International Women’s Day this year is less a cause for celebration than a call to arms. Around the world, women still face significant discrimination, some at the hands of multinational companies that face no penalties in Britain for their treatment of women abroad. Many of the women who come to this country from overseas also face appalling treatment. Despite increased public awareness over the past decade, the trafficking of women for sex, illegal working and domestic slavery remains “significant”, according to Europol. Immigration policies, designed under successive governments primarily to keep people out of Britain, place too little emphasis on giving them the protection they need. This, combined with an adversarial legal system, forces rape and torture survivors to prove their case against attempts to discredit them. These features combine to create a system in which, often, those most in need of protection are the least likely to get it. Trafficked women struggle to get recognition and, according to a report published by Amnesty International last year, may then be sent back to countries where they can be re-trafficked.
In 2008, I co-authored research for the Children’s Society documenting the situation of refugee and migrant women who were destitute in Britain. Some of those women were victims of domestic violence who had arrived in here as dependents on their husband’s immigration claim. When they fled from their husband, they ended up without immigration status, unable to work and claim benefits. Others had been wrongly refused asylum because of poor legal advice, and two of the women we interviewed had prostituted themselves to survive, conceiving children as a result. Now new restrictions on English language classes are threatening to leave those women literally voiceless in the face of this systemic discrimination.
Under the last Government, the worsening situation of this minority of women could be contrasted with the public policy drive to improve the situation of the majority. Under the current Government, that initiative has collapsed. Somen are bearing 72 per cent of the brunt of the public spending cuts, but much of this is hidden. Where women are prevalent in many of the groups facing draconian cuts, including housing benefit recipients, single pensioners, lone parents, public sector and part-time workers, will have a devastating impact on women. The reform of the National Health Service, funding for domestic violence and rape services and changes to the state pension will all disproportionately impact on women. Some women stand to lose up to £15,000 in income because of accelerated changes to the state retirement age, entrenching an inherent unfairness.
The coalition’s actions demonstrate an attitude of striking indifference to discrimination. Nearly 40 years after the introduction of the Equal Pay Act, the gap between male and female pay stands at 17 per cent and in the private sector the gap is widening. In response, the Government has decided to repeal measures to force companies to disclose the gap between men and women’s pay, placing the emphasis on individual women to take action against employers. It is indicative of a view that sees discrimination only as a loss to the individual and not, as John Stuart Mill so compellingly argued, as a loss to society as a whole.
That these issues have so little traction in public policy is not surprising considering that men outnumber women in Parliament and on local councils by three to one. Is it any wonder then that women are not only bearing the brunt of the coalition’s cuts, but also watching a retreat of some of the great advancements of the past 100 years? We are in danger of recreating what Mill called “the disqualified half of the human race”.
Lisa Nandy is Labour MP for Wigan
