Women Officers

One of my four new year’s resolutions this year (by request of my colleagues) was to learn to take on enraging information and deal with it in a less emotional manner. The most challenging test of this so far has been researching for this article, after which I immediately scrapped the resolution, resolved that I am who I am and I think emotions are healthy. It’s good to get angry and upset about things, it spurs you on to change them.

Between 1988 and 2011, KCLSU has had two female presidents. The last female president was in 2000 – 2001 meaning that there hasn’t been a female president for ten years. Ten years. In fact, since 1988 only 36% of Presidents and Vice Presidents at KCLSU have been women, when at the moment our demographic is actually over 60% female. That was bad enough, but when I started researching how far behind we were on the gender equality front on trusty Wikipedia*, I also found out that in 2000 absolutely no Nobel prizes at all were awarded to women. Or in 2001. Or in 2002. Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 followed by a peak of 3 women winning in 2004, then back to none for 2005. In fact, of the 260 winners between 1988 and 2010 only 19 were women. Now, I’ve had all sorts of apologist, defensive and sometimes downright sexist excuses thrown at me about why this is but these are just two examples of hundreds that highlight the fact that there is still a problem, whether we like it or not. It makes me cringe when people say things like “men and women are just made for different roles”. In the world of student politics especially, that is – quite frankly – poppycock.

So, we can’t solve the Nobel Prize issue at the moment. We also probably can’t successfully address the millions of underlying issues surrounding female attainment in all areas of society any time soon. But, if everyone just changes their attitude slightly, we might be able to start to change everything. For instance, next time a young girl says she likes physics or science or engineering, try not to raise your eyebrows and say things like “oh!” (If this catches on, we might have more than two female Nobel Prize in Physics winners by the time I’m retired). Or next time someone makes a comment about the UK having a female prime minister, try not to make a joke about “how well that turned out last time LOLZORDS!". And while we're on that note please, please stop comparing strong women to Maggie Thatcher – it’s really, really off-putting. But most importantly, let’s get our own house in order.

I’m not suggesting that women officers will be more able or better than male officers, I’m saying we’ll never know until we give it a good go. So if you are considering going for a position of power or responsibility, be it at KCLSU or in the wider world, do the world a favour and go for it. Incidentally, nominations open on the 31st January and close on the 18th of February for all KCLSU Student Officer Positions. Check the homepage for details.

* I also checked this out on the Nobel Prize website.