Mum's The Word! The Parenting Podcast - MP Stella Creasy

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

MP Stella Creasy joins us this week to chat about getting more mums into parliament, the fight for maternity leave and flexible working, misogyny becoming a crime, bringing her child into parliament and how we can get involved with making a change.If you want to get in touch with a question or guest suggestion, send us an email to [e-mail]--- A Create Production Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So today, I think I've never been so excited and nervous about having a guest on, which by the way... I feel the pressure. I feel real pressure. Honestly, I just, I really didn't think that you would come on. And in a moment of madness, I actually went on Instagram and sent a DM. So that was a real sign of the times. And somehow she said yes. So I'm going to give you some hints and see if you can guess who it is before I say. So funny enough, I'll start by saying that she is an MP.

And the only MP I actually know is Anne Widdicombe after we did the Celebrity Big Brother Year of the Woman. And they are both definitely forces of nature but I think complete polar opposites and I'm obviously not going to get political but I'd say that

my guest today is making I say we're not going to get political we're absolutely going to get political I hope you're not going to ask me

to go trekking because I'm so out of shape it's really bad No we're not here to talk about any any shapes especially as a mom yeah i honestly i've been in awe of what you're doing for years and i know to everyone listening you'll know who she is as well and regardless of what party you vote for i think you'll all agree that she's just an absolute powerhouse. She's doing so much for her constituents, but more specifically for women, for parents,

and specifically for mums. She's been a Member of Parliament for the London constituency of Wathamstow since 2010. Within 18 months of being elected, she was on Ed Miliband's front bench. I love this quote, which, by the way, I got from Wikipedia. But The Independent described her in 2014 as one of the brightest lights of Labour's new generation, but also haranguing and aggressive, which we could argue is potentially sexist terminology to talk about a woman.

But I'm sure we'll get on to that. And she's just campaigned for so much and at great expense to herself she's had so many threats but just touching on some of the things that she's um campaigned for um the no more page three campaign stop the sun newspaper from publishing pictures of topless glamour models which retrospectively is just the craziest thing that that was in a paper um she campaigned to extend access to abortion and for people in Northern Ireland. I'm sure you can imagine the threat she received from anti-abortion activists because of that. And since becoming a mum, I know that you'll have heard about her fighting for maternity cover. And I know that you will have seen her in the Commons with her baby strapped to her,

something that actually recently she was reprimanded for. And she's been campaigning to make misogyny a hate crime. Arguably, her most important role is she's a mum of two. And it is the absolutely brilliant Stella Creasy. I feel very embarrassed now. I feel like I've got a lot to live up to. I mean, that is only like the tip of the iceberg of things that you've campaigned for as well.

So I just think you're amazing. I'm so grateful that you've come on. Thank you. That's very kind to say. I have to say it's a weird job to be an MP because there's no job description. So you can do as much or as little as you want. And most people now presume that you're doing sod all,

let's put it that way. So actually if people, you know, it's nice if people recognise that you are trying your best, especially because I'm an opposition backbench MP. I have very little access to the traditional levers of power. So everything you're doing is about trying to change a conversation, and that's quite hard work. Yeah, and I think what's so clear about you is like how much you care for your constituents and i don't confess by the way to know a lot about politics as i'm sure

a lot of people say as well but um i just think it's amazing like what you're doing to kind of like shatter um and also create conversation around um women in parliament and just even more in general like mums and maternity and like the way we view mums in the workplace. Well it's all interconnected because my general feeling is that if the place that makes the law on how you should treat a new parent or indeed any parent in the workplace isn't very good at how they treat parents what hope have we got of them making good laws to help make sure that more parents can combine work and family life and it's particularly mums that are just absent from our political life at both a local and a national level all the evidence shows us that basically if you have a family men tend to go into politics and you know everyone gets very excited about pictures of them with their kids showing what great dads they are and the mums get told or wait until the kids are

older wait it's all so difficult or you know really who's going to look after them as if there isn't somebody else around possibly or or that somehow being a mum is is a barrier to being able to be a representative that means that we miss out on lots of really brilliant women from our politics um and actually i say from wider society as well because it's not just in politics it's happening it's happening in the media it's happening in business it's happening in public service as well all the time as soon as you have a baby people are kind of like all right we're just going to write off the next 10 to 15 years of your life and you sort of think hang on when did when did i sign up for that I don't remember that in the antenatal clinic you know it's so interesting because before I was a mum I have always considered myself a feminist and really progressive and I never ever considered

so much of being a mum like a feminist issue and obviously when I became a mum and learned so many statistics around um you know 54,000 women a year having to leave jobs because um they can't afford child care or um can't get flexible working and all of this stuff I was like why is why are more people not talking about this and I realized actually that I had so much like deep-rooted misogyny about my expectations of what a mum was and I think that's one of the reasons I was so scared of being a mum but also maybe didn't relate to wanting to be a mum because I'd always considered myself well I'm a career woman I'm a career woman and now that's something that when I hear it it really irks me because people will say to me like you know friends are

I haven't had a baby because I chose my career and in my head I'm like I choose my career I still choose my career nobody ever says I'm a working dad it's like and actually they should do because one of the big elements to fixing this is making sure that dads can play the role that you know most dads want to play which is be part of their kids lives too and that people aren't either shaming them in a workplace or making it financially impossible too but until we do that it's absolutely women who end up paying the price it's women who like you say you you soak all this stuff in I think the thing that struck me I mean like I've become a mum later in my life because I've struggled to have children for many years and a lot of these battles I thought we'd had like I really thought we'd made more progress about all this stuff and actually if I'm honest it's often women who are the toughest crowd and the most critical

and the most kind of oh you know this is self-indulgent don't talk about it you know everybody struggles get over yourself and you think hang on a minute this is like a massive moment where if feminism is like the person is the political is one of the most personal things you can do and we're just writing off swathes of women purely for having babies and that's insane to me absolutely insane so just to be clear like the current rules in parliament state so our mp's not allowed to take maternity leave? So Parliament is an exceptional case, right? Because I mean, because Parliament just, we all think we're super special sausages because we're MPs.

So we don't have any employment rights at all. And so since 2010, since I got elected, we've worked out there've been 23 babies born to women in Parliament. And that's not necessarily 23 different women, which if you think about it over 12 years in any other workplace is extraordinary. So few babies have been born. And it's not really rocket science as to why that's happening, women which if you think about it over 12 years in any other workplace is extraordinary so few

babies have been born and it's not really rocket science as to why that's happening because we make it so difficult to combine being a mum with being a member of parliament I mean when I had my first child I went to the parliamentary authorities and said oh hi I'm gonna have a baby I think you know well it's I've been pregnant several times before then but this time I thought okay this this one might happen um so I need some maternity cover they're like no MPs don't take maternity leave and I remember kind of looking at looking at my growing tummy thinking yeah I think I am going to probably have to do that some of my brilliant colleagues have thought this has not just been me who's been on this so like obviously Harriet Harman everyone was aware of was an extraordinary

force for just going, what is going on? Where are the women? And then Tulip Sadiq actually ended up going into Parliament days before she was due to have a cesarean section in order to vote on the Brexit legislation because there wasn't anybody to vote for. So if you didn't vote, especially

on something like that, which was a really close vote, then it could affect the outcome your constituents would understand that you really crossed because they weren't being represented and there was nothing in place so she managed to get a system in place called proxies which means that for the last six months because my little boy now I've got is five months old for the last six months I've had somebody who's voted on my behalf but that presumes that the only thing MPs do is vote and that's like a tiny percent about 10% of what we do is what you see on telly in terms of standing up in the chamber and speaking so all the other bits of the job but going out working with my

local community working with campaigners attending meetings when there's a crisis happening being able to be briefed about and be able to be part of the political process. And there was absolutely nobody to cover that. And in my first pregnancy, when they said that to me, I was just like, I fought really, really hard to have children. And now you're telling me at the point when this might actually happen, I've got to choose between my constituents being represented or being with this child. And that just doesn't seem right.

And, you know, in any other place of work, people would have cover. Well, they just they just expected you to um to muddle through so the expectation was that you would step aside and allow someone else to represent your constituents or that your constituents wouldn't be represented there was no exit because nobody thought about at all in fact what they kept saying to and they said to other women in this position is oh we've never really had to think about this problem before as if the issue was us having babies rather than the fact that parliament due to represent everybody in the country hadn't thought about what would happen if some of its members had babies i kind of shamed them and went public and said this is crazy and so they gave me

funding to allow me to and i just appointed somebody and I called them my locum so basically it was this woman she's brilliant local woman I'd never met her she you know applied for the job and um I I said she's my my maternity cover nobody battered an eyelid in my constituency indeed I think they probably would have quite liked it she stayed and I'd never come back because she was really brilliant at the job and it made such a difference with my first pregnancy because that was during the start of the pandemic so she had to do and also I had a I had to do with a general election eight and a half months pregnant as well there was no cover for that so I was walking around trying to talk to people about why they might vote for me again and having people saying I will vote for you if you sit down because you are so out of breath they're really worried about you and it's

like our politics is set up for white men of a certain age with independent means and if you don't fit that profile nobody's thought through how to make it inclusive and because there aren't the people in there going well hang on a minute this doesn't work how can we make this work it it becomes a chicken and egg syndrome so you don't get very many people coming forward and this time around with my second pregnancy so they promised me when my first one that they'd do a consultation and they'd look at this issue they didn't do anything there was no they just they sat on it they argued that because some of my colleagues um in the Labour Party were opposed to even having the conversation that they wouldn't do anything so I was in the position of having a second pregnancy and having to negotiate again

pregnant about what cover that would be because this time around I was in the position of having a second pregnancy and having to negotiate again, pregnant, about what cover that would be. Because this time around, I was like, well, I can't really ask somebody to do a job at a cut price salary without a clear job title, because it's having that job title that makes a difference. It's like people going, you know, if I send my member of staff to something, people would say, oh, no, I want to see the MP. So you need somebody who has that status that people go. So because the parliamentary authorities refused to somebody who has that status that people go so because the parliamentary authorities refused to let me do that a second time and bear in mind I had I got gestational diabetes so I was really really ill I mean I was keeling over going into hospital trying to negotiate all of this going please please please can we just put something in place

but equally determined that I wasn't going to ask somebody to do a job on the cheap because they hadn't thought about maternity cover. I ended up the day I gave birth in a phone call with the ministers full of morphine. Now, God knows what I said to them because it was about what was happening in Afghanistan, because they said they wouldn't let a member of staff and they'd only let the MP in. So without someone to cover that role, I had no choice because I didn't want to let families in Afghanistan who were terrified about what was happening to their relatives down and it's been like that for the last five months so it's a very long-winded way of saying like there's nothing has changed and you seeing me

going to parliament with my baby like I don't really want to do that anybody who's handled a very small baby um you know obviously I make sure he's fed I make sure he's content I've managed to get him to be quiet during the debate so that you can hear what I'm sure he's fed, I make sure he's content, I've managed to get him to be quiet during the debate so that he can hear what I'm saying. But actually what I really wanted was cover so that I could spend time with him and not stress about making sure that my constituents weren't let down so that nobody could say, oh, well, don't vote for women of childbearing age because they might disappear. But that is what situation we're in right now. It's such a chicken and egg situation, really, isn't by the way i'm so sorry to hear about um your losses and also i can't imagine what you know we all find pregnancy

so hard so to have i imagine like the fear of like well that with your history of loss and then gestational diabetes having to almost like fight for what most people just get as a right it must have just been i can't imagine how stressful gestational diabetes is really terrifying because especially if you've had pregnancy loss because it's um it's basically your body trying to poison your baby and I got it really bad I was on lots of drugs by the end of it um and and just thinking you know yet again my body's just letting me down it's not doing what I need it to do to be able to look after my baby. So that was just really terrifying in and of itself.

Yeah, you know, I could have done without the heads of the parliamentary authorities telling me I was being a difficult woman because I brought my own legal representation to the meetings. Because I thought I spend my life telling women to stand up for their rights and fighting for their rights. I've got to have somebody there to make sure I look after my own in these conversations. I think also what was generally quite shocking and disappointing for me to discover is that actually when the decision was made to oppose introducing locums for maternity cover, it was actually opposed by the Women's Parliamentary Labour Party, which was obviously chaired by Jess Phillips, who I really like a lot of what she represents.

And she's meant to be very progressive and very feminist. Why do you think you're fighting against... Surely all women should be on board, whether you want to have children or not. Surely all women should be on board to fight for the rights of maternity. So I can't pretend to be anything other than heartbroken by some of the responses of colleagues in parliament because as I say going through it twice it was really difficult and also saying none of this is about me anymore because having had my second baby and having been so ill I'm never having another baby ever again.

But I think about all those brilliant women I meet out in the country who would make great MPs who are just going, well, I want to have a family and I can't see how this is going to work. And I know that they're being put off by it. I understand that women are wary. They're wary that, I mean, another MP accused me of making women into victims when they have children. And, you know, there's a lot of talk about whether MPs employment status should be set up. And also that, you know, MPs shouldn't have better maternity cover than the constituents they represent. My challenge is I think we should be fighting for the highest standards in Parliament to set the tone for employers. So the irony for me was I was negotiating with a civil service organization called the itch of the parliamentary authorities that covers our budgets and they all had six

months paid maternity and paternity cover for their staff and saying I just want what you have for my constituents because for me this is ultimately about making sure that residents got represented because what people have tried to say to me is oh when I had a child I just disappeared I just you know I hid and you think that's quite worrying that you know if my constituents thought I could disappear for six months and it would make no difference to anything that we were doing for them they'd have a right to ask what I was doing the rest of the time I understand that lots of women have different views on this um parliament right now is having an inquiry into whether you can take babies into the chamber.

And that's just the wrong end of the telescope, because what I really want for this is a proper maternity cover policy, so that any woman coming forward thinking about standing in politics, and we've got another election coming up maybe in the next 18 months, won't think twice that that's a consideration as opposed to whether she's got the skills the experience the commitment to be able to do the job but at the moment that's the debate they want to have is whether you can take a baby into the parliamentary chamber rather than whether or not parliament is a place that has maternity cover and I worry that that sends the message that maternity cover isn't important because I know how many women are being discriminated

against I also know that if I were a cabinet member or a senior you know if I was on the front benches there would be cover so we've got this kind of two-tier system so the attorney general when she had a baby and I fully support this had six months paid maternity cover but because I'm a backbencher so I don't get that and it means we send the message that it's okay in workplaces to discriminate when actually the rights should be about having a baby not what role you play in a workplace and I think it it just speaks to a lack of understanding about why maternity cover matters you know people saying to me oh just send a member of staff or or you know just don't don't bother about all this don't disappear for six months do a disservice to the role that you play

because it's not maternity cover people saying oh well MPs can take maternity leave it's not you can't take leave if there's no one to cover what you're doing so that when a crisis happened you know I didn't just have people stuck in Afghanistan I had murders in my constituency we had flooding in my constituency we had all sorts of issues people needed help with there are campaigns we talked about the misogyny campaign you know the legislation we're trying to amend won't stop for six months whilst I take some time away so if we're going to take up on those opportunities somebody has to cover that role and I know firsthand in my first pregnancy having somebody who did that made a massive difference.

So to not have that in my second pregnancy makes me even more determined that in future, women coming into politics should have that option. And indeed, dads should have the option of parental leave. Because, you know, either your constituents suffer or your kid does. And I don't think that's a choice anybody should have to make. I think this is like what the conversation for me is,

why it's quite frustrating is it's always a female problem. Boris Johnson, he's had two kids since he's been Prime Minister. The presumption is that his wife is looking after the kids. So therefore, it's not a male issue. But actually, it should be, obviously we're talking heterosexual relationships, but it should be an issue for both parents. And it's always seen as a women's problem and, you know, maternity leave, flexible working, it's always an issue for women.

Well, we saw it, we saw it during the pandemic, didn't we? Like we spent months in Parliament debating pothole funding and road, and you know what parents got a pat on the back for doing homeschooling and i knew a lot of mums who i could hear swearing at their computers when they heard that from the chancellor like universal child care pays for itself because it allows families to make choices that mean they can take different jobs they can earn more and yeah they pay more in tax it pays for itself it's just not a conversation happening in politics right now like you say everything is all about moms should struggle and I think for a lot of women you know I put my head above the parapet and said hold on a minute I don't agree with that I don't I don't know why we would not want to make

this easier to manage but for a lot of women it's almost like if you're not struggling you're not doing it right and that seems to me something that that reflects that you know we've had it drummed into us for so long that this is it this is the big thing I saw an article in the press the other day about worrying about women are putting off having babies as if it's only women who have babies and they're like well I did biology I'm pretty sure there's two people involved in that equation at the very least and however you want to do it modern technology and different relationships fine but like there's so much pressure put on women and about motherhood that you cannot win whichever way you turn I just don't want to play that game I refuse to accept

but it has to be this well shit and I think i'm happy to take grief from people if we can change that i think what's fascinating is that you're considered selfish if you choose not to have children um or you know people always want to know why if you decide as a woman not to have children and we always hear the word what term child bliss as opposed to just being child free and thriving. But then we also make it so hard for women who give birth to then have careers and, you know, that maternity leave and discrimination and the cost of childcare. And, you know, I saw a lot of the backlash from you taking your baby into parliament,

which again, you shouldn't have had to do especially so soon after giving birth people were saying well what what why can't she just leave it at home or you you know you run enough to have child care why can't you have child care but also like we shouldn't have to feel like we have to either go back to work and it was just a very practical thing for me like my my little girl is in is in nursery because she's two but my little boy I'm I'm breastfeeding him so it just doesn't really make any sense to leave him with somebody I keep running back and forth I there was another MP who had attacked me for just that and then and then set out how she was doing that and it was all fine and it sounded like an utter nightmare. I just thought, like, you know,

because also people attack my partner as well. He's like, he does huge amounts of childcare, but he can't breastfeed a baby. And when you're breastfeeding, especially with a very new baby, you know, okay, I'm not a super nanny. I don't have my child on a strict, rigid timetable. And I don't have a wet nurse because I'm not a character from Blackadder either. I'm just a normal mum trying to make all these things work. And so, yeah, without cover,

I had the baby with me. But I also had made sure that he was contented and quiet because, above all, I was trying to do my job. Push Your Peak is a brand new podcast brought to you by What Bike? Join me, Louise Minchin, and some of the world's most incredible sports people to learn what it takes mentally and physically to push yourself beyond your limits. Whether you're an elite or everyday athlete, it can be hard to continually progress. How do you push yourself out of your comfort zone where do you go to find that inner drive tune in to hear these inspiring stories and take away the

belief that you can achieve your own goals no matter how big or small you can find us wherever you got this podcast just search push your peak i just think you say, about how we judge women by what they look like first and what they say second. We do it the other way around with men. But, you know, you could drive yourself crazy. I mean, when I first got elected, someone said to me, so I have a PhD, so I'm technically Dr. Creasy. I only use it really with the bank manager when I'm bleeding. And they said to me, oh, you should call yourself Dr Dr Creasy on the screens because you know as a young blonde woman people would take you more seriously and I was like if people are going to judge me by my hair color they're only going to do it the once

um but you know it's really hard when you're facing that relentlessly so um you know I always had people obviously as I was becoming more and more pregnant commenting on my weight online and this sort of thing and you just sort of think i don't want to particularly have to be the person having to respond to this all the time or telling other women that they don't have to put up with this i just wanted to stop because what i worry about is say it's all those brilliant campaigners who just see it and think i don't want any part of this yeah how do you feel like the constant trolling because i know this this isn't necessarily just a female problem because i think mps you know i look sometimes at the tweets that sadiq khan

received and they're absolutely vile like there's so much like racism so add you know being a female mp but also from a human element i i felt so vulnerable as a new mum um and I felt a lot more um sensitive about um criticism that I am people gave me because I feel like when it beforehand I mean it affected me trolling but not as much as it did after having a baby but whether it was like you know my parents or the way I parent um and I mean you got it you got it a staggering amount and I do really want to talk to you about this um you know making misogyny a hate crime which I know people just see it as like sticks and stones will break your bones and we all need to grow a backbone and stuff but like how do you cope with it and also from a human element like how do you deal with

like the constant backlash when you're trying to do good things like with maternity discrimination and maternity cover? I think you have to separate it all out. There's definitely banter and robust debate. And I sometimes, I'll clap back at people. I'm human. And I think it's quite important that we don't ask our politicians

to be patient saints because, you that way hell lies i mean all of us can you must have a quote when someone writes something and you just think oh sod off i also think you have to separate that so the misogyny stuff is about things that are existing crimes if you're sending somebody a rape threat a death threat intimidation abuse that is already illegal um and it's not free speech because you can't have free speech if 50% of the conversation is living in fear about what you might do next given what you say and that's not a debate that's not that's not any like I keep saying to people I've had it in the last 24 hours because I've been trying to talk about mums on mumsnet obviously there's a lot of people on mumsnet who are very interested in trans rights issues and and they

got very cross with sort of saying about having a kinder debate and for me a kinder debate is partly about recognizing that one of the things that kind of macho patriarchal debate is all about is about killing the opposition and you know wham land a killer blow and therefore you know they're done before they can never speak again and actually for me the kind of idea about a be kind debate is to say do you know what I might not have all the answers i might be wrong i'd quite like to hear what you have to say i'd like to be able to explore it i'd like to be able to ask some really stupid questions that um you know might make me sound like an idiot but they're the sorts of things coming to my mind and i'd like to know at the end of it there's enough respect here that even if we do still disagree we can carry on

talking and that is for me a much more collaborative way because like I learn stuff from people all the time that's why I'm really nosy I follow loads of people on Twitter and Facebook and social as well as in real life like I refuse to be away from these forums because I learn stuff and it helps me think things through and yeah sometimes you're going to have quite strong debates you can't do that if you've got the equivalent of like 500 people screaming at you let alone things that are criminal offenses and abuse we have to take that stuff out of it but we also have to say what kind of debate do we want to have and yeah you know you want some kitten pictures and you want some banter and you want some funny videos that you've seen as well because that's humanity isn't it it's nice things to balance out so i think it's

really important to fight for all of those things because not just it it's about the voices that you're not hearing but it's about all the stuff that you could do together if we could get this right and it really worries me that our politics you know when I first got elected in 2010 social media was still a relatively minor thing in politics and it was a little bit of a club you know we would all sit around and there'd be a lot of kitten pitches not very much debating now there's like a lot of anger first and then people start asking questions and also because I think people can't see that there's 500 other people screaming at you and then they start saying oh you're ignoring me oh you're trying to and you're like I'm not I'm literally one person like one of the things I would want to say to you

is I don't I don't have anybody else doing social media I'm not one of'm literally one person. Like one of the things I would want to say to you is I don't I don't have anybody else do my social media. I'm not one of those weird people. Do you see people who put like this, their initials at the end of a tweet or something? It is me. It's me with my phone. It's me when I get a moment to read stuff. So if you are bombarding me with hundreds of messages like I'm a normal human being, I can't cope with all that much. So I probably don't engage in a way that, you know know if we can have that more kind of collaborative more interesting debate actually I will do because I'm going to learn something like it does need to change because it's harming all of us because we're not getting the best out of each other for it um which is separate from are there people trying to intimidate harass silence people and using social media to do it

and that i think like the the misogyny campaign that we're doing doesn't create any new crimes it just recognizes what drives crime and that's the same online as well as offline you know the people who are that abusive online it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that that doesn't stay online it also comes to other parts of their lives and that means they're quite potentially quite dangerous people and if that were racism and you're right you know the abuse that my colleague diane abbott gets is absolutely horrific uh and sadiq gets i mean so and david lammy as well like all of them have had serious police interventions now and how they're living their lives and just think that that's awful you know if we create a politics we create a public life where only people who enjoy conflict who are abusive who are aggressive and are from a very similar background can speak out

it's gonna be really dull isn't it i mean it's just gonna be a load of piers morgan's internal consciousness and actually that just gets quite boring after a while, doesn't it? Every time you try and talk about online trolling, or let's even just talk about specifically this campaign to make misogyny a hate crime, you always get people clap back by saying, it's free speech, it's freedom of speech. How do you separate the two? Because I feel like even in Parliament, you know, like, why are you having to fight to make misogyny a hate crime? Surely misogyny should just be a hate crime. Is it going back to this sort of like, you know, public school locker room sort of banter that it's like, oh, it's just harmless fun? We have an equalities law in this country, which has a list of what we call

protected characteristics, things that we say, actually actually these are just an element of who you are so your race your religion your sexuality you know and you can't be discriminated against on those things in a workplace you can't just say right because because you're gay that means that we're not going to promote you that's that's wrong and we also say in law if you get attacked simply for being who you are we should recognize that and that means that both the police have to record it which means they get data on where it's happening that can help detect those crimes but it also means our courts can send the message going if you are targeting gay people for abuse for assault then that in itself will have to carry a tougher penalty the one thing we don't do is cover someone's sexual gender so the one thing we don't say is to women well if someone is attacking you just for who you are that's wrong um so we know that you know most women have

experienced sexual harassment and abuse and very few of them report it and the reason a lot of women tell you they report it you don't think anyone's going to do anything about it about five six years ago the nottinghamshire police force started to change that so they started to record where women were coming forward saying look I was targeted um just because we know that misogyny drives crimes against women so you know I was just targeted for being a woman and what that's done is it's helped them with detecting crimes but it's also helped women feel like it's worth coming forward because you're adding to the police knowledge about what's going on in a local community and you know and this wasn't cat calling this was like serious sexual assaults it was rapes it was kidnaps that women were fine

feeling confident to come forward and report and critically it was women from minority communities in particular because right now in this country if somebody targets say jewish women for abuse they're targeting both for being jewish and for being a woman but our hate crime law says oh no it's just because you're jewish so it asks them to fit a box rather than saying well who are you and why why why what can we do to protect you from you know what we do to catch this person catch these people um so adding in sexual gender to our hate crime doesn't create any new crimes but it gives the police that set of tools that we know in the police forces

the court of all police forces in the country who are doing it and it is having an impact it's changing the way in which they're dealing with violence against women and frankly I think all of us are looking at the police and how they deal with violence against women and saying well something really big has to change like the culture of the police has to change too but what we also want to do is give the court the ability that where

a crime has been motivated by that hatred just in the same way that if it's motivated by hatred of someone's skin color then we can recognize that in sentencing um and it's an amendment in called the new love amendment but why doesn't it exist already it seems such an obvious love amendment but why doesn't it exist already it seems such an obvious thing well but you see this is the thing isn't it it's like misogyny is so inbuilt into our society sometimes we don't recognize it i'll give you a really good example of this because i only really worked this one out recently so indecent exposure by flashing somebody is illegal if you do it to cause harm or distress. It's not actually illegal if you do it for your own sexual pleasure. So if some guy flashes you on a train, he has a defence of saying, oh, well, I was just enjoying myself.

Think that one through for a moment. Like you have to be distressed for him to be in trouble, not in of itself that element of power, for him to be in trouble. Not in of itself, that element of power, that element of abusing a woman's freedom just to be able to get on a train and not be presented with a penis. So it's so inbuilt in our law that men are entitled to certain forms of behavior that actually when you start unpicking these things, we've just recently won an amendment to the law to make it illegal to photograph a woman breastfeeding without her consent because it used to be perfectly legal and in fact i had it happen to me with my first kid and there was a brilliant campaigner julia cooper who um actually you know what happened to her she challenged the guy he refused to take the photographs off his camera and then she got went to the police the police said well there's nothing

we can do it's not illegal and when we raised this with the government, they were like, oh, yes. But what happens if a man is taking photographs of his wife on a beach naked for his own sexual entertainment? And he accidentally photographs a woman breastfeeding in the background. And he thought, I'm going to stop you there and reel back and say, did you really just say this in Parliament as an argument? Did you actually just come up with this scenario? just say this in parliament as an argument did you actually just come up with this scenario and it was like the whole thing was predicated on protecting these poor men and their enjoyments to their wives as though there was some kind of toy um i mean you just think like the the husband who accidentally photographs a woman breastfeeding and doesn't delete it probably isn't going to

be a husband for much longer anyway but it was just it speaks to misogyny is so ingrained in our society that lopsided way of thinking about who you act in favor of and what whose rights you protect of course we've never thought about well hang on a minute why do we protect women from discrimination in the workplace but as soon as they walk out on streets of this country it's a free fall and the consequences are the violence and the culture that we see I'm not telling you that making misogyny part of our hate crime law is going to be a silver bullet but I do think it will start to change cultures within the police I think we'll start to change cultures in the cps and I think it will start to change wider society in the same way that

hate crime law around race and religion you know if I think I mean I'm I'm 44 if I think about some of the things that were on telly when I was a kid now we would rightly say Jesus Christ that's really racist and it should be illegal because it's a form of race hate and I think hate crime legislation has been part of that cultural change in calling to attention the impact on victims of people being able to perpetrate those sorts of offences without any accountability. And I'd love, I think over time, this could be part of that change. Where are you drawing the line with misogyny? Like what counts as misogyny? Like is it catcalling? Is it part of the campaign to make catcalling illegal?

Well, catcalling is already illegal, though I do support the calls for a clearer public sexual harassment offence, because I think the fact that people are questioning shows that we probably do need to be clearer that it is an offence. I mean, there's a threshold test in the law about any offence. So, you know, if you start shouting abuse at somebody, if you start shouting racial abuse at people, for example, there is a threshold that you have to meet. It'd be the same on misogynistic abuse um but i think particularly for me it's this concept of being able to recognize where you know not all crimes driven by misogyny are about intimate or sexual violence if i think about so we had a scenario in my community a couple of years

ago where there was a gentleman going around attacking muslim women and pulling their hijabs off their heads that was a misogynistic as well as a religiously motivated form of hate crime and being able to recognize that and being able to say well that is a form of assault so there's already an existing crime but by approaching it as a hate crime we're drawing all the evidence we've got about where it's happening together we're telling victims we take it seriously and we will sentence accordingly and that's where i see the benefit of this so hate you know harassing somebody in the street is already a crime it's the question of whether you meet that threshold it would be then for the courts to decide whether what you were doing was misogynistic in the same way the courts have to decide whether what you're doing is racist so

there isn't a test in law that says oh well this is what racism looks like you present the evidence to the courts um so that an example so i was working on the upskirting legislation saying we should have a misogyny penalty on that because you could probably present evidence if somebody had particularly targeted women for upskirting that it was misogynistic um but it would be for the courts to decide whether they agreed with you based on what people would understand as misogyny see that's crazy to me because i remember when i um kind of stepped into the public eye it was so normal that you know when you were getting into a taxi after an event that perhaps would try and um get photos up your skirt and i remember all being mortified but again it was that kind of it was that sort of um guilt that

if it did happen to you that was your fault because you were wearing a skirt that was too short or you were silly or you got too drunk and I remember like being horrified at the fact that that was even allowed and also when people were campaigning to make it illegal that there's there's always seems to be so much push push back like people don't understand kind of like the how intimidating it is and it's like with catcalling how it's always brushed aside as like just being harmless or a compliment and so it's really hard to have like the serious conversations because i feel like the media always just want to like belittle catcalling to like brush over the whole thing of um sexism and

misogyny but that's where i think like just the same stopping people going well hang on let's let's just talk that one through shall we like you know you are fighting for the right I mean I've always said I'll stop campaigning to include misogyny and hate crime when I go to a wedding and the bride gets up and says well he followed me down the street screaming about my tits wanting me to get into the back of a van with him and I just thought it was the most romantic thing ever like it's not a compliment it's a form of abuse people are calling out what I find frustrating is my local police are very proud that they're running education events with men about this and I'm like we don't educate people that burglary is wrong like it is a crime

to harass and abuse women in the street you don't't say, oh, men don't realise. Lots of men don't cackle women. Lots of men do get that it is creepy and unpleasant. So we shouldn't let people off the hook that somehow this is just a kind of cultural thing. It's not. It's a crime. What I think is brilliant about the Our Streets Now campaign is they're wanting to clarify the law so that there's a really clear boundary.

But we shouldn't walk away from the idea that there was already a boundary or that somehow, like you say, that it's like a, it's a compliment because somebody rolls down the window and starts wolf whistling at you and following you in a van. Like, no, it's really frightening. I think like the really hard thing for me about misogyny is it's so built into so many women as well. Like, you know, even I breastfed online and a lot of it wasn't even a conscious decision.

I breastfed on the Jeremy Vine show. And that was purely because I was invited to go on the Jeremy Vine show. I was breastfeeding. So probably like similar story to you. I either chose not to do it and potentially missed that kind of opportunity and might not get called up again. Or I did it. And of course, Alf was too young to understand when we're on air when we're not on air he just needed to feed and so I fed him and there's always this huge pushback and especially for women where they say um but what he's gonna he'll get bullied when he's 15 you're gonna you're

causing him psychological distress like how do you explain to other women especially like mums that why should somebody get bullied when they're 15 for the fact that they were breastfed and there's pictures of it yeah I mean I recognise and I hear you

and I know exactly what you mean because it is difficult because sometimes other women can be their own worst enemies you know that we we tell ourselves that this is just how it is and everyone's making a fuss and there are bigger fights to have I feel very strongly like however critical people have been women are entitled to do mothering how they want to like you do it how you want I'll do it how I want and actually what we're fighting for is a space to have the conversation to say does it work for everyone because like it is there's so much mum shaming out there um and you know I mean

it's the only thing I do to embarrass my son in my life given with my my bad music taste and my poor jokes is to have talked about breastfeeding him then he's got off lightly I think but it is really important that we start creating a space where we're saying actually it's okay to not play along with this to not say this is all so terrible and women are letting the side down it's okay to talk about this and one of the things I've been really heartened by is as much as yeah going out and campaigning on this people have been quite cruel and and you know there has been people who've said things and you say like colleagues and people who challenge you but there's also been a lot of women who said okay thank you now you've done it and now you've

said actually there's a space I can add my voice to it and you know the way that we stop the mum shaming is the mum celebrating and saying well hang on a minute you know this is part of life like like you say I don't know a single baby that will work to a timetable go oh fair play I took him I took my son on tv to try and talk about pmqs and he just wasn't having any of it absolutely cried the place down and yeah absolutely I was mortified and trying to work out and quiet and they went to a commercial break and all that but you know what that is an entirely human experience um I just think we've got to be really careful to make sure that we grow and nurture that space where people can talk about all of this.

I mean, that's why we set up the This Mom Votes hashtag to get people to talk about their experience in the workplace, because once you start it, people can't stop. And actually, your experience is not a unique experience. You're very powerful for going out there and doing it. What can mums do who are mums-to-be who are feeling like they have to choose between becoming a mum in their career or they're experiencing discrimination in the workplace or feeling like they're being overlooked in opportunities, what can they do to get and help get more women in power? First and foremost, we can all say a prayer and a hallelujah

for the existence of Pregnant Then Screwed, because Jodie Bre braley is a living legend who walks amongst us as far as i'm concerned she's an amazing woman who experienced maternity discrimination pregnancy discrimination and turned her anger about it into an amazing organization that now campaigns on these issues but also crucially provides legal advice so first and foremost if you are experiencing any form of return to discrimination or pregnancy discrimination please do get legal help because you do have rights i mean we're talking like we don't i might rather involve actually there are really important rights we've really got to fight to protect them um secondly please do sign up for this one votes this one votes.org.uk and we are running lots of events seminars we want to get people talking to their parliamentarians about get people talking to their

parliamentarians about it also talking to their employers about it and saying well actually you know this is really bad for our economy because we're losing loads of really talented women from workplaces because our workplaces don't reflect modern life but other workplaces do so you know good employers will lose good people unless they change. And our politics will as well. And then thirdly, be kind. Be a really good, supportive, interested person, because your experience of motherhood might be very different from somebody else's. And that's OK. But the point is, the experiences of motherhood right now aren't being surfaced, not being talked about. And we're all missing out as a result because it's creating a barrier to change um so you know send a good kitten pick sign up for a campaign and above all will be part of making change happen because everyone could do it you don't need just a couple more mps we need a revolution but but what i've learned is that there's a revolution out there as long as we can

have coffee we can do it at times that make sense for us, be able to combine with everyday working life, then actually that's an easy one to solve. Honestly, I feel like you are like the epitome of doing juggle and dress hats off to you and thank you for everything that you're doing and also obviously for taking the time to come on. Well, it's amazing.

It's amazing what you're doing with your podcast. And it's like the thing that's really interesting is in Westminster, people think nobody's interested in mums. No, it's not a concern. And we know out in the country for a lot of women, this is this is that moment of kind of realisation, like you say, in that moment of real frustration and kind of is this it? And how can I get help and what can I do? And you might be having that conversation in their little WhatsApp groups. They might help and what can I do and people might be having that conversation in their little whatsapp groups they might be having it in the park they might be having it when they go to baby class but they are having that conversation so that's like that revolution

is there and people like you and the stuff that you're doing with your podcast are absolutely part of it so really thank you for having me I'm just excited to see hopefully lots of positive change and also for people to realise that like you don't have to just become a mum when you're a mum and yeah hopefully it'll get easier so I'm gonna let you go but thank you so much for your time and for chatting to me not at all thank you actually I really appreciate it so yeah I normally don't even let a guest um before the very end of the podcast but I could see and hear that Stella is so busy and you know what I love the fact that you can hear her kids in the background because I feel like when you're at work you have to pretend that you don't have kids and

then when you're home you're expected not to work and I love that blend especially from an MP a female MP um and I actually just cannot believe that she came on the podcast. I hope you guys found that interesting because I mean, obviously I'm very political, but I feel like I don't know a lot about politics, but I thought it was really interesting. And I just think it's amazing everything she's doing. And I just can't believe like to think of everything that I have gone through

as a new mum with like I don't know things like prolapse and piles and leaky boobs and mastitis and you know that whole recovery and identity battle like the fact that Stella I say has chosen to do it but I guess like she said she hasn't had a choice to do it but the fact that she has gone through all of this that we all go through the insomnia and still gets up because she like cares about her constituents and wants to make a difference i feel like you know we only ever really like hear about mps when it's negative but it's really nice to think you know we heard about a lot of mps just on holiday when things like afghanistan happened or not even living in

the country. And she's obviously so committed to being an MP and representing her constituents that she basically didn't get maternity leave. And interesting that expectation that she had to do that to prove her job. But, you know, whether you choose to breastfeed or not, like if you're breastfeeding, it's like, you know, me going on TV, you can't just like leave your child. And hopefully she's like breaking down barriers and helping people to realize that you can do both.

But I just want to really briefly touch on the Apple podcast reviews because I've been reading them and I honestly, it's just so, so nice and reassuring to read such nice things about you loving the podcast. So I just wanted to read one nice things about you loving the podcast so um i just wanted to read one from jess who said um i so look forward to each episode thanks for being so honest and sharing the ups and downs of motherhood i'm totally on this journey with you i love your approach to postpartum body image and you've made me feel so much more confident in my new stretchier skin and i love that yes to being more confident in our bodies even like

pre or postnatally but especially postnatally because let's be honest like our bodies are doing a lot for us but yeah thanks for listening to Mum's the Word

the parenting podcast I can't believe I had an MP on my little parenting podcast make sure to hit the subscribe and follow button so you never miss an episode and yeah

if you're listening on Apple Podcast if you do leave a review, then I can always read it out. Or you can also get in touch on WhatsApp where you can send a free voice message on 075-999-27537. Let me know what you thought of this episode,

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