Just 10 per cent of the world’s income goes to women. Global fair trade is part of the solution to that.
It’s widely acknowledged that improving women’s economic prospects supports economic development more generally, and especially the wellbeing of children. Fair trade arrangements that support women’s work, enabling them to secure a degree of economic independence, have an important role to play in the developing economies.
But, despite living in the fifth largest economy in the world, women in this country too continue to suffer economic disadvantage. The gender pay gap remains at nearly 20% (much higher when you look just at part-time work), and, as Yvette Cooper showed last year, the ConDem cuts hit women particularly hard. That there is still a way to go to achieve gender equality here at home, let alone in the rest of the world, ought to be a no-brainer.
For a certain breed of Tory, though, it seems it really isn’t obvious. Last week, to mark the centenary of International Women’s Day, women (and men) from across parliament sought a debate in the chamber. It took place on Thursday, and it was a very rewarding event. Speakers covered the broadest possible subject matter, from sexual violence to girls’ education, and the tone throughout was constructive and consensual. But it nearly didn’t happen at all.
When the proposal for a debate was first raised with the leader of the House, the response was to suggest a debate in backbench time. In previous years, under Labour, government time had always been allowed, but clearly gender issues take a back seat under the present regime. Miffed, but determined, a group of women parliamentarians then presented the request to the backbench business committee. We were very surprised at the resistance that we met there from some of the rightwing Tory members, who simply couldn’t or wouldn’t see the need.
Of course, it wouldn’t be right to characterise all Tories as unreconstructed gender equality deniers. Some made excellent contributions to last week’s debate. But what’s of concern is not just the continuing need for such a debate, but the reluctance of government to make time for it – not to mention the casual way in which the disproportionate impact of cuts on women has been seen almost as a trivial by-product of policy by the chancellor and his minions. It all goes to reveal an institutional indifference among the Tories to how much more is needed for gender equality to be achieved.
The same attitude explains why the government appeared totally oblivious to protests in the debate on the welfare reform bill last Wednesday that the structure of the new “universal credit”, which works on a breadwinner model, with households with one adult earner faring best, could set back women’s economic independence. And planned changes to child support, the fact that support for childcare will be spread thinner than ever, and a host of other superficially attractive measures like support for mini jobs (which could limit women’s career development) and monthly payment of benefits to mimic wages (likely to leave many women juggling overstretched family budgets), threaten to make matters worse.
Yet, in what’s sometimes felt like an unseemly rush to give support to welfare reforms that will – allegedly – improve work incentives and simplify the system, Labour has so far failed to make sufficient fuss about the potential damage to women’s economic status that’s likely to result. We can’t be casual about this, for here, as in developing economies, women’s economic independence is important for families, for the economy as a whole, and of course for women themselves. The irony that the government should proclaim its welfare reforms as being designed to promote independence when for women they go in exactly the opposite direction is one that we must be prepared fully to exploit – for political advantage, on economic grounds, and for the sake of justice and equality. But it must not fall to women alone to point that out.