Women's Views on News |
| Stitches and an army for a living wage Posted: 26 Jun 2015 02:29 AM PDT
"I’m joining #craftivists across the UK with @ShareActionUK for this #craftivism project. "It’s for Martha Lane Fox, one of the Board Members of Marks and Spencer’s to encourage her to take a step back from her emails, big To Do List and remember she can use her power & influence to make life changing decisions for people such as voting for M&S to implement a #LivingWage and lead the way for other retailers to do the same. "I spent lots of time thinking of colours and quotes that resonate with her, her charity work and hobbies. "I hope this hanky shows we are supporting her not blow it but to use her courage, care and voice at the M&S AGM on 7 July to help the other board members and shareholders also push for a dignified wage for their employees”. The Craftivist Collective has joined forces with ShareAction's AGM Army this summer to press UK retailers to pay a Living Wage. The campaigners are coordinating a series of "stitch-ins" at branches of Marks & Spencers (M&S) across the UK, for crafters to sew hand-made messages onto M&S handkerchiefs, to be delivered to the board, celebrity endorsers, and major shareholders of the British retail giant at its annual general meeting at Wembley Stadium on 7 July. An online poll has shown 17 per cent of British shoppers would shop more often at Marks & Spencers if it paid staff a Living Wage. And ShareAction has organised AGM questions on the Living Wage at more than 20 company AGMs so far this year. ShareAction is simultaneously mobilising an Investor Collaborative for the Living Wage made up of institutional shareholders with billions of pounds in British companies, including asset managers, pension funds, charity and faith investors. In 2015 these large shareholders wrote to all of the FTSE 100, including M&S, in support of the Living Wage. The idea of the "stitch-ins" is to show M&S that in addition to major shareholders with billions of pounds under management, its core customer base is also fully engaged and supportive on the issue of the Living Wage, and that they expect the company to show leadership on this basic fairness issue. The first "stitch-in" took place on 22 June in London at 6:30 pm outside the Marks & Spencers on Liverpool Road. Another "stitch-in" took place on for 23 June 23rd at 6.30pm in Cardiff, another is scheduled for Brighton on 29 June, and another for Brentwood – date to be confimred. There will also be stitch-ins in Glasgow, Manchester, Lincoln, Edinburgh, and Birmingham amongst others. "This craftivist initiative at the M&S AGM is nothing to 'sniff at'," Catherine Howarth, chief executive of ShareAction said. "Sarah and her amazing stitchers are devoting hours to creating gifts the M&S board we hope will treasure and remember for ever. "People adore M&S but they want to see the company step up and become a Living Wage employer. "The many big shareholders backing this call know it makes business sense as well as being the right thing to do." Stitch ins need to take place before 7 July. To take part, please contact Sarah, the founder of The Craftivist Collective by email or on Twitter @Craftivists. Or join in by tweeting a positive message to @marksandspencers, to encourage them to lead the way in retail #AStitchInTime for a #LivingWage |
| Women in Europe only half way to equality Posted: 26 Jun 2015 01:09 AM PDT
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) revealed the results of its second Gender Equality Index yesterday. The European Women's Lobby (EWL) attended the launch event in Brussels with great interest as this research is of course essential for monitoring the effectiveness of gender equality policies at EU and at national levels. The EU-28 achieved an average score of 52.9 out of 100 points (2012 data) showing that Europe is only half way towards a gender-equal and cohesive society. Moreover, progress since 2005 has only been marginal; then the score was 51.3. Viviane Teitelbaum, president of the EWL, has urged European Union decision-makers to commit to, accelerate and invest in women's rights. “We need to talk the talk and walk the walk, to think out of the box, otherwise we will have the same index or worse 10 years from now,” she said. That is why the EWL and its members continue to call on the European Commission to adopt an ambitious new Strategy on Equality between women and men post 2015. Find the full report here. Find the Gender Equality Index by country here. The index shows just how far European countries are from full gender equality. It is based on already existing data from 2005, 2010, 2012 and measures the progress towards gender equality across the European Union Member States over time. The index focuses on 8 domains pertinent to EU policy: money, knowledge, time, power, health & violence and intersecting inequalities: these last two are not calculated in the index, because they measure an illustrative phenomenon. However they are used to compare to the Gender Equality Index score of a country. For a country to achieve a high score, it is necessary to have low gender gaps (differences between women and men on a certain indicator) and proximity in levels to the best performing country for each indicator. In other words: it is not because women and men are equally performing low: that this results in a good score. Because of the economic crisis, for example, gender gaps have greatly reduced across the EU in some areas. This increase in gender equality does not reflect improvements in a country, but rather is a reflection of how the lives of both women and men have been negatively affected over the past few years. For info, the Gender Equality GAP report, published yearly by the World Economic Forum covers many more countries worldwide and does not use these levels of achievement. The index is binary male-female, and EIGE rightly points out: “It remains necessary to interpret the results from a more elaborate and critical gender perspective”. Additionally, the EU average score measures gender gaps in relation to the level of cohesion across the Member States. It goes up when gender gaps close on average and the difference between Member States is smaller. Four countries – Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden – score markedly above the EU average score and those of the other Member States, over time the upper limit of scores has barely changed. Ten Member States follow the EU pattern with scores that have risen both between 2005 and 2010 and between 2010 and 2012 – Finland, Slovenia, Ireland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Poland and Italy. Nine Member States' scores have risen between 2005 and2010, but decreased between 2010 and 2012: Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Hungary, Greece and Portugal. Four Member States' scores have decreased between 2005and 2010 but rose between 2010 and 2012: Luxemburg, Austria, Malta and Bulgaria. Four Member States' scores have decreased in both periods 2005–10 and 2010–12: the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Croatia, Slovakia and Romania. When looking at the different domains, we can come to roughly the following outcomes – but consult the report for more nuanced information: WORK: Women are less likely to participate in the labour market, tend to work fewer hours, and work in segregated sectors and so therefore the quality of work is lower. MONEY: Women earn less and are at greater risk of poverty. These two domains however show some minor positive results, which is interesting because these are areas in which EU coordinated and strategic action takes place. KNOWLEDGE: More women are studying, but what remains largely unchanged is the gender-based pattern of segregation in education with greater under-representation of women in engineering, manufacturing and construction and their overrepresentation in education. TIME: Women perform the bulk of caring activities, with an extremely wide gender gap between the time spent on caring and educating children and grandchildren, as well as time spent on cooking and housework. POWER: Women, compared with men, are grossly under-represented in political and economic decision-making. HEALTH Sexual and reproductive health was not included, because it is not comparable between women and men – but as the report puts it ‘Women get sicker and men die younger’. What EIGE also did, was a check with the broader context in Europe. The report discovered correlations between a higher GDP, higher social protection, fewer young people unemployed, more formal child care, more women on boards and more spending on health care when a country has a higher gender equality index score. The Gender Equality Index focused on violence against women for the first time, using data from the extensive Survey of the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) performed last March. This Survey finally produced official evidence of the high prevalence of violence against women in all parts of Europe. It also provided a comprehensive overview of the old and new forms of violence that women in Europe are facing specifically because they are women. Member States with higher levels of violence against women also scored higher in the Gender Equality Index: this is not odd or even contradictory information: EIGE research shows that when the level of gender equality is high, people tend to have more trust in justice institutions and in the police and the levels of disclosed violence are higher. This is of course very valuable evidence for the continued struggle of the women's movement. In 2017 the Index will focus more on intersectionality. |
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