Pay discrimination of British women

This video is called BATGIRL saves BATMAN & ROBIN 1960’s Equal Pay For Women.

38 and still waiting

(Wednesday 29 October 2008)

IT IS now 38 years since a Labour government passed the Equal Pay Act, which was supposed to guarantee equal pay for work of equal value.

The Fawcett Society’s Women’s No Pay Day [on 30 October] dramatises the reality that women are still paid 17 per cent less than their male counterparts by pointing out that women workers are, in essence, working unpaid for the rest of the year [until 31 December].

Far from a recession being the wrong time to raise the demand for pay justice, it is precisely the correct time to do so.

Increasing purchasing power for low-paid workers is likely to stimulate economic demand and hold back further closures and redundancies.

When TUC general secretary Brendan Barber points out that “the touchy-feely approach with employers is not working,” he is quite right.

But, unfortunately, the trade unions’ touchy-feely approach with the government is also not working. New Labour has constantly dragged its feet with regard to the unions’ demand for a level playing field.

It has conceded pay audits in the public sector, but it has dug in its heels for similar mechanisms in the private sector, where the problem of pay inequality is even more acute.

Many women face discrimination not only with pay but also with pensions, being denied the full state pension as a result of their caring responsibilities, first, with children and, then, for close elderly relatives. The best that the government can come up with on this issue is to offer women the opportunity to make a lump payment for up to 12 years national insurance contributions.

Not only does such an arrangement discriminate against low-paid women who will not have the wherewithal to pay for these catch-up payments but it takes no account of the social contribution that these women’s caring duties represent.

It would be more just to simply pay the full pension without making it dependent on contributions.

The double jeopardy in which women find themselves, with regard to both pay and pensions, illustrates that this government in particular and the political Establishment in general are yet to be convinced of the vital need for gender equality.

They will only be convinced by an unremitting struggle by the trade unions and equality campaigners to make women’s rights a central issue.