Suzanne Moore calling all Angry Birds

Today Suzanne Moore published an excellent piece entitled 'It's time to get angry, all this polite and smiley feminism is getting us nowhere' in the Guardian telling us there is a need for women to start getting angry about inequality. Moore, like me, has long since been irritated by the term 'post feminism'. All the women I know who have been active within the feminist movement struggle to recognise any development that would allow us to consider that job done and the emergence of a subsequent, distinct reconstructed era. Moore's piece takes a deliberately controversial stab at unpicking what has happened there and as such is really worth a read, but its the comments that followed that were really heart stopping.

As soon as I had sunk my first cup of tea at around 9am, watched the fab Campbell Robb, ceo at Shelter tell us on BBC Breakfast to be concerned about the crisis in housing shortages, the stream of bile was well under way. From mostly men but some women as well, the feed tells you everything you need to know about the current status of feminism in the UK. Read it and weep. It is quite clear from the comments that the truth is feminism isn't unnecessary because we have achieved equal pay, have equal access to senior jobs or are anything other than a risible minority of FTSE 100 board members or MPs. No we have not 'arrived' and not for the want of trying, but because some men really, really don't want us to have those positions and aren't going to 'give' them to us or indeed tolerate any position that describes the current state of inequality as even unfair.

My own comment on the piece, left a few moments ago was as follows:

If anyone was puzzled about the context of this piece they only have to read the majority of the comments that followed it, spiteful, defensive miopic sexism dressed up as counter balance. To put her thoughts in the context of my own week I got involved in an interesting twitter dialogue earlier on when I tweeted my surprise during Monday's Panorama, that the ceo of the Mother's Union was a man. Several women picked up this point and agreed, the next day the Mother's Union tweeted me back to point out that they have an equal opportunities policy and my comments were sexist. Really? In establishing the selection criteria for the job of representing the Mother's Union, clearly being a mother didn't even make it onto the essential list. Now every point made to emphasise the most important job in society, that of being a mother, is made by a man. Which other special interest groups do that? Would Fathers for Justice have a woman as their figurehead? The Muslim Defence League elect to be run by a non-Muslim, the NAACP select a white spokesperson? When the gauntlet of equality is laid down it seems only women are scrupulous enough to pick it up, everyone else steps over it and carries on shouting. So maybe we should stop being so reasonable, so measured and take a leaf out of Moore's book? In my own world of social enterprise the majority of my members are women led companies and yet the vast majority of our spokespeople are men, white men to boot. Day after day I go to meetings that are dominated by men, attend conferences where all male panels discuss the issues and key note after key note is a white man, often of a certain age, all offered up and passed out without comment. There are exceptions to this silence though, recently I attended a good conference on the future of public services at the RSA where, sadly, the plenary was all male even though the audience contained some of the country's leading female experts on the subject. After the coffee break, and without even discussing it, those women returned early to the auditorium and occupied the entire front row and then the rows immediately behind, causing raised eyebrows from almost every man who entered the room and eventually leading to a comment from the panel. I think we do have to make an effort to avoid invisibility, especially the most senior of us, as economic austerity gives those in authority every excuse not to do what they didn't want to do anyway. We should assert ourselves as women, not just for our sake, not just for our daughter's but our son's too. A peaceful, powerful, careful society is a fair one and women have so much to contribute to that, to call it a job done without them is illusionary.


We shall see if anyone picks that up, but in any case my point is we all need to be vigilant. Girls are getting distracted by media, the cult of celebrity, and terms like 'post feminism' and in the great scramble for the few remaining jobs and the female economic independence a civilised society is predicated on, they are, almost inevitably, missing out. Suzanne wants to recruit an army of 'Angry Birds', she can count me in.    

Straight talking

I thought I’d take the time spent in the hairdresser’s chair having my hair straightened (first time ever – hope it doesn’t fall out!) to update you on Social Enterprise Day.

No 10 was fun, bumped into lots of old friends including SEL pin ups Micheal Pyner of the Shoreditch Trust and Campbell Robb, who is leaving the Office of The Third Sector in December to take over as CEO of Shelter. Good for Shelter, but our loss. Campbell has been a great champion of social enterprise and has been particularly effective in developing support for the movement to play a key role in England’s economic development strategy. Sounds boring but makes all the difference to our members, who are crying out for the information, guidance and support provided through things like CapacityBuilders and the Social Enterprise Knowledge Exchange, both of which Campbell has put in place. He will be missed.

At the reception the Prime Minister spoke warmly to the gathered social entrepreneurs, telling us how much he admires what we do. He said he applauded the fact that we are working to make people's lives better. It sounds cheesy but was really nice actually and I think he meant it. I managed to hook up Reed Paget of Belu Water and the amazing Lynn Berry of the massive volunteering organisation WRVS, who is on a mission to make her organisation more environmentally sustainable. WRVS makes and distributes more sandwiches than anyone else in the UK and they also sell a great deal of bottled water, so let’s hope Belu hits the mark. Wholfing a few delicious canapés courtesy of CafeSunlight, Peter Holbrook’s outstanding social enterprise, I headed off...



...to The Guardian conference in Birmingham where I joined the round table delegate discussions. The questions centred on how we can deliver more public services and whether social enterprises can work with the private sector. I did an Anthea to Patrick Butler's (Head of Health, Society & Education at The Guardian), Brucie and we each read out individual table findings. One of the things that struck me was how positive people are on the proposition of working with the private sector, the general consensus being that as long as we negotiate effectively it is absolutely possible. I have been saying this for years and as a result SEL has had several highly successful commercial relationships with the private sector. I had always thought it was controversial and so was fascinated to see that in that auditorium at least, the attitude was very positive.

We then had speeches from Vince Cable of the Lib Dems and Barbara Follett, Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Communities and Local Government. Vince was really interesting, he had clearly thought the issues through for himself and confessed to us all that until he recently met Margaret Elliott from Sunderland Home Care he didn’t really understand was social enterprise was. Having got to grips with it he feels it has a strong future, particularly in delivering local services. In print recently he un-packed the 'big government vs local government' debate, arguing we need local services delivered to national standards - I think he’s spot on. Barbara said ‘social enterprises express what people really feel’, I liked that.

In the q & a Vince threw my question straight back at me, asking what I think government needs to do to better support social enterprise. I said:

1. Government needs to be a better shopper - buying from organisations which deliver real positive social change

2. Existing capacity building support (which Vince had slightly upbraided in his speech) is vital and needs to be continued and developed.

Caught the train with Patrick and Mark Gould from The Guardian, Gemma Hampson of Social Enterprise Magazine and our Matt Jarratt, where we had a good debate over whether social enterprises really will end up running public services on a large scale. We agreed that they could do rather well if the planets align in our favour. Earlier I had chatted to Sophi Trachell, MD of Divine Chocolate and SEL’s co-Chair, who had been frustrated that The Guardian had chosen Social Enterprise Day to report on the collapse of Total Healthcare. I put this to Patrick who maintained that he had done it to put the debate about the future of public services into context: social enterprise can be a winner but it can lose too. Fair enough I think, when Woollies went down no one said that it marked the end of high street retailing.

We sat around some poor chap who looked like he was trying to work. When we got out at Euston I apologised for disturbing him and he said he had really enjoyed the conversation, gave me his card and said he would welcome a further chat about the social impact I mentioned…. everyone is interested in social enterprise, they just don’t know it yet!

As I finish typing I’m presented with the result of the hairdresser’s endeavours. They say it won’t look like this forever... I feel a gin coming on.