Indraadnan's Posts - The Downing Street Project / network2024-03-29T06:50:45Zindraadnanhttp://thedowningstreetproject.ning.com/profile/indraadnanhttp://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2197441351?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1http://thedowningstreetproject.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=2rdprjnq3e4re&xn_auth=noOn International Women's Day, DSP enters Phase 2tag:thedowningstreetproject.ning.com,2010-03-08:2715135:BlogPost:50992010-03-08T13:30:54.000Zindraadnanhttp://thedowningstreetproject.ning.com/profile/indraadnan
The Downing Street Project is one year old. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">With the UK on the brink of an<br />
election, our dream of lining up 100 new women to stand seems far away. Despite<br />
plenty of excellent candidates, the eye of the needle is selection at party<br />
level. There are more women short-listed, but very few that are chosen to run<br />
for winnable seats – even where the local selectors are largely women. Why? At<br />
the current rate of change, it has been estimated…</span>
The Downing Street Project is one year old. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">With the UK on the brink of an<br />
election, our dream of lining up 100 new women to stand seems far away. Despite<br />
plenty of excellent candidates, the eye of the needle is selection at party<br />
level. There are more women short-listed, but very few that are chosen to run<br />
for winnable seats – even where the local selectors are largely women. Why? At<br />
the current rate of change, it has been estimated (<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jan/05/houseofcommons.genderissues">http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jan/05/houseofcommons.genderissues</a><br />
that it will take us another 200 years to reach parity in the British<br />
Parliament.</span><br />
<br />
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">It was our journey into the underlying causes for this stalemate that made the year so valuable. Few would
argue that injustice, inequality and institutionalised sexism are at the heart<br />
of the matter. But are these the <i>causes</i></span><span style="color:black"><br />
of women’s marginalisation in politics - or are they the <i>effects</i></span> <span style="color:black">of deeper structural and cultural distortions in our<br />
society that are affecting everyone? And will we be able to address those<br />
deeper factors by focussing only on the quantity of women included, without<br />
looking carefully at the quality of their contribution?</span></p>
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<p class="MsoCommentText"></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">Although politics is hugely gender-imbalanced, there is an understanding on the part of both women and men
that it should be a gender-neutral space of competition: a simple, though<br />
unexamined, meritocracy. Whoever is best at politics, gets chosen. Women<br />
accepted that choice because, at that point, they were fighting a battle for<br />
equality. Any suggestion of difference would sound like special pleading.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">Today, full equality may not be entirely achieved, but at least women’s rights are enshrined in the law. We can
afford to move into a new cooperation between the sexes. Instead we’re choosing<br />
to stick to the same old rules of engagement.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">Within the meritocracy we have, women cannot – or will not – make any claims for womanly skills or capacities.
In politics, what is deemed effective is alpha male behaviour: the ability to<br />
perform, to dominate, to make quick, tough decisions and not be distracted by<br />
emotion. In addition, the politician has to come free of the baggage of<br />
families – willing to put everything aside to give political service,<br />
unproblematically, at all hours of the day. At the moment of selection, it is<br />
those women who can demonstrate most of these macho qualities that are chosen<br />
for office.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoCommentText"></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">Women whose strengths might be in listening and integrating rather than performing, who have an ability to see
the bigger picture over the immediate crisis, who use emotional and social<br />
intelligence as a primary tool of connecting with the people they serve – these<br />
women will be undervalued in such a political culture. Those women who make<br />
their child-rearing responsibilities central to the decisions they make about<br />
their whole life, including their work – those that are not willing to put<br />
their family second to their job – are excluded from the political process.<br />
Given that we can see the benefits of these women in numerous other professions<br />
– health, care, teaching and increasingly business – society surely misses out<br />
by not having them in government.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">Is there such a thing as a bottom line in politics – a clear list of deliverable outcomes? Is maintaining fiscal
growth, or keeping crime at a manageable level, sufficient grounds for our<br />
leaders to proclaim their competence? Or are there other cultural and<br />
quality-of-life issues that we feel government could help shape? In their<br />
mid-nineties book The War Against Parents, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West<br />
concluded that parents were particularly excluded by the political agenda. Can<br />
we say it’s any better today? And if we don’t know what our real hopes and<br />
expectations are from government, how can we know whether or not we need women<br />
in the mix to deliver it?</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">For that reason, in our second year, The Downing Street Project is going to shift its gaze from equal
representation for women, to the much broader question of the gender dynamics<br />
of the public sphere and its effect on society. What do women offer politics<br />
that is currently missing and would benefit everyone? What do men have to win -<br />
and lose - by women sharing that space? How would balanced leadership make a<br />
difference to how young people thrive in their public and private lives? Would<br />
it deliver a softer, smarter style of governance than the hard-powered style we<br />
have come to see as normal?</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">This is a call for the whole field of gender politics to be expanded, not just shifted in any particular
direction. We want more involvement of people – men and those women who never<br />
saw themselves as feminist - as a complement to the vital work being done already<br />
by women’s organisations everywhere. Our plan is to host facilitated spaces for<br />
men and women to work together, <i>gender-consciously</i></span><span style="color:black">, on creating a new understanding of how gender impacts the<br />
whole of society. We will be experimenting with different kinds of forums for<br />
exchange – more dialogue than debate, more play than delivering clear<br />
objectives. We’ll be starting a model Downing Street Cabinet - 51% women, 49%<br />
men - giving participants the powers to add or subtract government departments<br />
according to how they reflect the priorities of the whole of society – not just<br />
the male part. The result should be a growing understanding of what the real<br />
opportunities of balanced leadership are in public life and what the benefits<br />
would be for everyone.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">The Downing Street Project Phase 2 is for the men who love women and support change, but also the women who love
men and want to maximise the benefits for all. A new journey is about to begin.<br />
</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"></p>It's integrity Captain, but not as we know ittag:thedowningstreetproject.ning.com,2009-05-19:2715135:BlogPost:21612009-05-19T16:31:40.000Zindraadnanhttp://thedowningstreetproject.ning.com/profile/indraadnan
Mahatma Gandhi (http://dmihrd.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/gandhi-and-some-sugar/) once received a visit from a woman concerned about her child who was eating too much sugar. Knowing how much the child revered the guru, she asked Gandhi to convince him to give up, afraid he would become diabetic. Gandhi listened to her, nodded his head and asked her to return in a week. On her next visit Gandhi told the young boy that sugar was not good for him and he should give it up. Asking why he could not have…
Mahatma Gandhi (http://dmihrd.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/gandhi-and-some-sugar/) once received a visit from a woman concerned about her child who was eating too much sugar. Knowing how much the child revered the guru, she asked Gandhi to convince him to give up, afraid he would become diabetic. Gandhi listened to her, nodded his head and asked her to return in a week. On her next visit Gandhi told the young boy that sugar was not good for him and he should give it up. Asking why he could not have said that on the first visit and saved her the journey, Gandhi replied: the first time you came, I was still eating sugar.<br />
<br />
It’s the kind of integrity that we acknowledge, yearn for but, in all honesty, do not expect from our politicians on the grounds that they are common mortals. Yet this week the call has arisen loud and clear: we DO want a different kind of politics and integrity is the issue.<br />
<br />
When Lee Chalmers and I first embarked on The Downing Street Project – a ‘think and act tank’ aimed at creating balanced leadership at all levels of society – we knew we were responding to a rather simple loss of integrity at the heart of politics. Women make up 51% of the population and are represented by a mere 20% in Parliament (only 9% Cons, 28% Lab, 16% LD). If there were really no difference between the needs and concerns of men and women in our society this would not be an issue: but there are, so it is.<br />
<br />
However we are not ushering women in to address women’s issues but to serve the whole of society. In our discussions with people of all ages, colours, sexual orientations and financial perspectives we hear that what loss of integrity means to them, is loss of connection. What they see happening in Parliament and coming out of Downing Street does not seem to have much to do with their hopes and dreams, other than that they are on the receiving end of policies that constrain them.<br />
<br />
Now we all remember the days of focus groups and the listening government. Why did this have little or no effect on the way politics is generally perceived? Maybe because it is one thing to cock an ear, and another, to hear what is being said. During several periods of research and consultancy I undertook within public services over the past ten years, the constant refrain was “they ask us for our ideas but then they ignore them”. Time and resources wasted on new government initiatives from on high that interfered with best practice already identified on the ground, was legend.<br />
<br />
This may not suggest acts of wilful deafness on the part of the government, but it may point up a capacity deficit. Can they hear? There is so much clamour endemic in the day to day life of our politics – the increasingly self interested demands of the media, the constant call to battle with the Opposition – that the roar of politicians defending themselves easily drowns out the voices of the needy. The spectacle of our honourable gentlemen – and ladies – jeering at each other across the House sums it up.<br />
<br />
Which bring me back to integrity. Maybe the reason our politicians find it hard to emulate Gandhi is that he only had a robe and a bowl to his name and no rank or status to defend. Not much came between Gandhi the man and the people he wished to serve. I’m sure some of our very top politicians wish they could get back to those basics and reconnect, not only with the people who vote, but with their own selves - the well-meaning man or woman who entered politics with a desire to help.<br />
<br />
But this is not a council of despair: there are a number of ways that the culture and structure of politics could support well meaning politicians better in doing the job they originally set out to do. The first would be to understand and enshrine the principles of engagement and connectivity within government and the wider polity. What we still call representative democracy has changed and developed: people now have the technology to speak their minds and find alternative truths to the singular party line or the habitual stance of our major papers. Those people – the active citizens that we pretend don’t exist – need to be brought into our concept of governance. That does not mean setting up party websites that bark out policy and invite us to share our concerns without offering a response. Engagement is a two way process – there have to be clear channels of communication in both directions and the people to operate them.<br />
<br />
If you are not sure what that kind of integrity looks like, think Obama. His successful campaign for Presidency was delivered by the unprecedented levels of connection he had with voters. On winning, one of his first concerns was how he was going to maintain his connection if he had to give up his Blackberry. His power is not the ‘hard power’ of shouting and coercing, it’s the ‘soft power’ of knowing himself and “being the change he wishes to see” (Gandhi) in a connected world.<br />
<br />
And that coherence can be extended to policy: in his first 100 days he demonstrated how his own listening, patient style of dialogue can be reflected in a foreign policy which is intent on listening and dialoguing. His inclusive manner has led to a level of commitment to bi-partisan politics that continues to challenge his Democratic colleagues. But the race is on to see whether or not he can change the broader culture of governance before he is overwhelmed by the tide of cynicism that stalks him.<br />
<br />
The Downing Street Project’s call to bring substantially more women into the heart of politics is not a numbers game but a strategy to change the culture of politics. Women, particularly mothers, are perceived by the broader public as being better listeners. Despite the understandable resistance by women themselves to stereotypes, they consistently emerge in domestic and professional life as carers, mediators and facilitators. While so many women in politics have felt the pressure to adopt the more masculine style of performance, in a new politics of integrity, a more feminine way would be a good thing.<br />
<br />
Our constant question however is, which of the three main political parties has the politicians with the capacity to “be the change”. Which would commit themselves to the sort of radical moves the public is now shouting for? Or should we, with maximum a year to go before the next election, think about creating a new party?