Gender equality at the very top of the UK

I haven’t seen the text of this as 10-minute bills don’t get printed until their second reading, but from the title and debate alone it seems to me like Labour’s Keith Vaz is on to a good thing with this, the “Succession to the Crown Bill”. Although the debate is available online, there don’t seem to be any nice soundbites in it. Instead, I’ll just give you the bill summary that I believe says all that’s needed:” A Bill to remove any distinction between the sexes in determining the succession to the Crown.

Hopefully the idea will go somewhere. Get those at the top so set the best example and all that. Sadly, random Wikipediaing the other day about the abdication of Edward taught me that the Statute of Westminster (1931) states that (sensibly) the line of succession must remain the same throughout the entire British Commonwealth.

There’s a whole host of nations in the commonwealth that are not exactly at the forefront of equality so this initiative may be doomed, but I still think it’s a good thing to at least try.

2 comments

  1. I don’t get it. Why bother dealing with discrimination against close female relatives of the monarch while leaving in place the discrimination against people who didn’t happen to be born into the royal family?

    1. “Group X is more marginalised than group Y” should never be an argument not to improve the lot of group Y as long as you’re not somehow disadvantaging group X in the process.

      If it was a valid reason, nobody would ever get get any equalities work done. There’s always some group that someone can say is marginalised.

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