilised with quite a lot of agreement. There does seem to be a reasonable consensus among women across politics about what needs to change in society.

Issues such as the gender pay gap, women’s career prospects, childcare, domestic violence and international affairs were discussed. I was particularly struck by a couple of things Jo said about tackling domestic violence – early intervention, giving decent education around sex and consent for a start.

I was interested in Gloria De Piero’s comment that she keeps getting challenged because she doesn’t have children.

And although she wasn’t part of the Marie Claire debate, the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon had a really good retort to positive discrimination opponents at another event in London tonight.

Sturgeon: “I got emails after announcing the balanced cabinet about whether the women were there on merit. No one asked if the men were.”

— Jamie Ross (@JamieRoss7) February 11, 2015

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

8 Comments

Conor McGovern 11th Feb '15 - 10:05pm

Hope thinks went ok at A&E, Caron.
Conor McGovern 11th Feb '15 - 10:06pm

things* really need an edit fuction here.. 😀
Caron Lindsay 11th Feb '15 - 10:17pm

Thanks – all well.
Al 11th Feb '15 - 11:15pm

Johann Lamont (e.g. in her spring 2014 conference speech) famously had digs at Alex Salmond for not having children so once again Gloria De Piero is wrong that the point is never made against men. Fortunately, Jason Zadrozny’s indefatigable team will remove her from Westminster in a few weeks!
Caron Lindsay 11th Feb '15 - 11:39pm

I have no problem with her being beaten by the ace Ashfield team, but I think it is very rare for men to get that sort of nonsense. There is a particular disapproval for women who don’t fulfil what some see as their biological function.
Conor McGovern 12th Feb '15 - 12:01am

^Agreed. Just look at the criticisms of Sarah Teather as Children’s Minister.
Sue S 12th Feb '15 - 1:27pm

Glad you are OK. You do a great job. Sometimes these pages are so depressing I don’t know how you keep up your enthusiasm.
Stuart 12th Feb '15 - 7:07pm

“Need to do several things. Women trad work in low paid sectors need to encourage them into higher paid jobs.”

I can’t agree with this. It’s looking at the problem from completely the wrong end.

Those “low paid sectors” are sometimes low paid precisely because there are a lot of women working in them. The solution should be to stop those sectors from being low paid in the first place. Though Swinson no doubt means well, what she’s actually doing is putting the onus on women to do things they may not want to do in order to solve a problem that is not of their making.