Gender Neutral Uniform at Priory School

The headmaster of the Priory School reports that there has been negative public comment about schoolgirls’ short skirts – and an increase in students claiming to be ‘gender-fluid’. He plans to kill two birds with one stone by making all students wear trousers rather than skirts. Predictably, there has been complaint, because, as always, it is female dress being restricted.

There’s no doubt that shortened school skirts constrain free movement and expose girls to sexual comment, so change is needed. However, schools seem to get themselves into a needless twist over uniform, placating one interest group only to offend or hurt another. In the melee, children’s – and especially girls’ – real interests are often lost.

Some state schools have approved a uniform hijab for pre-pubescent girls.  A decision made to placate one group of ultra orthodox parents, has appalled others, who rightly say it sexualises very young girls.

The intention of uniform should surely be to ensure all children are neatly and comfortably dressed, their bodies neither sexualised nor exposed to insult, humiliation or embarrassment and free to play, exercise and excel at sport.

I would suggest local schools give all children a choice of knee-length culottes or ankle-length trousers, provided that neither are too tight and both allow free movement. Culottes look like skirts, but cannot ride up or easily be shortened. This would allow girls free movement, protecting them from harassment – and the public from embarrassment – while giving boys access to cooler clothing in the summer.

Whatever schools do, they need to keep their focus on all children’s equal right to education, not the lobbying of interest groups.

The Manchester Bomb was an Attack on Girls

Twenty two people died in Manchester and 120 were injured when suicide bomber Salman Abedi blew himself up at an Arianna Grande concert packed with children and young people. Given that the former teenage actor is an idol of young teenage girls, it is likely that the bomber understood very well that most of the victims would be very young and female.

It may be that, as some commentators have said, that the bomber simply didn’t care that the victims were children, but went for soft targets at an event with little security. Or that he deliberately aimed to attack children, knowing the distress and terror this would create. Few have acknowledged the probability that this was a deliberate attack on girls.
Journalists and politicians who had no difficulty describing the 2016 Orlando attack as an assault on LGBT people, struggle to identify the Manchester bombing as a targeted hate crime, aimed not at ‘children’ but at girls. Yet this attack is entirely consistent with previous evidence of targeted attack against females. In 2004, young islamists were recorded by British police while discussing a possible attack on a London nightclub. The men commented that no one could “turn round and say ‘Oh, they were innocent’, those slags dancing around”. The journalist James Harkin has pointed out that In 2007, a car bomb outside Tiger Tiger nightclub in London’s Piccadilly “seems to have been designed to coincide with a ‘ladies’ night’ at the venue, in which the perpetrators might have hoped to kill and maim scantily clad young women drinking alcohol.”

ISIS, the extremist Islamist organisation that has claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, has many similarities to other Jihadi groups such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra (now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) and Boko Haram. Their adherents are islamist Sunni Muslims, influenced by Salafism, a sectarian system of thought rooted in Saudi Wahhabism. Funded by the Saudi government this ideology is now deeply embedded in British mosques and has taken root in universities, museums, libraries and schools. At its heart is the forced subordination of women and girls.

The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, like Boko Haram in Nigeria, regularly attack girls, often in their schools, subjecting them to fire bombs, rape, kidnap and murder. The most famous victim of this sort of attack was Malala Yousafzai, who was shot on a school bus in Pakistan because she campaigned for girls’ education. Malala rejected the highly confined role conservative sharia law permits to women and in so doing asserted her right to freedom and self-determination. She was supported in her free choice by her loving parents – as were the teenage girls attending the Arianna Grande concert – but to Salafist jihadis this would make no difference.

While young men like Abedi treat the women of their own Muslim communities with contempt, they reserve their deepest loathing for rebellious women and those in particular who are ‘apostate’ or non-muslim. They view them, as the journalist Sarah Vine puts it, as “barely human, the lowest of the low, for whom no punishment or suffering can ever be enough.” She says “We see this in the treatment of young Nigerian schoolgirls captured by Boko Haram and sold into sexual slavery; we see this in the mass rape of Yazidi women by Islamic State guerrillas; we’ve even seen it in our own country, in the systematic sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale by so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim men who wrap their own daughters in the hijab, while simultaneously defiling other parents’ children”.

Politicians have for decades sacrificed young Muslim girls on the altar of multiculturalism, allowing powerful community leaders and domestic tyrants to deny girls equal rights to inheritance, freedom and even control of their own fertility. They have allowed generations of boys to grow up believing that they have a right to control female lives and domestic labour – whether this takes the form of untrammelled sexual access to obedient wives and control of their children or the sexual abuse of White girls from Rochdale, Christian schoolgirls from Nigeria or Yazidis from Sinjar.

A young unveiled Muslim woman on Question Time (25th May 2017) spoke out against Wahhabism in British mosques, calling for Saudi funding to be stopped. This brave young woman was supported by panelist Nazir Afzal, the former Crown Prosecutor of the North East of England who had a key role in ensuring that the organised abuse of white working class girls by groups of Pakistani-origin men, was eventually prosecuted.
These brave Muslims, like the Amadiyha Muslim women who stood on Westminster Bridge in protest against the murderous violence of Khalid Masood, deserve our respect, support and gratitude.

Our Construction, Technical and Engineering Industries Need Women Workers

Note: The following article was first published in the Argus 4th February 2017

There is a new ‘Engineering Barbie’ doll. It’s supposed to encourage small girls to develop their mechanical and design skills. In fact, it encourages them to build washing machines, or shoe and jewellery racks, or design a chromotography dress.

Dame Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge University said the Barbie reinforced outdated stereotypes. She applauded efforts to interest girls in engineering, but deplored the “message to boys that they don’t need to get involved with washing”.

Jo Jawers, for campaign group Let Toys Be Toys, agreed: “While the doll is a step in the right direction it’s a real shame the things the girls can build relate to domestic chores while boys get the …… rest of the world. Arguably the washing machine is the greatest invention of the 20th century but its not a women’s machine.”

Barbie’s creators have learned little. In 2014, public outcry forced the then Barbie manufacturer Mattel to withdraw the book I Can Be A Computer Engineer. It showed Barbie (wearing a pink heart-shaped flash drive on her necklace) dependent on men’s help. Barbie says: “I’m designing a game that shows kids how computers work … You can make a robot puppy do cute tricks….” adding “I’m only creating the design ideas … I’ll need Steven and Brian’s help to turn it into a real game!”. She crashes her computer and needs their help to fix it.

According to the Social Market Foundation, UK science, technology, research, engineering and maths (STEM) positions are expected to grow at double the rate of other occupations, creating 142,000 extra jobs over the next few years. Women workers are needed, but remain chronically under-represented, at just 14.4% of the STEM workforce.

A 2015 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found girls lack the confidence to pursue high-paid careers in science and technology, despite their school results being as good as, or better than, those of boys.

Most schoolgirls do not choose, or are discouraged, from studying STEM subjects. Yet 2015 GCSE STEM results show girls did better than boys – measured as the proportion of each attaining A* and A grades. Even when they have excelled in GSCEs, few girls study STEM subjects at A Level.

Only 20 per cent of A-level students studying Physics are female despite the fact that girls who do study physics at A-level outperform boys. Shockingly, in 2011, over 50 per cent of secondary schools had no girls studying A-level physics.

There have been improvements at a professional level, but, according to the WISE Campaign, only one in 10 of STEM managers are female. In Britain, women make up just 8.2% of engineering professionals and just 17.5% of ICT professionals. The STEM industries employing the lowest proportion of women are mining and quarrying (14%) and crucially, construction (12%). Though 2015 GCSE results in Construction show that 100% of girls entered achieved an A* to C grade, only a tiny number enter construction apprenticeships,. This matters when both Government and Opposition are promising investment in building projects, while warning of skills shortages.

Though more females now enter apprenticeships than men, they are less likely than men to gain well-paid (or any) further employment. Traditionally male-dominated sectors are better paid, more secure and have better career prospects.

The Young Women’s Trust (YWT) 2016 report, Making Apprenticeships Work for Young Women, confirmed that extreme gender segregation is the major problem. For every female engineering apprentice there are 25 male apprentices. In the construction industry, the ratio is 1 to 56, while in plumbing, it is 1 to 74.

Girls continue to be directed into low-paid traditional ‘female’ employment. Those attempting to enter non-traditional trades report discrimination and harassment. One young woman quoted in the YWT Report left an apprenticeship in construction, due to the sexism and discrimination she faced. Her unsupportive course coordinator called the harassment “banter”, telling her not to “be emotional”.

The UK economy needs skilled labour. In previous years, successive governments chose to rely upon migrant male labour rather than train its own workers. Now the Government has given priority to developing apprenticeships, but has done little to ensure equal access to jobs and training for females. Nor has it put in place schemes to allow retraining and ‘second careers’ for either sex.

The Government’s recent proposals to develop “builders’ universities” though welcome, raise concerns. Unless politicians take steps to confront sexist discrimination and guarantee equal access to training and jobs, new educational initiatives will simply reinforce old weaknesses – and widen the gross inequalities of income between women and men.

The Sussex Boys

Where are they now,
Our swaggering sons
Our likely lads?
Shouldering black flags and guns
In Syria and Iraq.

Hard to think
They took the bus
Wrote GCSEs
And drank in parks,
then staggered back.

Did they use stones to kill
Or buy girls cheap in a market place
To rape another day?
These sad-faced dead-eyed boys,
With mobile phones and southern ways

Some are dead –
Did they die alone?
Did they call for their mothers
As it’s said
real soldiers do?

Or curse some bastard father
Safe at home.

Violent Domestic violence offenders should always be prosecuted

This post was first published on 27th February, 2016 by brightonpoliticsblogger

Perpetrators of domestic violence in West Sussex are to be offered a 10 month programme to change their behaviour at a time when victims’ services are being slashed.

It concerns me that high-risk abusers will be diverted from the criminal justice system at a time when domestic homicide and other forms of violence against women are on the increase. And that failures in the criminal justice system are being blamed on victims’ reluctance to give evidence. In fact, more women would give evidence if offered the opportunity and better support.

It’s terrifying and exhausting for victims of serial attacks to bear the burden of a prosecution, especially at a time when they may be coping with the threat of further abuse and supporting traumatised children, sometimes in insecure accommodation. They shouldn’t have to, because this isn’t a private matter. Domestic violence is closely associated with homicide, child abuse, sexual assault and other criminal behaviour and social problems. It costs our country billions. It’s in the public interest to pursue prosecution.

Police should be required to pursue prosecutions without relying entirely on adult victims, gathering evidence using every means at their disposal and protecting the victims at all times. The late Ellen Pence, founder of the effective ‘Duluth Model’ in the USA – which by collaborative inter-agency working cut domestic homicides in Duluth to almost none – urged police to investigate every domestic incident, including the first, “as if it were a homicide” and prosecute even ‘minor’ offences. She advocated treatment for perpetrators, but only following prosecution – and after protection and support for victims and child witnesses was in place.

Bishop Bell and the Church of England

I’ve been saddened to see so many people rush to defend the reputation of Bishop Bell – and by implication suggest the elderly woman who accused him of child sexual abuse is a liar. The Church of England has accepted that the abuse took place and given its previous determination to keep abuse by its clergy under wraps, I suspect the evidence is compelling. I was pleased that Bishop Warner apologised for the abuse and defended the alleged victim from criticism.

In respect of prominent abusers, the modern Church of England has done better than the Church of Rome. Eric Gill, the famous artist and Roman Catholic adult convert was the son of a Church of England clergyman, also from Chichester. Over many years, Gill sexually abused his sisters, servants and then his daughters, socially isolating the girls while using them as models for semi-erotic religious art. The abuse is catalogued in his own diaries, but if you visit the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral, where his famous Stations of the Cross take pride of place and are publicised in the Cathedral shop, there’s no mention of his history or his victims’ exploitation.

The Churches’ responsibility – and our own, whether we have faith or none – must be to protect the living, defend the powerless (especially children) and treat survivors with compassion. This being the case, Chichester Diocese should, out of respect to all clergy victims, fulfil its promise to change the name of Bishop Bell House – and ensure people understand its past actions and current position regarding child protection and clergy abuse.

First Prosecution for FGM poses a Challenge for Brighton and Hove and Sussex Police

Here in Brighton & Hove we have a significant and growing number of immigrant communities likely to have experienced FGM. I recently submitted Freedom of Information requests to both Sussex Police and Brighton & Hove Council , asking whether they had been involved in investigations of suspected FGM, what policies and arrangements for training they had in place and whether any steps had been taken to inform the public and support victims. 

Brighton & Hove Council gave a fairly comprehensive reply admitting there had been no joint child protection investigations with the police, that they have never taken legal steps to safeguard adults vulnerable to FGM and that they have no specific policies about FGM nor any specific strategy for professional training, though they say there is an “shared understanding” amongst professionals that this should be treated as a child protection matter. They also say that their training and communications strategies in respect of domestic violence are being reviewed and will address FGM.

Given the seriousness of the issue, there was a worrying complacency and lack of urgency in this response – but it was far better than the reply I received from Sussex Police, who curtly refused my request for information – on the basis that the cost of providing information was “above the amount to which we are legally required to respond”. They wrote “It is estimated that it would cost in excess of 18 staff hours to comply” because the information is “not held in a centrally collated or retrievable format” .

Frankly, eighteen staff hours does not seem much to me, when the issue to be addressed is the abject failure of the criminal justice system and the wider state to uphold the law and protect vulnerable children and adults from torture.

 

First Prosecutions for FGM

The 21st March 2014 was a great day for women – and a great day for the country. 

 Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, announced that the first prosecution for FGM is to go ahead – and that others are under consideration. A male doctor at the Whittington Hospital has been charged – along with another man who allegedly encouraged him. It seems the alleged ‘operation’ took place at the hospital and was a re-infibulation, which is the procedure whereby the women’s vulva, which has previously been mutilated, is sewn up again after childbirth. 

 I talked with my daughter about FGM. She asked me what it actually done to the genitalia and how old the victims generally are. I would have spared her the details if I could. The look of horror on her face was distressing. 

It was over 30 years that I read about FGM in a book by Mary Daly called Gyn/Ecology, which was published in 1978. Her account of the practice, its history, its function in maintaining the subordination of women and the then refusal of international bodies to address the issue, remains one of the most powerful I have ever read – though since then I have heard and read many other horrifying accounts by brave campaigners who have themselves been victims of FGM. 

I vividly remember my own feelings of disbelief and fear, horror and rage when I learned of a practice that tortured and tortures so many small girls and women, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. It never occurred to me then that the practice might not just come to Britain, but be allowed to flourish by authorities prepared to sacrifice the rights of women and girls on the altar of multiculturalism – who spoke of ‘diversity’, but were too misogynistic and racist to care that large numbers of immigrant women were being subjected to a practice the UN now considers to be torture.

The Foundation for Women’s Health, Research and Development – FORWARD – was founded in 1983 by the remarkable campaigner Efua Dorkenoo to campaign against FGM. Largely as a result of FORWARD’s work, the practice became illegal in the UK in 1985. In 2003 the Female Genital Mutilation Act, in theory at least, strengthened the law, raising the maximum penalty from five to 14 years in prison and making it an offence for UK nationals or permanent UK residents to carry out FGM abroad even in countries where it is legal. However, this did the victims little good, for over the last 30 years there have been no prosecutions at all. This is despite the fact that there are reported to have been more than 140 referrals to police in the past four years alone.

Some estimates suggest there are 24,000 girls at risk of FGM (FORWARD gives a figure of 6,500 girls a year), while many thousands of women in the UK suffer the appalling effects of the procedure. A recent survey of women referred to 31 NHS hospital trusts in London alone revealed that over a 4 year period almost 4,000 women had presented with FGM. Until recently there was no obligation on health professionals to record such information, so the likelihood is that it is seriously under-reported. In addition, it is feared that many women are unable to seek medical help.

The Home Office minister James Brokenshire said the government had “stepped up its response” to “take this crime out of the shadows” and give victims the confidence to come forward. This is welcome, but very long overdue. 

Efua Dorkenoo could hardly contain her happiness when interviewed about the prosecution. She said she felt like she was on the top of a mountain. However, she warned   “Getting a prosecution after so long is fantastic and a key part of ending FGM. A prosecution will send out a strong message that FGM will not be tolerated. However, we also need to ensure that girls at risk are urgently protected; survivors need to be empowered and given the physical, psychological and emotional support they need to speak out.

“Eliminating FGM means having a ‘joined-up’ approach where everyone is working together. Front line professionals and others in regular contact with children need to know what their roles and responsibilities are in relation to reporting and safeguarding. The campaign is moving so quickly now we cannot afford to lose momentum. We need to ensure that every single girl is protected.”

Girls’ Unemployment – Do Politicians Care?

In a recent interview with journalist Mary Riddell, Labour’s shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said the UK schools system is failing white British boys. He also suggested that immigration from the EU accession states has particularly damaged them.

Hunt admitted that Labour under Tony Blair “did not focus on vocational education and the FE [further education] sector to the degree that (it) should have done” adding “from 1997 to 2007, there was a failure to recognise the significance of technical education.”

He told Mary Riddell “What we can do in the education sphere is to [show] that there is a growing issue of white British boys not getting the education they want.” When she asked whether he “sees them as the cohort most failed by a migrant influx”. He replied “None of this is to say there isn’t more work to do with black Afro-Caribbean boys and in urban areas. But we do know … there is a strand of low-attaining, not necessarily poor, boys in suburban coastal districts – …..– who are not being challenged or served effectively enough by the education system. It doesn’t matter that these are white boys. It’s not about the colour of their skin. It is a grouping that we know we have an issue with.”

What is remarkable about this – apart from the belated recognition that New Labour did a disservice to Britain’s children by neglecting technological education – is Hunt’s indifference to the needs of girls. The lives and job prospects of working class girls, in particular, have been damaged as much as, or more than, those of boys – and girls’ long term financial prospects are far worse. In addition, these young girls experience discrimination, prejudice and sexist bullying and harassment in schools and places of training and work, which by and large do not afflict white boys.

Tristram Hunt ignores evidence that women and girls are being hardest hit by current economic policies. He fails to mention that women’s traditional public-sector sources of employment are being slashed, while wages in the private sector are driven down by low-paid immigrant labour and government failure to enforce the minimum wage – especially in the care sector, where many jobs are now only advertised abroad.

Hunt makes no reference to last November’s report by Prof John Perkins, chief scientific adviser to the Department for Business, which revealed that less than 10% of Britain’s engineers are women – the lowest figure of all European countries. Prof Perkins stressed that more must be done to encourage British schoolgirls to take qualifications that will lead to engineering jobs. Vince Cable, the UK Business Secretary, warned that many companies had a “psychological barrier” against women becoming engineers, saying: “Half of all state schools don’t have a single girl doing physics. We are only tapping half the population”. He said this would be an “enormous problem for years to come”.

Hunt recognises disillusionment in unemployed young men. He would do well to note recent research by the Princes Trust, based on 2,161 interviews, which reveals that one in three young women – twice as many as their male counterparts – have thought about committing suicide, while almost as many have self-harmed. The Trust found that 54% of women aged 16 to 25 have experienced feelings of self-loathing, with one in six having been prescribed anti-depressants. They are also significantly more likely to suffer panic attacks and feelings of inferiority than men their age. Almost one in five young women have faced mental health problems as a direct result of being unemployed, while one in four believe they have “no talent”. They are also more likely to feel unhappy with their employment prospects. In almost every area, young women were more likely to suffer issues with their wellbeing than men. Around 30% of the girls questioned said they were unhappy with their mental health and were significantly more likely to feel like a failure if they asked for help.

The Trust’s chief executive Martina Milburn said: “Unemployment is driving young people to despair, with many facing significant mental health problems – particularly young women.”

The response from both government and Labour has been deafening silence. Labour’s only declared large scale plans for job expansion involve a proposed housebuilding programme with apprenticeship schemes, which, unless there are radical changes in policy, will largely benefit unemployed British boys and young men. Any vacancies are likely to be filled by male workers from abroad.

This being the case, we might have hoped for a Labour strategy to retrain British girls and women in non-traditional skills – committing a future Labour government to ensure that at least 50% of new apprenticeships are reserved for females and supporting them in countering sexism and harassment in training schemes and the workplace. However, there’s no evidence of this.

Given the care crisis which faces the nation, and the fact that thousands of older women workers lose jobs or work-hours because of caring responsibilities, we might have hoped for Labour to invest in high quality care facilities for elders and those with dementia – and re-instate decent qualifications and training for basic nursing and care staff – thus creating jobs and allowing older carers to remain in work. Again, nothing like this seems to be under consideration. Instead, unscrupulous agencies recruit poorly trained foreign staff with little English as cheap labour to work with vulnerable elders.

Recent governments have cynically abandoned working class and non-academic girls to training for non-existent or low paid beauty and child care jobs rather than helping them acquire better paid skills and trades. Even the highly-respected nursing apprenticeship, the SEN Qualification – a lifeline for unqualified female school-leavers – was taken from them in the drive to graduate professionalism.

In respect of British girls and women, Ed Miliband has yet to show that a government under his control would be significantly different from its predecessors.

No More Condoms on Carrots

Tim Loughton, MP for Shoreham and West Worthing and former Children’s Minister, is backing a campaign for sex and relationships education (SRE). 

He wrote: “The laissez-faire approach to SRE is not working and the DfE (Department for Education) needs to get a grip…. We need much more about the relationship bit of SRE not just the mechanics of sex. We should not shy away from a values based approach which induces self-respect and confidence in impressionable teenagers and develops their emotional intelligence to resist being pressured into risky behaviour.”

I was heartened to read this. Young people have been let down by both the Coalition government, which has failed to introduce comprehensive sex and relationships education, and the Labour party which now supports SRE, but didn’t introduce it when in government. 

Its not surprising there’s been disagreement about SRE. It’s impossible to frame a coherent sex education curriculum without agreement about the age of consent and sexual equality – and for many years, despite the uncompromising nature of the law, our society has been unclear about these issues. We have found it easier to campaign to lower the age of male homosexual consent, than to acknowledge that the heterosexual age of consent has for decades failed to protect girls. 

There is now far greater awareness of the modern sexualisation of childhood, of forced marriage, and – following the Rochdale and Saville scandals – of the systematic abuse of many adolescent girls by older males. However, since the mid 1980s successive governments permitted a culture of non-intervention in abusive early ‘relationships’ – and the effects of this remain. 

For decades, police and social services failed to protect teenage girls in particular, treating 13 as the de facto age of consent, putting neglected youngsters at risk of sexual exploitation by older and adult males and vulnerable teenage mothers at the mercy of abusive older men. 

Over these years, journalists and politicians of the right stigmatised and failed to protect teenage mothers, blaming them for raising ‘feral children’ while obsessing about the need for male role models and increased contact with estranged fathers – failing to realise that these ‘role models’ were sometimes deeply abusive.

Left politicians and ‘progressives’ romanticised sexual activity in vulnerable young people, habitually referring to – and treating – young girls as “young women”. Professionals focussed on vulnerable young people’s “right” to sexual activity rather than their safety, often ignoring their duty to protect young people and failing to question how they had become sexually active, whether they were aware of their right to refuse or possessed any power to do so. 

While the right promoted marriage, resisted attempts to challenge sexist attitudes and blamed feminism for everything from boys’ bad behaviour and poor exam results to the breakdown of the family, the left told young people they should begin sexual activity when “ready”, failed to address sexist bullying and harassment of school girls and – with a few honourable exceptions – had no real strategy to combat teenage pregnancy other than to provide information on contraception and abortion. 

For years, politicians lacked the vision and courage to address the sexism and attitudes of contempt which poison social relationships in school and elsewhere. They refused to make religious schools teach a curriculum based on sexual equality – and they failed to address a history syllabus which, shamefully, could include a grotesque GCSE module on Jack the Ripper’s serial butchery of prostitutes, but left children ignorant of the heroic campaign by Victorian reformer Josephine Butler to end child prostitution by raising the female age of consent from 12 to 16. 

Now, however, things are changing. Politicians have started to address the exploitation of adolescent girls and there is a new and vibrant movement of young feminists – and anti-sexist male supporters – demanding change. There’s a real opportunity to create a programme of education which addresses not just the mechanics of sexual relations, but crucially the wider social issues – the right to safety, to protection under the law, to female and gay equality and to a childhood free from exploitation. 

The stakes are high. Properly designed and taught, a new programme of SRE could, over time, reduce sexist bullying and domestic and sexual violence, bringing improved parenting and incalculable social benefits. However, to be successful it must be consistent and, once agreed, be delivered to all students in all schools without exception.

It raised my spirits to find a Conservative politician like Tim Loughton, who might once have been hostile to such ideas, echo Mariella Frostrup in saying we need “a celebrity ‘man army’ shouting loud and proud that rape and domestic violence is for cowards, child abuse is despicable and treating girls like pieces of meat is simply unacceptable.”

I agree – and suggest a cross-party ‘man army’ of politicians would be a great place to start.