International Women’s Day is a day of celebration but also serves as a reminder of the continued action required to bring about women’s equality. As I work in politics, this means the usual reflection about how far women have come, the role the Labour Party, the trade unions and women’s organisations have played in those advancements – and how much further we have to go.
This year will be different; not necessarily because it is the centenary, but because we will now have to focus our energy on preserving the gains women have already made. The first International Women’s Day for 13 years with Labour in opposition means the inevitable assessment of our time in government. Labour has a good record for women based on the national minimum wage, better maternity rights, flexible working, Sure Start Centres, the Equality Act and the End Violence against Women strategy.
We should have done more in that period, but that’s something you can say of New Labour across the board. There should have been more improvements in the way women are treated in the criminal justice system. Labour’s parental leave policies should have focused more on childcare as something that should be shared equally between parents. We didn’t fund women’s refuges and rape crisis centres well enough either – a point that has been brought up at every International Women’s Day event I’ve been to in recent years. But when we look at the impact the coalition Government’s cuts will have on women over the next few years, it’s clear the focus has to shift quickly to defending our ground. With women making up 65 per cent of the public sector workforce, they will be hit hardest by the job losses and the raid on public sector pensions in the Government’s deficit reduction plan. It’s shocking to think that women will be paying for 72 per cent of the changes in taxes, benefits and tax credits set out in the Chancellor’s Budget last year. More than ever, it is important that women have a strong voice in the Labour Party, that Labour raises these issues in Parliament and works with the trade unions and women’s groups. At present, Labour is running good campaigns to protect services such as Sure Start, which will no longer have their grants ring-fenced from the next financial year. Labour is also opposing the Government’s accelerated timetable to equalise the retirement age, which means hundreds of thousands of women will have to work years longer than they expected to.
We still need a stronger defence of the welfare state from Labour and a stronger position on the recent up-rating order that linked public sector pensions and benefits with the lower Consumer Price Index rather than the Retail Price Index for the next year. Labour’s willingness to support a temporary switch to the CPI until the deficit is reduced is disappointing, because I don’t think we should accept the argument that public sector workers should pay the price for the bankers’ gambling, especially when there are alternatives for deficit reduction based on a strategy for growth.
This is a real boom in women’s activism, with many women re-engaging with the Labour Party and the trade union movement. In the past few months, I’ve seen women from all backgrounds campaigning against the abolition of the Education Maintenance Allowance and cuts to ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) funding, re-starting local trade councils, campaigning against library closures and fighting changes to their pensions.
The first real show of their collective strength will be at the TUC march on
March 26. If Labour can show women that it is standing up for them in Parliament, we’ll stand more chance of getting the votes we need to oust the current Government and get back to focusing on building on our equality record.
Lauren Edwards is a parliamentary researcher at the House of Commons
