...The benefit of having women in the cabinet remains to be see for migrants, low-paid, or abused women. For now, it seems as though there is no difference: the powerful look after the powerful, with gender as an afterthought, or a bargaining chip when trying to deflect criticism for cuts that harm women.
The idea that getting more women into position of power automatically benefits women as a whole seems logical, but curtly overlooks competing interests of class, race, and social and economic position. Whilst parliaments and cabinets continue to be predominantly white, pale, and stale, those women who do elbow their way in tend not to be the acutely underrepresented, but those who fit into a similar culture. Conservative’s portrait of Margaret Thatcher, a lowly daughter of a greengrocer, crucially misrepresents the fact that she was a university-educated barrister, and her father was less a grocer, more an entrepreneur and business owner...
- From Lean Out by Dawn Foster
