Women's Views on News

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 05:52 AM PDT

28 August was effectively the last paid day of the year for women working part-time.

The following is an extract from the speech made on 17 October to the Kenilworth Chamber of Trade in Warwickshire by Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England:

"Despite having fallen by almost 10 per cent since the crisis, real wages among the top 10 per cent are still over 20 per cent higher than in 1997.

"But wages for the bottom 20 per cent have fallen by almost 20 per cent since 2007 and are essentially back to where they were in 1997.

"Taken together, this paints a picture of a widening distribution of fortunes across the labour market – a tale of two workers.

"The upper peak of the labour market is clearly thriving in both employment and wage terms.

"The mid-tier is languishing in both employment and real wage terms.

"And for the lower skilled, employment is up at the cost of lower real wages for the group as a whole."

Commenting on this speech by Haldane, the TUC's General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: "On Saturday tens of thousands will march through London for the TUC's Britain Needs a Pay Rise demonstration. This speech shows why.

"The Bank of England's Chief Economist is clear that workers have faced the longest and deepest squeeze in their wages since the middle of the nineteenth century.

"And what is worse is that those in the middle and at the bottom have suffered while those at the top have soared ahead with a 20 per cent wages increase since 1997.

"Britain's workers have every right to be angry, especially now they have been locked out of the economic recovery as the proceeds go to tax cuts for the rich and boardroom greed."

And people did march, in their tens of thousands.

The TUC is campaigning for action that will start to move the UK's economy back in the right direction.

And as far as the unions are concerned, sustainable economic growth depends on fairer pay for ordinary workers and smaller bonuses for the super rich.

Britain needs a properly enforced minimum wage, for although the national minimum wage safeguards from extreme low pay it is no use if not properly enforced.

We need the Government to publicly name and shame those companies who aren't paying up. HMRC also needs more resources to help them to identify more minimum wage cheats.

Britons need higher wages from employers who can afford to pay: many low paid sectors employers could afford to pay more without making job losses.

Which is why we need new ways for unions and employers to work together to set higher wages, so that workers and businesses both get a fair deal.

Britain needs an increased commitment to the living wage, because companies that can well afford to pay the living wage are not doing so and contractors are winning lucrative public sector contracts are continuing to pay poverty wages.

We need more local authorities to make sure that their own staff, and those in their supply chains, get at least the living wage.

And Britain needs a crackdown on excessive executive pay: pay at the top continues to rocket, fuelling inequality and excessive financial risk taking.

We need real action to get top pay under control starting with worker representation on pay committees and far more transparency about how much the super rich are being paid.

And then, as Scarlet Harris explained, women are more likely to be low paid; are more likely to work part time; are more likely to be paid less than the living wage; are more likely to live in poverty; are more likely to be subjected to the public sector pay freeze and still earn less than men.

Writing on the Fawcett Society's Feminist Matters she pointed out that:

Women are more likely to be low paid. Women's work has always been undervalued and underpaid or gone unpaid.

And today that the lowest paid jobs are predominantly carried out by women: of the 2.6m employees in the ten lowest paying occupations, 1.7m employees are female and 1.8m work part-time.

Women are more likely to work part time.

Women account for almost three-quarters of Britain's six-million strong part-time workforce, and the shortage of skilled, decently-paid part-time jobs affects women's pay and their careers prospects far more than men.

This year the TUC marked the first Part-Time Equal Pay Day. Women earn 34.2 per cent less per hour than men working full-time so 28 August was effectively the last paid day of the year for women working part-time.

Women are more likely to be paid less than the living wage.

At least one third of women working part-time earn less than the living wage. There are huge regional variations in how many women are paid the living wage. In London, over 50 per cent of women working part-time earn less than the living wage- currently £8.80 in London and £7.65 in the rest of the UK.

Women are more likely to live in poverty.

Single mothers are more likely to be living in poverty than any other group. And, as the Women's Budget Group and Child Poverty Action Group have pointed out, women's poverty is clearly linked to children's poverty.

Single women pensioners are also overrepresented in the poverty statistics. A lifetime of low pay, unequal pay, poor pensions provisions, time out of the labour market for motherhood and other caring, and part time work, all add up to an old age lived out in poverty for many women.

Women are more likely to be subject to the public sector pay freeze.

Women make up over 66 per cent of the public sector pay force – closer to 80 per cent in some occupations such as primary school teachers – which means that it is women who have borne the brunt of the public sector pay freeze.

The freeze has meant that pay across most of the public sector has increased by just 3 per cent since the Coalition came to power in 2010, while the cost of living has soared. Inflation (Retail Prices Index) for the same period has increased by almost 20 per cent.

Women still earn less than men.

Last year the gender pay gap widened for the first time in over a decade. It's forty years since the Equal Pay Act yet the gender pay gap for all workers now stands at just over 19 per cent and is even higher for certain groups of women such as women over 50 and women working part-time.

And the current squeeze on pay has gone on for too long.

Workers across the UK face the seventh consecutive year of falling real earnings – the longest period of falling pay since records began.

Even the pay squeeze of the long depression of the 1920s was shorter, according to TUC analysis.

The entrenched inequality that we see in our society, Harris concluded, is a product of political and economic decisions – decisions which we can influence.

The march on 18 October was one chance to show our politicians we want a fairer and more equal economy.

And we can now tell them too: email your MP and send them this link. For example. Ask them what they are going to do to close the pay gap and ensure women get a pay rise.

Child abuse or confronting abuse

Posted: 20 Oct 2014 01:58 AM PDT

What is the real taboo?

I do work hard. Yes I do. Really.

But in the middle of an important meeting, I found myself considering what we really mean when we talk about a taboo.

It is broadly defined as a "system of prohibitions connected with things considered holy or unclean".

I'm no social anthropologist or sociologist, but it seems clear to me that even when we collectively uphold something as a taboo, it's not actually a prohibition; it simply stops us talking about it.

Child sex abuse is a taboo; within the confines of trusted structures – such as family or school or religion – even more so. This is quite right.

Yet although we operate this "system of prohibitions" it doesn't translate into action from us, as a society, to prevent it in the first place. This is because where abuse is concerned the actual taboo is talking about it, acknowledging and confronting it.

It's unsurprising, I suppose. We are frightened of taboos; how they challenge us, what we might need to do to stop them.

Take death. Since we left the Victorian theatricality surrounding death behind, it is high up on the list of taboo subjects. We can't talk about it. We deny it and at best address it euphemistically. But this doesn't stop it. It just means we aren't prepared for it.

Of course, this is where that comparison must rightly stop. Death from natural causes is inevitable, child abuse is not. However until we break the talking taboo childhood sex abuse will continue and will remain inevitable.

You see the things that start at home – private, unshared, tacitly understood – are perpetuated. A taboo, such as family abuse, is a crime committed, known about, but rarely talked about. The more trusted, tightly wrought and familiar the institution, the greater is the taboo surrounding revealing any deviation within its confines.

Recent high profile celebrity abuse cases are really helping us to peel back some of the layers here. The reporting is so often skewed, but the conversation has started however uninformed and misguided it may sometimes be. Like Sophie Heawood in her column I too punch the air when another case is revealed because some fresh air has been blown into the musty long held secret. But I also have to temper my exasperation. The bind is that a concept such as 'celebrity' and the notion of an 'institution' enable us to put a distance between these horrors and daily family life. This is what gives it license to continue, unchallenged. We speak out about the famous, but we can't speak out about our families. The more we know about it, the more we defend against it.

The family is our smallest unit of society – many would see it as a fundamental building block of society. In so many ways it forms us, teaches us, sustains us. We are taught to trust it and everything that happens within it. The rules learnt within the family – including what you do or don't talk about – are virtually impossible to break as a child or an adult. If you experienced something hateful, perpetuated by someone you trusted and actively or passively sanctioned by those you loved, how on earth do you know it is wrong and how on earth do you summon the resources at any point in your life to speak out? Society at a macro level can't believe you and society at a micro level, your family, may well reject you. The talking taboo is an important contributor to this.

Twitter is alive with the fact that the Home Secretary's long promised inquiry into historic child sex abuse has been kicked into the political long grass. This, I believe, is a living, breathing example of my point. We know it's happening, at scale, but we can't talk about it, for fear of what might ensue and what it might unleash. It is, in fact, too close to home for everyone.

The inquiry matters for all sorts of reasons: first it was promised by the Government and the Government needs to follow through. Second it would send a message to those who have suffered and are suffering abuse that this issue will be taken seriously. Third, and most importantly, it would mean talking about abuse.

Although the inquiry will focus on institutions, it should shine a light on the fact that it happens inside families, outside families, in institutions, by those we trust and don't trust, in every class, faith, colour, and household, and make it part of our discourse. Only in this way can we take some small, firm steps towards putting an end to abuse.

I am not living embodiment of what I say here. I am not out of that particular closet: I was abused for a long time as a child.

I write about it, think about it, have opinions about it, take medication because of it, feel huge empathy for others who are suffering and admiration for the struggle of survivors. However talking openly is still a taboo for me – I blog anonymously and I share my experiences with very few people.

In my family the abuse is known about but not talked about or acknowledged. It remains a silent, living secret…although the perpetrator is dead.

So, the taboo of talking is created and reinforced in families from the bottom up.

I'm usually of the opinion that small scale action leads to big scale change. But in this case I believe a top down, national inquiry, signed up to by politicians of all persuasions and supported by all agencies, with survivors and their representatives at its heart, would start to create a discourse that might help permeate every layer of society.

This could outlaw the taboo of talking about childhood abuse and enable us to focus on stopping the real taboo – the abuse itself.

A version of this article first appeared on anewselfwritten.

24 UK News

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Women's Views on News

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