liberation

[NewLabour Party history] 9: The influence of the social liberals

As well as the revolutionary-reformist divide within the NewLabour Party (NLP) discussed in previous blog posts in this series on the history of the NLP, there were other axis-lines of significant political conflict in the early organisation. Many social liberals were strongly represented at the founding conference, and were involved in several important early debates over party policy (especially about environmental and gender issues). Most significant was the involvement of activists from the women’s movement. According to Alison McCulloch, an observer at the first conference, ‘Feminists at the conference were one of the most united groups’ (McCulloch, 1989: p.13). [Read more below]

[Act Party history] 15: Feminising the party

The Sydney-based Kortlang Group was employed to help reconfigure the languishing Act Party in 1996. One of Kortlang’s most visibly apparent recommendations was the advice to feminise the party’s image. Act had obviously become associated with its prominent male leadership and much of the party’s propaganda contained messages that were supposedly more orientated to males. According to Act organiser Brian Arps, ‘We've been selling it with the numbers.  Men are more linear thinkers, and women are more inspirational in how they think' (quoted in Campbell, 19 Nov 1994: p.16). [Read more below]

[political party social bases] 15: Gender

The gender cleavage in New Zealand society plays only a small role in party politics. Few political parties or candidates campaign on gender issues, and it appears unlikely that this social cleavage will become sufficiently politicised to make viable the establishment of a gender-specific political party. [Read more below]

Socially liberal Cuba to legalise gay marriage

Cuba is set to become the most socially liberal country in the Americas by legalising gay marriage and making sex change operations free of charge under Cuba's world leading health service. The country abolished its anti-gay laws in 1979, well before most US states (many of which retain various laws against forms of sexual activity usually associated with male homosexuality), and well before New Zealand. NZ too, has only adopted a half-way-house approach to gay marriage whereby gay and lesbians can only get Civil Unions (because Helen Clark and co thought that the sanctity of marriage meant that it should remain a heterosexual-only institution).

According to a Guardian opinion piece, Havana now has a lively and vibrant gay scene, and the days of official repression and machista cultural societal oppression are over. It quotes the president of Cuba's national assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, saying that 'We have to redefine the concept of marriage. Socialism should be a society that does not exclude anybody.' This is a huge advance on the Cuban revolution's early homophobia. The Guardian says that the change has come about primarily due to pressure within Cuba, but also significantly from Cuba's external supporters of the revolution that have encouraged progressive social-political change in the island. See also, the USA Today article, When it comes to gay rights, is Cuba inching ahead of USA?

Idiocy and feminism on Working Women's Day

Feminism in NZ - and elsewhere - has had a strong tendency to degenerate into non-political and highly personal issues at the expense of any real struggle for women's liberation. After all, the leading creed is 'the personal is political', which originally had some significant meaning, but eventually just became an excuse for navel-gazing and the drift away from progressive politics. Around the time of International Working Women's Day - March 8 - some of these absurdities normally surface. It's not often the feminists deal with this tendency, but in the UK Guardian, Zoe Williams is outraged that 'a day that once stood for women's liberties has been hijacked by yoga, spices and animals in art'. She says This is idiocy, not feminism. In NZ, the day tomorrow will inevitably be somewhat more political than usual due to the recent police rape cases.

Is the future of politics female?

Women are increasingly holding power in politics - being elected as MPs, presidents and prime ministers around the world. The Inter-Parliamentary Union's latest study of gender proportions in Parliament says that the proportion of women politicians has jumped from 11% to nearly 17%. NZ is one of the more advanced nations in this respect, with 33% of the Parliament composed of women (40 out of 121 MPs). Sadly, our Pacific Island neighbours have the lowest proportion in the world - about 3%. In contrast, Rwanda and Sweden have nearly 50%.

A recent article in the UK's Sunday Times posed the question of whether the future is female. It noted that alongside women either being president or presiding over parliaments in NZ, Germany, Chile, and Finland, there's a decent chance that the next leaders of the US and France will also be women. They say that this is part of 'a decades-long process of post-war empowerment', and many feminists are excited by the prospects of women running the world. Women now preside over 35 of the world's parliaments.

While it's a good thing that there is increasing equality of opportunity, it still seems to be a bad idea to prefer a candidate over other because of their gender. From a progressive or leftwing point of view, the track record of female leaders isn't exactly much better than that of their male counterparts, and I've got no great desire to live under the rule of awful past leaders/warmongers like Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher (to say nothing of Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark). To me the political programme of the candidate will always be the central measure. And on that issue, George W Bush has been one of the worst for women. See, for example, the New Statesman article, Bush's war on women.

Women's liberation and slapperisation

In the Sunday Star-Times, Ruth Laugeson reports on a cultural change that I've definitely noticed in New Zealand and abroad - 'a new climate of sexual explicitness in advertising' and beyond. Laugeson says that 'In a bizarre cultural U-turn, we seem to be back in the 1970s' to pre-feminist times when sexual objectification is rife. It's a very interesting article, but it doesn't really have any answers, which I think is feel enough. It's a complex issue, and one that I don't think there is simply a right or wrong. I tend to think the phenomenon is a mixture of both harmless and harmful post-feminist irony. Some elements of the sea change reflects a vulgar commodification of sex, and some of it seems quite liberating and fun. But I definitely agree that there is 'an intensification of sexual imagery sweeping the west', and that it reflects some sort of defeat for both conservative moralism and conservative feminism. [READ ON BELOW]