How worrying is it that there is a distinct lack of female candidates running for YUSU sabbatical positions this year? Of the 22 positions, only 4 are female! Laura Bo for Welfare, Katy Unsworth and Rachel Hesslewood for Student Activities and Elanin Vince for Academic Affairs.
This year there has been a 50/50 split between males and females in YUSU – do we need a gender balance? Would a possible all male YUSU be a true representative of the student body? Surely not – plenty of us are female.
Why are there no girls standing for President this year? Or last year for that matter?
Are Peter Saul and Mark Pickard pushing the boundaries too far with their campaign – when does a joke become insulting? On their manifesto they state “we’ll create policies that reflect the dignity that the position of Women’s Officers merits”.
These include increasing the size of the woman on toilet doors in an effort to challenge sizeism, but then in an interview with Vision they claimed to discourage fat women from campus! Conflicting policies indeed…
Also, they argue that whilst biologically male they “self define as female”. The mere fact that their campaign for Women’s Officer is clearly a joke highlights the fact that sexism is prevalent on campus and if anything shows that the position of Women’s Officer is as important as ever as some males continue to carry misogynistic views!
Charlotte Phillips and Jennifer Stevenson fight the campaign against the clear degradation of the position, including in their manifesto important issues that concern females; these include body image, sexual liberation, violence against women and the pay gap. The girls acknowledge that the issue of body image does not only affect women and thus aim to enhance male involvement.
Lewis Bretts last week posted a statement on YUSU’s website detailing that a number of complaints had been made against Saul and Pickard. Bretts has taken measures to discipline the pair, including a week long campaigning ban. This only further supports our point. Students feel that this is beyond a joke. It is an insult.
However, some boys that we have talked to seem to give the impression that they see all girls offended by the joke campaign as ‘feminists’. The problem here is that the majority seem to have misunderstood the term, associating feminists with unnatural amounts of hair and no social lives. Some even believe that the role of Women’s Officer is another way in which females are ‘taking over’. But on the contrary. The mere fact that there is a representative for women shows that women are in need of a voice.
Some of this year’s candidates believe this too. Luke Malkin, one of the candidates for Student Activities Officer (one of the only categories to feature female candidates) told Vision: “When voting for the sabb team, I’d be tempted to vote against myself to make sure there were more representatives for women!”
The problem isn’t that qualified candidates should want to vote against themselves, but that girls aren’t involving themselves as much as their male counterparts.
We aren’t saying that a woman should be voted for because she is a woman, but to be there in the first place provides a wider choice. Whatever the outcome is for this election, it should be because the candidate was right for the job and was voted for through his/her own merit.