women's officer - should it be "equality officer"?

tintinr35

The following posts have been taken from the "more elections" thread. I have created a separate thread for this issue as it was one which clearly caused the most debate and I didn't want a thread on the actual elections being high-jacked by a discussion on the relevance of one position within the SU. [/peachypants]

pretty*monster wrote:

The Women's Officer works with the Welfare Vice President for the promotion of women's rights and to campaign on issues of specific concern to women, to organize the widespread availability of personal security alarms and to co-ordinate Women's Week after Christmas.

i think its high time that this position was changed to equality officer as it is in most other uni's. if it was the other way around and there was only a mens officer there would be uproar!

pretty*monster

Yes, equality officer would be better

tintinr35 wrote:

i think its high time that this position was changed to equality officer as it is in most other uni's. if it was the other way around and there was only a mens officer there would be uproar!

*Cries*

I'm so tired of having this argument.

Ok... the argument is: Women are under represented in ucdsu. When was the last time you saw an all female sabat team (answer: never). Even when we do have female sabats they're not in the majority. Also, there are fewer female class reps than male class reps. :eek: Even though 53% of ucd students are female :eek: :eek:

Now, most of us (please, please, please let it be most of us in this day and age) don't think women are underrepresented because they're just useless, or because the women who run always just so happen to run against better qualified men. It's because women are labouring under the wieght of a long (long, long) history that says 'women are not as good as men', though we have made significant gains towards busting this steroetype change takes time and, we're not there yet.

Now, that considered, and since men are thus far always the minority on exec despite being the majority in ucd, the woman officer sits as a voting memeber on exec to aid gender balance.
Additionally she should run women's week every year with the aim of raising women's issues, and getting attitudes changed so thyat someday (someday soon, please, please, please) a women's officer isn't needed and everything will be hunky dorry and equal and lovely.
Unfotunatly, in my time in ucd, the women's week hasn't been run with any noticable feminist or egalitarian slant, it's mostly just craic and fun and games, but I hope to see if I can do something to change that next year...


Replacing the woman's officer with an equality officer is a bad idea because they'd technically have to do the work of the woman's officer, the lgbro, the disability rights officer, and the international students officer. This would be lots of work, far too much for a part-time unpaid student.
So you could replace it with a gender equality officer...but how would that job be different from the woman's officer? Most gender inequalities have women on the losing side (bar paternity rights and similar, buth they're not really massive issues in ucd afaik).

And finally, the union run a men's health week every year, so it's not as uf we're leaving you lads out in the cold.

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

Its discrimination. Fewer women run and the ones that do aren't as good as the men(except you). I don't vote on balls or lack thereof I vote on the person. Gender is not the only deciding factor. Democracy should not be mutalated in some virulent femenist quest for artificial gender equality. Women have the vote: They choose men!

pretty*monster

Yes, equality officer would be better

Firespinner wrote:

Its discrimination. Fewer women run and the ones that do aren't as good as the men(except you). I don't vote on balls or lack thereof I vote on the person. Gender is not the only deciding factor. Democracy should not be mutalated in some virulent femenist quest for artificial gender equality. Women have the vote: They choose men!

It's not discrimination, we have a disability rights officer, a lgbro, an international students officer and an outlying facilties officer. These positions are just as discriminatory. Should we scrap them?

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

pretty*monster wrote:

It's not discrimination, we have a disability rights officer, a lgbro, an international students officer and an outlying facilties officer. These positions are just as discriminatory. Should we scrap them?

Those are all minorities!

scop

pretty*monster wrote:

It's not discrimination, we have a disability rights officer, a lgbro, an international students officer and an outlying facilties officer. These positions are just as discriminatory. Should we scrap them?

I would scrap most of them, if you want equality dont set up organisations based upon the idea that you need extra help.

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

Although tbh im not sure that we need an lgbto we have the lgbt

tintinr35

Apathy, apathy I say!

but in fairness women only ran for three of the positions this year and two lost fair and square, dont go sayin that they lost because they were up against men! u cant win an election if u dont put yourself up for it!! has there ever been a male womens officer???

scop

tintinr35 wrote:

but in fairness women only ran for three of the positions this year and two lost fair and square, dont go sayin that they lost because they were up against men! u cant win an election if u dont put yourself up for it!! has there ever been a male womens officer???

As wrong as I think the position is it would be absurd to put a man in there. However it would perhaps be a good move to make a point.

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

scop wrote:

As wrong as I think the position is it would be absurd to put a man in there. However it would perhaps be a good move to make a point.

Why? I know what women want. I could give out the flour, the ovens, the rohypnol and arrange training classes so they can grow up well and find husbands

tintinr35

Apathy, apathy I say!

Firespinner wrote:

Why? I know what women want. I could give out the flour, the ovens, the rohypnol and arrange training classes so they can grow up well and find husbands

thats just playing into the hands of those who believe that the office is necessary!!
oh ya and women have representation all year around with the W Officer but us fellas just get a week...........ya thats real equality

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

tintinr35 wrote:

thats just playing into the hands of those who believe that the office is necessary!!
oh ya and women have representation all year around with the W Officer but us fellas just get a week...........ya thats real equality

I volunteer to mens officer right now! all i need is beer and hundreds of nubile women. Then I'll take the job.

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

Blush_01 wrote:

I think some of us are a little more enlightened (both male and female) than some people like to believe. Ok, so Firespinner is stirring things (Stephen, I WILL verbally slap you if you make me mad, so watch it.) by saying women are inferior - but then again, he knows it'll get a rise out of you. Plus he's big into annoying people for the sake of it.

I don't suppose you'd believe that I was trying to make the point that we've moved on from those things:D
For me intelligence is the most decisive factor about a person

anonymous_joe

Apathy, apathy I say!

Haha, Steve got in trouble!

You big troll...

He does raise an issue though, which is, why does UCD still need a women's officer? Surely the SU should have done enough to render such a position obsolete?

Scraggs

Everytime I hear 'womens officer' I cringe a little... Really it should be renamed equality officer or something similar.

arbeitsscheuer

Yes, equality officer would be better

Women tend not to have a history of discriminating against the Y-chromosome-replete gender.

Honestly, what are you lot like?:rolleyes:

Sangre

I've thrown my name in the hat for women's officer.
Its ridiculous that a man shouldn't be voted for this position. That would somehow imply that a particular sex is somehow less able for a job than another. Surely sex is irrelevant and you should look to what they can bring to the position.

Anyway my manifesto speaks for the people. Its about time we had a womens officer of the people, for the people.
<snip>

*mod note*I do believe I have stated that there is to be no SU canvassing on this forum. Pity that, isn't it?

Sangre

I've retracted my nomination for womens officer but I will vote for whichever one can implement my former manifesto:


Anyway my manifesto speaks for the people. Its about time we had a womens officer of the people, for the people.

1)For too long have women in UCD been oppressed by the shackles of man. What is this cruel facism I speak of? Well women, thy master is clothes. Women are forced to be burdened by heavy clothes that cover their legs, arms AND chests. Do you know what this means? Women aren't exposed to the sun and become pale and sickly. This means that the poor girls have to resort to poisoning their skin with 'fake tan' to achieve a natural glow. I have decided to liberate women from this cruelty by introducing a new UCD uniform for women which composes of a white two piece bikini. Not only is it comfortable it provides for freedom of moment and allows the skin to breathe!
Of course since certain girls of a higher 'body mass' have a larger skin surface they are much more suspectible to the hazards of sun burn and skin cancer. For this reason the bikini will not be availabe to these independent women for health reasons.

2)For too long have women been subject to male orientated fitness centres. Men filling the gym with their sweaty bodies and leering eyes while swinging their phallic weights. I will introduce equipment for the modern women; foxy boxing, mud wrestling and skip ropes! Now you can let off steam at this male-centric world.

3)Men are just basically ruining the college for everyone. Thinking they own the place and just plain oppressing you. For that reason I propose that all male students be removed from the college (except for me your womens officer of course)

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

tintinr35 wrote:

thats just playing into the hands of those who believe that the office is necessary!!
oh ya and women have representation all year around with the W Officer but us fellas just get a week...........ya thats real equality

Yeh. You used to be able to say that we got the other 51 weeks but now we don't:(

anonymous_joe

Apathy, apathy I say!

Firespinner wrote:

Yeh. You used to be able to say that we got the other 51 weeks but now we don't:(

Oh Steve, you bastion of equality...

In fairness, UCD seems fairly egalitarian as it is.

PhantomBeaker

Firespinner wrote:

Although tbh im not sure that we need an lgbto we have the lgbt

I think there's a very good reason to have the two.

The LGBT soc exist as more of a social forum for the LGBT members of UCD to get to know other members.

The LGBTRO (or LGBTQRO as Tobie Marven declared it to be in her year - ref: UCD schnews, first edition) is one that requires a bit more subtlety, one which would make an auditor's job far more difficult and involved. The LGBTRO takes on more personal cases, and will be the first point of contact for some LGBT students in more delicate positions such as unaccepting parents etc. As a result, the RO would need a close working relationship with other members of exec.

The LGBTRO is also one who can make the voice of minorities held on exec (the LGBTRO is a non-voting member of exec). This is not something an auditor can do, nor should they have to. From a purely practical level, it would mean that auditorship of the LGBT society would open the doors of exec to you - which would place the society in the precarious position of the auditorship being hunted by other politicos on campus in order to get a position on exec. This, incidentally is why we don't have a voting LGBTRO. If it was a voting position, do you think it'd be safe? By being non-voting, we have a voice on exec, but we don't have a vote, which would make it a target for political organisations on campus.

Another responsibility of the LGBTRO is to deal with the press regarding as an SU representative of the LGBT population of UCD. Some make a pig's ear of it (ref: Bernard Cantillon 2001/02, Observer/Irish Times - the LGBTRO 'who shall remain nameless') but that's an issue down to training.

Right, so that's why the LGBTRO is needed seperately from the LGBT soc: If the auditor was to take on these jobs as well as that of running a society, either nobody would take the job, or they'd have to be afforded such special status and training that it'd be a totally irregular position.

Now, as for the issue of the equality officer, my answer is a flat no.

Whatever my feelings are with regard to the women's officer, and its place in the council, I don't consider lumping minorities (and a majority) into a single equality officer to be a good plan. Exec is small enough as it is first off.

Take the minorities that need to be represented: disabilities, lgbt, women's, international and outlying faculties. And now after Pearse's referendum, there's postgrad and another, if memory serves.

Let's talk pre-pearse-referendum for a second, and go with just women's, lgbt, disabilities, international and outlying fac.

That'd mean that to encompass this all in one officer, you'd need a lesbian/bisexual woman who's disabled in some way (I was going to say in a wheelchair, but it can just as easily be blindness, deafness, dyslexia etc) who's not from the republic of Ireland, and is studying something like med.

If any of those needs are not met, those previous needs are not as equally represented as they should be (actually that officer above would just gloss over the trans aspect of the lgbt office - not much of a change from Dave G this year then). And those voices need to be heard by some sort of decision maker, because god knows you can be walked over otherwise (by the way, normally if I was any more laid back I'd be dead - but I'm actually getting quite worked up about this for once).

Also from a purely political (I treat politics as a game - that's why I don't play it any more) point of view an equality officer would be a very bad thing indeed. First question, would it be voting or non-voting? I'm assuming that it's probably going to be voting, because if the positions were to be downgraded to just a single equality office, the only way it'd get through would be if a concession was made to keep it voting - it's a mild stab/gesture at 'fairness'.

But let's say for a second that it wasn't a voting position: you've abolished a few positions that are voting. That means that the potency of each remaining voting position has just increased. Each vote counts for more to swing the decision of exec - that hots up competition for voting positions on exec, and the equality position goes to the wayside except for the occasional person who has a bee in their bonnet about one particular equality issue, but the rest can go to hell (i.e. they may care about gay rights and students, but not know the first thing, or even care, about disability access or the needs of disabled SU members). Not healthy.

If the equality officer did get a vote, you still have an increase in potency of the votes (not as much as if equality was non-voting), which would make it a covetable position for politicos, meaning that real equality issues would fall by the wayside while hacks vie for the position.

Now, my own opinion on women's officer is that I'm not exactly in favour of it. At least unopposed. I've heard of other colleges that do, in fact, have a men's officer as well. And it's not just a pointless position, there are issues that men need to be aware of too - one that was particularly good was that one college in england ran a testicular cancer campaign where they'd give out packets of salted peanuts with the words "check your nuts" on them (it's more of a visual gag, not conducive to text :rolleyes: ). Another underaddressed issue is that men aged from 18 to 25 are the ones most likely to commit suicide. I'm sorry, but you don't see that as an issue. You might see a depression awareness week from a welfare officer, but it's not something that's really out there.

Of course, either's pretty useless to me (at this point, I'll do the useless little coming out thing - my name is Aoife and I'm a transsexual... do a little bit of archive searching and you'll find me posting on other boards about it. Or about programming. Either way, unless you're particularly into one or the other subject, I doubt you'd be particularly smitten by my posts ). The LGBTRO rarely will care about trans issues, and I could just imagine the fun I'd have running for women's officer (not least because I'm not cut out for that game), because I'd imagine no woman's officer even considering it as one of the issues to work on. The closest I saw was Tobie Marven's, but she flaked barely a month into the year, and I definately didn't see anything like she promised on her manifesto about that (one of which was self defense classes for all "female and female-identified students").

Anyway, I can't figure out a good way to close up this little self-righteous rant, but yeah, I don't think that the composition of exec should be touched at all... not in any of the ways people are talking about. The women's officer is there for a reason, as Kate pointed out (I don't agree with all of them, but believe it should be there). Maybe countering it with a men's officer could be a good thing, but certainly not reducing the women's, especially not the entire minority representatives of exec, down to a single.

If you really want to cut the bloat - remove the IT & comms officer. :eek:

Aoife

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

So basically its a gay welfare officer:)

If there is no voting then how is the position obtained?




ps: I'm familiar with l,b,g,and t but whats a q? q=questionable?

pretty*monster

Yes, equality officer would be better

Q for queer m'dear.

I believe (though I'm open to correction) that in the context Tobie used it represents the most flexible definition of 'queer', i.e. a lable fore any person or group who deems themseleves to be oppressed (or at least, not represented by) by the heteronormativity of mainstream culture.


Or it could have been Q for questioning, sometime's the Q is for questioning... though knowing Tobie I'd gamble on Queer... though I wouldn't bet the house, I'm noy psychic and I weren't around then.

Just to confuse you: LGBU, LGBTI LGBTT LGBTA and FABGLITTER
(ok, I wikied the last one, but it ain't made up).

In conclusion: Sexuality is tricky and I am now off topic

tintinr35

Apathy, apathy I say!

its not that i really feel that hard done by or anything but it is discrimination to have a womens officer and not a mens officer......jus my opinion tho!

why not a gender equality officer???? just to deal with the current issues that a womens officer has to and the relevant one's for men.

it would be stupid to lump in any other office with it!

Samos

Apathy, apathy I say!

tintinr35 wrote:

but it is discrimination to have a womens officer and not a mens officer!

Is it discrimination to have a disabled rights officer and LGBRO and not an "abled rights officer", or a "heterosexual rights officer"?

How about having two welfare officers, one of which is female and the other male? Each would have a remit to his/her particular gender and be of assistance to those who avoided going to the welfare officer becuase he/she was of the "wrong" gender. As well as this the work load would be split up and allow a more effective service.

Larien

okay, i know this is possibly a weird stance for a girl...but i wouldn't have a problem with having an equality officer instead of a women's officer. i think the fact that we have a women's officer actually sends the wrong message. it's basically saying that we don't have the ability to stand up for our own rights, but need someone to do it for us. i've personally never had any problems in ucd because of my gender, but if i did i'd prefer to sort it out myself than to go to a women's officer. i'd much prefer to assert my own rights as a woman, than to have them handed down to me by someone else. Women have fought long and hard for equality and i don't think having a women's officer was quite what they envisaged. they would have preferred that it wasn't necessary.

But i do understand what pretty*monster is saying. maybe we're just not there yet...but i don't think we ever will be as long as there are positions like that being created.

Dave!

Apathy, apathy I say!

Pointless position, no need for bra-burning in this day and age -- you don't need testicles to reach a high position of employment, power, or whatever, anymore.

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

Samos wrote:

Is it discrimination to have a disabled rights officer and LGBRO and not an "abled rights officer", or a "heterosexual rights officer"?

Like I said earlier they are minorities. Women are the majority, so really it is the tyranny of the majority.

tintinr35

Apathy, apathy I say!

Firespinner wrote:

Like I said earlier they are minorities. Women are the majority, so really it is the tyranny of the majority.

i wouldnt take such a "machiavellian" (or was it mills, anyway) position tyranny of the majoriy and all that.
but disabled people and people of different sexual orientation's do need representation because they are in a minority and unfortunatly are somtimes discriminated against, but what would be wrong with a gender equality officer to ensure there is no male/female discrimination within the college!

The_Minister

Apathy, apathy I say!

tintinr35 wrote:

i wouldnt take such a "machiavellian" (or was it mills, anyway) position tyranny of the majoriy

I assure you Machievelli never even considered the majority of people a hinderence.

tintinr35

Apathy, apathy I say!

ud think id know that after 3 years into a politics degree