Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Women, work and the recession in Wales

Posted: 05 Mar 2013 08:11 AM PST

Job Centre PlusReport reveals hardship suffered by Welsh women in the recession.

A major new report has revealed the impact the economic crisis had had on women in Wales.

Five years after the global recession hit, independent research by the Bevan Foundation suggests women in Wales are experiencing a delayed impact.

The report claims that while traditionally male-dominated jobs in industry were the first to go, women in Wales are now experiencing a decline in employment as a knock-on affect of the recession.

According to the research, male unemployment in Wales has been static or declining over the last two years, but women have been hit by a 12 per cent rise in unemployment over the same period.

The figures are 'obscured', according to the Foundation, by the increase in the number of older women staying in employment as the female retirement age increases.

In Wales there are now nine per cent more women aged 50-64 in work than there were in 2008.

And unemployment among young women has increased during the recession by more than 20 per cent within four years.

Victoria Winckler, director of the Bevan Foundation and author of the report, said: "The labour market is very challenging for women.

"As well as the effects of the recession and public spending cuts, the increase in pension age is reducing job turn-over while the welfare reform has increased the number of women looking for work – nearly 15,000 lone parents and 22,000 claimants of incapacity benefits have come onto the job market recently."

The Welsh government’s equalities minister, Jane Hutt, said: "This report shows how decisions being made by the UK government are affecting the lives of women in Wales.

“There is clear evidence that reducing budgets and welfare reform are impacting on single parents and carers, the majority of whom are women."

The figures also show that women in Wales are among the lowest paid in the UK.

In 2011, the average earnings for women in the public sector in Wales came in at £12.70 an hour, the second lowest in the UK, while at £8.50 an hour, they are the lowest paid private sector workers.

And so, in the public sector, women's full-time median gross hourly earnings are 91 per cent of men's compared with 79 per cent in the private sector.

Speaking to BBC Radio Wales, Winckler said that four in ten women in Wales work in the public sector. It is therefore not surprising that women in Wales have felt the full force of public sector cuts.

According to the Fawcett Society, women make up 65 per cent of the UK’s public sector workers, and 75 per cent of the UK’s local government workforce.

In 2011 evidence from the GMB union revealed that women accounted for almost 70 per cent of job losses in Welsh councils.

In 19 councils in England and Wales, women made up 100 per cent of job losses.

A recent study by the TUC revealed that two thirds of  the UK’s workers who were made redundant since 2008 were men, but claimed the last two years have been the worst for female redundancies, reflecting public sector cuts made by the coalition government.

And the latest unemployment figures for Wales show it is lagging behind the rest of the UK.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), unemployment in Wales rose by 6,000 to 8.6 per cent in the last three months of 2012, while throughout the UK the number of people out of work fell by 14,000 to 7.8 per cent.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan Smith said: “These figures show another big increase in full-time jobs, half a million more British people in work over the past year and more women in employment than ever before."

Last year in Wales, female unemployment hit a record high.

The welfare reform has increased the number of women looking for work – nearly 15,000 lone parents and 22,000 claimants of incapacity benefits have come onto the job market recently.

"Many of these women have not worked for some time, with low self-confidence and rusty skills," Victoria Winckler said.

The findings of this most recent report suggest that the recession is far from over for women in Wales.

And so while men's employment starts to show signs of recovery, we are likely to see the number of Welsh women out of work continue to rise.

Women’s rights are human rights

Posted: 05 Mar 2013 04:12 AM PST

eavesFor an abuse to be recognised in law as a human rights abuse the State has to be responsible for the abuse.

Guest post by Heather Harvey of Eaves.

"Women's rights are human rights" is an old, old slogan and one that I and many might think seems so stark-staringly obvious as to be redundant.

I have noticed, however, that it is reappearing on twitter, in articles and on placards recently.

And what exactly are ‘human rights’?

It is a truism that all too often we [feminists] talk too much to ourselves, and in doing so assume a far greater shared belief, knowledge and history than is the case.

That may explain why on the one hand it is great that we all think this slogan is so obvious but it may also explain why a significant number of feminists actually are not aware of the struggle women activists have fought  for this slogan to seem so obvious.

Not everyone knows that there was, and in some quarters still exists, a strongly held view that violence against women is not a human rights abuse.

Indeed such a view still feeds some of our perspectives, responses and struggles when confronting violence against women today.

So this is a recap. And apologies in advance to those who know it inside out.

For an abuse to be recognised in law as a "Human Rights Abuse" the State [the Government] needs to be responsible for the abuse.

Traditionally this was interpreted very narrowly to mean that the perpetrator had to be a "State actor" – that is an agent of the state exercising their public function – when they committed the abuse such as a police, prison or immigration officer, member of the recognised armed forces, civil servant, public sector employee etc.

In the same, equally narrow and artificial way; an abuse committed by a "non-state actor" [private individual] such as a mugging, a racially motivated attack between individuals in the street or domestic violence etc was not in law seen as a human rights abuse but as a crime between individuals.

This may be due to the fact that much of human rights legislation was drafted in the post world wars context in a response to the persecution and abuses of the time.

Inevitably therefore much of the focus of these international standards was the actions and powers of States attempting to consolidate their power or engaged in traditional conflict.

The "victims" in mind, therefore, were commonly opposition or dissenters challenging a state for over-reaching its powers, those persecuted, tortured and arbitrarily imprisoned for opposing the state, those persecuted by the state as a threat to the status quo or to the vision of the state, those fleeing the persecution of the state, prisoners of war and civilians mistreated by a state over-reaching itself or by the State's conduct of war.

This State or public v. private distinction was always, but now more than ever, far too simplistic and artificial.

We live in a climate of private companies delivering government functions at home and abroad, complex real-time media, freedom fighters, guerrillas or terrorists, irregular armies and militia, counter terrorism, "pre-emptive" strikes, drones, robots etc.

We see states acting out their self interest and ideologies of choice in who they promote and protect and who they ignore and demonise.

States are choosing to intervene in different ways in some crises and not in others and we see a huge growth in the power of big business interests merging with security and foreign policy at local, regional, national and international level.

There is a definite blurring of the edges between public and private and indeed human rights commentators have been grappling with State Accountability in these traditional conflict scenarios for some time.

Women's rights activists found that issues like violence against women were always treated as isolated, fragmented, individual crimes.

At the same time, however, violence against women was happening on an epidemic scale and was acknowledged as a pattern of discriminatory behaviour arising from women's unequal and traditionally inferior status.

There were few shelters or women's services, no education and awareness campaigns, police were not investigating, and rape and domestic violence was seen as a normal hazard of a woman's life for which she was often partially or wholly responsible and so on.

Women's rights activists in the 80s and 90s in particular, therefore, highlighted that even if the perpetrator was not a  "State actor", the state's inadequate action in the face of such violence rendered them complicit and engaged state responsibility.

Consequently violence against women (inadequately addressed) could be defined as "human rights abuse" in the strictest sense of the term.

This is sometimes expressed as "Due Diligence" whereby the State has to take all necessary measures to respect, protect and fulfil women's human rights.

This includes legal and non-legal measures including investing in women's support services, education and awareness campaigns, training for public sector workers as well as legislation and measures to ensure investigation, prosecution, compensation and access to justice etc.

The activists were at pains to stress that this was always implicit in the human rights legislation just that it had not always been interpreted in this way and perhaps also reflects the need for women's rights activists to be engaged in drafting, interpreting and applying legislation.

This construct applies to other marginalised, unpopular or minority groups and individuals who are also more likely to suffer abuse, often discriminatory violence, at the hands of their family, community or private individuals.

If the State is not taking adequate steps to protect against, for instance, racial and homophobic abuse that may be committed by private individuals then the state is complicit and so responsible hence it becomes an issue of "human rights".

This is why civil liberties legislation, which is about limiting the reach of the state, is not nearly so threatening to the state as human rights legislation.

Human rights legislation requires the state to reach out and be seen to proactively protect and enforce the individual rights of each of us – even those of us who are unpopular or lacking in influence or voice and who otherwise may not come into much contact with the state but suffer "in private".

So next time you hear an expression like "It's just a domestic" or you read about the latest mediation and "restorative justice" proposals to respond to domestic and sexual violence without engaging the criminal justice system, or hear government slating human rights legislation or indeed read a placard bearing "women's rights are human rights" you might like to ponder the weight of the history that has gone before and the implications for what is to come.

Bedroom tax will hit women hardest

Posted: 05 Mar 2013 01:12 AM PST

bedbYou can’t ‘choose to downsize’ if there is nowhere to go.

Housing benefit is to be cut for families living in social or council housing who are deemed to have a ‘spare’ room or rooms.

Women on low incomes, and their children, face being forced out of their homes when the controversial ‘bedroom tax’ comes into force in April.

Women will be particularly hard hit as one million more single women claim housing benefit than men, according to a report by The Fawcett Society entitled ‘The impact of austerity on women’.

A household with one spare room will lose 14 per cent of housing benefit, and those with two spare rooms will lose 25 per cent.

As housing charity Shelter explains, in real terms if a rent is £100 per week and there’s one spare bedroom, then occupants will only receive £75 housing benefit leaving them to find the remaining £25 per week from overstretched household budgets.

The cuts are part of series of welfare reforms introduced by the UK’s coalition government.

The idea behind this one is that families will choose to downsize to smaller homes, freeing up larger ones for the one million plus families currently on council waiting lists.

Conservative MP Richard Harrington puts the case for the government in a Guardian debate here.

Campaigners against the tax fear the reality will be that more people will become homeless because there is not enough social housing being built to accommodate those who downsize or are forced out of homes which they now can’t afford.

So there is nowhere for them to go.

Those living in private accommodation will not be affected by the bedroom tax, but women living in council or housing association homes will be.

More women rely on housing benefit than men because many are single mothers, and 64 per cent of all low paid workers are women.

Disabled women and women from ethnic groups will also be affected by the new rules.

Journalism students in Birmingham found that the bedroom tax will hit hardest in predominantly ethnic communities rather than predominantly white ones.

The Bedroom Tax Investigated blog says: ‘Ladywood, possibly the most affected area, has the lowest proportion of white residents in Birmingham at just over a third.

‘The predicted least affected area of the city is Sutton Coldfield, where a massive 94 per cent of its residents are white.’

In 27 February’s Prime Minister’s Questions David Cameron promised to listen to every bedroom tax case – and The Sunday People, which is running a campaign for a fairer deal for those affected by the tax, urges people to write to him.

These include disabled people who because of their health issues are unable to sleep in the same room as their partner; parents of children who died who want to keep their child’s room as a memorial; separated or divorced parents who have their children to stay for part of the week – their room will be deemed spare – and siblings forced to share.

And students living away from home will have their ‘home’ bedroom classed as spare, as will those in the armed services.

Cheryl Guillott of Halifax told The Yorkshire Post how she and her disabled son face having to move from the home where her grandson’s ashes are buried in the garden.

Part-time shopworker Vicky Downey of Kimnel Bay, a mother of three girls, told The Daily Post that she will lose out because one daughter lives with her for three days a week instead of seven.

And Alison Huggan of Middlesborough told The Mirror that she will have to pay the tax for the ‘spare’ room her twin sons leave behind when they go with the army to serve in Afghanistan.

The tax comes in on the same day as the coalition gives a £1.3billion tax cut to 13,000 millionaires.

Another anomaly is pointed out by Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell, in his take on Richard Harrington’s remark that ‘taxpayers, including social housing tenants, are effectively having to pay for around a million unused bedrooms’.

Protests against the bedroom tax are taking place around the country on 16 March.

Here is a list of those organised so far.