Women's Views on News |
- Looking at utopian thinking
- The “free periods” revolution
- Petition against minimum income floor for self-employed
| Posted: 15 May 2015 09:58 AM PDT
Ecology and equity demand radical social change, yet public debate remains dominated by a contest over who can better manage a capitalist economy. Ruth Levitas contends that we need more utopian thinking in order to develop genuine alternatives to the status quo, and that utopia is always a central part of critical social change. However, utopia must be understood as a method rather than a goal, and this entails revealing the images of a good society embedded in existing political programmes and policies, the imagination of possible alternatives, and the implications of these for human flourishing. Ruth Levitas is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Bristol. She has throughout her career worked on questions of utopian thought, as well as poverty, inequality, policy and politics. She is also founding chair of the Utopian Studies Society Europe (USSE), a former chair of the William Morris Society, and holds the Sargent Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Utopian Studies. She was also a member of the research team for the 2012 ESRC-funded study of Poverty and Social Exclusion in the United Kingdom. Her book 'The Inclusive Society: Social Exclusion and New Labour' published in 1998 and reprinted in 2005, introduced the idea of social exclusion as part of the new political language. Levitas identified three competing meanings of the term in contemporary British politics, emphasising poverty, employment and morality, and argued that there has been a shift away from understanding social exclusion as primarily a problem of poverty, towards questions of social integration through paid work and moral regulation. Her book ‘The Concept of Utopia’, first published in 1990 and reprinted in 2010, is an introduction to the meaning and importance of the concept of utopia, and explores a wealth of material drawn from literature and social theory to illustrate its rich history and analytical versatility. Situating utopia within the dynamics of the modern imagination, she examines the ways in which it has been used by some of the leading thinkers of modernity: Marx, Engels, Karl Mannheim, Robert Owen, Georges Sorel, Ernst Block, William Morris and Herbert Marcuse. Utopia remains the most potent secular concept for imagining and producing a ‘better world’. In her most recent book ‘Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society’, published in 2013, Levitas argues that a prospective future of ecological and economic crises poses a challenge to the utopian imaginary, to conceive a better world and alternative future. Utopia as Method does not construe utopia as goal or blueprint, but as a holistic, reflexive method for developing what those possible futures might be. It begins by treating utopia as the quest for grace, through a hermeneutics that recovers the utopian meaning in our culture, explored through colour and music. Moving from the existential to the social, it draws on H. G. Wells’s claim that the creation of utopias is the distinctive and proper method of sociology, and on the tentative reappearance of utopia in contemporary social theory. It proposes a constructive method, the Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. This fusion of explicitly normative social theory and analytic critique rehabilitates utopia as an integral part of sociology, and offers a means of collective engagement in shaping a better tomorrow. Levitas is speaking on The Necessity of Utopia at the Bristol Festival of Ideas on 19 May; and although the event is fully booked, there is a waiting list to join.  |
| Posted: 15 May 2015 03:53 AM PDT
The "stop taxing periods" campaign is gaining momentum, but there is another solution to the problem of unaffordable periods. Anti period tax campaigner Laura Coryton's petition has now gained over 200,000 signatures, and has received widespread attention in the media. In the run up to the general election the campaign even gained political support, with backing from Labour and even UKIP. The main theme of the #EndTamponTax campaign is simple: crocodile meat and private helicopters are tax exempt, but women continue to pay a 5 per cent tax on sanitary products – this is surely unacceptable. It seems obvious that we should object to paying tax on products which are essential for most women, but there is something far bigger that virtually everyone is missing when discussing this campaign. Tampons and sanitary towels have too long been portrayed as the only way to deal with a period, but there has been a quiet revolution going on for years, in the form of reusable menstrual cups. The argument for menstrual cups is compelling; in the UK 4.3 billion disposable sanitary products are used each year, all ending up in landfills or the sea. The environmental impact alone is staggering. And few people say anything of the unknown effects on women's bodies of the bleach, pesticides and other chemicals involved in the production of tampons and towels. Add to this the fact that the average woman spends £90 a year on sanitary products and it starts to feel like we are all being taken for fools. Washable menstrual cups cost around £20, and with proper care can last for well over ten years. Many women who use them also report that they experience less pain during their period, as the cup is designed to sit lower than a tampon and doesn't absorb natural secretions. Although they were once considered acceptable only to "hippies", you can now buy a menstrual cup in Boots and on Amazon – so why don't more women know about them? The simple answer is that a handful of huge companies benefit from us being squeamish about our periods, from believing that the only way to control them is to expose ourselves to the risk of toxic shock syndrome, and from us forking out each month for expensive pieces of chemically treated cotton which we throw away after a few hours. Like many economic issues we face, the issue of expensive periods is more about big business than it is about individual governments. And if we wanted to make periods affordable for all women, we should be pushing for the safer, cleaner alternatives – how about free menstrual cups for women in poverty? It really is time we took control of our bodies back from the corporations who profit every time we bleed.  |
| Petition against minimum income floor for self-employed Posted: 15 May 2015 02:53 AM PDT
If you are self-employed and claiming tax credits or Housing Benefit, you will be eventually moved onto Universal Credit when it is introduced in your area. Here is a summary of what to expect and what to do to be prepared. How Universal Credit payments and the minimum income floor aims to work: When the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) works out your Universal Credit payments, they will normally assume you are earning at least the 'minimum income floor'. This is an assumed level of earnings that is used to calculate your Universal Credit when your actual earnings fall below it. The minimum income floor level is calculated as follows: Take the number of hours you would be expected to work each week. This depends on your personal circumstances, for example you'd be expected to work fewer hours if you have caring responsibilities or you're disabled. This figure is then multiplied by the national minimum wage rate for your age group. This figure is multiplied by 52 then divided by 12 to reach a monthly figure. An amount for Income Tax and Class 2 and Class 4 National Insurance contributions is then deducted to arrive at your monthly minimum income floor. Universal Credit is paid monthly in arrears directly into your bank account. The amount you get each month is linked to how much you earn. If you earn more than the minimum income floor you will receive less Universal Credit. If you earn less than the minimum income floor you won't get any more Universal Credit to make up the difference. The problem – and therefore the objection to this scheme – is that many self-employed people make less than the minimum wage for hours worked. People have small cottage industries and work very hard and many more than minimum hours, yet are being told that because they have not made enough money and reached the 'minimum income floor'- which is what this petition is about – they are not working enough hours. When in fact they are working way more than minimum. Many single parents are working hard in small self-employed businesses. These take time to grow and are extremely valuable – to both them and society. The minimum income floor will impact thousands of single parent families and leave them unable to continue trying to be independent. Entrepreneurial single parents are a great role model for their children and being self-employed gives single parents the flexibility to also be present and care for their own children. And campaigners believe that the introduction of a minimum income floor for self-employed single parents will plunge many hard working single parent families into either poverty or unemployment. Please sign this petition asking the government to think again and see the huge and valuable contribution that many thousands of single parents are making in being self-employed and trying to create something for the future of their families.  |
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