The rise and rise of the UK Feminista

Bucking the trend for August's silly-season, I've been pleasantly surprised to see some refreshingly even-handed reporting in the UK national press. At the weekend, the campaign organisation UK Feminista held an activist training weekend for aspiring feminist activists. Unexpectedly, in all the reporting I saw, there was none of the usual stereotyping and lazy criticism we've come to expect since the mid-1980s.

It isn't my first brush with UK Feminista. At the Compass conference I attended earlier in the summer, I was exceptionally impressed with how founder Kat Banyard portrayed the issues confronting feminists as a fiercely contemporary challenge to both women and men. She spoke passionately to current concerns about equality, employment, public services and tackling a culture of disrespect.

For many years, feminism has felt like a closed shop to many men who espouse feminist ideals. I know that for me, my concern around gender equity has been more readily channeled through my activism for LGBT equality, an area that is sometimes not immune to peddling sexist viewpoints. Yet I feel that UK Feminista have a good chance of broader-based success because they see men as crucial partners in making change happen. Their approach is more media-savvy, using social-media networks to get their message over and being very careful in choosing potent current issues that matter to everyone. Women, especially those starting out in the job market, are feeling the bite of the recession with reduced opportunities. The ladders of state support are being disproportionately kicked away from them. Interrogating fairness and inequality is high on everyone's agenda - from female low pay, to those living in deprived communities scarred by the recent riots, through to the lost of trust in political, business and media elites. Under such circumstances, sexism is an even less tolerable distraction.

And we need to challenge it now. An impact analysis by the Fawcett Society has shown that the Government's austerity cuts are hitting women hardest. Home Secretary Theresa May warned colleagues of this behind the scenes, although she was ignored. We shouldn't be surprised. Political parties are still dominated by wealthy men. With only modest improvements at the last General Election, women are still pitifully represented in the Conservatives and Liberal Democrat ranks.

There is an issue here for the Greens too. We have made great strides, with our Leader (also our first MP) being a woman, as well as our leading GLA Member Jenny Jones and MEP Jean Lambert. They represent a respected and inspiring "front bench" of female Green politicians, but I'm anxious that nobody repairs the glass ceiling they have shattered before the next generation of female leaders comes forward. I do wonder whether their prominence can lead ordinary members of the Green Party to uncritically assume that we've cracked the gender representation issue and side-stepped the pitfalls others have fallen into. That is something that we need to guard against.

We should constantly interrogate the way our party functions and how it encourages and facilitates engagement from women activists. I think the time is upon us to have a serious party-wide conversation about how we not only increase representation in our number of female politicians, but how we transform our political outlook as a party to embed these gains into the DNA of our party. The growing success of UK Feminista is a stark reminder that women-focussed policies are crucial to solving the complex problems facing this country and aren't something tacked on to political policy as an "added extra".

Whilst we have that debate, I'll also be keeping an eye out to see if UK Feminista start up a group in Brighton, because when society faces hard times and difficult choices, female equality will (as always) be the battleground on which it is fought.

Messed-up morality: Conservatives fall "Back to Basics"

It must be dreadfully frustrating for David Cameron. He spent years (and a fair proportion of Lord Ashcroft's tax-free millions) trying desperately to detoxify the Tory brand and make their policies seem more palatable and human. However, now his colleagues are back in power, an unattractive tone of moral judgement and reactionary social engineering has crept back into public discourse around women and sexuality. Even if we were able to set aside Cameron's own recent patronising display of contempt to Angela Eagle when he told her to "calm down, dear" at Prime Ministers Questions, there are many other signs that there are unmistakable signs of a regressive social agenda bubbling under the surface of many of the Coalition's policies which infantilizes women and wants to draw a firm line under the successful gay legislative programme of the Labour Government.

Ken Clarke's comments about some rapes being less serious than others was a clumsy slip under fire whilst defending a wider cost-cutting approach to justice - but it still betrayed an unbelievably dismissive attitude towards the victims of sexual violence by the Justice Secretary.

Backbencher Nadine Dorries' 10 minute bill pushing for young girls to be taught abstinence (you read correctly -girls, not boys), leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth as it puts female sexuality in the dock as the cause of all lapses in sexual morality. This is at a time of diminishing budgets for HIV prevention and the tightening of health spending around sexual health. Nonetheless, this week it was announced that the well-respected British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) has been removed from the government advisory group on sexual health and replaced by Life, a conservative organisation that takes a hard-line stance against abortion and is strenuously pushing for abstinence programmes, even though they are known to be counter-productive in fighting sexually-transmitted diseases.

You would think on the positive side, that this is the sort of issue where having a coalition Government would put the brakes on these excesses. Right now (the argument goes), keeping the Liberal Democrats onside has meant that the Conservatives are working hard to ensure this remains a series of isolated incidents and does not become a larger narrative behind Government policy. Memories on the front bench are also short enough to remember John Major's ill-fated Back to Basics campaign, which crystallized the public's views of his party's hypocrisy around morality and sex.

Within the Home Office, Liberal Democrat Lynne Featherstone MP represents a trusted pair of hands as the current Equalities Minister. She is interviewed in this month's issue of Total Politics and hints that she clashes at times with her Secretary of State, Theresa May, over this agenda. That said, the article gives her a fairly gentle ride as she talks about ensuring the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is supported to deliver on equalities protection. The truth however, is that the remit for the EHRC has been severely restricted so that it works on the barest minimum needed to deliver it's core aims. Unsurprisingly, this has been accompanied with a significant funding cut.

You may also remember that I posted about the Government's Red Tape Challenge, which is currently consulting on whether we should scrap every law and regulation on the statute books. The presumption is that everything is marked for abolition to "reduce bureaucracy" unless a strong enough argument is given to retain them (or sufficient people can marshall a public stink enough to stop them). After years of campaigning by minority communities, the ink was not yet dry on the Equality Act before it fell into the firing line.

Until this attack, these policies and the funding that underpinned them were in the front line of ensuring that in a country where inequality has steadily increased over the last thirty years, we had an independent voice arguing for concrete changes to close this gap. They ensured that people were able to make adult choices around their health and were treated with dignity in their dealings with the state.

Gender and sexual equality is under more sustained attack than ever before. Cameron's rebranding campaign is over. The Conservatives have learnt a lesson - they are moving back to basics, but aside from the odd slip, this time they aren't making the mistake of telling us.

Building Green Success: Launching Brighton's new Council (Part 2)

Earlier this week, I started my analysis of the transformed political context in Brighton & Hove following the local elections. As our direct competition for centre-left votes, I explored the implications for Labour of our success and cautioned our supporters not to view the result as a repudiation of that party. Labour's approach in the last two weeks has been measured and publicly respectful, however differently their activists may feel privately. Already, I sense an effective pincer movement between their reasoned opposition and the aggressive denunciation of our policies that the local Conservatives are conducting via the local press. We need to quickly find a voice that responds to their challenges and talks over their heads direct to the voters.

Which is why the right choice of Council cabinet is an essential pre-requisite for us to set the tone for the next four years. We announced the first Green cabinet late last week and whilst I have a couple of minor reservations, I am pleased with both the individuals announced and how they have begun to conduct themselves in their first statements on policy.

Bill Randall, our first Leader of the Council, alongside Amy Kennedy and Ian Davey as Deputy Leaders, have an established track record in leading the Green Group of councillors locally over the last couple of years. As well as a strong overview on the key issues facing the city, they are genuinely pragmatic team-players who have maintained respectful and constructive relationships with other political parties. They command respect amongst the local party and are also known as strong advocates for their constituents, regardless of party affiliation.

Amongst the remaining members of the Cabinet, we have a good mix of those councillors with direct experience of political office, alongside newcomers who have been brought forward due to their professional and private experience with particular portfolio areas. This is a sound foundation to work from. Promisingly, I know of several of our "backbench" councillors who could also do a fantastic job in these positions. I hope this first year in office provides these councillors with opportunities to shadow and assist those in the Cabinet - it won't hurt to nurture the largest pool of talent for the Green Group to select from over the course of this Council session.

One issue that is achieving some traction in the blogosphere is the notion that our cabinet could be more gender balanced - I have some sympathy with that view and would call upon the Green Council to ensure that their policies are impact-assessed to ensure that women, children and the vulnerable are not disproportionately affected by the austerity measures we are being placed under. I would also challenge my local party to bring equal representation to bear as a preferred approach in the future.

Later this week, in my final article of this series, I'll be looking at the key political issues facing the city, share my views on how the Green Council should consider tackling them and give thought to the broader narrative we should be building during our time in office.