Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.
“Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman”. Recent events have surely confirmed the lament by the great Tammy Wynette.
In Afghanistan last week, the ruling Taliban issued a new morality code further to curb women’s freedom. Edicts, including the restriction on speaking in public and going out without a male relative, add to the existing repression of women and girls. The United Nations warns the measures will “completely erase” women’s presence outside the home, making them “faceless, voiceless shadows.”
Meanwhile, the Iraqi Parliament is to consider allowing girls aged 9 to marry. Campaigners Girls Not Brides state that this threatens “significantly to roll back the rights of women and girls in the country”.
Sometimes it’s hard not to think that the foreign policy of the Labour government 1997-2010, particularly the illegitimate intervention in Iraq, achieved anything other than sow future chaos.
Condemning the hatred of women in faraway places is easy, far easier than confronting misogyny closer to home. Last month, the National Police Chiefs Council said that violence against women and girls had reached “epidemic levels” in England and Wales, equating to one-fifth of all recorded crime. It estimates that one in 12 women and girls will be a victim.
Instead of a laser-like focus on dealing with a level of crime against women that the NPCC says is a “strategic national threat”, the Government appears to be more concerned about misogyny as form of extremism, especially online. To crack down on “hateful and harmful beliefs”, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has ordered a review of the UK’s existing counter-extremism strategy.
At best, this faffing around will be a review of a review, which just a few months ago offered a new definition of extremism. Overseen by Michael Gove, it sought to “counter some of the most dangerous extremist activity taking place in Britain” without seeking “to stymie free speech or freedom of expression.”
In the context of misogyny, hateful and harmful beliefs are more than usually subjective. Many women would consider the belief that “trans women are women” is harmful, not least because it is a denial of the biological truth: trans women are not women; they are men. These men might want to identify as women for their psychological well-being, or more questionable reasons, but they remain male, whatever a Gender Recognition Certificate says.
Until very recently, Labour was mustard-keen to favour the trans cause (i.e. men) over biological women. Politicians refused to protect women’s spaces, including female prisons and women’s sports. Wasn’t this harmful to the women involved?
In a misogynist game of Follow My Leader, Labour women scrambled to catch up with Sir Keir “99.9 per cent of women haven’t got a penis” Starmer. Infamously, Annaliese Dodds failed to define “woman” on the 2022 International Women’s Day edition of Woman’s Hour. In a separate interview, Cooper also ducked a definition.
After last month’s Olympic women’s boxing bout between Imane Khelif the Algerian of questionable feminine attributes and Italian Angela Carini, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, could only bleat about an “incredibly uncomfortable watch”. Most women surely found Khelif punching a woman in the face unwatchable – and believe it should never have happened.
Nandy is on record as stating trans women “should be in a prison of their choosing”. This allows rapist men like “Isla Bryson” to game the prison system, putting vulnerable women at risk.
With so many Labour women previously unable to bring themselves to utter “adult human female”, their sudden claim to be on the side of women and girls doesn’t ring quite true.
The Home Secretary seems keen to talk up the problem of online extreme misogyny from Incels (Involuntarily Celibates). It is hard to see how the problem of socially inadequate young men can be solved by more laws. Perhaps instead of grandstanding about this second-order issue, Cooper might instead prioritise the more pressing problem over which she has control: the Metropolitan Police.
The murder of Sarah Everard by a serving Met Police officer and the subsequent policing of a vigil held for her in March 2021 has eroded women’s trust in the Force. This is harmful both to the Police and to women. In A New Met for London, Commissioner Mark Rowley promises “more trust, less crime, high standards” which is a positive step: women’s faith in the Police needs to be restored as a matter of urgency.
Despite the NPCC’s statistics, most women in this country enjoy a level of security and freedom that women in, for example, Afghanistan can only dream about. In 2023, asylum seekers were 11 per cent of immigrants to the UK, their most common single nationality being Afghan. We should ensure that Taliban-style attitudes towards women and girls are not also being imported. As the NPCC states “We know that VAWG [Violence against Women and Girls] offences are driven by the often-accepted misogynistic values and culture.”
Given that many Labour politicians have found it difficult to define a woman, how are they going to define “extreme” misogyny? Visceral antipathy towards female stars like Ariana Grande and their tween girl fans? Male reservations about female sports pundits? Liking lads’ mags?
Looking ahead, Conservative policymakers should be seeking a detailed breakdown of the recent surge in VAWG, getting a better idea of exactly who the perpetrators are. They can also monitor the UK’s generous overseas development aid. It should be targeted directly at women and girls, not the regimes in Kabul and Baghdad which are the true face of toxic masculinity.
