So the headlines blazing across the Sunday Papers was the story of how the Coalition intend to ‘make’ benefit claimants do unpaid work for a specific period or risk losing their benefits. At first glance it seems a good idea, being out work takes it toll on your mental state, so why not do some unpaid work whilst looking ? Firstly, job hunting takes time, the internet searches, the rehashing of the C.V and even the time to travel to employment agencies (as my favourite champagne socialist Polly Toynbee found out and expressed in Hard Work). Secondly,  most people already do unpaid work, its called voluntary work which, if you’re lucky enough not to had to trudge to the dole before, you have to declare as part of your job hunting plan, but you’re not allowed to do ‘too much’ voluntary work nor state that you have made  a fixed time commitment less it stop you from landing a ‘proper’ paid job. So , if the government makes you do unpaid work because you are guilty of  the crime to be out of work in the middle of  double dip recession what gap are you filling? Why! the gap made by public spending cuts, think tank genius! The third sector is awash with recent graduates, the long and short term unemployed already,  so I can only presume that the newly unemployed  (fresh from the spending cuts, low level civil servants , librarians etc) are going to fill the gaping gaps left by the shrinking state. However, there is another kind of unpaid work done by nearly half of the planets population that the Coalition government never mention, a gap that is always filled due to social construction and that is the unpaid domestic labour provided by Women.

According to to a paper commissioned by the UN, the unaccounted economic activities performed by women include:-

• Cleaning, decoration and maintenance of the dwelling unit
• Preparation and serving of meals
• Care, training and instruction of children
• Care of sick,infirm or old
• Transportation of the household’.

Sound familiar? All that day to day stuff you do is worth nothing to the government and my argument is that it should be for several reasons. Firstly, these unaccounted activities are presumably unpaid because financial sustenance comes from a partner or the state, which as everyone knows is complete rubbish. Only the elite and upper middle classes can survive on one wage per household.  Single mothers live on a pittance and even when in work often end up hovering just above the poverty line . Secondly we also have to factor in the concept that women’s work is a relic of the industrial revolution,-  the Woman offers emotional and maternal support to the man who ‘is’ the wage slave ( the Women being a non economical unit). This concept is problematic now as Woman in this country have long been visible in the public sphere and now Woman  finds she is a wage slave Herself but but still endures the double burden. This is  nothing compared to our Sisters in developing countries but non-the-less, equal,sexist free Britain? Thirdly even if you don’t have children, Women are socially immersed into ideals of being this caring, nourishing being, via the media (domestic goddess that can whip up a four course meal in 10 minutes,drop everything for your friends, look out for your neighbours). Women have always been the volunteers that filled the gaps left by the state’s policies, the PTA’s that raise money for schools (mostly women), the coffee mornings for charity, Women activists that march and lobby at grassroots level , keeping your eye on that neighbour who you know is taking abuse from their  ’other half’, saying hello and engaging in conversion with an elderly person who you know, probably hasn’t spoken to anyone all day. If I where to categorize our ‘unaccounted economic activities’ as paid work then the list would be this;Nanny,Counselor,Lobbyist,Community worker,Fund-raiser,Chauffeur, PR,Carer, Nutritionist, Personal shopper. All validated, trusted positions,  economically viable but not so if the work is unpaid.If as the DaveCam puts it we are ‘all in this together’ then why is unpaid ‘domestic labour’  economically irrelevant in these days of the Big Society? We fill the gaps!

Did you notice that last week the fire service threatened to strike on bonfire night? The New Statesman posed the question is it an abuse of power? No actually its not, it strikes at the heart of the public’s fear of unsafety. So why is it that Womens strike day this year was largely ignored by the media? Well you know why,Women in the west are still seen as unpaid labour, economically irrelevant, whining when we have so called political rights.If we were were to strike, can you imagine the gap?  This is what I say, mind the gap left by Women, the void is too vast to cross safely, society would as we see it would crumble. Women fill the void left by the shrinking state , unpaid work for women claimants creates a triple burden. Marx once wrote’ We stand on the shoulders of giants’ but that’s rubbish we all stand  on the shoulders of women and society is taught that those strong shoulders are irrelevant because of a chromosome. MIND THE GAP!

David Willetts is the Shadow Universities Secretary, and this week, is winning a special award for being a singulalry sexist nincompoop. He wins said award for his recent speech claiming that the family is threatened by a rise in the number of young women attending university.

According to Mr Willetts, the 10% difference between the gender when it comes to university education is threatening the family- men can no longer ‘bring home the bacon’, which means marriages break up, the family as an economic institution fails and well won’t somebody please think of the children.

I’ve no problem with Mr Willett saying that 35% of men vs 45% of women attending university is something that needs addressing. I’ve also no problem with him pointing out, that the overwhelming majority of young people Not In Education, Employment or Training (NEET) are young men , and that perhaps we need to examine the causes of this and do something about it.

What does vex me mightily is his claim that this is the fault of women- that women wanting to improve their lives and undertaking higher education, something denied to them for hundreds of years, is to blame for these young men’s lack of higher education. That somehow women improving themselves destroys the very fabric of our society, when I would have considered it to , logically, improve our society and improve the economic stability of the family. His notion that there is only a finite amount of education to go round is disturbing and as Jess at the F Word pointed out based on a disturbingly middle class presumption that no one from the working classes might want an education, and that rather than panicking that more middle class women are accessing higher education, we should instead examine why more people across the board aren’t accessing university level education.

I find the Conservatives to be a generally depressing political party- as far as they are concerned people deserve everything that ever happens to them, and it isn’t the job of the government to help anyone, because well if they can’t sort it out themselves they don’t deserve the help anyway. They uphold ridiculous ‘traditional’ views of gender roles and seem to think that the only way a relationship or a family can function is if the man (because in Tory land no one is gay and if they are they are very discreet about it and don’t presume to have families!)  has a nice job and works hard to bring in the money and his nice little wife stays at home and bakes and sews and deals with the children. The children will of course, be terribly nice, polite children who do their homework and don’t get into fights or take drugs and only the children of unemployed, drug abusing single mothers who don’t deserve any government help at all, will ever get into a trouble at school or with the police. Anyone outside of those norms is well, nontraditional, and thus threatening the security of ‘the family’ and thus the very fabric of society as we know it. Which means we should all sneer at them and denounce them and come up with special policies to keep them and their kind on their little council estates and living in the poverty they so rightly deserve.

I expected better really. Unrealistic- but seeing as Mr ‘call me Dave’ Cameron and his cronies looked to be seriously considering some family freindly, equality based policies – I was hopefull. Now I’m despondant. It’s just all going to be the same classist, sexist, racist shite as always. So don’t vote for the Conservatives people. Becuase like their American counterparts, they’d cheerfully see us all living back in some unrealistic vision of the 1950′s where men are men and women are unpaid domestic labour and baby machines, kept forcibly uneducated, sexually repressed and slaves to their biology.

Being as I’m British, I haven’t really had much to say in Bloglandia about the American Election. I just wish our elections got as much coverage stateside as the American one gets back here in Blighty!!

That said though, I do have to question exactly what the hell John McCain was thinking when he picked Sarah Palin. I mean really, you would think that being an experienced Statesman (not to mention a POW *rollseyes*) he would have considred that picking a candidate with foreign policy experience, Senate experience and well general ‘has lived outside of Home-state at least for college’ to be important. You would think he would have considered that he is in fact old. And it’s a stressful job running America. Whilst I’m not for a second going to say someone old isn’t capable of running a country (because that’s bollocks and also highly ageist), I am going to say that given his age, he should have considered the likelihood that he MAY pass away whilst in Office and be looking to pick a candidate for the position of Vice President who is capable, at least on paper, of taking over the leadership of the USA at a moments notice and doing a good job of it.

Instead he picks a candidate who has no foreign policy experience and who appears to know very little about ‘truth’, ‘decency’ and ‘working for the good of the people’.

Palins pick is historical- for starters she’s a woman, she’s a working Mother (which is not an easy thing to be). The more I read about her though, the more I am absolutely convinced that either a) John McCain has taken complete leave of his senses and picked an idiot or b) John  McCain has made what he considers to be a shrewd political decision in picking a WOMAN regardless of her abilities or qualifications to be VP on the grounds that it will curry him favour with the scores of women pissed off that Hillary didn’t get the Democrat Nomination and the scores of women pissed off that Obama then chose Joe Biden to be VP.

Actually, I think both a) and b) are true. Thing is McCain hasn’t just picked a woman, he has managed to handpick perfectly a woman who represents just about everything I think is wrong with the Republicans and conservatism in general. She’s anti-choice, pro-abstinence, she hunts, she’s pro-drilling (and lying about it), her morals are distinctly questionable (*see Troopergate, ladies and gentlemen) and to top it all off, we all now know about how her actions meant that rape victims in Wasilla were forced to pay for their own Rape Kits leading to Alaska having to pass a State Law making this illegal.

So erm yeah. Palin = More of the same old Republican shit, dressed up in a package to try and appeal to women and fool the people generally that voting for McCain won’t be another 4 years of the last 8 years of shite.

Don’t do it people please. For the love of any deity/non-deity/the universe at large please vote for the nice people who have a reasonable grasp of economics, a non-isolationist approach to foreign policy and a decent track record of reproductive rights, women’s rights and fighting against VAW.