Woman's Officer
During my time at Uni, I was quite involved in the Student Union. As such I was the Special Needs Officer, and thus sat on the Student Council. One of the positions we had, then got rid of and then restored, was Woman’s Officer (WO). I knew the person who filled the post. She left Uni half way thru her second year, and from there the post went from vacant to abolished. Her absences, as WO went unnoticed, her absence as a friend was very much noticed. On the whole every single facet of the WO position was well cover by the Union and the Uni itself.
All was well, until Halla (as that is her name) came on to the scene and won the election, to become President of the Student Union. She started to moan that all the mail that was being address to the WO was being dumped on her, although she did reveal that she had stumbled across it and thought it needed someone’s attention etc etc. Thus her campaign started. I would like to add at this point a couple of factoids. First the male to female ration on the student body was something like 7:1 (and from what my female friends said the pickings were still slim), the Union Had a ratio of about 1:1 within officers, volunteers and the executive (of 4 possible execs positions, during my time there, 2 were always female) , the staff were predominately females. I would like to add that the Advice & Support Centre was run by an all-woman staff and ranked one of the best in the country. They did an amazing job. So as you can see within the Student Union, women were very well represented, disproportional to the actual ratios of the student body.
This was not enough for Halla. She kicked up a fuss and put forward a motion for the following. The WO position to be reinstated, that only woman would be allowed to vote for this position (no other post had this honour i.e. all other post were open to the whole student body to vote for), that a Women’s Advisory Group be created, which had it’s own extended budget, only women could join, only women could vote in and was autonomous (again no other position or group had this).
During this time I polled my female friends, most of whom asked two things, “Is there a Men’s Officer?” and “Why do we need a Women’s Officer?”
When it was put to the vote only 2 people (me and someone else) voted against it, however as it needed to be ratified over the summer before it came into effect, the incoming exec stripped it out as most it, as it contravened our bye-laws. So basically we got our old WO position back….
Where is the sexism in all this, Halla, was not adverse to wearing low cut down, leaving forward, batting her eyes and asked for something, all the while complaining that women were not treated fairly blah blah.
Oh and during this, she got two female students to voice their need for a WO. Both worked at the Union. One complained that something or other wasn’t available, when I pointed out all she needed to do was go to the Advice & Support Centre and they could help her. Her response was “Oh I went there they weren’t very good” (which I believe to be bull shit) so I pointed out that she could have used the Uni’s Student Advice Centre (also mainly women and from my personal experiences wonderful and helpful) her response was “Oh I didn’t know it was there till last week”. So what she needed must have been a very pressing matter…. The other one found out she could claim for a taxi home from work (she lived on campus a whole 7 minute walk home), what annoyed people was the fact she tried to claim one then the next night she was in as punter got drunk and walked home alone.

So Yeah. Who needs a WO. We didn’t.


StyX
(StyX is staring at you, yes YOU!!!, Wed 30 Dec 2009, 0:34, Reply)