So here it is, after nearly a month of campaigning, TV debates, mud-slinging and all manner of shenanigans – it is UK General Election Day. Unmoved by so many national newspapers coming out in support of the Conservative Party, I voted as planned – for the Liberal Democrats. I don’t expect miracles, I won’t be miserable if it is a hung parliament and I won’t be surprised if nothing much happens in the short term. I just hope that the 44 million British people who registered to vote, exercised this right.
I am in a sombre mood, much like the rest of Britain. I can’t decide whether to risk my savings to book a week’s holiday abroad this summer, keep it in the bank earning pathetic rates of interest, or plough it into some long-term savings/pension plan which may not pay out at all. Tomorrow I have to encourage young girls into future careers that may not come to pass considering how many high-achieving graduates are now out of the job in the UK. They can try entrepreneurship, but given that so many bright, dynamic, hard working, skilled business folk are finding it hard to get a bank loan or even seed capital….is it really prudent to recommend this path to 15 year olds with little or no business experience?
And I have been mulling about the invisibility of women from this year’s election campaign. Apart from the initial play for the ‘Mumsnet’ vote, the parties have largely ignored women – except for photographing the three glamorous wives of the party leaders. It is hard to believe that women make up more than half the population and now slightly more than half the workforce. I am grateful to The Labour Party for forcing through the Equality Act at the eleventh hour although no-one even bothered to mention if they would be supporting it, enforcing it or consigning it to oblivion thereafter. Repealing the Equality Act would certainly cause riots and perhaps give rise to a 21st Century women’s suffrage movement.
Women first got the right to vote in Britain in 1918, although you had to be over 30 years of age, a householder, married or armed with a University degree! The UK might have considered itself advanced on women’s suffrage but it was behind New Zealand which allowed women to vote in 1893, Australia (1902), Finland (1906), Norway (1913), Denmark (1915), Iceland (1915), Canada (1917) and Russia (1917). However, we can pride ourselves on being in time with Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Kyrgystan, Latvia, and Lithuania who all allowed women to vote in 1918. Shame then, that it then took us another 10 years until 1928 before we lowered the vote age to 18 and allowed the unmarried equal share of voice.
Among ‘desis’, there is a view that in Britain you are never “one of them”: you can be born here, live here all your life, start a business, raise a family, give back your all….and still you will always be an ‘outsider’. I’ve always held that view as ridiculous. But, with the interminable slow pace of change, the lethargic 100 year history of women’s suffrage, the invisibility of ordinary ethnic minorities (rather than the self-serving, self-promoting, self-interested ones we have at present) in the public arena….the promise of freedom and democracy, but the reality of moribund, archaic electoral systems …well, I must admit to being a little sad today.
Can I really expect ‘change that works for me’ as Nick Clegg promises? Well, I certainly hope so and more importantly, I hope that it can be during my lifetime.