The women's minibus

On Thursday, I tabled a motion at Union Council for opening up the Union’s night minibus for women to all students – maintaining priority for women so as they will not lose out. We debated this, but support for it was low and the motion fell – maintaining the status quo.

For those not on council, or attending the meeting, I thought I’d lay out my reasoning for introducing the motion in the first place.

The driving reason behind me introducing the motion was that it strikes me as odd that the Union would only provide such a service for half of their student body – men (particularly those travelling alone) are also at risk of assault, although assaults on women are disproportionately of the sexual nature as opposed to men, which I hoped my proposal of giving women priority aimed to account for.

There were a number of arguments against – a compelling one is that the minibus is currently perceived as a women only safe-zone, that the introduction of men to this space would eliminate this and put some of the most vulnerable women off using the minibus, however I still believed that this will be minimal, and outweighed by the significant increase in welfare to vulnerable men who choose the use the service (and who currently have no equivalent service).

Another argument related to the viability of the idea – anecdotal evidence was presented that men would somehow result in the minibus need cleaning more, or are more likely to vomit than women. To me, this argument was less compelling – and is exactly the kind of negative stereotype the Union should be battling against, rather than reinforcing.

Union democracy worked and it was decided that the status quo should be maintained, and although this motion itself has failed, it has brought attention to the issue of a disparity between male and female welfare provision travelling home from the Union at night – hopefully constructive discussions and ideas will arise from this.

As student, we’re a progressive bunch, and obviously a way to do this is to question the status quo, and I have absolutely no regrets about bringing this issue up.

As always, if you want to contact me and discuss with me my role as Union councillor, or you want me to bring something up to council, drop me a line to my Union e-mail address: computersciencecouncillor@sheffield.ac.uk.