Women to be taken out of A level politics

The consultation on the new A level politics syllabus runs until 15 December.

Earlier this month the UK government’s Department for Education (DfE) and Ofqual put forward proposals for a revised Politics ‘A’ Level syllabus.

The details of the revised syllabus proposal ‘Politics – Draft AS and A Level subject content’ can be found here.

It doesn’t include feminism.

In the current syllabus there is a section on ‘feminism’, unarguably one of the most important social rights movements that the UK has ever seen, spanning several centuries and continuing to this day.

The current syllabus can be found here.

But in the proposed syllabus the section on feminism has gone, along with the topics of sex/gender, gender equality, patriarchy, the public/private divide and essentialism.

If this proposed syllabus goes ahead, after the next syllabus revision, British sixth form and college students will no longer learn about feminism.

And the women in the syllabus?

Women are still there, but only just.

The Suffragette movement, arguably the most important female rights movement that ever existed, has been neatly squeezed into the ‘pressure groups’ section, along with questions such as ‘whether pressure groups help or hinder society’.

And Mary Wollstonecraft has been fitted into ‘liberalism’ – and is the only female thinker in that section, as well as the only female thinker in the entire proposed politics syllabus at A Level.

That’s despite leading thinkers in conservatism and socialism being cited – they are just all men.

But, as Jaqeulyn Guderley, co-founder of @Stemettes, points out in her blog, that’s 1 x female rights movement and 1 x female thinker in the entire new A Level Politics syllabus – despite the fact that it is 2015 and we are going through a huge feminist revival.

And even if we weren’t, our daughters and granddaughters, sons and grandsons, nieces, nephews, and families need to know about the movements and key female figures that got women to where they are today. The stage of gender equality which we are now at.

This is so important, as Guderley points out.

It is important because we are still striving, still moving forward, fighting against the remaining societal pieces – norms, traditions, prejudices – that stand in the way of complete gender equality. We still have some way to go.

It is 2015.

If we know nothing of key social and political milestones – women gaining the right to matriculate and graduate from many universities in 1920 and gaining the right to vote in 1928 – how can we learn from them and progress?

This syllabus change can’t happen.

The government has a responsibility to everyone, including themselves, to be a progressive force for change; to allow this country and this world to march towards betterment.

This change can’t happen and it mustn’t happen.

Women’s voices are often silenced. We mustn’t let them silence women’s voices from the past too.

What can you do?

The government is still consulting on their decision, so there is still time to change the conclusion.

Visit this consultations page  ‘Further additional GCSE and A Level Subject Consultation’ and counter their proposal. Or go and remark on the proposed changes via the Political Studies Association website link.

You have until 15 December.

You can also show your support for women’s right to have a voice, now and in the past, by signing – and sharing all over your friends’ pages and social media – this petition created by ‘A’ Level politics student June Eric-Udorie and join Jacquelyn Guderley and the many other women who want women to be written into history, not erased from it all together.

And then write to or Tweet the Minister for Women and Equalities and the Secretary of State for Education and ask her what on earth she is doing.

Thanks.