What is the point of Ms Hopkins?

Last night, I was riled by my DAB radio.

I’m sitting here minding my business when I hear on LBC that Katie Hopkins – of Apprentice and I’m a celebrity fame, pictured below – is coming on the radio to talk about Vince Cable’s idea of getting more women on to company boards.

At this point, I know I should switch the radio off and focus on getting Gem to bed as opposed to listening to this woman who has annoyed me a few times in the past see this old post here.

Because I’m addicted to talk radio at the moment, I leave the radio on as I give Gem her bath.

This woman proceeds to raise a few points set out below:

– There’s no glass ceiling for women in the workplace
– The old boys’ network is something to aspire to be in because it is filled with intelligent public school educated men
– Women exclude themselves from climbing the career path by having children etc etc.

Basically, to me, in that hour she spewed out a lot of bullshit!

In terms of the points she raised:

– if there was no glass ceiling, we would have had another woman PM since Maggie T left 10 Downing Street

– the old boys’ network is not only running this country at the moment (enough said) but more or less took down the City with the financial crisis. In addition, Mrs Thatcher fought long and hard against these bloody old boys network chums because coming from a lower middle class background, she wasn’t in their clique.

– women who take time off to raise kids are raising the next generation of doctors, thought-leaders, lawyers, midwives and hopefully better politicians.

I’m riled because I don’t want to hear a fellow woman spew out crap about there being a level playing field when there is a ridiculously small number of women running major FTSE100 companies, no women bishops and a predominantly male House of Commons.

I acknowledge that taking a year off to raise Gem means I’ve taken a year off from my career but it doesn’t mean I should be sidelined when I get back and request to work four days a week so I can spend one working day out of five looking after my child.

Knowing me, I’ll do five days worth of work in four days anyway so I should definitely get the credit for that.

She mentioned how she’d taken two weeks of maternity leave after each of her three kids and that she saw this as a way of ensuring her place on the career path was protected.

At this point, I’m screaming Lawd hav mercy at the radio and really thinking I should put off the radio as I’m about to loose my mind.

I’m also starting to question the point of this woman. Not only does she love the sound of her own voice, she seems to get her kicks from riling people.

Two weeks after having Gem, the last thing on my mind was work. I was still trying to adjust to the world of being responsible for another human being!!

I didn’t put the radio off or call in but I did send the following text into LBC radio:

“Why do you get women like Katie Hopkins talking about these issues? She is selfish and is a terrible representative of most ‘normal’ women. I’m a career woman myself so I know the struggle she terribly underestimates.”

My text didn’t get read out within the hour but like this post, it was cathartic just typing it up.

Reading about her on Wikipedia also made me realise that there really isn’t much of a point to this woman – read more here.

The next time she’s on the radio, I might actually call in to find out from her – What is the point of you Ms Hopkins?

This is a blog hop.

xxxx