Tagged with Women

Fast Facts: Gender social inequality and austerity in Europe

23700472_sEurope’s austerity fetish and longer term neo-liberal reforms promoted by Big Business, Governments and the EU Commission hurt women disproportionately. Here’s a few facts to illustrate the point.

Europe wide 

  • The gender pay gap is around 16%
  • It ranges from more than a quarter (27%) in Estonia to around a fiftieth (2%) in Slovenia. The latest figures from Eurostat suggest that at least until 2010, the gender pay gap appears to have been narrowing. However, there was no further progress in 2011. Continue reading →

Mayoral candidates: a manifesto for London’s women?

Joe Quimby, Mayor of Springfield, from the Simpsons by Matt GroeningOne of the most interesting fringes at Labour conference was a Demos fringe on London after Boris. Given the speaker list (Andrew Adonis, Tessa Jowell, Sadiq Khan and David Lammy), I was fully expecting it to be the first hustings for London’s Labour Mayoral candidate in 2016.

And given the large numbers queuing to enter a small, dark, sweaty room fifteen minutes before kickoff, I wasn’t alone in the supposition. Thankfully chair Ben Rogers quickly dispensed with any pretence that the fringe meeting was intended to be anything else. Continue reading →

Rape threats, Twitter and masculine crisis

Caroline Criado-Perez wages a successful campaign to get Jane Austen onto the £10 note and a pledge that, in future, the Bank of England’s designs will better reflect the actual look and shape of British society. A welcome happenstance for everyone who isn’t white, male and posh. But not all.

Unfortunately, the bigger story has been the rape and sexual assault threats she’s been on the receiving end of. Caroline talks about some examples here. It goes without saying the volume of misogynistic abuse has generated a furious backlash, from folk bombarding key members of Twitter staff to a 30,000-strong online petition, as well as talk of a Twitter boycott on August 4th. And, for good measure, Caroline has rightly reported threats received to the police. This has led to one arrest, and I expect a few more shall receive an unwelcome knock on the door from the plod.

Continue reading →

Mothers facing brunt of Tory attacks

The economy may for now have escaped a ‘triple-dip’ but women, particularly those of us who are mothers, have experienced a triple- whammy from cuts which hit us as workers, as claimants and as carers.

As the Fawcett Society recently identified:

  • Women are being hit hardest by job cuts in the public sector;
  • Women are most affected as the services and benefits they use most are cut; and
  • Women are being left ‘filling the gaps’ as state services are withdrawn. Continue reading →

Have the feminists won, or did Blairism see us off?

NEC member Christine Shawcroft looks at the history of women’s organisation in the Labour Party.

When I first tried setting up local women’s organisations in the Labour Party, it was the late 70s and they were generally known as Ladies’ Sections. The word “women” was considered rather uncouth. You needed the agreement of your (overwhelmingly male) GC, or General Management Committee (GMC) as it was then. We had to go cap in hand and plead with an uncomprehending GMC for permission to set up a women’s section. They were absolutely mystified: why would a group of women want to meet? Who would they be making the tea for: each other?

When I moved to London in the early 80s, the story was slightly different. There were many more younger members, as the activism of the times seeped into the Party – most of whom considered themselves feminists. Continue reading →