Women’s Worries

Our current sabbatical team is entirely male. Yes, they were democratically elected, but in a competition and framework that literally drips patriarchy.

Of the sabbatical team, only two of the five have decided to run again for their jobs. Tim Ellis bucks the trend of his predecessor and will be leaving the role open to some new blood come next year. James Croydon hopes to leave on a high after a year of successes and Sam Asfahani is ushered out adhering to the constitution. Current Academic Officer Graeme Osborn faces a one-on-one fight with Eppie Leishman, leading course rep in the Social Sciences department whereas Welfare Office Bob Hughes’ strongest opponent comes in the form of Hannah Wrigley, the former Vanbrugh Female Rep. Scratch below the surface of these however and these will not be equal fights, with the current officers most likely retaining their seats. Ironically, the only incumbent to lose their job in recent years was the lone female Sabb Laura ‘Bo’ Borisovaite . The race for York Sport President looks to be much closer between Dong-Oh Shin, the hockey supremo and casual bouncer, and Charlotte Winter. Now Sam Asfahani’s immovable combination of personality and achievements of York Sport is out of the picture, we could see the gigantic shoes of York Sport’s President filled by someone entirely different.

These roles, as important as they are, pale into insignificance in any voter’s mind when they begin to mull over their future YUSU President. Despite several favourites not running for the position, the number of candidates is almost overwhelming. Vanbrugh Chair Kallum Taylor stands out from the rest, with former Goodricke Chair Nacho Hernando unsurprisingly standing in what looks to be an interesting race. Thomas Stuart Taylor, Peter Warner-Medley, Abir Ahmmed and infamous James Carney make up the jokes and write-offs, which seem to be out in worrying force this year. Finally, Zahra Latif is the seventh candidate in the running.

Yet, something is horribly wrong at the University of York. Our presidential election is shaping up to be dynamic and game-changing, but it’s proving to be a male-dominated field. Of these seven candidates, only one is female. Last year we were treated to the nail-biting race between Ellis and Lydia Blundell, who lost to the former by only a handful of votes. She was the favourite, he was persistent – It was how all good races should be. Yet Blundell was an enigma, not simply because she occupied those curiously opposing positions of Halifax Chair and DJ, but because she bucked the trend of female non-participation when it comes to the top job.

This is not, as is often dismissed, a small matter of a lack of interest. Nor does this university lack strong women candidates in the form of college chairs, RAG officers or union members. We cannot fall back on the outdated cliché that “delicate sensibility”, to echo the words of proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, prevents women from engaging in what is always a difficult competition oozing with undertones of anger, frustration and burning ambition.

We’ve only have ourselves to blame.

There is a culture of absolute masculinity surrounding the presidency. We talk about the ideal candidates in typically masculine terms; they must stand up for students, fight tooth and nail with the university and be a charismatic figurehead for the entire university. This is not to say that being a woman immediately invalids candidates in this respect, far from it. Many of the budding female candidates that had the potential to run have all these attributes, and more – but this aura around the presidency mystifies, alienates and discourages “atypical”, read as “female”, candidates who actually have a very real shot at the presidency.

The democratic process itself does not provide any favouritism when it comes to gender, but external factors and campus pressures warp the process into anything but fair. Media outlets are as much to blame as anyone else. The term, “female candidate”, is as oppressive as anything else. But due to lack of involvement, we’re left with no other option but to use this phrase. I hope for most that the moniker is only ever used to point out the huge inequalities in candidates, or when a candidate is running consciously under the banner of female liberation. The current situation disempowers women through patronising discourse: they are novelised, trivialised and tokenised. Have we ever talked about a male candidate? Men’s rights? Masculism? The language and omission that surrounds the presidency contest represents a dangerous conflation between men and everybody; they become interchangeable, and women become marginalised.

Maybe we can enact a change; maybe we can even right some of these wrongs and encourage further participation in the future; maybe we could achieve the utopia of union equality, when women’s participation reaches a point where “female” slips away from “candidate” and we can talk about agenda, not gender.