Sophie Walker: 'We could have an equal parliament in a decade'

As leader of the Women’s Equality Party, Sophie Walker is on a mission to rebalance Britain. Ahead of tomorrow’s manifesto launch, she tells Rosamund Urwin what’s driving the gender agenda   
Sophie Walker, Leader of the Women's Equality Party
Addison Lee
Rosamund Urwin19 October 2015

One of the common reasons members give for joining the Women’s Equality Party is their sons. “Mothers write to us and say: ‘I’m really worried at how the world treats boys — they’re blocked in by gender stereotypes that are just as damaging as for girls’,” the party’s leader, Sophie Walker, tells me. “There’s an aggressive sexuality that I think boys are demonstrating very early on.” She points to the increase in “sexting, naked selfies and watching porn”. Given that the 44-year-old is running a political party set up explicitly to fight for a better deal for women, it’s notable that our conversation keeps coming back to men.

The WEP, which is non-partisan and plans to work with people across the political spectrum, is the brainchild of broadcaster Sandi Toksvig and Prince Charles biographer Catherine Mayer (“Both have brains the size of planets,” says Walker). A former Reuters journalist, she became involved after realising too little had changed in a generation. “I was having the same conversations around my kitchen table that I used to hear my mum having around our lovely Seventies pine table.” Those covered everything from the everyday sexism of “being unable to walk down the street in peace” to the “difficulties of balancing career and motherhood”.

Walker was appointed in July and feels she’s effectively been doing two jobs ever since. “It’s like being the head of a start-up and leading a political party. I have to get this on its feet and make us an electoral force.” This has left her both exhausted and energised. “It’s eight days a week and not much sleep.” The career switch has advantages, though. “I’ve never felt younger — in politics I’m immediately the youngest person in the room.”

Tomorrow is the party’s policy launch. Ideas have been crowdsourced from its 45,000 members and shaped with the help of campaign groups. “We’re not presenting tablets of stone — this is a first take. The brief was to be pragmatic. The mainstream parties discuss equality as though it’s something really hard.” Walker screws up her face, as though she’s struggling with an impossible simultaneous equation. “We’re saying: ‘Stop making it difficult, this is how you do it’.” The proposals include quotas for candidates for the next two general elections to achieve equal representation in Parliament. “We could do it in 10 years. At the current pace I’d have to wait until I was 84.”

She believes quotas already exist: they’re just unofficial ones which result in the “unjustifiable over-representation of men”. Even Labour, with its all-women shortlists, still chose a man as leader, deputy leader and mayoral candidate. “There’s an argument [we hear] a lot: ‘This is a meritocracy so only the best people are being chosen’. Are we therefore concluding that women are no good, black and Asian people are no good, working-class and disabled people are no good? It just doesn’t hold water.”

Another criticism of the WEP is that the party is effectively campaigning for white, middle-class men to be replaced by white, middle-class women.

“That stems from a lack of understanding that women bring a different perspective because women’s experiences —of crime, healthcare, education — are different. This isn’t just a bunch of middle-class women saying ‘I want in’. We’re campaigning for women’s equality — in doing so, we want to reflect the diversity of women in Britain.”

Fellow Women's Equality Party founder Catherine Mayer
Matt Writtle

Why are they a political party, not a pressure group? “You can present your case and stand around with banners, but until you have thousands of voters behind you no one will listen.”

Walker is straight-talking. It’s only when I ask whether the WEP will work with Ukip that she gives a politician’s answer — delivered with a knowing smile. “Our core values are diversity and inclusivity so we’ll work with any political party that wants to get on board.” Talks with the different parties are still in the early stages but Walker says she’s “very heartened”.

The party is also planning to field candidates next spring in the elections for the London Assembly. Whether there’ll be a mayoral candidate remains unclear. “We’d like to. It’s a £20,000 losable deposit, though. If you’re Zac Goldsmith that’s not such a big deal but if a woman from a normal background wants to speak out for women and do it with the mayorship, automatically she’s almost excluded.”

They have “hundreds” of male members; would they ever put forward a male candidate? “Of course.”

Women's Equality Party founder Sandi Toksvig
Rex

One of the major hurdles preventing more women reaching the top in all spheres, Walker notes, is that “the weight of family responsibility automatically falls upon them”. She has two daughters herself, the elder of whom — 12-year-old Grace — is autistic. Walker has written a book, Grace Under Pressure, about the struggles of the family in handling the diagnosis. “It was a big eye-opener for me. It was a real shock to see how poor we are as a society at embracing people who are different.”

At one point they both hit a “terrible” low: “Grace just did not want to be here — and I found it beyond distressing to be raising a child who was so unhappy.” Thankfully, this has changed: “She now treats her diagnosis like a superpower. I look at her with great pride, and I think she’s going to be OK if we get a lot of this done.”

Walker has two stepsons too, and feels there is “a lot of pressure on boys and girls to behave in particular ways”. An aim of the WEP is to challenge that. “My dad is terribly emotional, he cries at the drop of the hat, and my husband [Chris Naylor, CEO of Barking and Dagenham council] is also a big softie.” She corrects herself. “See? I find myself saying ‘he’s a big softie’: we don’t say that about women when they cry.”

Celebrity feminists - in pictures

1/5

It isn’t just about getting more women to the top, she concedes: nursing and teaching need to be opened up to men. “Caring roles are undervalued because they’re seen as the preserve of women. We need to encourage more men.”

Part of what needs to shift is the media portrayal of men: “There’s a tendency to portray men as inept carers, as second-class carers. Many media depictions of women are iniquitous but I think equally damaging are depictions of men being bumbling idiots who can’t be trusted with a baby — that’s the kind of stuff we’ve got to address.”

There’s a practical side of that too. “When can you ever find a nappy-changing station in the men’s toilet?”

Walker is technically the WEP’s interim leader, with membership elections next year. “I like to think of myself as the leader right now. That isn’t me announcing I’m seizing power,” she laughs. “But I’m taking this very seriously.”

She’s been dubbed “the new Pankhurst”, a title she self-deprecatingly shrugs off. She did love the film Suffragette, though. “It was amazing to see all these great actresses together — you realise how rare that is.” Of course, a number of male stars turned parts down because they didn’t feel they were meaty enough. “Yeah, and they didn’t get the irony of it at all.”

A brief history of women’s lib in london

1847: Dame Millicent Fawcett born

Fawcett was president of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, campaigning for women to get the vote. She also fought to end child marriage, and to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, which imprisoned prostitutes who passed on sexually transmitted diseases.

1913: Emily Wilding Davison funeral

Davison, who suffered force-feeding in prison, died after trying to attach the suffragette flag to the King’s horse at the Epsom Derby. Thousands lined London’s streets for her funeral and the suffragettes wore white and carried laurel wreaths.

1972: Launch of Spare Rib

Deemed so provocative that W H Smith wouldn’t stock it, Spare Rib was intended to offer a radical feminist alternative to women’s magazines. Closed in 1993, it was brought back online in 2013 as the Feminist Times.

1979: Southall Black Sisters founded

Set up to help Asian women combat racism, the group campaigned to help domestic violence victims and against religious extremism.

2012: Everyday Sexism launch

East Londoner Laura Bates wanted to record the pinpricks to the female spirit that remind women equality has not yet been won. Thousands of women have sent Bates their stories of harassment and discrimination.

2015: Protest at the Suffragette premiere

Sisters Uncut, which campaigns against cuts to services to help victims of domestic violence, released smoke flares and lay down on the red carpet at the premiere of the film Suffragette. Helena Bonham Carter who stars in the film, described the act as “marvellous: exactly what the suffragettes were about”.

Sophie Walker is speaking at Feminism In London next weekend (Oct 24-25), feminisminlondon.co.uk

Follow Rosamund on Twitter: @RosamundUrwin

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in