Letters From A Tory

Dear Alice Thomson,

Thank you for an excellent opinion piece in today’s Telegraph.  The Queen’s speech gave away little about whether Gordon Brown actually has a ‘vision’ for this country.  In particular, the proposal to introduce more flexible working time for women may not be as grand a plan as it might seem.

One of the fundamental problems in women seeking ‘equality’ is that they wish to be treated the same as men.  That may sound like an odd statement and yet I believe that many people fail to realise how self-defeating this objective is.  Let’s take parental leave, for example.  Women receive approximately 6-12 months maternity leave, depending on their career, whereas men receive two weeks - yes, two weeks.  If women really wanted equality, the only logical solution is either to increase paternity leave to 6-12 months (which would severely damage businesses) or to cut maternity leave to two weeks (which would be incredibly unpopular amongst women).  Equality in this instance would be extremely unwise.

Your point about extending flexible hours hits a similar snag.  If women have a strong desire to be seen as equal to men, they must be treated the same by employers.  Following this train of thought, why would an employer take on significant numbers of employees who can pretty much choose if/when they turn up to work once they have children?  In my opinion, they’d be stupid to.  If equality is so desired, then surely flexible working time should be cut, not expanded.  Now I’m not saying that is the right action to take.  However, if ‘equality’ is to be implemented then women would undoubtedly be the biggest losers and our businesses, as you rightly pointed out, will pick up an enormous tab.

As I said in the ‘Why I write this blog’ section, men and women are not equal.  We are physically and psychologically different and will always be different, so let’s start asking ourselves what is best for society and stop trying to chase this ridiculous notion of treating men and women exactly the same.

With respect,

A.Tory