 Good evening. Welcome to the British Library, home to the nation's memory. Do you know about our free Readers Pass? I hope you do. They're free and they give you access to the knowledge, all the knowledge from all every era of written civilisation. Plus you get some of the poshest chairs in central London thrown in and did I mention they're free? Readers Pass is off everybody at the British Library is your library so please check that out. And hello also to audiences joining us from home. You'll be able to join the Q&A section when that rolls around so please put your questions in underneath the screen. Thank you online audience and thank you you for being here because this is a really important event. I feel quite emotional actually because of the collective importance of the women that are about to join this stage. Some people are happy just to live their life and just be other people, get out and they get stuck into the world and they won't sit down until they've changed it and these women have done that in spades and I'm just very grateful and I think we all should be really grateful for people who stick their necks out and yes for politicians. It's too easy to hate politicians and I think sometimes we should thank them and encourage them, appreciate them and maybe even be one. Who knows? I mean you can get some tips tonight maybe. I'm just going to give you very briefly for inspiration. Charlotte Despar who served prison time with Sylvia Pankhurst was selected to run as a Labour MP for Battersea North aged 74. So who knows? No excuses. And today is Mary Wollstonecraft's birthday so. Got a good feeling about it yes. Now, talking of Sylvia Pankhurst, we all know that she was the cool one, right? The rebel. Well wait until you meet her granddaughter Helen. She is what my daughters call a G. Apparently that's really good. So in this whole evening has been inspired by Helen Pankhurst and her brilliant centenary action team who you'll meet soon. Helen is steering us through this evening. Please welcome her with a massive round of feminist applause. A big opening from Bee who herself is just an amazing person. Involved in the Mary Wollstonecraft statue or initiative and doing amazing work here at the British Library events. Yes, so wonderful to have you all here. I will be introducing this amazing panel in a minute and I think what's phenomenal actually about these amazing women is that they're coming from different spaces. So Harriet Harman, the mother of parliaments, that whole history of engagement in politics. Charlene White, an engagement in media and the celebrity in many ways. That word is relevant. And then Joe Lee who's in the civil society space as an incredible activist. So you have civil society, media and politics. And then feminism diversity in those three spaces. And isn't that just amazing? And it's those links between these three forms of activism that I hope we can explore today. So before we do more and before you hear from them, would you turn to your neighbors, make sure nobody's on their own and just introduce yourselves. Think a bit about what you want to get out of this session and any experiences you have in this space of feminism and diversity. And changing the world. I'll just give you a few minutes amongst yourselves for those online apologies. I hope there's somebody that you are with and if not just go and get yourself a cup of tea. If we can come back together again. So I hope you've started to have really interesting conversations and maybe met a few people in the process. Definitely I heard somebody say, I don't know whether that was a point about their own conversations or the wider one. But hopefully the wider issue. I wanted to say a little bit about Centine reaction before I introduced the panel. At the back just there we have Joe and Liz who are working with the Centine reaction at the moment and leading it. And this was set up in 2018, 2018, the centine re of some women getting the vote with the idea of continue to campaign to 2028, which is a centine re of equal franchise, 10 years. And the issue was in this 10 years, could we together with the whole ecosystem of feminist activism, try and shift the needle in some way. And we work very closely with the other organisations that you'll probably know more about such as 50, 50 Parliament, Forces Society Elect, and many other organisations such as Muslim Women's Network UK, such as the Women's Institute, the Girl Guiding, Suroptimus and a number of others. And some of you here I know are linked to those organisations. So what we were trying to do as Centine reaction is bring together civil society and cross party, those organisations like Women to Women, Women to Win and the Labour Women's Networks. And also some of the staff as associations to say how can we shift the needle together, bringing together cross party politicians, Parliament and also civil society to create a noise and to try and shift and push for change. And we're looking at three areas. We're looking at the issue of violence because we know that that's a constraint to women standing and staying in Parliament. And that's about online related violence, but also the fear of that spilling into violence in person and then issues around the economic inequalities and difficulties around that and then structural barriers. Right now we are running a campaign called Women Count, which is looking at the issue of the pathways and on candidates. So sharing the experiences of women candidates, but also looking at the data around candidates because we know that there is a bottleneck and a problem around some areas only having certain types of people ever as candidates and namely men of a certain age. So we want to put the spotlight just like the gender pay gap and we have here Helen Reardon Bond who is one of the key campaigners that made that happen. So the gender pay gap data that shows that puts a spotlight on issues of pay gaps in the workplace and that spotlight has helped. And we thought putting the spotlight on the candidates issues and where there hasn't been diversity and where there is as well as showcasing amazing women that are putting themselves forward was something that we could do. So that's the campaign that we're running at the moment. If you want to know more about the centenary action, Liz and Joe are there at the back. She wants to just wave. And there's also some information at the back. So please do join us. We're really keen to have more people involved and supporting us. That's centenary action. Now back to the agenda for today. And first, I mean, I don't really feel that Harriet needs much introduction. I'm sure many of you know all about her, but just in summary, a Solista NMP, she's been the Labour MP for Campbell and Peckham. The name has changed over time since 1982. She's now the mother of Parliament and has served at various Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet positions. Harriet, over to you to share with us your thoughts on this issue of feminism and politics and your personal experiences and thoughts going forward. What's been done, what still needs to be done. Right. Well, thanks very much. And thank you, Helen, for all the amazing work you do. And I'm really looking forward to hearing about what my two sisters here on the panel are going to be saying from their different perspectives. I mean, I think feminism needs politics because feminism is a movement for change. It's a movement for action. It's a movement for remedying injustice. And actually politics and government and public policy is an essential mechanism to actually deliver that. So feminism needs politics, but politics needs feminism because actually democracy is supposed to be representative. And democracy is not representative when all the decisions that affect women and men's lives are actually made by men. So to have legitimacy, our politics needs to be equal because there are men and women equally in this country 50%. And therefore women need to have a say in the decision making. And that's why often I kind of balk at the idea that we want women's voices to be heard because that implies that women are outside the decision making room and they're wanting their voices to be heard. No, they want to be in the room making the actual decisions because that's the only way really politics has legitimacy. So feminism needs politics, politics needs feminism. So just to, for those of you who are my age and some of you I see are my demography in the audience and some of you are absolutely decades and decades younger. When I was brought up and I was born in 1950, the absolute summit of the ambition for a girl would be to get a good husband. And once she'd done that remarkable and important thing is to actually support him and she was subordinate to him and he was the head of the household. And I remember my mum who had slightly sort of off beam views saying to me, most people think that when a man says something, it's more likely to be true or important than when a woman says it, but actually that's not the case. And this was like, God, this is a really shocking thought. But so basically that was the kind of idea that women, if they did a bit of work before they got married, it was probably to go into a world of work where they might be able to find a husband. So it was all about finding the husband, supporting them, having his children, looking after them. Lots of women always did work but it was very much not regarded as important and not paid properly or anything like that. And then the women's movement kind of emerged in the sort of 70s particularly strongly and it was just a group of women where we all thought, this is dreadful. How come the idea is that men make all the decisions and we abide by them? How come there is all these bars to women doing things? It doesn't make any sense at all and we were determined to actually change it. And I remember when I was studying for law and trying to get a training contract, I would look in this thing called the Law Society Gazette, which advertised the training contract. And they would say, the right man for the job is. I mean that was actually how it was. They could decide not to have women and most of them did exactly that. And I remember ringing up one firm because I knew that they actually had a woman in the firm. So I thought they might be able to have me since they were obviously not able to, you know. So I said, they said, no, no, no, we don't want you because we don't want a woman. And I said, but you've already, you've got one. And they said, yeah, because you'd only argue. So the idea was that women were rivals, mostly rivals to get a man. And therefore there wasn't any sense of women's solidarity. Women's were rivals and it was all about, you know, circling around the man. And the women's movement was about women collectively, women's solidarity for change for all women. And there was women at the time trying to get into the media. There was women trying to get into academia. Women trying to get into higher positions in the private sector. And all across the board, women were saying, you know, or the law or anything like that. Complaining there were hardly any women judges. And my sort of side of things was to say that we need to be going into Parliament. So loads of us tried to get into Parliament because we didn't want the men making all the decisions. And at the time when I got into Parliament, it was 97% men and 3% women. So Parliament was not representative. And actually when I arrived all the men were absolutely outraged, especially because I was pregnant. Because it was like sending a bad message. Because actually the message should really be that women's role was to support them being MP. You know, their wives was to support them. And here I was like being trying to be on equal terms with them. So, you know, we've made loads of demands for change and lots of things has changed. In fact, one of our earliest demands was childcare, tackling domestic violence and no men only decision making. And we've still got a lot of work to do on all of those three areas. I think that basically we've kind of won the argument, although there is a lot of the sort of Andrew Tate misogynist backlash going on. But for the most part we've won the argument, but actually there's still a lot of passive resistance. So the argument is more advanced than the actual change in practice. We've still got a great deal of structural inequality. So I think the thing for us to do now is to reframe our demands and to pitch them high. You know, today's unreasonable demand is tomorrow's conventional wisdom. So pitch our demands as to what is right, not what we think we can do or what might be acceptable. So make unreasonable demands and also to think about the issue of male allies. Because, you know, when you think about the issue of race, it's not good enough for a man to be saying, a white person to be saying, oh, I don't discriminate. You have to be anti-racist. You've got to be positively anti-racism. Whereas for a man he's sort of like considered to be an ally to the women's movement if he just refrains from sexual harassment. That is not good enough. I want men to be stepping forward. Why, for God's sake, are women campaigning for paternity leave, for Christ's sake? Why don't men campaign for maternity leave? Why don't men, under our leadership, of course, campaign against domestic violence? You know, we don't want them running the show on issues to do with women, but we want them absolutely abandoning passive resistance, which is still a major problem, and actually stepping up. So I hope we can have male allies, and then what we'll have is something which is good for every individual, meritocratic, to actually have people to have opportunities according to what they want to do and are able to do. It's good for society because it's not good if everybody's resentful, you know, and there's inequality. And it's also good for the economy because things are done better if they're done by meritocracy rather than by a clique of an old boys network. So there's still work to be done, but there is a new generation amongst all of you, and certainly my sister's on the panel to be taking this forward. Thanks, Harriet. Thanks for setting the scene and with such clarity about the issues that have come before us and still to go. And also, you know, we know how much you've contributed to this space, and I hope that that will come through in the future as well as we continue to discuss. And your sisters will have a chance to ask you some questions down the line as well. But moving on to Charlene. Charlene White, a television broadcaster, journalist and presenter, best known for presenting ITV news and has been an anchor on loose women and appeared on the ITV reality show I'm a Celebrity. Get me out of here in November 2022. Over to you, Charlene. I was looking into lots of things to do with women in politics, and I knew that was going to be on this panel. And it did. My aunt is here actually, so my aunt will wave on Chelonore. I was raised by very powerful women who had a huge impact on the women that I then became. And when I was younger, I did used to want to be the first black female prime minister, but then I started working. It's not too late. But then I started working in journalism and realised just how much of a slog it was to try and change the world as a woman in politics, because they're just at that point, and we're going back more than 20 years, there were so few. And I looked at the way in which politics works and the whole lifestyle of politics and politicians just didn't go alongside the life that I wanted to live in terms of the hours that you guys have to work and the sorts of events you have to do in the evening. It doesn't really line up for me with having a family, and I wanted to be able to have a family life. So I decided to stick with journalism in the end anyway, but I sort of thought that that was a way that I could try and change things. And I've done some of that, but haven't necessarily conquered everything that I wanted to conquer. In terms of when it comes to media politics and feminism, I know that there are lots of media organisations that are harder on the women than they are on the men, and I think we can just about be in agreement in that. And I think that's also part of the reason why there are so few women who necessarily would choose politics as their first port of call to become an MP. And the numbers sort of bear that out. Labour are doing a lot better than the Conservatives are, I think, but the Conservatives 25% of MPs are women compared to 52% within Labour. And Labour has done phenomenally well when it comes to encouraging more women to get into politics, but hasn't done as well when it comes to those women getting to the top. And there are those who perhaps are Labour voters who will think, my gosh, I can't believe we're in that situation. And when you look at the history of the changes that Labour have made and when it comes to equality, when it comes to discrimination, all of those things that Labour's fought really hard for, it is quite strange to them being in a situation where we still not even had a Labour Prime Minister, not even a Labour leader, which is incredible when you think about the fact that we are in 2023. But then when you look at just how difficult it has been for other world leaders who are women and the number that we've lost in the last 12 months, it's when you look at what they have had to put up with compared to what the men have had to put up with, a lot of that has been, I wouldn't say encouraged by the media, but that's not helped. When you look at Jacinda Ardern, for example, and I think in the time that she was in power in New Zealand, by the end of her term, sorry, by the time she handed in a notice, the level of abuse that she received had tripled in the time that she'd been in charge. We're talking not just about death threats, people physically trying to assault her when she is on the street. These are things that happened a lot less frequently, less often with men. And I think you have a generation of women, I think there was a report done in 2021 which looked at why lots of organisations are losing female leaders. And one of the things that they had said was it's not because they are not as driven as men, they are as driven as men, but they are less likely or just don't want to put up with the status quo. So those long hours, those expecting you to work twice as hard as the other men that you work alongside, they want more from their life and they're not prepared to put up with it, so then transfer and work in other organisations. And when you look at that happening with leaders, leaders who are more than capable of doing the job, when they are leaving politics, not because they don't have a love for politics, because of the abuse and vitriol that they get on the outside of that, we shouldn't be living in a society where women who are capable of doing a job are leaving because of outside influences and things that are happening outside of their organisation. And unless we look at the root of that, I don't necessarily believe that we will continue to see that rise in women in politics. Because you know, ladies like Jalee should be working in politics with her campaigning and with her drive for change. Those are the sorts of women we really need to be involved within our political sphere. But there are so many women who are just not prepared to put up with the abuse that you get online. Women, female politicians have to put up with so much abuse online. You have to realise that there's a whole new generation of women who are sat there and going, you know what, it's just not worth it. And we are losing so much talent across the political sphere because they have to put up with so much. And I think unless we look at the root of that, and that does cover the media, the media covers papers, it covers broadcasting, it covers online publications, it covers all of it, if we look at how women are treated in those spheres when it comes to women in power, then perhaps then we'll see a change. Because people forming that opinion that women shouldn't have opinions, women shouldn't get above their station, women need to be standing behind the man, women can't possibly be in child of defence, therefore can't possibly be in child of the country because what if we go to war and your man can deal with those situations. A lot of that narrative comes from the media landscape. And I do believe that when we start changing the way that we talk about women, when we change the way that women are discussed within those spheres, I think that's when we'll see a change. Brilliant. Is this working? Yeah. I don't know why we need this one as opposed to this one, but this one's not working. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. And already the connections, the references to each other, to the links between media and politics, really, really fascinating. And lead on beautifully, I think, to Joly as our next speaker. She is a women's rights activist and founder of Pregnant then Screwed, founded after she was sacked by her employer when she was four months pregnant. Pregnant then Screwed protects, supports and promotes the rights of women who suffer the effects of systemic, cultural and institutional discrimination. Joly, over to you. Thank you. So I started Pregnant then Screwed in 2015, so eight years ago, as Helen said, after my own experience of pregnancy discrimination, I informed my employer that I was pregnant, I was four months pregnant, and the next day they sacked me by voicemail, and my employer was a children's charity. And after that experience, I then obviously tried to get legal advice, tried to get legal support, found it really, really difficult. I found a lawyer, they wrote a letter to the charity demanding I be compensated. That letter cost me £300, and I had no idea where my next bit of income was coming from, so that was pretty terrifying. Charity just threw that letter in the bin. Then I discovered I was having a high-risk pregnancy. My cervix had almost vanished. The doctor said I could go into labour at any point, and if I did go into labour now, the baby would die. They did a delightful process where they tried to bolt my cervix together to keep the baby in place, and the surgeon said to me afterwards, look, whatever you do, don't get stressed. Thanks, yeah. So I was then left with this choice, because you only have three months to raise a tribunal claim from the point the discrimination occurs. So I was literally left with the choice of protecting the health of my unborn child, or accessing the justice that I clearly deserved. And so I had to drop the case. I had to, there was just no other choice. He's fine, he's a healthy nine-year-old now. But I found myself lying on a sofa watching daytime TV, not Jeremy Kyle, wondering where my life had just gone. I'd gone from having a successful career. I had a baby on the way. I was really excited to suddenly, nothing. I had no income. I thought nobody would ever employ me again because I was, by this point, showing. I was reliant on my partner to pay, to put food on the table, keep a roof over my head. And all that I was good for was a vessel, essentially, for this growing fetus, and I wasn't even doing that very well. I was failing at that. And so I just lay there for three weeks crying, rubbing this belly, begging this baby to stay put. And that three weeks radicalised me. It completely changed the way that I look at the world. And it was like a blindfold had been lifted and suddenly everything came into focus and I could suddenly see inequality, like pure inequality because of my biology. I suddenly had nothing. So things worked out well. I ended up getting another job and ended up doing some really incredible projects. I went to Moscow and did a project and did all sorts of brilliant things, but that anger just ate away at me. I couldn't get rid of it. And so after I had had Theo, I attended parent groups and started talking to other parents about what had happened to me and discovered that this actually was quite common. In fact, the majority of women that I spoke to said something awful had happened to them at work. And then it happened to two friends of mine, one of which was a stockbroker and they'd spent all the time that I lived with her at university studying and studying and she got to a certain point and then she had a baby and they got rid of her. And then I started hearing really horrendous stories from women, women, a woman who was made to do a shot of vodka every morning to prove that she wasn't pregnant. Women who'd announced their pregnancy and their employer had told them they'd better get an abortion if they want to keep their job. Women wandering around the office who would get a cup of water and people saying, well, I hope they've put something in that water cooler that'll deal with that problem. There was a woman who had been working for the same employer for six years. She was doing really well. Her boss had told her that she deserved a promotion. She had to go for an interview but it was just a formality. The job was in the bag. Before the interview she told her boss that she was pregnant. She didn't get the job and when she asked her boss why he said he had discussed things with his wife and they had decided that her priorities would change. So these stories, I just kept hearing them over and over again when I was out and so I thought, I just got to a point where I thought I've got to do something about this and I had come up with the name pregnant and screwed. It was going to be worse than that to begin with. We couldn't all imagine what that was going to be. I decided to slightly tame it down and on International Women's Day I woke up and I had a baby on one knee and I was spoon feeding in porridge and I taught myself how to use WordPress and then I just launched this website for women to tell their stories anonymously and mine was the first story on there and my friends was the second and then I was begging and pleading with these women to put these stories and expecting this onslaught of stories and it was just silence. Nobody would give me their story, nobody would put their story on that and then that's when I discovered the colossal stifling power of non-disclosure agreements that are silencing women across this country and gagging them from speaking publicly about really horrific experiences of discrimination, racism, sexual harassment. Eventually I managed to encourage ten women to tell me their stories anonymously. They went on the website and it was picked up by the media and slowly it snowballed and these stories started coming in and then of course people needed help and support and they wanted me to give them advice and I wasn't qualified and so I met a lawyer in Manchester and we had a cup of tea and I begged her to help me and she agreed and she would do three phone calls from the bath each night calling people in a spare time and last year that support service helped 5,500 women this year. This year we're expecting to help 12,500 women through that same advice service and in terms of influencing politics and influencing legislation I think really what we've done differently that many organisations don't do is because it started from my own experience, my anger and I was very open and personal about my trauma essentially and what had happened to me, people identified with that and so we went a faceless institution, we were human beings that they could identify with and we've continued that even though we've grown and so rather than us being a broadcast machine us being top down telling people what we're going to campaign on we truly genuinely engage with women on the ground and say what's happening what do you need to change what's not working for you and through that people trust us they genuinely trust us and they believe that if they do something with us that it's powerful that we are a genuine community that work together and I tell you what politicians are terrified of that because we're noisy, we're loud, we're noisy we can get up in the streets we can march, we can shout and we are a big pool of voters we know that we can encourage thousands and thousands of women to support certain manifesto pledges I have seen first hand real misogyny within Parliament I remember doing an oral evidence session in Parliament and a Lord outside telling me he would eat me for breakfast I've had many many interesting experiences so I can't imagine what it's actually like on the inside for many of the women that are in there and there's a lot that needs to change a lot that needs to change and I hope that as part of Pregnancy and Screed we can influence as well more women to have the confidence and the courage to stand for Parliament and the changes that we really really need to see in order for us to thrive in society Thank you and just an amazing panel and I just love the fact that you're each referencing back to politics but it's the power of the three spaces that you occupy and the links between them that I think is really really powerful What I'd like to do next is both open it up for some questions from you but also for each of the panellists to ask a question to the other so we're going to start with Harriet and I'd like Charlene and Joely to ask a question but also any of you who has a question for Harriet and then we'll do the same for the other two panellists so maybe okay Joely starting with you any questions and Harriet is it okay if we take about three or four questions so two from here and a couple from the audience as well If there was one law that you could change before you leave Parliament what would it be? Only one I think Helen referenced the idea that now because of the Equality Act which Helen Reardon Bond was absolutely a driving force in getting through that Labour put through in 2010 we put in that that companies and organisations with more than 250 people have to publish their payback gap figures so they have to publish the average that they pay for men and the average that they pay for women so that you can see in each individual organisation what the pay gap actually is but I think the next step that we need to change the law on and that was the first step and everybody was massive opposition to it but now everybody can see the importance of shining a light on it but I think that we need then power to enforce change so that we should give the Equality and Human Rights Commission the power when these figures are published to do like a particular enquiry into say a sector like the health service and basically say right you have got to narrow your gender payback gap by 12% each year over the next five years or else we'll find you and to say to media companies and here's the names of these companies that they've all got to over the next five years they've got to reduce their pay gap or else we'll find you and I think that it's not good enough to show the discrimination in pay which is obviously related to the structure of men being at the top and women at the bottom it's got to have some power to actually change that because of course if you say to an organisation unless you do something you're going to be absolutely fined they will find a way to do it it's not that there aren't women out there perfectly well qualified they're all being fired because they're pregnant or fired because they're regarded as too old or too young or too something or another so actually I think there needs to be fining and then soon we would have transformation in the workplace that's just one but I've got about 100 other things but I'll stop there but that's just one and it's definitely needed because the data is not showing massive changes in some respect it's zipping back actually I was having a discussion with the trade union last week the GMB and they were talking about the strikes that are going on amongst their members and all the really excellent work they're doing for their members and they were also talking about how they're doing lots of cases on job evaluation which is to try and get equal pay and I'm afraid I found myself saying well that is really excellent work and I strongly support the trade union movement and the GMB but your gender pay gap in your union is 30% so you know the point is somebody somewhere has got to actually say okay trade unions we're going to look into you in a sector and if your pay gap is x amount you've got to change it and more than half of their members are women so it's not as if there aren't women out there so anyway there's also a really good app at the moment there's a bot that looks at what the pay gap is and used International Women's Day whenever a company was saying how wonderful it was to show what the pay gap was on there it was absolutely brilliant Manchester based initiative I think okay so yeah Charlene question yeah I'm going to answer your question regarding the labour leadership just because last year when you had the Tory leadership I think half of the candidates were women I think 8 out of 10 of the city mayors a labour only one of them is a woman and I just find it incredible that a party such as yours has still not managed to field a woman leader or an ethnic minority even what would you say is the main battle that the party is dealing with in order to get either of those two things or both well it is you know I've joined the Labour Party I've always been part of the Labour Party on the basis that the Labour Party is the kind of political wing of the women's movement therefore it is and over the years Labour's done absolutely amazing things but it is egregiously wrong and embarrassing that we've never managed to have a woman leader either in government as Prime Minister in opposition as you actually said and paradoxical that the Tories have had not but one but three and their first one was Margaret Thatcher ages ago now the only explanation that I can give for this and it's not an excuse but it's something that Les Phillips said once which is that the women in the Conservative Party are less subversive and demanding than the women in the Labour Party they certainly Margaret Thatcher she wasn't about changing the system to make things more equal for men and women she was about being better than the men and beating them on their own terms which she did and therefore they don't the women in the Tory party don't say this whole structure and this whole hierarchy is rubbish it all needs to be changed and you all need to make space for women to be on equal terms with you and frighten the men whereas the women in the Labour Party are very threatening to the men in senior positions because we won't change and we're in the room being disgruntled and that therefore is not conducive to you rising up the ranks and pleasing everybody I mean that is just it's as good an explanation as anybody but it still is rubbish that we've never had a woman leader and we do actually need one and you know I'm hoping that Keir Starmer is going to be the next Prime Minister and we're going to win the next General Election so that we won't have a leadership change for some time yet but next time it absolutely must be a woman and we need to have a self-denying ordinance whereby we say to the men if you're going to be a male ally don't put yourself forward support a woman to put yourself forward because as soon as they put themselves forward then suddenly they are the front runners and the women fade away and one woman said I thought it was very good it takes a very strong man to be a leader but it takes an even stronger man to support a woman leader so I want the men to be like declaring I am brilliant I'd be the most brilliant Prime Minister but you know what I'm not going to run actually I want to support a woman's leader and at that point you know I might be well dead and gone by that point but actually I should be thrilling in my grave when that actually happens thank you okay over to you all any questions for Harriet yes here I'll take two at the same time if possible so you first do we have roving Mike thank you my question is oh yes my name is Chesca Walton from Hackney my question is how do you keep going so I've been loosely involved in politics for a couple of years now and it's already been mentioned there's weekends evenings other commitments you're out knocking on doors and at the moment I just feel really exhausted and knackered and a bit burnt out you've had an extensive career how have you kept going all of that time hi there Harriet my name's Diba, I'm a long-term Labour member I'm actually a Campbell and Peckham constituent so I did actually put myself forward to be a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party earlier this year and my experience of it was pretty brutal I found that the sort of attitude of members was that I was too young and I felt that being a woman of colour really separated me from the pack we're talking about women leaders but I think it's just generally been really difficult for women to get selected even just at the bottom rungs and I think the people who have got selected tend to be from a certain background and skin colour and acting a certain way so I'm quite concerned about the fact that all women short lists are not going to be in play well have not been in play and I'm just wondering what you and your historic trailblazing track record what can we do to make sure that women or women short lists come back because I believe they are really key to getting more women selected and just what reassurance is can you get if the Labour Party is going to be in power from Keir Starmer particularly on that particularly in relation to women of colour so the first your point about how personally I kept going there were many times especially when my kids were young and the House of Commons hours were absolutely bonkers at that time it would be like never finishing before 10 o'clock often going to 11.30 quite often going through the night we weren't running an intensive care unit it was just absolutely bonkers and we had a big campaign to change that and everything but it was really exhausting and difficult together with the fact that I would get sack loads of correspondence from people saying how could you be being an MP when you've got young children you know you are ruining your children and it will be absolutely terrible so there were many many times when I wanted to give up and pronounce to my friends and family I was giving up but by that time the women's movement was so aspirational and I thought if I threw in the towel everybody would go ha ha see a woman can't hack it she's flaked out and I kind of felt there was no way out for me because I was not going to be a cross for the women's movement to bear as an example of somebody who managed to get into Parliament but couldn't hack it and therefore I was kind of sort of stuck in the best possible way and my friends would say no there's a recess a parliamentary recess coming up you'll feel better then just keep going until the summer and then see how you feel they just sort of never let me escape together with the fact I remember one time when I was doing loads and loads and loads and loads of stuff on domestic violence all my male colleagues were really getting very fed up with me about it I remember saying to a friend of mine perhaps I should do less on domestic violence because everybody's going on about I'm just banging on about domestic violence all the time and she said oh is the problem solved so I said do I have to be bloody ridiculous of course it isn't solved and she said well there you are so in a way you've got to keep going if you want to make change sometimes you know you can take a bit of a step back recharge your batteries and then go forward again or sometimes you can do a bit and then stop but because I was so exposed and there were so few of us there I couldn't I was stuck but I'm quite glad I did ultimately you know stick it out your point about selection I think that the women's movement is mostly about and women's aspirations is about a collective endeavour and there's something a bit counter intuitive about women sticking themselves forward as the big I am me it feels you know we're more likely to do things collaboratively and so the whole structure of sort of being the front runner is quite a difficult thing for a woman to do it's much easier on an all women shortlist because at least which is where men are not allowed to apply and the constituency is only going to have a woman candidate because then there does actually often develop a sort of sisterly solidarity between all those are going forward and you've got to lease the certainty that a woman will actually win it but I think that selection still are a very difficult process and if it's one where we a constituency we hope to win then the men are busy elbowing the women out of the way and often it's talked about about encouraging women to stand actually I found in the Labour party there are bags of women like you who want to stand and the issue is not encouraging women to stand the issue is getting the men out of the way who are stopping obstructing them so that is the issue it's not that we have to women are shrinking violence they don't see the point in politics and we have to explain to them it's a good and important thing to do I think that is the most patronising and awful argument there are women all around who know why politics is important who want to play their part and just the men are there with their elbows and with their entitlement and it's difficult for them to get through I think the issue about race and gender and other different sorts of discrimination is a really really important one and if I was going to have a question that's what I was going to ask Charlene about because basically I think the thing is that there are many different sorts of discrimination and inequality and there is you know there's gender, there's race there's sexual orientation there's disability and the question is how do we see all the different sorts of inequality and form a common front so that we don't have a hierarchy of different sorts of inequality which is more important race or gender we actually recognise that all discrimination all prejudice is an appalling thing and therefore whichever bit we happen to be either experiencing or working on we still are part of the family of the broader progress towards a more fair and equal society and one of the things that I've been discussing with my black sisters in the Parliamentary Labour Party is whether or not because we've got a women's plp group is whether or not it would be good for them to have a black women members of parliament group black Labour women members of parliament group that they can actually work together and make their own demands they meet informally but actually why shouldn't they like we've got a women's plp which is a formal organisation within the plp why shouldn't they actually have their own organisation so that they could set forth their demands which have to be listened to so I think that one of the things that's always the case is we've got to think about how we make the enemy misogynists racists you know people who are disabled not make each other the enemy in the early days of the women's movement there was a big argument where it was like you're either if you're a woman who's heterosexual then you are anti anti lesbian and you're consorting with men and you're letting down women by consorting with men and therefore you could either be one or the other you had to be gay to be properly in the women's movement and it was like why were we having all of these arguments between women when actually the problem was men and so that's one of the things that I think we've always got to keep an eye on is that we've all got to support each other and have a common front and I wish you all the very best of luck and can I just also say that the successor that you've chosen as members of Camberwell and Peckham Labour Party for me because I'm standing down at the next general election is called Miata Fanbola and if you haven't heard of her already you will certainly be hearing of her soon she's chair of the new economics she's director of the new economics foundation she's an economist she is the most brilliant woman and actually she's going to be an inspirational figure in parliament not just for Camberwell and Peckham but for the whole of the country and I wondered whether or not I would feel slightly nose out of joint absolutely brilliant woman and she's going to be called the member of parliament for Camberwell and Peckham and that being me for 40 years and people are going to be saying God Miata is actually amazing not all look at what she's doing but I'm actually delighted to find myself thrilled by how totally excellent she is so watch out for her she's going to make a huge difference Thanks Harriet, thanks very much Okay, moving on so there's a bit of a question there for you Charlene I think from Harriet I don't know, could we take a few more in the interests of time so I think that question was around gender and race and how you manage and how you make sure that one isn't prioritised over the other can I just take it, can we just do a bit more, so Charlene could we have your question as well and then I'll open it up to the audience I was going to ask you about Andrew Taitan online misogyny but I sort of feel like that's unfair and probably he's derailing the conversation a bit so instead I think I might switch the conversation that you asked to Harriet to you to say I mean obviously there's all the things externally that stop women progressing in the media childcare, flex, working, we know it all I know it all because I work on it all the time what do you think is the key thing in media that prevents women progressing and particularly black and brown women who we know are disproportionately massively underrepresented is it about a third of the media is women of 20 something percent something like that and then even less when it goes further up but in terms of how we progress I genuinely believe that with the younger generation they are not just campaigning for one thing they want to push forward LGBTQ plus rights, disability rights when it comes to race, when it comes to gender they rather than looking at things as one singular thing they understand intersectionality intersectionality they understand that a lot better than saying my parents generation would have done for example I think that working together to ensure that we have a quality across the board is by far the way forward but we do have to look at certain things like when you have I don't know for instance and I know I keep going on about the Labour Party because I know the figures but when you have a situation where there is you know you have a party where the high proportion of its members and supporters are from ethnic minorities compared to the other parties you have an opportunity there where you've got your base a lot of your base comes from ethnic minorities and it's still not to have that represented high up in the party it's just madness and then when that comes down to okay well you could be a black woman well there you go you've got two things there you're black and you're a woman where even less of a chance to be able to get high up in the party I think in terms of when we're looking at leaders generally not just in politics but elsewhere as well we have to look at it as a whole and not just look at it as one thing because we can't yes you could have a black woman that's high up in an organisation but then what are you doing about those who have disabilities are they not represented either I think it's easy for certain sectors of the media landscape to sort of look at that by sort of saying oh they just want anybody to go in and take over you know it doesn't matter if you're qualified or not but actually there are hugely qualified people across the board and rather than keep holding them back because they don't look like the status quo they don't sound like the status quo we have to stop holding them back and just let them do their jobs which then comes into what you're talking about in terms of how you then rise up especially when it comes to politics for example Laura Koonsburg was the first female political editor at the BBC she's also the first woman to host her own political programme and that was only last year we're talking 2022 and you have Steph McGovern who when she was the business presenter on BBC breakfast the abuse that she would get both people taking the time to hand write letters into the BBC saying that someone with her accent shouldn't be talking about business because clearly she wasn't intelligent enough letters they would never write to a male business reporter they just wouldn't quite frankly you have a situation where there have been lots of women and yes women of colour who haven't been allowed to rise so they were up at echelons and so from a public's point of view they sometimes look at that in terms of what were they clearly not intelligent enough to do it that a woman clearly isn't intelligent enough to to head up political programme part of the reason why Laura still gets Laura Koonsberg gets a lot of abuse a lot of that is to do with misogyny but then as Harriet is saying you sort of have that situation where you get the abuse as I do doing the job that I do anytime we do an all black panel on loose women even the one in celebration of Jamal Edwards Brenda's son we still get a torrent of abuse online because you're four black women on national TV in the UK which is ludicrous in 2023 but as Harriet says you sort of have those situations where you know it's going to happen you know that it can be emotionally very difficult but you've just got to keep going because it's that feeling of if you drop out and then the next person drops out and then the next person drops out everybody's starting from the bottom again as opposed to you get to a certain level and you don't pull up the ladder behind you you bring people up with you and that's the way that change happens but it also comes back to the abuse that again women always get and women have to deal with and that's where allies come into play what you should be having is those male leaders but in broadcasting, in politics in sport all over that when they see their counterparts being abused in the way they are online they stand up for them because you have a group of people who perhaps yes will listen to the man more so that the man says to them don't do that it's wrong and these are the reason why it is wrong we need to support that woman that immediately starts changing mindsets opening it up any questions for Charlene one there and one there and then let's take those two hi my name is Faith and I'm the CEO of Girls Not Brides and we work to add child marriage I first want to say that Harriet in 1998 I came to your office and you are very very helpful and I saw that whenever I meet you again I will say thank you this has been the opportunity to say thank you so receive that gratitude I used to live in your constituent self kind of move down I come from Kenya but we can talk if you want to know what happened but my question for you is as an international woman living internationally I come from Kenya but I always define myself as an international woman I get very inspired when I see other women like you talking about some of the battles you have fought to be where you are so today thinking about women like me in Kenya in rural Kenya this is my colleague from Nigeria in rural Nigeria because we talk to these women what words of hope can you give them today because they are battles they have longer journeys to come then perhaps you have and I am sure you have had many battles but what are some of the things you can inspire them with so that as we go back we can say we heard this and this is how you can win your battle too thank you let's hear from the online questions as well couple of questions one has come from Claudia who asks could you give the definition of feminism because people confuse it with manhating there's a question from Barbara about media ownership being concentrated in the hands of largely white men what can change the male leaders to challenge the blocks to politics faced by women I think perhaps that could I cheekily put in my own question the Andrew Tate question Joely I wonder if you'd like to tackle that one is there a question or just Andrew Tate Andrew Tate why what so I had this I've become a bit obsessed with online because I've got two boys I've got a six-year-old and a nine-year-old boy and I was in the park with my eldest son the other day and he suddenly said to me Andrew Tate is the real G and he could see the colour drain out of my face and I sat him down and he so he panicked and I kept saying where have you heard that from where have you heard that from and he just kept saying I don't know I don't know so I turned everything off in the house and he wasn't allowed anything because I just didn't know what to do I didn't know how to handle it I had no clue it transpired that it was a kid at his school but kept saying it and he was just repeating it but I had then realised that really I had no idea what he was seeing and I had a conversation so we started talking about it and I started thinking about it and there is this issue with I've talked to teachers about this as well that it is really is seeping into the minds of adolescent children and they are trotting out these lines and they are finding something in Andrew Tate and online misogyny that they're not getting elsewhere and my query is why are they finding a home in Andrew Tate what is it that we don't understand about our boys and their lives what is it that we're missing what is it that we can give them that fills that hole that gap that they are filling now with the likes of Andrew Tate and I feel like if we think about the future of feminism the future of feminism has got to be to bring boys with us and to for them to understand why feminism and equality is good for them as well as good for women and I've been listening to some brilliant men who talk about some of the challenges that boys and men experience and you put that alongside the sorts of things that Andrew Tate talks about and I don't know if anybody listened to Steve Bartlett's podcast that guy Chris I can't remember his surname but he used lots of the data that is factual about men are more likely to commit suicide men don't do as well as women in the education sector there were really not very many charities that really concentrate and care about men and boys and some of the challenges that they're experiencing but he used all of that data and then turned it into this misogynistic nonsense that was horrendous and what we really need is to think about what is it that with this drive for equality for women are the things that we're missing with boys that so we can bring them with us on this journey and not forget them in the process because you know some of us have sons many of us love men we have men in our lives that we love and I just think it's a really important conversation to have right now because the next generation of feminists coming through will really have to wrestle with this Thanks Julie I think could we have Charlene and Harriet answer some of those points that have come up briefly if possible so that we can still have another round of questions In terms of sort of the message that's quite a weighty question but the one thing that I would say is that remembering the world has a ripple effect so the stuff that people are fighting for will have an impact elsewhere the sorts of things that they are fighting for in Kenya will have an impact on the rest of the world and in West Africa all those things have a ripple effect across the rest of the world and I can use that with an example when Obama was first voted in as president the ripple effect that then had around the world in terms of engaging a lot more young black people in politics because they felt like oh my goodness me I really can change something just in New Zealand that also globally had a ripple effect where you have a woman that gave birth when she was in Parliament oh my god that's amazing that then has a ripple effect and it's always important for women to remember that they're not alone in the fight for equality irrespective of where they are in the world because we may well be fighting for things to change here but in fact we live globally and social media has changed so much of how we live in the world full stop yes it has its negative effects but a lot of people black women especially have found a home with other black women who are also fighting for things globally they found each other through social media and that's quite that's such a powerful tool that can't be underestimated so I think that all I would say is to remind them that they're not alone fighting a very similar battle in order that it can impact everybody globally around the world just firstly on the international thing I kind of used to think and I used to sort of feel that I was a sort of proud feminist proud of what we've done in this country and the change we've made and everything and I kind of sort of thought that we might be really ahead of the game and have really done a lot of change so I started on this project which is turning into which is going to be a book about there are now women in parliaments in every country in the world which isn't used to be and doing an interview with them and asking them about why they're in politics what they're doing, what's going on in their lives what they're hoping to achieve and everything and I was like really shocked at myself because actually the women in the most patriarchal and difficult countries have been so inspiring and so tough and received 100 million times more abuse and difficulties and challenges that we've done but nevertheless achieved so much and worked with such iron solidarity with other women and that so what I feel I can do about that is amplify here their voices so actually interview them can just be absolutely admiring them just admiring them and recognising that we are not as great as we think they are we are like cities compared to them and actually our foreign office should not be endlessly talking to male leaders they should be talking to the women in these democracies who are actually really the future I mean one woman said she said it takes a bird two wings to fly and in a democracy one wing is men and the other wing is women and if you don't let women be part then the bird can't fly and the sense that they are part of the potential future for their country is just really absolutely incredibly important as far as the thing about Andrew Tate and everything I don't know whether I take a different view from Joly but I think if you think to yourself if you're fighting against racism I don't think that we do it in terms of well white people are going to be then challenged with their privilege what can we do for white people to make them feel bad about not being able to be racist anymore and I think we don't we just like say it's absolutely disgusting it's got to be squashed and fought at every turn and we don't say in relation to people without disabilities we're going to fight for people with disabilities we've got to think of something that is going to make people without disabilities not feel that their position is challenged I'm not sure we can do it like that and I know it's a terrible thing to think but women are always trying to appease men we're brought up to make that we've got to make men feel comfortable and I think misogyny and you know perhaps this is unrealistic it's just got to be bloody well fought and I've got sons as well and no doubt I make them feel very uncomfortable on many occasions but actually we have got to fight misogyny and not say that they should somehow be made a comfortable place we've been in subordinate positions for centuries having to support and agree with men they should try it for a bit so I know I think this particular bit of the conversation can continue any other questions we've got about 10 minutes so question there and I think I'm going to open it up they can be directed at anybody so let's start there we'll take a few thank you very much to all of you it's been brilliant to hear from every single one of you so my name is Rhyth Omston and this is a organisation called the Mindfulness Initiative and we look at mindfulness and inner capacities and we look at it within politics as well because quite a few politicians have done mindfulness and I've heard a few of you touch on mindset and this idea that there needs to be inner change that goes on as to support the external change and one of the things I think listening to you all is Jacinda Ardern and Nicholas Sturgeon talked about the brutality of politics so even if we took away the long hours you know all the kind of external things there's still a polarisation that exists within politics and within the media that we need to address we need to give people the capacities to be able to deal with that so we're not just left with people only with the people who can deal with a really tough horrible situation leading our country I just wondered what your views were on that yeah this is for Jolie just to say I'm a teacher in Hertfordshire my name is Claire I would be here with many of the young mothers in our staff from not had to be at home looking after their children and the term pregnant and screwed is common parlance in our staff room for better or worse so thank you on their behalf I'd like to know what is there anything that you would wish that you had known when you first became an activist and it's a question that I could ask all of you actually but particularly you thank you let's just see if there any this will probably be the last round of questions so if there's one there thank you my name's Nicola and I've been a feminist for well over 40 years now started very young I just maybe not to introduce a note of controversy but there are two issues that I think we haven't touched on which relate to feminism and politics one is the issue of transgender rights and the other is the letter of Diane Abbott which is of course a Ferrari and I'm not asking you to say where you stand on either of those but just in terms of more how they've been reported and how that affects feminism in politics thank you any other questions and then I'll ask you each to have one last go at answering any of the questions that we can so one there okay one there hi my name's Feod I'm currently a master's student in politics of Africa and my questions relates to what was said about sort of the ripple effect and sort of the other side of what was said obviously there's such a positive ripple effect at the moment but in the degree that I do there's a lot of negativity that we've seen throughout history in relation to how women have been treated and especially in the last nine to twelve months with the loss of another female prime minister in the UK and I think that's a big deal with that negative ripple effect as someone that wants to get into politics I think I've been told in the last week alone oh you're really going to struggle because you're going into a continent that is not as widely discussed and might as a person on a degree of three people I think that kind of shows it for itself and as a woman I've been told you're really going to struggle going into politics I kind of want to know your opinions on and sort of how can we combat that negative ripple effect because there's so much that's sort of being non-recognised sort of as we go into universities as a student of four years now there's so many times that even professors have admitted that it is going to be hard but what exactly from a young age can we do thank you are we okay taking two more and then we'll close hi my name's Rebecca you all seem like very confident, robust ladies is there anything different about your upbringings or what your parents did that made you feel able to cope with these things in life lovely last question anybody for the last question there was a hand here but it's gone down just a bit of advice really I think we all agree that men need to come along with us on this fight so what would you suggest how can we do that so many questions as well first things thank you for the question definitely I wish I'd known more about what to expect when it started and the abuse that you get as things grow is horrible and it really takes its toll on you as well as the fact that with what I'm doing the work that I'm doing I'm dealing with trauma every single day and during the pandemic that turned from dealing with discrimination to life or death pregnant women I was terrified for during the pandemic and we were doing everything we could to try and keep pregnant women safe and then a number of pregnant women died which that whole period dealing with that trauma and dealing with the abuse that were getting on top of it I'm very northern and kept thinking it's fine I'm okay and then I had a bit of a breakdown in the end of 2020 I just I couldn't function properly at all and so I think if I was to tell myself anything now it would be alongside what you're doing if you can afford it get some therapy to deal with it have a way of dealing with the trauma no human can absorb that amount of trauma and just keep going so many other questions and menopause I can't remember them all Me too, I've got a pair of menopause I've got some testosterone in my back actually we can share that later there was a question about just touching on the women that have recently left in very Nicola Sturgeon and Jacinda Ardern of course recently resigned and what we saw from the media I felt really shocking so Jacinda Ardern resigned in the BBC the headline was I can't have it all yes they can if they've got to stay at home husband you're talking about Jacinda Ardern one of the most important women we've ever witnessed and then when Nicola Sturgeon resigned the BBC said that Kate Forbes couldn't possibly run because she was on maternity leave and so I just think it's so important when we're getting these stories from the media that we are constantly telling the real story of what we are capable of and you know we've got brilliant women like Harriet who can who can do that and we just need to keep shouting I'll be very quick in terms of changing I think it's changing the status quo or finding a different way of doing politics and choosing leaders differently I mean when you were a woman in politics if you remember Angela Merkel would only ever wear suits because I'm wearing the same suit she was like if I wear anything else I'm wearing as opposed to my policies I think these things will hopefully change of a time but it also requires for the online question regarding newspapers and those who are in charge of media it also requires people to not get so hooked on what a woman is wearing when they're in power but then that ties into they do it because loads of people click on those stories so it's like changing the mindset and that it's like a ripple effect which goes all the way down to what are we consuming if we don't click on those stories and we're not sharing those stories they simply won't be writing them but if we keep clicking on them they're going to keep on writing them and things will never change so I love it is also down to what we do individually and to your question about we all seem very confident was there anything different my aunt and my mum were very confident my aunt was a deputy head she was on marches she taught us that our voices should never be quietened or silenced and we should always talk up on behalf of those whose voices are quieter and fight for equality I was raised in a family where the women in my family were very strong, very confident and would fight, they were fighters and when you grow up in that environment you find that you have a voice you're allowed to have a voice and the voice that I was allowed to have at home is the voice that I then started using when I started doing my job and I see myself as being very lucky because of that so many really interesting and important questions Ruth, thank you for the mindfulness initiative it was a really good initiative in parliament to give us mindful sessions which I certainly partook in and benefited from and actually now you can get MPs who will stand up in the House of Commons and talk about their own mental health difficulties and that is such an incredibly important breakthrough so I think that's really good progress in terms of fionn people saying oh you're going to find it a struggle in politics it's kind of is that saying are they saying so this is how I'm going to help you this is how I'm going to stand alongside you and support you in what you're doing or are they really saying don't get involved in it because you're not up to it so I think it's like you need a good response to the person who's implying that so what are you going to do about that type of thing as far as what I wish I'd known I think in a way I'm quite glad I didn't know anything because actually some of it is just too awful but but actually all of you know if you are trying to make change then two things will happen a you'll get massive backlash and everything but b you'll also get massive support massive support out there you've just heard from the staffroom in Hertfordshire I mean how fantastic is that you can know you put on this earth for a good reason when you hear that so you get you do get the support as well as the backlash and as far as trans rights is concerned it really goes back to what I was saying about that there are many discrimination and prejudice can take many different forms and there is undoubtedly horrific prejudice against trans people and dreadful transphobia and I personally along with you know people hopefully want to be against that and want to see that actually eradicated and I don't think that you have to choose between somebody who fights for women's rights and somebody who recognises transphobia and wants to be an ally with trans women or trans men so there was one more there was advice to come forward there have been a lot of changes in my workplace that has to do with having women higher up within the organisation but it's also having men who are parents and don't want to hide that so as a result of not hiding that and a result of doing the things that they would like to do like make parents evenings like make school sports days and what have you because they also want to do it and they don't want to hide it they're also encouraging everybody to be honest about things like that and not hide the fact that they have kids and encouraging them to go for jobs even though they have kids whereas historically they would never have been even shortlisted for that I think with I think if men as Harry has said if you have men who are allies but not just hiding that fact then you've got to hook on to them and that's one thing that I have done throughout my career is all my mentors majority of them have been men because they're men in positions of power who were able to bring women up with them as opposed to men who've got no interest in that and I personally don't have any interest in that Great, okay we're going to have to call it quits there a big big thank you to the British Library for organising this event and to be in particular thanks to all of you for fantastic questions we could have gone on for a long time I know a big big thanks to this brilliant panel and to the ability I think of each to link in to the other to understanding the importance of these three spaces politics the media and civil society and the importance of working together I would like to end on one with saying one thing but then before you leave please do talk again with your neighbour and see whether you had an interesting conversation whether they're points that are still outstanding we weren't able to answer all of the questions that you put but maybe we'll stick around a little bit but hopefully you can continue the conversation but the last word I wanted to give is to quote my grandmother Sylvia who at the end of her book talking about the suffragette movement didn't just say how wonderful all of the things that we achieved the last words in that book are great is the work which remains to be accomplished