Two important questions to ask this week

Why do the Panana papers matter?

Should (could) the new UN Secretary General be a woman?

I couldn’t decide which of these headlines to write about this morning. The former is currently dominating our media in the UK whilst the latter is something very close to my heart. It was as I weighed up these options that I realised the two aren’t so very far apart. Both reveal and challenge the lingering international male elite. As a cynical student, the Panama papers did not surprise me: the fact that Western neo-liberalism in the twenty-first century makes the rich richer and at the expense of everyone else is hardly a revelation. Unfortunately, what also did not surprise me was that every single prominent figure and head of state implicated in the Panama papers so far has been a man. The papers demonstrate that the global elite is still constituted overwhelmingly by middle class, middle aged, straight men. Whether it be men in charge of whole countries or men in charge of large global corporations the powerful global elite who make the decisions that affect everyone else remain completely unrepresentative of the rich diversity of the international population.

Many people in the UK have argued that the scandal with our own prime minister’s involvement in the tax evasion has distracted from the real debate that needs to be had. I do to some extend agree but I think it matters that Cameron lied about his tax affairs because it is emblematic of everything that is wrong with this government and our political system in the UK. How can Cameron say he hasn’t benefitted from his fathers tax evasion when it likely paid for his fees at Eaton without which he would not have got into Oxbridge or met the people he needed to meet to get into the upper echelons of the British conservative elite. More significantly, this government tenuously balances on a rhetoric of victimising ‘benefit scroungers’ and ‘benefit tourists’ who supposedly ‘steal’ from the British economy. It is that narrative that they have thrived off by creating fear and hatred in British society. It is this hypocrisy that really gets to me: this government line their pockets while they rip apart the pockets of our most vulnerable including women, disabled people and refugees.

We’ve come some way from the selection of a new United Nations Secretary General! The UN ostensibly exists at the other end of the moral spectrum from the likes of Vladamir Putin but in reality it is a deeply troubled, bureaucratic, corrupt and paralysed organisation in need of reform. That is not to say that UN does not do good work but, unfortunately, I’m sure one would not have to bust a gut to join the dots between those implicated in the Panana papers and the UN organisation. So what does this have to do with the SG? A woman SG would take step towards challenging this global male elite as well as having all other cited benefits of equal representation. That is not to say that a woman would absolve corruption and not be at risk of corruption herself but can we at least have equality in the corrupt global elite! (I joke.) I’d like to think that a woman SG would also heighten the work of UN Women on the UN’s agenda particularly in development and conflict arenas as well as tackling the hideous problem of sexual violence perpetrated by ‘peacekeepers.’ What these two prominent headlines have in common this week is that gender still matters, patriarchy still matters and feminism still matters in global politics. The power and money remain in the hand of one set of people who do not represent the rest of us.