The New Government is set in the very near future following the spectacular collapse of the previous administration, the Women’s Equality Party. That disastrous regime saw the virtual economic collapse of the country and a rapid rise in social unrest. The New Government, skilled in the black arts of surveillance, coercion and blackmail, was swept to power on a tidal wave of anti-feminism. The opposition to militant feminism was such a vote winner that it became one of the central planks of New Government policy. Feminism itself was declared illegal and in order to safeguard the future of the nation certain groups of women were targeted by the State.
Thanks to fiscal mismanagement Britain was in a particularly weak condition and was badly hit by the recession. By framing the economic disaster as a female, liberal issue, the New Government gained millions of votes from men. It was very careful to blur its anti-feminist message. It didn’t want to alienate women; it merely wanted to scapegoat a certain demographic, namely educated, liberal women. Women who may have benefited from the pro-feminist policies of the Women’s Equality Party for example, women who had been appointed to jobs purely because they were female, women who had been promoted in order to fill a quota, women who could never be fired despite their obvious incompetence.
The story opens a year or so after the New Government has come to power. Many thousands of feminists have been removed from their jobs and careers simply for belonging to illegal, feminist, organisations. The vast majority of people are unperturbed by the news that feminists and other liberal ‘troublemakers’ have been removed from circulation. The women haven’t been imprisoned, that would be far too crude and a potential vote loser, they have simply been sent to one of the many recently established Re-education Centres. On the surface at least they are places where feminists and liberals might have the error of their ways explained to them. In reality of course, the Re-education Centres are prisons in all but name for their middle-class, professional, female inmates. The women are treated as schoolgirls; they are required to attend classes wearing humiliating school uniforms and are subject to stringent corporal punishment. When they’re not being indoctrinated they’re required to carry out menial or exhausting physical tasks.
Professional women who can’t be sent for re-education are targeted by their increasingly politicised male managers. Women who were used to working in female dominated offices quickly find themselves in a minority. Women are now fired for transgressing one of the many new rules and regulations brought in by the New Government. Former powerful, female executives now find themselves undermined by the male hierarchy. Many are sacked without a reference, the lucky ones are demoted and often find themselves working for their former male subordinates, Corporal punishment has become commonplace and is regarded as a useful management tool. Providing sexual favours to their managers is considered to be a given, and passes almost unnoticed.
The story follows a selection of professional, middle-class women who find their lives in rapid transit. A senior manager is put under pressure at home and at work, and her spoiled brat of a daughter has to be reminded of her place. A feisty executive is framed and sent for a period of re-education, a young lawyer has her license to practise revoked and is re-employed as a junior secretary. A middle-aged man passed over for promotion and sidelined at work by his female superiors suddenly discovers how his support for the New Government can work for him. What used to be reliable and certain is now in turmoil. Mapped-out careers and lifestyles have been abandoned, long –held beliefs have been questioned and proved to be wrong. How will our heroines react to the removal of their recently acquired rights and privileges? Read on and find out.
