[Reader-list] (fwd) What Women Want (in UK)

[sanjay ghosh]

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Extracts from a article wherein the Guardian's formidable feminist think-tank details 'what women want' on the eve of the Labour party conference.


Equal pay (Polly Toynbee)

The headline writers were excited. "Females heading departments earn more than males," said the latest report from the Chartered Management Institute. For the first time, women heading corporate departments earned more than men. Good grief. 

But what's the catch? They are special: only a quarter of department heads are women. There are more women managers than five years ago, but women still make up only one in seven of company directors. There are very few on the boards of top FTSE companies, and no woman in the greedy stratosphere of those earning seven-figure salaries. Does any of that matter? Not a lot. But it is symbolic that the cards are stacked against even these highest flyers. 

However, the serious pay battle has never been about well-off women. The most oft quoted fact about inequality and the pay gap is that, on average, women working full-time get 18% less than men. But that does not begin to reflect the true status of women. The most shocking fact is that 43% of all working women are earning less than £5 an hour. Half of all women in full-time jobs, and 80% of those in part-time work, are earning well below the Council of Europe's decency threshold of £6.31 an hour. For most of the women who have flooded back into the labour market in the past 30 years, work is not a sign of "liberation" - but of abject drudgery for sub-survivable wages. 

Low pay and women's inequality are one and the same phenomenon. Solve one and you solve the other. When Labour extols the wonders of Britain's "flexible" market, it means low-paid women in jobs without prospects working flexible hours so they can do most of the childcare and housework at the same time as one, or maybe two, jobs that don't pay the bills. Tax credits subsidise their employers to pay wages that no one can live on. 

Cleaning, caring, catering and cash registers - the four Cs - are what occupy most working women. But because these are traditionally women's jobs, they are undervalued and underpaid. When the Equal Pay Act came in 30 years ago, the hope was that women would quickly move into higher paid men's work, but job segregation is as rigid as ever. Women have not become well-paid bricklayers, plasterers or plumbers, and are unlikely to in the foreseeable future. The only way they can earn equal pay is through society revaluing the work they do. The skills of the carer in the old people's home, the hospital cleaner, the nursery nurse and the classroom assistant are tasks as vital as any. Equal pay for work of equal value has to be brought in: the system for fair comparison is there, but mostly unused. 

Women's pensions are a critical issue. The great majority of poor pensioners are women who have taken time out to care, and who have been earning low wages; they are excluded from entitlement because they have earned too little. They need better, fairer credits towards their pensions so they end up with equal rights. 

Summary 

· Every employer to carry out an equal pay review every few years. Government to force every state employer and contractor to conduct and act on pay reviews immediately. 

· A pensions system that does not penalise women for caring, and which recognises different working patterns. 

· Everyone's pay should be published. Without unions in most workplaces, employers get away with secretive and unjust pay structures. Openness is the only guarantee of fairness. 

· The minimum wage to be increased to come into line with the European decency threshold of £6.31 an hour. 

· An increase in the carer's allowance to at least the same level as the basic state pension. 

· In July, the government promised the unions to end the two-tier workforce, whereby those employed by contractors (eg, cleaners in hospitals) are paid less than direct state employees, affecting mainly low-paid women. This needs to be implemented at once, not phased in. 

· Every employer should be obliged to allow unions in once a year to talk to the workforce, to make union organising feasible in hostile environments.
Polly Toynbee 


Work-life balance (Madeleine Buntin)

Britain is the only country in the EU that still has an opt-out from the European working time directive, which puts a limit of 48 hours on the working week. As a result, we have the biggest proportion of people working over 48 hours a week in Europe. This work culture is effectively a form of discrimination against women because it becomes impossible to combine a job with long hours with the caring responsibilities which fall, more often than not, to women. The long hours culture impacts on the labour market at both ends - the poorest paid and some of the best paid - and in both cases, most women get squeezed out. What we want is women having the same opportunities as men, and the only way to achieve that is a working culture that allows for life outside the job. 

One of New Labour's greatest achievements has been the introduction in 2003 of the right for parents of children under six to request flexible work. A million parents took up the option, of whom 800,000 had their requests accepted. In follow-up surveys on the legislation's impact, employers have said they are satisfied. 

There are two crucial steps to building on this success. First, the right must be extended to carers. Six million people look after a sick or disabled relative in the UK; they should have the right to request part-time work. Second, the right must be extended to parents of all children under 16; there is now a wealth of research indicating how difficult and important the teenage years are, and parents may well need to give additional support. 

We should be given the right to work flexibly, not just to request it - perhaps with conditions such as a minimum year's employment and a right of refusal if a case was proven of damage to the employer's business. The problem with the current situation is that it is something of a personal lottery - no trade union representation is allowed to help employees frame their request - and many people are deterred from asking by a hostile work culture. What is urgently needed is a much wider range of part-time jobs with better career prospects. At the moment, taking a part-time job means a big pay cut and dropping several skill levels. The right to flexible working would be the lever to turn that around. 

Summary 

· Phase out the opt-out to the working time directive, limiting the working week to 48 hours in line with the rest of Europe. 

· Right to request flexible working must be extended to the UK's six million carers, and to all parents of children under 16. 

· Granting a right to flexible working for parents of children under six. 
Madeleine Bunting


Rape convictions (Katharine Viner)

Few like to look at them, but the statistics on rape convictions are unbearably bleak: reported rape has trebled in the past decade; less than 6% of reported rapes result in a conviction; less than 20% of rapes are reported to the police. There is more rape, and it is easier to get away with. 

The law itself is not to blame. MP Vera Baird was the driver behind the Sexual Offences Act, which came into force in May. A man may no longer claim that he believed a woman was consenting to sex; a jury must instead be convinced that his belief was "reasonable". This change could have a big impact, with more pleas of guilty at an early stage and the message sent out that the smug, "But I thought she wanted it, m'lud" defence is no longer enough. 

But the act must be closely monitored if it is to have any effect at all, because it is in the hands of judges, lawyers and juries. Our judiciary, not renowned for its regiment of women (there are 11 among 156 of the most senior judges), needs to be evaluated carefully to check that it interprets the new law properly. How did Judge Michael Roach let off trainee croupier Michael Barrett with a conditional discharge for having sex with a 12-year-old girl with the comment, "I trust you to behave yourself now"? Do judges have a clue about the reality of today's social culture, of contemporary gender relations? 

As for the police, we need sexual assault referral centres (Sarcs) in each of the 43 police forces - where victims have access to women doctors, counsellors and specialist non-uniformed officers. There is evidence that specialist treatment by the police is more likely to end in a conviction, and yet there are only eight Sarcs in the whole of England and Wales. We also need public funding for rape crisis centres, which are aimed at more long-term psychological support. Three have closed in the past three months, demonstrating the low priority our culture gives to the victims of sexual abuse. 

And finally, the public. It is jurors who acquit presentable young men who look just like their sons; it is jurors who assume that women in short skirts are asking for it. So what is needed is a high-profile, hard-hitting public information campaign debunking the myths about rape. Just as aggressive public information broadcasts changed the way the public sees drink-driving, which was absolutely acceptable 30 years ago, so outdated thinking on sexual violence must be highlighted and quashed. For example: a low-cut top does not excuse rape; nor does bleached hair or being drunk. Rape is rarely committed by strangers; former stranger-rapists understand the courts well enough to know that if they get to know a woman before they rape her then they will probably get away with it. The overwhelming majority of rapists are friends, boyfriends, husbands, ex-lovers, men in bars. 

Summary 

· Tight monitoring of judges over the new Sexual Offences Act. 

· Sarcs in each of the 43 police areas in England and Wales. 

· Public funding for rape crisis centres 

· High-profile public information campaign debunking myths about rape.
Katharine Viner 


Political representation (Anne Perkins)

Sixty years ago, the women of Blackburn constituency Labour party rebelled, demanding that at least one woman should be on the shortlist of candidates. They got their way, and in due course got Barbara Castle for an MP. 

Blackburn was not the only constituency where women who had grown accustomed to exercising authority during the war years influenced candidate selection. Labour's first landslide in 1945 saw 24 women MPs victorious, all but three of them Labour. But by 1983, there were fewer women MPs than in 1945. It wasn't until the next Labour landslide in 1997 that more than 100 women were elected - only for the total to fall again in 2001. 

Such a pattern of under-representation demands correction by intervention. Experience in Wales (where there is a 50:50 gender split in the assembly), Scotland and the European parliament all show that positive action such as all-women shortlists and twinning works. 

Research repeatedly confirms that women, especially young women, feel a parliament that looks so unlike their own lives cannot represent them. But women in parliament also bring diversity to debate and decision-making. The current generation of women in government communicate, in a less adversarial way, a different view of politics from their male colleagues. Their perspective can make them less awed by traditional lobbies and quicker to see perhaps unintended implications of policy decisions on women and families. 

Following such hype and promise, the last election was a gloomy moment. After the government refused to reintroduce the legally suspect all-women shortlists that had made such a contribution in 1997, the number of women MPs fell for the first time since 1979. The embarrassment persuaded the government to amend the Sex Discrimination Act to allow positive discrimination in the selection of political candidates until a sunset clause comes into effect in 2015. Since the start of 2003 the party has operated "with a strong presumption" that MPs who retire will be replaced by a candidate from an all-women shortlist. If Labour's share of the vote holds up, after the next election there should be a new record number of women MPs. 

But they will still be predominantly Labour. The Liberal Democrats, and especially the Conservatives, choke on the idea of direct intervention and this government insists it would be wrong to impose it on them. Both parties have increased the number of women candidates, although not necessarily in winnable seats, but they are a long way from the culture shift that will broaden their parties' gene pool (at the current rate of progress, it will be 300 years before the Tory party has full gender equality). 

Summary 

· All political parties to undergo compulsory reviews of their selection processes with particular emphasis on equal opportunities. 

· Equal access to all training opportunities for candidates and selection committees; employers should be encouraged to support political participation by their workforce.
Anne Perkins 


Parental leave (Natasha Walter)

Imagine a new family - mother, father, and baby. The parents pledged one another, in the innocent days of pregnancy, to care for their child equally. As the day draws nearer, they decide to take all the time away from work that they can. For the mother, that means up to a year away from work, the first six weeks paid at 90% of her earnings, the next 20 weeks at £102.80, the next six months unpaid. 

The father, who has been employed for exactly the same amount of time, finds he is allowed just two weeks away from work, rewarded at the standard rate of £102.80. After those two weeks, for 10 hours a day, the mother is alone with the child. For those hours, the father is back in the rhythm of work. The parents feel the clash in their priorities, and sometimes feel as if they are speaking across a great rift. She begins to say: "He tries, but he just can't get work out of his head." He begins to think: "I try, but I'll never be as good as she is at under standing what is needed at home." From the very beginning, the father is considered marginal to his baby's life, and so is pushed back to work quickly - in turn making him more marginal. 

Equalising rights to leave will not revolutionise our society overnight, but it will go some way towards changing this self-perpetuating pattern of inequality. If parents were entitled to a long block of shared paid leave, they could negotiate something more equal between themselves. She might take four months off, then he might take four months, and then she might take another four months; or they might both take six months of leave as half-weeks, so that together for a year they "job-shared". This is something that fathers should be campaigning for, too, since the current system of leave locks a father out at a time when new relationships are being made and new priorities decided. 

On Monday women's minister, the Patricia Hewitt, said that the government was looking at introducing a year's paid leave, in which the last six months could be transferred to the father. But since these last six months would be paid at the standard allowance of £102.80, few fathers will take it up. Governments cannot reforge the experiences of domestic life, but government can at least make the landscape in which we operate more level. The current system of maternity and paternity leave is an iron barrier to the movement towards equality, and it is time that the government dismantled it and built a gateway instead. 

Summary 

· More paid leave to be shared between parents as they wished. This could be job shared, eg each parent taking half-weeks for six months. 

· Leave paid at a rate in line with best practice in other European countries. 

· A higher rate of statutory allowance for parents who are not employees; self-employed workers are only entitled to £102.80 a week for six months, and as such are pushed back to work too soon.
Natasha Walter

complete article :
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,12913,1311890,00.html