The government’s efforts to show how women-friendly it is would be almost laughable – if they didn’t reveal a profound indifference to the real impact its policies are having on women’s lives. Struggling to make ends meet, worries about unemployment, cuts to help with childcare, loss of public services, and an attack on the value of their pensions matter far more to most women than altering the royal succession, or the position of women at the top of corporate life.
Last week Theresa May published the government’s response to a consultation on how it should consult and engage with women – an exercise in navel-gazing that spectacularly misses the point. Of course, women want to be well informed about government policy, but more important, they want to ensure that it’s developed in a way that helps them live their lives.
It’s not that the Women in Business Council and the creation of 5000 business mentors to help women establish their own businesses are bad measures, they’re just light years short of what’s needed to protect women’s economic position. A government that was really concerned about women’s prospects would be far more worried that its revised public pension proposals still penalise part-time workers (mostly women), while rumours that George Osborne wants to implement a further attack on the value of benefits – the rising cost of which is being, driven by the government’s own disastrous economic policies – spell yet more bad news for women, already hit twice as s hard as men by earlier benefits cuts.
Tories groan when Labour members complain in parliament that the government just doesn’t ‘get it’ on women. But it’s very clear that it simply does not. Last week, the Fawcett Society, in its report A Life Raft for Women’s Equality, published an important analysis of the impact of the coalition government’s policies on women, highlighting that they represented an attack on women’s economic security and rights on a scale not seen before ‘in living memory’. The report is supported by more than 20 charities, unions and academics, and ministers ought to take careful note of its contents.
Frankly, the government’s fooling itself if it thinks women are going to be bought off by a thin veneer of engagement, and a few fancy announcements when there’s so much that’s more fundamental at stake. And women themselves are certainly noticing what the government’s policies mean for them. At the North West Labour regional conference this weekend, there was an outpouring of anger and anxiety from women present, and a determination to fight back. Women are appalled that their daughters could find themselves in worse position than their own experience, they’re angry that traditional gender roles are being reinforced by government policy, they’re furious that women’s autonomy and choice are under attack.
So, in the spirit of self-organising that’s really gripping women in our party, Labour North West women have set up a new Facebook campaign, Make ends meet. We’d be delighted to see all women in the Labour movement support the campaign – and this is just the start. For unless and until the government starts really listening to women, women refuse to ‘calm down’.
PS – thanks to everyone who sent messages of support in response to my piece on disability hate crime for Progress last week. I’m delighted to report a rare positive response from the government – Ken Clarke has committed himself to bringing forward a government amendment on this point when the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders bill is debated in the Lords. It’s nice to be able to achieve some real change for the good – let’s hope that this is just the start in tackling the unacceptable harassment of disabled people that is, as the EHRC describe it, ‘Hidden in plain sight’.
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Kate Green is MP for Stretford and Urmston and writes a weekly column or Progress, Kate Comments