Calling all women!
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-03-10Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 15 →
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I'VE always wanted to chair a meeting where I could start by saying. 'There's no need to use positive discrimination here'. But I'd hoped to be able to say it because the women there could participate fully -not because there were no women there except me!
We've had drives to encourage groups to send women delegates before -usually with some success. The importance of having women delegates has been seen before - for example, when the delegate meeting before Labour Party Conference discussed whether to have a woman-only platform at our fringe meeting, women delegates all spoke in favour of it (against the male delegates who tried to water it down), and for many it was the only contribution they made in the There was only one woman to raise women's interests in all the major discussions. Male delegates did not bring women into debates on the TUC March for Jobs, or the idea for a socialist election campaign. Result: token woman to pipe up about us in the debates, no women to make political contributions.
So where are you all? Is it that we don't have women Socialist Organiser supporters? Or what's wrong in the groups that means women don't put themselves forward for election? Or what's wrong to mean they don't get elected?
The next delegate meeting is in six weeks: time for groups to work out the answers to these questions.