Blog by Beatrice Travis, Political Consultant for Children, Education, and Skills
Background
When the new Government announced the ministerial appointments and their roles in the Department for Education, stakeholders were surprised to find that Secretary of State for Education, Bridgit Phillipson, would also be Minister of Women and Equalities. As the equalities policy sits at the cabinet level with Philipson, Anneliese Dodds is listed as a DfE minister for Women and Equalities as well. Furthermore, the new Women and Equalities unit consists of several DfE ministers in addition to Phillipson and Dodds, including Skills Minister Jacqui Smith, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education Seem Malhotra, and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education Dame Nia Giffith DBE.
The Women and Equalities portfolio being under the DfE is a move intended to create a more integrated approach to equality and diversity issues, particularly regarding gender equality. By linking these responsibilities with education, the Government aims to address systemic inequalities from an early stage, particularly in schools and educational institutions. The move is designed to help ensure that gender and equality considerations are embedded in education policy, with the hope of influencing long-term societal change through improved educational outcomes for underrepresented or disadvantaged groups.
It should also allow for more streamlined policymaking where issues such as gender pay gaps, representation, and equal opportunities can be tied to educational reforms, providing a more cohesive framework for tackling inequalities across various sectors.
Additionally, the role of the Women and Equalities Unit will be mainly to break down barriers, boost opportunity and ensure that equality is “at the heart of every mission.” The unit has established key areas of equality being in education, social security, children and young people, and international development.
Additional key priorities include:
- strengthening the legal duty for employers to create and maintain working conditions free from harassment
- enshrining in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minority people and disabled people
- delivering a full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices
- championing the rights of disabled people
- focusing on socio-economic disparities
While many will see the shift of creating crossover between the DfE and Women and Equalities, from a feminist perspective, this may be problematic. This blog post will examine the merging of the Women and Equalities brief into the Department for Education through a critical feminist theory lens, analysing the implications this shift may have on women across the nation.
Feminist Theory Explainer
Feminist theory in International Relations (IR) emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, challenging the traditionally male-dominated discipline. It began as part of a broader feminist movement that sought to critique how mainstream international relations theories, such as realism and liberalism, overlooked the role of gender and marginalised women’s perspectives in global politics.
Feminist theory aims to bring gender analysis to the forefront of global relations, exposing the ways in which international political processes, such as war, trade, and diplomacy, are deeply gendered. By foregrounding issues such as gendered violence, the role of women in peacebuilding, and the intersection of race, class, and sexuality with global power structures, feminist IR challenges existing hierarchies and seeks to make global politics more inclusive and equitable.
Women and Children
Historically, women and children have been grouped together in critical settings, arguably creating the illusion that women are defenseless, weak, and in need of teaching and nurturing the same that children are. By grouping women and equalities into the DfE, the Government may risk accidentally encouraging this unconscious bias towards women across the UK.
In a 2021 article by Melissa Hogenboom at the BBC on gender biases, it states that “neuroscientist and author Gina Rippon of Aston University explains, the fact that we live in a gendered world itself creates a gendered brain.” She goes on to say that this gendered brain facilitates the rhetoric that men are naturally violent and stronger, and that women are naturally submissive. It should not be misunderstood, however, that women and children are certainly among the most vulnerable populations in the world, suffering the most from illness, poverty, disparity, and especially in war-torn societies. However, the grouping of women and children is often used to emphasise vulnerability, but ultimately leads to counterproductive reduction of women to “victims”, and according to political scientist Maud Eduards, “the idealisation does not protect women from violence, but on the contrary makes them more vulnerable”. It not only undermines the roles of women in shaping peace, conflict resolution, and security, but also acts as a rhetorical device used by aggressors to legitimise conflict and aggression.
Additionally, this framing could obscure the unique and specific forms of violence and harm experienced by women and children. Additionally, academic Patricia Viera wrote that “women are associated with children because they are, in fact, regarded as children… Their evacuation from the theatres of devastation and war goes hand in hand with the evisceration of their political agency”. This statement from Viera reiterates that women’s involvement in shaping or responding to political events is undermined through their association with children, reinforcing traditional gender hierarchies and limiting their role to passive victims rather than active agents.
Ultimately, while the integration of the Women and Equalities brief into the DfE may seem like a logical step towards embedding gender equality within the fabric of educational policy, it is crucial to consider the unintended consequences of such a move through a variety of lenses to gain a full scope of the decision. By situating women’s issues within the DfE, there is a risk of reinforcing long-standing societal biases that link women to children, reinforcing narratives of vulnerability and passivity.
Feminist theory reminds us of the importance of recognising women as active agents of change, not merely passive recipients of protection. To achieve true equality, policymakers must remain vigilant to the nuanced ways in which gender is constructed and maintained, ensuring that political reforms do not perpetuate the very inequalities they seek to dismantle. It is only by addressing these unconscious biases that we can hope to create a future where equality is not merely a policy goal but a lived reality for all.