Laura’s new job

CONGRATULATIONS to Frognal and Fitzjohn’s councillor Laura ‘Hot To’ Trott who is moving on up. A smart cookie who is already an aide to Francis Maude in the Cabinet Office, Laura has been recruited by the Prime Minister to be a Downing Street adviser on policies affecting women.

Her appointment apparently sparked some of the less charitable national newspapers to start researching* her past this week, presumably a silly search to find a forgotten wild night at university or an ex-boyfriend or a bad exam grade or something similarly irrelevant which might disqualify her in their eyes from being able to dispense sensible advice.

The Guardian meanwhile suggests Laura’s new post has been created because David Cameron telling female MPs to ‘caaarm down, dear’ during Prime Minister’s Questions and stuff like that is losing him the[insert colour to represent women, pink and grey are already taken] vote.

It’s a broad brief for Laura, but important because let’s face it women are still discriminated against in all walks of life. Some people think the battle against bigotry is at least half won but yeah they’re discriminated against: you don’t have to be all right on to think women are still penalised for having children, penalised for not wearing the right clothes, for getting older, for being the not as good looking as the other ones one in a girl band, penalised for thinking things and so on.

Laura has a lot of things to sort out, bigger challenges than the shopping list below, but she could start with some of the little things to create a culture in the United Kingdom where:

* Women’s football is given as much weight in the popular psyche as men’s football – and so Arsenal are still always considered champions.

* MPs can go to Parliament without being asked: zing, zing, whose boobs are these?

* Female entertainers on TV are not quota’d by screening Miranda Hart and Sarah Millican wherever possible.

* Women’s tennis players do not have to read that they ‘look like a man’ on Twitter every time they play at Wimbledon.

* The word ‘cow’ is reclaimed by female rappers.

* Female baddies don’t have to wear catsuits in films. Nobody robs a bank in high heels.

* Bloggers do not make up nicknames for local politicians like ‘Hot To’ based on the fact that her colleagues think they are stylish and good looking.

* Editors understand you don’t always need a spread about the summer season sunglasses to keep ‘the women’ happy – they’re interested in politics and social affairs too.

* People do not assume that every animal they see in the zoo, every dog they see in the park, every cuddly toy held by a child is a ‘him’ – some of them will be a ‘her’.

* A blonde woman can stand for election as Mayor of London without being called ‘pure environmental viagra’.

* Adoring a misfiring football team is not compared to being in ‘an abusive relationship’.

* Jennifer Aniston is not hired to represent ‘normal woman in a relationship’ in every single film about normal women in relationships.

* We all understand that it is perfectly possible for women to be just as adept as men at: using a hammer, DJing, writing something that isn’t a mush novel and all the cliched battle of the sexes things like parking and cooking on a barbecue.

* Women who do well in business can reach the top without being characterised as being cold-hearted and ruthless, no-nonsense dragons in the boardroom who have stepped on every man in a suit in the world to have got there.

* It’s ok for everyone to have short hair, long hair, ginger hair or no hair.

* And most importantly newspaper columnists do not feel they have liven up the long bits on their pages about serious billiards room politics and Andrew Lansley with short pieces accompanied by a picture of an attractive woman. (scroll down if you click on the link here)

 Any more ideas? I’m sure Cllr Trott will be brainstorming ahead of her new job. Good luck to her.

* Researching = checking to see if she’s on Facebook.