Labour must shift the centre-ground once again

In 2007 I debated in favour of the statement: ‘No feminist should vote Conservative’; I was arguing against the author and now former Conservative member of parliament Louise Mensch, still a parliamentary candidate then. The arguments I used then are the same arguments I use today, with one significant difference: the pay gap between men and women has got worse.

Equal Pay Day was on 4 November this year. It is the day in the year when women start to work ‘for free’ for the rest of the calendar year because of the gender pay gap. This year it is three days earlier thanks to the gap having increased under the Tories.

Between 1997 and 2007 the gender pay gap (full-time) fell by three per cent to 15 per cent. Now we are back up to 15.7 per cent and the most recent report from the Fawcett Society says that the coalition’s economic choices are the reason for this equality disaster.

The pay gap has got worse because of austerity. The coalition’s drastic cuts to public spending have hit women the hardest and that is why the gap is increasing. We have seen job losses in the public sector where the pay gap is 17.1 per cent and creation of jobs in the private sector where the pay gap is much worse at 24 per cent.

Since 2008 the concentration of women in the lowest-paid sectors has increased and 826,000 women have moved into low-paid, insecure work. Another 371,000 have become self-employed, where the pay gap stands at 40 per cent.

I stand by what I said to Mensch in 2007. The solutions to the gender pay gap are heavily evidenced. Countless organisations repeatedly recommend the same things: introduce a national living wage (which would reduce the gap by 0.8 per cent immediately), increase opportunities for quality flexible and part-time work, increase transparency in pay, and improve childcare access for all.

Women make up 82 per cent of workers in caring, leisure and other service industries, while men make up 88 per cent of those in science, engineering and technology. Gender segregation in work contributes to both the pay gap and the leadership gap.

And, yes, childcare is an issue but it is not the cause of the pay gap; the fact that women still do the vast majority of domestic unpaid labour in the United Kingdom is the cause. Our goal should be to make childcare a parents’ issue rather than a women’s issue.

There is a sense that mainstream political parties have merged in the centre-ground on certain issues. There is now widespread agreement on principles like fairness, equal rights, and a view that economic greed is unacceptable. Labour principles dominate this new centre-ground because of our work over the past 30 years. The question for Labour is: what is its vision is for the centre-ground of 2044?

Currently only 23 per cent of members of parliament are women and Labour has by far the most. We have been the party of women and no other party has done what we have done. Except now our ideas have become mainstream: women make up the biggest ever proportion of Tory and Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidates for the general election.

Our methods and ideas about equality, which were shocking 30 years ago, have become mainstream. In one sense this is a victory, but we should not conflate a victory for our methods with a victory on achieving equality.

We are not anywhere near a victory on this. On equality, Labour has to get out of the centre-ground that we created. We need to go further than any other party will go because wherever we go now will become the norm of 2044.

Our fight for equality reminds me that to win a general election is to win the battle; to win on our ideas is to win the war. The legalisation of equal marriage this year was not exactly down to tireless campaigning by the Tory party, was it? We need to do the same on equality for women.

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Kat Stark is a member of Progress

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Photo: Eva the Weaver