Women’s Equality Party part-funded by donation from male entrepreneur – so what?
![The founders of the Women's Equality Party; Catherine Mayer, Sandi Toksvig and Sophie Walker [Image: Charlie Forgham Bailey].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/160113WomensEqualityParty.jpg)
The founders of the Women’s Equality Party; Catherine Mayer, Sandi Toksvig and Sophie Walker [Image: Charlie Forgham Bailey].
Why shouldn’t a man help fund a political party devoted to equality of rights and opportunities for women? It’s not the ‘Sex War Party’, after all.
From his credentials, it seems Mr Biriotti is a decent chap. Perhaps his contribution has not been publicised because – as the article admits – he has not sought publicity.
Good luck to him – and to them.
The Women’s Equality Party (WE), the newest party to field candidates in elections in 2016, was helped into existence by a donation from a wealthy male entrepreneur, The Independent can reveal.
Financial support from Maurice Biriotti, co-founder and chief executive of the business management consultancy firm SHM, enabled the newly created political party to pay a salary to one of its founders and meet the costs of getting names on ballot papers for the 2016 elections.
Mr Biriotti, who has not sought publicity, is a former academic. He set up a business partnership with fellow academic, Henrietta Moore and BBC film-maker Sophie Marnham in 1996. He is also involved with the HIV charity Body & Soul.
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Empowerment of women is a socialist agenda. All individuals should have equal opportunity to do or be whatever best suits them irrespective of gender, race, disability, religion etc etc. By the same virtue anyone can support feminism, gender rights, disability rights, anti discrimination agendas etc. So a man can call himself a feminist (I do) if he supports feminism.
I donate to groups that try to move the equality agendas forward because I believe that in a democracy all should be equally empowered. Why does The “Independant” think that a man donating to The Women’s Equality Party is newsworthy? The fact that they thought they should even comment on it shows how much of a struggle we still face in striving for equality.
I’m not actually surprised that one of the main backers of the Women’s Equality Party is a man. There was a piece in the ‘I’ yesterday, which said that slightly more men support women’s equality than women, according to a poll. The stats cited were 85% of men and 83% women supported equality for women. And to be fair to Sandi Toksvig, she has always acknowledged in interviews that her party has male supporters. In fact, going back almost to the origins of the modern women’s movement in the 19th century, one of the first pamphlets supporting women’s rights was co-written by a man. So we really shouldn’t be surprised at Mr Biriotta’s contribution.