Womens representation debated at All Student Meeting

A large part of discussion at the All Student Meeting (ASM) on Monday 13 May was based around the issue of female representation within student politics.

One of the motions proposed was Anna Chowcat’s, Warwick Students’ Union (SU) postgraduate officer. It addressed women’s representation in the SU.

The motion proposed to have a weighted quota to ensure that half of the NUS National Conference delegates were women.

The proposed policy stated: “Until women are not disadvantaged when running in elections due to sexism, methods of ensuring women’s representation are a necessity.”

Yolly Chegwidden, Warwick SU LGBTUA+ officer who was to second the motion, took the place of Anna Chowcat, who was not present at the ASM. She said: “[Introducing quotas] may be patronising to women [but] the NUS does not represent the 50% of women adequately.”

This was rebutted by James Beavis, a second-year student, who claimed: “[We should] choose representatives based on what they can bring to the table, not based on their gender.”

He suggested that a quota system on the elections of sabbatical officers would be destructive of democracy.

Natasha ‘Bam’ Cabral, Warwick SU Sports Officer, also seemed critical of the motion. She suggested that quotas may not do much for the empowerment of women as there would be “less of a sense of achievement” in running against a limited range of candidates.

Sam Fry, a second-year Economics student, opposed the motion. He suggested that “anyone can define themselves as a woman” and that he did not believe the election process was sexist.

He added: “There are problems with positive discrimination […] it’s like putting a badge of inferiority [on women].”

Another speaker, however, said that although the election process was not sexist, the problem with female under-representation was based on a wider societal problem.

Alys Cooke, Warwick SU women’s officer, continued to argue that it was important to encourage more women to run for elections so women could be better represented.

Although she acknowledged that four out of the seven SU sabbatical officers were women, she asked the question: “Did we have any women running for president?”

Ben Sundell, Welfare and Campaigns Officer and President-elect at the SU, was supportive of the motion and suggested that gender quotas had been successful in pushing women to run for elections in past cases.

Another speaker, however, pointed to the number of women present at the ASM and suggested that the lack of women running for elections may be because women, in general, were not interested in politics.

3:1 ratio of men to women in the Atrium for the ASM tonight. #WarwickASM

— Boar Live (@BoarLive) May 13, 2013

This was followed by shouts of “shame” from the floor and was refuted by another speaker who said that this was because women considered politics to be “a patriarchal sphere and that it was not for them”.

Later in the meeting, Ben Sundell brought forward the motion over Moo Bar’s “sexist” wallpaper. The policy stated that the SU would be proactive in matters relating to equal opportunities.

The motion made reference to Warwick Anti Sexism Society’s campaign to get the wallpaper removed, which received over 4,000 signatures.

There was no rebuttal or debate over Sundell’s motion and an indicative floor vote suggested that all was in favour of the policy.

The debates that took place at the ASM have taken place as there has been growing debate about sexism on campus. A ‘Warwick Men’s Rights Society’ Facebook group was set up last Friday 10 May. Many students have regarded the group as an anti-Feminist group.

A group wall post by a student wrote: “I believe our first course of action should be to hold a ‘Men’s Week’ with free beer and gym tasters, as well as erotic female performances in the Arts Centre.”

John Servante, a second-year English Literature student, described it as “a group which welcomes sexist comments.”

The ‘Warwick Men’s Rights Society’ later changed their name to the ‘Warwick Uncensored Anti-Sexism Society’, and as of Tuesday 14 May, the group appears to be closed off from the general public or deleted.