Why I'm a male supporter of the Women's Equality Party

Don‘t despair if you’re overlooked for a job that goes to a woman. Instead, rejoice!

Party leader Sophie Walker speaks at the Women's Equality Party policy launch in London

This week the country’s newest political party held an event which was, unsurprisingly, greeted with a somewhat muted fanfare from the media. At other party conferences news outlets have flocked to hear the latest re-hashing of an old idea. For the Women’s Equality Party, it isn’t going to be so easy.

But what happened yesterday was fresh, it was new, and it should be hailed as the launch of the blindingly obvious. What they want is so simple, it beggars belief that anyone would argue that it isn’t just. Surprising, then, that not more was made of a 40,000 member group (the same as UKIP, and only slightly less than the Greens) laying out their plans for the next ten years.

It’s easy to dismiss this new movement as a single issue party. In doing so, you are assuming they will fail, but this movement cannot be allowed to fail. It is just that important. We must all ensure it now becomes a permanent part of the political and social narrative.

On the face of it, what the WEP stands for is plain and simple; equality - across the board. They actually have a lot of great policies, not least: equality in parental leave, legal rights for parents who aren’t interested in marriage and age-appropriate consent classes for children. Hard to argue with any of those, but possibly their most radical idea is for that of quotas, for women, to be in Parliament and on the boards of business.

Now, that one may be a little harder to stomach for some, but if you happen to disagree with that premise, you’re ignoring what has gone before. You’re ignoring what has led to there being unacceptably fewer female MPs than there are male MPs currently sitting in the Commons.

Century after century of negative discrimination from within the boys’ club has not only meant women are grossly underrepresented in politics, they are also looked over for management jobs in public office, business, the media. And the list goes on.

Years of patriarchy have also meant that the 80 per cent male boards pay their female underlings £245bn a year less than the men. Truly, this is something that needs more than an ‘organic’ fix.

While nobody is disagreeing that things are ‘improving’ (as we’re always told), until decisions are taken out of the hands of the straight white men, change will not come fast enough.

Positive discrimination is so often viewed as a negative. The naysayers complain that it goes against the very ideals on which ‘equality’ is founded and that it becomes exclusive, rather than inclusive.

I’d hazard that most of those dissenting voices are, again, ‘male, stale and pale’. They’re a section of society that has, for so, so long, had a grip on the reins of power, and they’re unwilling to see the damage it does. If you believe that people can rise on merit alone, regardless of gender, race or social class, then you have to believe that white men are just better than everyone else – which is clearly ridiculous. So it’s time to force those white, male hands to loosen their grip - or they never will.

I’d like to have a daughter one day, and I’d like her to grow up in a world where she isn’t held back due to the lack of a Y chromosome. What’s more, I’d like to tell her that it was my generation, this generation of young people, who used their voice to finally achieve what is a basic principle of a fair society: equality, even when it made us feel uncomfortable.

So here’s a call to the white, middle class men (like me), who don’t know how easy they’ve had it thus far. If you want to live in the same world I do, support the introduction of gender quotas and be prepared to step aside. Don‘t despair if you’re overlooked for a job that goes to a woman. Instead, rejoice! You’ve just done your bit for society – and that should feel good.