Women's Views on News |
- Fat Cat Day not a fair pay day
- Banner drop for bridges not walls
- When environmental issues are women’s issues
| Fat Cat Day not a fair pay day Posted: 12 Jan 2017 02:14 PM PST
The UK's top bosses will have made more money by lunchtime on 4 January 2017 than the typical UK worker will earn in one year, according to an analysis that has exposed the gulf between executives and the rest of the workforce. The Guardian reported that the High Pay Centre calculated that the average FTSE 100 boss now earns more than £1,000 an hour, meaning they will have passed the UK average salary of £28,200 by around midday on Wednesday, 4 January, this year. The High Pay Centre, which calls itself ‘an independent non-party think tank established to monitor pay at the top of the income distribution and set out a road map towards better business and economic success’, said that after enjoying rapid earnings growth in recent years, leading bosses now typically earn 129 times more than their employees. 'Fat Cat Wednesday' as this day has been called, is an important reminder of the continuing problem of the unfair pay gap in the UK, Stefan Stern, the head of the High Pay Centre, said. "We hope the government will recognise that further reform to pay practices are needed if this gap is to be closed," Stern continued. He said giving workers a seat at the table when pay is set, something Theresa May had proposed when she became Prime Minister but now seems to have changed her mind about, would help restrain executive rewards. And, Stern said, forcing companies to publish pay ratios would be a good way to start pay reforms. Responding to the High Pay Centre’s analysis, Frances O'Grady, the TUC’s general secretary, said: "The Prime Minister must stick to her promise to tackle excessive pay at the top. “And she should keep her commitment to put workers on company boards. This would help keep executive salary decisions grounded in common sense and fairness." "Working people deserve a fair share of the wealth they help create," O’Grady continued. "But while the pay of top executives has been rocketing up, the average weekly wage is still worth less than it was nine years ago." Her remark was based on ONS data from the Labour Force Survey up to 2015, and the Office for Budgetary Responsibility’s projections for 2016, which together showed that real average weekly pay was £522 at its peak in 2007, but £499 in 2016. The Guardian also reported that labour market experts had said that despite continued talk of reforming executive pay, the gulf between top bosses and average workers was likely to widen this year as employers hold off pay rises because of the uncertainty surrounding Brexit and cost pressures from a weak pound. Sterling's fall since the referendum has raised import costs and is expected to stoke inflation, meaning that those workers who do get a pay rise are still likely to be worse off in real terms. And campaigners at the Equality Trust highlighted the gulf between UK executives and key workers pay. Using High Pay Centre figures for 2015, the Trust found that the average annual pay for a FTSE 100 boss was £5.48m – or 401 times that of a minimum-waged worker. It was also 172 times more than a nurse's pay and 145 times more than a teacher's. "Bosses continue to rake in millions even when they fail, but those who care for us, protect us and teach our children are left struggling to get by," the Equality Trust's executive director, Wanda Wyporska, said. "It's clear our priorities are all wrong."  |
| Banner drop for bridges not walls Posted: 12 Jan 2017 02:11 PM PST
On 20 January 2017 Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America. Donald Trump's election – driven by hate and fear, lies and division – is the most significant moment yet in the rise of a new far right politics in western democracies. Trump has demonised migrants, Mexicans and Muslims. He has mocked disabled people and talks casually about assaulting women. He has threatened to take rights away from ordinary people, hand even more power to a corporate elite and reverse urgent action on climate change. His election has added to the divisive rhetoric, deplorable insults and sickening dangers people in the UK already face post the Brexit referendum. The slide towards a 21st century fascism threatens the very fabric of our society. There are so many good reasons to protest this moment that it's impossible to fit them all on one banner. But this vicious politics challenges our rights at work and at home, it seeks to divide our communities, and it leaves the future of our planet hanging in the balance. It claims to stand for ordinary people, but at its heart lie financial elites, anti-science operators, and authoritarian bigots. So 20 January 2017 is also going to be a Bridges Not Walls day; a chance to say what you want to say about stopping it and to send a message of hope, solidarity, and unity out to our communities and the world on the day Trump takes up the US presidency. On 20 January 2017 supporters of the Bridges Not Walls project will drop banners from bridges all around the country to send a simple, hopeful and unmistakable message. This is an open invitation to anyone and everyone to stand up with banners and messages of solidarity and defiance. Any group can organise a Bridges Not Walls action – this will be a decentralised day of action so anyone can get involved. Your union branch? Your football team? A campaign or political group you're involved in? It doesn't even have to be a 'group' that already exists – you could ask a few mates if they'd be up for helping to organise an action. Please join in on a bridge near you. Simply organise to meet on a bridge near you, with a banner carrying your message, and take a photo. These photos will be collected centrally and their messages shared far and wide. And if you remember to register your event on the action map, others can find you and join your action. If you are in London and want to join in on a central London bridge, please use the relevant map and click on the red markers to identify which London bridge you'd like to join and use the contact details to contact the relevant bridge leads. And anyone in or near London can come and help make London bridge banners in East London on 14/15 January. You can also get involved by sharing content on social media: You can join the Facebook event for the national day of action here. You can like the Bridges Not Walls Facebook page here. You can follow Bridges Not Walls on Twitter here. #Bridgesnotwallz To find out more about what is involved in organising a banner drop (small or large!), or for further support, click here. And to have a look at or download or share the project’s handbook, click here. We at WVoN recommend reading the handbook – it says useful things: how to make sure your banner doesn't turn in to a sail, for example.  |
| When environmental issues are women’s issues Posted: 12 Jan 2017 01:22 PM PST
The Women's Environmental Network (WEN) works directly with women in the UK, providing information, training and workshops on matters of local food growing, health, and climate change, to encourage and inspire women to make change in their lives, families and wider networks. WEN was founded in 1988 by pioneers of the environmental justice movement, women who recognised that saving the planet is about social justice and human rights. WEN’s founders saw that women’s perspectives were often overlooked and undervalued, and that the environmental movement as a whole neglected to take gender-sensitive approaches to all environmental issues – and sought to address this absence of gender-specific research and activism. They called for a different way of thinking about and acting on environmental issues, and their voices echo down the decades to WEN's work today. WEN's first campaign in 1989 centred around preventing chlorine bleaching in sanitary pads and babies’ nappies. The use of chlorine to whiten these products and many others meant that women and babies were coming into direct contact with cancer-causing dioxins. This initial pioneering campaign would lead to work on breast cancer prevention, treating breast cancer as an environmental, and preventable, disease. The Women's Environmental Network's mission is to make the connections between women's health and well-being and environmental issues. WEN works as part of the global food sovereignty movement to encourage small-scale local food growing in London, for example. WEN’s briefings on health and harmful chemicals aim to help you make informed decisions about what to buy. WEN also encourages you to try making your own healthy, natural and sustainable alternatives to commercial products, from growing your own vegetables to making your own deodorant. And in the past decade WEN has led the movement in the UK to recognise that climate change affects marginalised groups, including women, in different ways. Until social inequality is addressed, climate change will only get worse. WEN also supports the use of healthier and more sustainable alternatives to conventional sanitary products, from reusable menstrual cups to organic cotton tampons. WEN educates and informs people about menstrual health, and has successfully campaigned to change the way conventional products are made and sold in the UK. WEN's vision is an environmentally sustainable world in which we have achieved gender equality. And the WEN FORUM, a quarterly symposium, will feature key note speakers discussing topics of the moment. These collaborative sessions aim to be inspiring, topical and – sometimes – controversial. WEN is excited to be launching a new series of events and seminars in 2017. On 26 January 2017, from 6.30pm-9.30pm, at the London School of Economics, the WEN Forum and oikos LSE society present: What's Feminism got to do with the Environment? An evening seeking to address how the feminist and environmental movements can work more closely together, and why feminism is central to ensuring environmental sustainability. Keynote speaker: Natalie Bennett, former party leader of The Green Party of England and Wales; Panel: Craig Bennett, CEO, Friends of the Earth (FoE); Lucy Bushill-Matthews, CEO, Muslim Action for Development and Environment (MADE); Marylyn Haines Evans, Public Affairs Chair, The National Federation of Women's Institute (NFWI); Kate Metcalf, co-director, Women’s Environmental Network; Belinda Phipps, chair of The Fawcett Society; and Judy Ling Wong, president of the Black Environment Network (BEN). The event is to be chaired by Maria Adebowale-Schwarte, WEN Ambassador and Director, Living Space Project and Clore Social Leadership Environment Fellow, and Anouk Patel-Campillo, Assistant Professor of Gender, Development and Globalisation at the Gender Institute, LSE. Join in. To buy your ticket, click here. And follow WEN and the WEN FORUM on Facebook.  |
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