Read our letter.

At the Million Woman March pre-meet on 4 March 2023, hosted by the NFWI, one of our members challenged Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, and Chair of the Labour Party, Anneliese Dodds on Labour’s stance on women. Anneliese Dodds had been invited to give the key note speech on ‘mid-life women‘.

Our member took umbrage at this for the following reason: Keir Starmer (Leader of the Labour Party) has said that is ‘not right’ that only women have a cervix and it is ‘something that should not be said’.

The statement/question was: how can women trust Labour when Keir Starmer can not define what one is.

At this point the Chair of the NFWI said that this statement/question was not relevant.

Anneliese Dodds intervened and replied she was happy to answer the statement and confirmed that Keir Starmer knows what a woman is as he is married to one (her response was more detailed than this, but our member was surprised at her own courage and failed to take notes). This was a direct echo of the Rishi Sunak comment, following the attempts of the Scottish Prison Service to place a convicted rapist in a women’s prison.

Ms Dodds was reluctant to use the word “sex” saying it was rather early in the morning, and at this point our member did shout out “sex is right, we’re oppressed because of sex”. This wasn’t to shout down Ms Dodds, but to re-iterate the point that the conflation of sex and gender is damaging. Women are discriminated against because of their sex, and gender expectations are the tool of the discrimination.

We have written to the Chair of the NFWI as we believe this simple statement is increasingly relevant.

Letter to the Chair of the NFWI – please note we have redacted names and addresses in order to prevent threats to the women involved.

We would like to apologise to Ms Dodds for the misspelling of her name, we have corrected it on the website, but left the letter as sent.

09 June 2023 – Update

We have now had a fuller response – given the points raised in the letter we are not sure how the question was inappropriate no explanation has been given, nor why they were not put in the initial letter. Initially there was silence, the “audible and negative reaction”, the member took this to be shock that some one had dared ask the question, silences are open to interpretation, there was a round of applause when someone shouted that the WI has been trans-inclusive since the 1970s, maybe this was the negative reaction? The question wasn’t about the WI, but the Labour party’s position on women’s rights. We also know women are scared to speak out about this, this is shown time and time again on social media – there is even a movement called “Let Women Speak“.

You refer to your views being stifled at our recent Million Women Rise event. We know
Ann Jones has apologised that you felt this was the case. However, we feel bound to note
that your letter and the information on your website here does not reflect that the question
put to our high-profile speakers was both out of the context* given what the speakers were
covering and received audible and negative reaction from your fellow members in the
room. We do not raise this to be difficult but simply to highlight the importance of ensuring
a fair balance when sharing information on public forums. The forum in question was not
the appropriate place to raise the question*, and it was appropriate for the Chair to clarify
this. However, declining to open a debate up in a forum which was considered not
appropriate at the time is not the same as the organisation actively seeking to stifle debate
or not listening to different views. As members (past and present) we hope you would
recognise that the organisation at all three levels (NFWI/Federation/WI) provides a
multitude of ways and forums where members can share and debate different topics.

* A Violence Against Women forum is not the appropriate place to raise the question that the failure to answer has led to rapists in women’s prisons, paedophiles in women’s refuges and placards at political rallies saying “Decapitate TERFs”. We strongly disagree.

We believe “recollections may vary” is the appropriate response.