Prostitution: A Left Wing Issue

By Rebecca Hewer.

In the past thirty or so years policy interventions concerning prostitution have focused on the women who sell sex. Whether it’s prostitution as public nuisance, prostitution as public health risk or prostitution as an inevitable accompaniment to the scourge of drug use, our policy makers have done much to address the supply of sex, but little to address the demand.

There are a number of explanations for this trend. Prostitutes are the more visible community and are thus easier to target. Prostitutes are more likely to be marginalized, whilst the men who frequent them are often respected members of their communities. Many believe that purchasing sex is merely the expression of normal male sexuality and that to penalize men for following their basic animal urges would be prudish and overly authoritarian.

Things may, however, be changing. Albeit slowly. Many local authorities now include prostitution in their violence against women strategies. In Scotland, Labour MSP Rhoda Grant, is proposing a bill that would criminalize the buyers of sex. And in England and Wales, a relatively recent amendment to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 makes it illegal for a man to buy sex from a woman who is being forced to sell it, regardless of whether or not he is aware of said force. The relative impunity of the buyer may, therefore, be drawing to an end.

There is by no means, however, a consensus on the matter. The subject polarizes the feminist lobby. There are those who believe prostitution is a legitimate form of employment and should be legalized in order to allow vulnerable women to become economically independent, whilst others argue that all prostitution is exploitation born of the culture of objectification which so oft prevents women from obtaining equality. Some might say that the debate transcends normal political distinctions. I, however, disagree. For me, opposing the legalization of prostitution and advocating for the criminalization of the purchase of sex is a left wing issue. And here’s why:

1. The belief that someone should have the right to buy sexual services is indicative of a commitment to market principles. It’s the idea that all things can be commodified, given a price and sold – that the worth of something is always measured by how much we are willing to pay for it. In the market, money reigns supreme and all other, more humane, considerations are represented as ideological drivel incompatible with the ‘organic’ existence of capitalism.
2. Much of the debate is predicated on the idea of ‘choice’: the idea that the right of the individual to choose should take precedence wherever possible. Individualism trumps communitarianism. This debate hinges on the mythical idea of the happy and empowered prostitute, who willingly sells sex. Why, we are asked, shouldn’t she be allowed to do so? And we reply: because she does not exist in a vacuum. The vast majority of prostitutes are vulnerable, subject to coercion, and daily the victims of violence. They need our protection. We do not legislate for the one, we legislate for the many. We should not run a society in the best interests of the lucky minority, but in the interests of the vast majority. And why prosecute the buyers rather than the sellers? Because we should not persecute the vulnerable, the poor, the exploited but we should hold the influential and wealthy accountable for the harm they cause by abusing their positions of power.
3. The criminalization of the purchase of sex is integral if we wish to achieve the aims of the wider equality agenda. The success of the sex industry is predicated on the objectification, commodification and sexualisation of human beings. People are marketed by use of their defining characteristics: their race, their disability, or their age. A woman who is pregnant can expect to make more money than a woman who is not – because pregnancy is seen as a more finite commodity demanding a larger price tag. And this dehumanization entrenches ideas of worth which harm the road to equality we all so much wish to travel.

Prostitution may not be an issue that feminists can agree upon, but it should be one the left can agree upon. The sale of sex is the most troubling form of wage slavery we will ever encounter. The sale of human beings can never be made acceptable. There is no way to incorporate prostitution into mainstream society whilst striving for equality and there is no way of protecting the vulnerable without prosecuting the powerful.

Rebecca Hewer is a Young Fabians Member.

We Need Quotas for Low-Income MPs

By Chris Grezo.

The time has come for political parties to set themselves targets for how many MPs they take in from low income backgrounds. The under-representation of people from low income backgrounds in parliament is at least as important as the under-representation of women, and perhaps something similar to All Women Shortlists (AWS) or A-lists could be used to remedy the problem.

What is the argument for a parliament that more accurately reflects the demographics of the nation? The short answer is that a body made up almost entirely of rich old white men is less able to understand the views and needs of the many other types of people who live in this country.

An example: as a man, I’m never going to understand the sense of dread a woman can feel walking home late at night. I’ve read up on crime statistics, yet still I was shocked to discover that my female friends were taking a longer route than myself between our homes because the nearest station is eerily deserted late at night. My inability to predict this problem, despite being the kind of boring person who reads crime statistics and thinks about feminism, shows why there is a need for more women in parliament: men, no matter how well meaning, lack the subjective experience to fully and completely represent the perspective of women.

I believe there are also benefits for men in having more women in parliament: greater diversity of voices acts as safety mechanism to prevent group-think. Studies have shown that large numbers of opinions, when averaged out, can be more accurate than the individual opinion of an expert (everyone’s small biases cancel each other out), but this only works if there is diverse opinion. One way to ensure this, and to ensure that our government makes good decisions, is to make sure MPs come from diverse backgrounds.

Studies show the value of ensuring parliamentary diversity. A survey by the World Bank found that governments that included more women were less corrupt, and a study on the effect of Labour’s AWS policy has shown that issues such as domestic violence, childcare and women’s health now get more parliamentary attention than they used to.

The counterargument to all of this is to say that quotas discriminate against rich white men, which is inherently wrong as all that should matter is who is best for the job. But this argument assumes that background has no effect on how appropriate for the job an individual is. I disagree with this because I genuinely believe that a rich white man is less able to understand the needs and views of a low income black woman than, say, a low income black woman. So strictly speaking I view quotas for parliament as actually reinforcing meritocracy, by rebalancing the selection process in favour of the qualities that matter to the job, instead of qualities such as networking and schmoozing ability, being a convincing liar, ruthlessness, oratory skills and so on.

Parliament is making headway in including more women and people from ethnic minorities. Women make up 22% of parliament now and non-white individuals, who account for 8% of society, now make up 4.6% of MPs. These figures are worryingly low but they pale in comparison to the under-representation of people from low income backgrounds: 33% of the British workforce are manual workers, but only 6% of MPs come from such a background. Compare this with the fact that finance makes up 3.6% of the UK workforce but a whopping 27% of the Conservative Party. Our representative democracy is not representative.

Some may argue that people on low incomes don’t have the level of education to be MPs. But consider this: in Germany the law requires that all companies with more than 2000 employees have workers on their management board. This law was initially enacted in the 1950s, then expanded in the 1970s. Not only has this not adversely affected German business, but Germany’s success in industry is now held up as a shining example to all other European nations. It could well be that, in addition to ensuring fairer treatment of workers, this law has resulted in more long-term orientated and more practical companies whose management actually understand what it’s like on the front line.

If we want parliament to work, it needs to be made up of people who understand what it’s like to be an ordinary citizen. It’s worked in German business, why shouldn’t it work in British politics?

Chris Grezo is a Young Fabians Member.

Government and equality

In this member post, Young Fabian member Kwaku Adjei argues that government should be at the forefront of the equality agenda.

As staunch progressives the word ‘equality’ is not simply a concept we champion arbitrarily. It is an article of faith. For equality is an ideal that should always find expression in every policy proposal the Labour Party puts forward. In order for our policy prescriptions to have the optimum effect there are three elements that our initiatives should guarantee; the elimination of unlawful discrimination; the promotion of social harmony and good relations between all people; and the promotion of equal opportunities. Where equality becomes tricky and politically contentious is when the concept is used to imply all people having approximately the same material wealth. Consequently, the Right has always harboured very pejorative attitudes towards this ideal on the grounds that any attempt to address material inequalities shall inevitably involve state intervention.

However, the issue is not about so-called “big government”, a label often used to discourage policy makers exercising their power in order to make good a wrong. The issue is about fairness and how we use the power of state institutions to enforce fairness in the market place when unscrupulous individuals in business, and in particular financial services, have failed to do so. Those on the Right must acknowledge that over the last few years especially, unfettered free market economies have not favoured families at the middle and lower end of the income scale.

People understand the value of public services. They understand the importance of access to good tuition and good medical treatment because invariably it will be these factors that condition the life chances of every man, woman and child in the country. This is why in healthcare especially, medical provision has in large part been the preserve of the state.

Those nations with more expansive public sectors, notably the Scandinavian countries, fair better than the Anglo-Saxon economies in Britain and the US in terms of managing wealth disparities. Britain remains a country where the top twenty percent earn seven and a half times as much as the bottom twenty percent; and the wealthiest seven percent own fifty percent of the nation’s assets. Reversing these trends cannot always be achieved simply by throwing money at the problem.

However the Coalition is significantly misguided if it believes that solutions can be found in the absence of the state. Yet this is the trajectory ministers are following as they legislate for smaller welfare provision. As the welfare retrenchment agenda continues to bite, it is difficult to envision how communities can support individuals or enable equal levels of capability across race, gender or disability if the government is not prepared to lead from the front. Public services afford people from many different backgrounds the opportunity to be fully fledged participants in our democracy. The current government’s insistence on smaller government shall only marginalise some groups and engender greater social discord. Life is then reduced to the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. This is clearly the case in higher education where those with insufficient financial resources cannot afford a university place.

Even during periods of high national debt, the “big government” label should not throw progressives of course when attempting to answer questions around poverty, social mobility and general economic inequality. Government must always serve to empower. This means finding ways to make material wealth matter less.

Kwaku Adjei is a member of the Young Fabians.

Why hasn’t Cameron apologised yet?

In this member post, Young Fabian member Lola Okolosie takes the Prime Minister to task for his ‘calm down, dear’ comment.

On the same day in which a conservative councillor, Payam Tamiz, was kicked out of the Tory party for calling the women of Thanet “sluts”, the Prime Minister himself made sexist comments during Prime Minister’s Question Time. And it appears Cameron got away with dismissing Angela Eagle, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, with the offensive rebuttal ‘calm down, dear’. The media’s excuse for not taking more time over Cameron’s quite blatant sexism will be that the Royal Wedding was prominent on all minds.

There is no denying that Angela Eagle was not the only MP taking umbrage with Cameron during PMQs last week, yet she was the only one he thought to single out. Even more alarming was his patronising reliance on gender.

Cameron should have done the right thing and apologised for his comments. He has not.

Instead he has gone on the offensive and claimed “socialists have no sense of humour”. To apologise would be to admit that his comments were sexist, offensive and plain wrong.

I smell a double standard here.

I wonder if Angela Eagle should write directly to Theresa May, the Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equality (obviously her first job doesn’t have a wide enough remit and there are no other women in the Conservative party that can dedicate the time and attention she can to the second position), about the treatment of women in politics? I wonder too, how Samantha Cameron, as a ‘British business executive’, would react if she was told to ‘calm down dear’? And why is any challenge to such obvious sexism in the Conservative Party dismissed as ‘political correctness gone mad’?

The cover of this quarter’s Fabian Society publication, Fabian Review, has a number of startling statistics that clearly show how we must vocally challenge the still marginalised position women hold in our politics and society:

• since 1918, 4719 men have been elected to the House of Commons, as opposed to 355 women in the same time frame;
• in 2010 267 constituencies had all men candidates, the same figure for women is just 11;
• only 14% of local authority leaders are women, 86% of them are men;
• the percentage of female MPs in the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party is 32%, 16% and 12% respectively.

We are nowhere near equal representation.

So how can women – feminist or not – sit back and not be completely furious at the patronising treatment of one of the few female MPs in the House of Commons? It is disingenuous to suggest that this ‘throw-away’ comment was not meant to offend. It is such an obvious example of the undermining of women and just the same as that heard by women up and down the country, who, when articulating their disagreement in the workplace or the home, are just dismissed by the notion that they are taking it all too seriously. They can’t, the argument goes, by virtue of being female, grasp the real dynamics of the given situation because their female hormones make them blow things out of all proportion.

In comparison, Gordon Brown’s ‘that bigoted woman’ incident resulted in more of a sustained media storm. In the media’s eyes Cameron’s casual sexism is not comparable to Brown’s off-mic faux pas. It would seem that there are far more people worried about EU migrants than there are women in this country.

Particularly in light of Tamiz’s comments and subsequent dismissal, you might expect the Conservatives to be a little more sensitive to gender equality issues. But this is the party that is comfortable with seeing women lose £8.80 a week as a result of the Budget cuts while men will only forgo £4.20. And it is the same party that seems unaware of the fact that women make up 90% of the group most affected by the cuts: single parents.

The reality is that casually sexist comments like this one often reflect an ingrained attitude that is in some ways more sinister – that ‘political correctness’ is a terrible thing and is stopping us from saying what we really want. In truth, we should always, especially the Prime Minister, be conscious of the power of language and what it is there to do: to communicate our thoughts and feelings.

To somehow claim that the comment wasn’t sexist is, in my eyes, unforgivable. This is yet another example of how the existence of these deeply embedded and disempowering attitudes is denied.

The Gender Agenda

In her first column for the Young Fabian Blog, Young Fabian Member and Membership Ambassador Anna Bage juxtaposes the coverage of Kate Middleton in recent weeks with the (lack of) coverage of women in politics.

It’s safe to say that in recent weeks Britain has been struck by Royal wedding fever. The engagement and wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton has dominated the news of late, with the UK in manic preparation for last Friday’s event.

Kate Middleton has received a huge amount of media attention, from interest in her wedding dress to how she’ll perform as Prince William’s wife. As a woman, watching Kate Middleton dominate the newspaper headlines has been bittersweet. Whilst it’s brilliant to see a woman on front page news being celebrated, the reason for the extensive coverage is less about applauding her capabilities and achievements, but more about her changing weight, her fashion sense, and of course, her appearance on the big day.

And although Kate enjoyed a successful three years at a red brick University, she now declines her right to vote by marrying into the Royal family – a right that was fought hard for by previous generations of women. In addition, she almost certainly forgoes a conventional career in which she might use the skills and knowledge attained via her degree.

With their focus elsewhere, the metropolitan media have missed the really big female story of the last few week. The Fabian Review study on gender inequality, both inside and outside of the houses of parliament.

Now, while I wouldn’t pretend that the ongoing lack of female presence in politics would sell as many headlines as the speculation over whether Kate Middleton would be wearing cream or ivory at the Royal wedding, it does highlight an important point. In a society that seems to venerate the status of the celebrity, what chance of intellectual exposure do the admirable qualities of our hard working Labour women stand? Not for them the front page news, endless headlines and photo opportunities. In fact, in the recent Fabian Review, the focus on gender equality, on feminism, and on highlighting the ever present lack of women in the Houses of Parliament showed that we have a long way to go.

It’s not that women aren’t as interested in politics as men, as accomplished women already show. Maybe it is rather that the political environment is not conducive to fostering fledging female ambitions.

In my work as a membership ambassador for the Young Fabians, I have come across young women who are passionate and enthusiastic about politics; women who are hard working, dedicated, and who want to get involved, but quite simply lack the confidence to do so. The Labour party need to both recognise and then realise the untapped potential that so many of these women hold. If this potential is to be harnessed for the future of both our party and our country, they need to be nurtured and supported for their future roles, just like Kate has for hers. Young women must realise and be shown that they have the support of their party behind them.

The Labour Party needs to do more to provide environments in which women can comfortably express their ideas and opinions, and can be guided through the workings of public life, and of the political environment. If we are to tackle the problem of under-representation in the houses of parliament, we must first surely energise women interested in politics by providing them with a strong and secure platform from which they can grow. And we should highlight Labour successes, such as Susan Nash and Luciana Berger, who are proving that being both political and female can be a perfect match.

For any union to be successful there needs to be a strong and caring framework on which it can rely. As Kate enters the cloisters of the Royal family, let’s hope that one day the Labour party can find renewed energy to work on providing a safe and supporting sanctuary for its young women.

That really could distinguish Labour from a party led by a man who, in the same week as Royalty crowned the media, thought it might be amusing to tell an elected representative of the people to ‘calm down dear, calm down…’

I wonder what Kate thought of that?

The same, but different

The ECJ ruling that insurance companies cannot charge different premiums for men and women is lunacy.

According to the ECJ:

Taking the gender of the insured individual into account as a risk factor in insurance contracts constitutes discrimination.

This is a rather absolutist view of gender equality, and ignores an important point: that gender differences may be the proximate cause of differences in observed outcomes, such as the ability to keep a car on the road.

Behavioural studies, as well as observed claim data available to actuaries who calculate insurance premiums, show that the risk of having a serious accident, and therefore having a large claim against insurance, is lower for females. (Other studies show that female drivers may be involved in more ‘low-claim’ accidents, and that over-75s are the riskiest group to insure). Essentially, the gender of driver is a reliable component in assessing the probability that a driver will claim against their car insurance.

The consequences of forcing insurance companies to ignore risk factors which may contribute towards the variance in the expected pay-out for a given individual is that some consumers are likely to overpay for cover – in the case of car-insurance, this is likely to be women who will be charged higher premiums.

Put another way, the link between the fundamental cost of the service and the price charged to some consumers will be distorted to the detriment of those consumers. Worse still, female drivers may now subsidise the cost of insuring more risky men.

Isn’t that a form of discrimination?

And where does the ruling end? Will insurance companies be banned from basing contracts on a person’s age? Or levying a higher price because someone is bad at driving – isn’t that discrimination?

A grown-up view of gender equality will recognise that there are some situations where acknowledging differences in gender is potentially important and desirable. The ECJ’s efforts would be better spent sorting out those situations where it is not.

Alex Baker is the Secretary of the Young Fabians.

How best to solve gender imbalance in the workplace?

A new paper by researchers at the University of Innsbruck suggests that from a young age – three years old – boys are more likely than girls to enter into competitive behaviour, and that this observed behaviour persists through childhood into adolescence. The paper is consistent with earlier studies which find a persistent and large gender gap in the willingness to compete amongst adults, but its conclusions are more instructive – willingness to compete may be less likely to be contingent on nurture, rather than nature, than we had previously thought.

Willingness to engage in competitive behaviour is important in the context of labour markets, where competition is likely to be higher (in general) for high-profile or well-remunerated jobs. This research might have important considerations from a policy perspective when designing programmes to promote competition in the workplace. Namely, when is the right time to intervene?

It might be possible to have greater impacts on outcomes later in life by targeting intervention from a very early age (pre-three years old) to boost the willingness to compete amongst females. However, this implies that the impact of nature and nurture are more balanced before the age of three (as there are no studies into competitive behaviour at such a young age, it is difficult to know).

Of course, if willingness to compete is largely innate, then it may not matter too much at what stage any interventions occur and, on balance, programmes are likely to have greater impacts if they focus on reducing competitiveness in the labour market to encourage wider participation amongst females.

On a broader, normative point – if we accept there are differences in willingness to compete given gender, then I’m not sure which course of action is more preferable – encouraging females to be more competitive, or making labour markets less competitive? Thoughts welcome…

Women still earn 20% less than men

An OECD study, published today to mark International Women’s Day, reveals that, globally, women are paid almost a fifth less than men, with the gender pay gap varying greatly, from a 30 per cent gap in Japan and Korea to a a 10 per cent gap in Belgium and New Zealand; in Britain, the figure is closer to the 20 per cent average.

Today’s OECD report also reveals 62 per cent of women in paid work, with a quarter of all women working part time compared to just 6 per cent for men. Women spend more time doing unpaid work and “spend at least twice as much time on caring than men”, adds the report, with the number of children in a household one of the biggest determining factors.

Another point of note was that public spending on childcare and pre-school services in OECD countries was on average only 0.6% of GDP, the amounts again varying sharply, from 0.1% in Greece to 1.3% in Denmark, with Britain once more in line with the average.

Earlier today, the prime minister described the absence of women from the boards of some of Britain’s top companies as “completely unacceptable”, saying it was “wrong” that only a tenth of directors in the UK’s top 100 companies are women.

His remarks come in the wake of recent evidence from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) showing the movement of women into positions of power and influence had reversed or stalled, reports today’s Guardian:

“It [the EHRC] likened women’s progress to a snail’s pace and said it would take a snail 73 years to crawl from Land’s End to John O’Groats and halfway back again before the numbers of women becoming directors of FTSE 100 companies was the same as men.

“The snail would have to cross the length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years before women would be equally represented in parliament.”

This article was originally published on Left Foot Forward