The COVID-19 Inquiry is well underway and confirming many things already known to us, such as Number 10’s infamous lockdown parties and the UK government’s lack of preparation. However, the inquiry has recently exposed something deeply rotten; the innate misogyny at the heart of Government. While this isn’t shocking for a workforce, the implication that this attitude has impacted women across the country is certainly one for concern.
On Tuesday 31st October, Dominic Cummings gave evidence at the inquiry. His WhatsApp messages made us privy to the spiteful language he used about his female colleague Helen MacNamara; referring to her as “that woman”, expressing a desire to “handcuff” her, and saying he was “dodging stilettos from that c***”. This kind of language is synonymous with violence against women, so the question begs, how was the top Number 10 SpAd allowed to get away with this? The answer, of course, is very easily.
Boris Johnson is no stranger to a ‘controversial’ comment. This is reflected in his attitude towards women. He is a man who advises his successor to “just pat her on the bottom and send her away”1, who said one reason to watch the 2012 Olympics was to watch “semi-naked women playing beach volleyball”2, not to mention his attitude towards single mothers, “feeble” for a man to be unable to “take control of his woman” and Britain needs to “restore women’s desire to be married”3. This clearly indicates Johnson sees women first and foremost as objects of desire, rather than people. Therefore it is no surprise that this dismissive attitude is one shared by his employees and team. According to MacNamara, Johnson’s staff “talk over” and “ignore” women, and in doing so they are merely behaving in this way that reflects their bosses’ attitudes; it is the perfect environment for misogyny. It is this dismissal of women, this ‘boys-only’ attitude, that resulted in the absence of a valued female voice in Downing Street. In turn, this has manifested itself in the Government’s approach towards women during the pandemic – there wasn’t one.
PPE is designed to fit men. This issue was raised in pre-pandemic times by Criado-Perez in her book ‘Invisible Women’. There was no acknowledgement of this when the £200 million contract was dished out to Tory party peer Baroness Michelle Mone. Women working in the NHS had to make do with PPE that did not fit them. In fact, one research project found that only 14% of women in the pandemic thought their PPE fit them.4 Consequently, women were more at risk of catching COVID than men. This in itself is shocking. This shock is only deepened by the fact that 77% of the NHS workforce are women.5, over three-quarters of the workforce were more at risk of contracting COVID just so a remaining minority could be more comfortable. Removing the context of gender to this sentence alone exposes the absurdity of the situation. This is a problem which could have been avoided if Number 10’s attitude towards women was different. Ultimately, the lack of regard for the female experience is a direct cause of the PPE problem.
It was not only women in the health service who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic; there was no concern regarding childcare and families. This disproportionately impacted mothers in a hetrosexual relationship. Despite being one of the two full time workers in their household, 67% of women said they were the ‘default parent’ when it came to childcare or homeschooling.6 This was at the expense of their careers. The inquiry hears that the Government was more concerned about the return of hunting, shooting, football and fishing (stereotypically male pursuits) than of childcare. Once again, a female perspective in Number 10 would have been beneficial to listen to and stop this inequality from happening.
Additionally, there were no policy areas that prioritised victims of domestic abuse during the pandemic. One research project found that 68.2% of survivors of domestic abuse felt that the emotional and psychological abuse they experienced increased during the pandemic. 70% of victims said their abuser had more control over their life (i.e. financial freedom, who they could talk to on the phone, what they could wear). This is not surprising information and the challenges of preventing domestic abuse under lockdown measures had been predicted to some extent. However, if women were not ‘talked over’, or ‘ignored’ there would have been at least some acknowledgement of this struggle experienced by (a minimum of) 1.7 million women in the UK.
I am left thinking about Iannucci’s The Thick of It’s infamous ‘there is going to be an inquiry’ scene. Fictitious Hugh Abbot is delighted at the prospect of an inquiry, the joke being that it allows the Minister to stay in the job (and cite the ancient British proverb “I’m going to wait for the inquiry” when asked about the offence) in the hope that by the time the inquiry does roll around, the initial offence will all be forgotten about. Perhaps this will all blow over very quickly for the Government, or maybe it won’t, only time can tell. What is certain, however, is that there are more than just a few bad apples left in Downing Street, rotten to their very core. We may have found a vaccine for COVID, but a vaccine for “macho posturing” in Number 10 is yet to be discovered.
1 https://www.indy100.com/news/international-womens-day-boris-johnson-sexism-quotes-9385281
4 https://journals.rcni.com/nursing-standard/analysis/women-in-nursing-find-ppe-is-still-not-fit-for-purpose-ns.37.10. 51.s19/pdf
5 https://www.nhsemployers.org/articles/gender-nhs-infographic
PolSoc Paper 