Grundtvig 2012-2014Partnership

ECDI“Everyone Can Do It!”

Accentuate (North-East) LimitedUnited Kingdom

1865 – John Stuart Mill MP argues for women to get the vote

1818 – Jeremy Bentham in favour of women voting

1894 – Local Government Act (women who owned property could vote in local elections.

1908 – the first woman to serve as mayor of a town

PUBLIC AND POLITICAL LIFE

Key dates in the struggle for the vote

•1903 – Women's Social and Political Union WSPU is formed (led by Emmeline Pankhurst

•1909 The Women's Tax Resistance League founded

•September 1909 – Force feeding introduced to hunger strikers in English prisons

•1905, 1908, 1913 – 3 phases of WSPU militancy (Civil Disobedience – Destruction of Public Property – Arson/Bombings)

•1905 – First Hunger Strike

•November 1918 – the Eligibility of Women Act was passed, allowing women to be elected into Parliament.[3]

•1928 – Women received the vote on the same terms as men (over the age of 21) as a result of the Representation of the People Act 1928.[4]

•1918 The Representation of the People Act•The vote was given to women over 30 who were either a member or married to member of the local GovernmenT Register

HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT

House of Commons 504 Men (Elected) 146 Women

House of Lords 642 Men(Nominated or Hereditary) 181 Women

• Britain’s First Woman Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher 1979-92

Women “missing” in Public and Political Life

• Just 22.5 percent of MPs are women, 21.7 percent of peers and 17.4 percent of the Cabinet. Women make up 13.3 percent of elected mayors and 14.6 percent of Police and Crime Commissioners.

• Britain is falling down the global league table when it comes to the representation of women in politics, as other countries move forward faster: in 2001 we were ranked 33 out of 190 countries, but by the end of 2012 we had fallen to 60th place.

• Women are similarly ‘missing’ in many other spheres of public life: just 36.4 percent of public appointments are women, 13.6 percent of the senior judiciary and 5 percent of Editors of national daily newspapers.

• Women’s absence is particularly marked in finance and economy: there are no women at all on the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee; women hold just 11.1 percent of UK Bank Chief Executive positions, 17.3 percent of FTSE 100 Director positions and make up just 15.1 percent of members of Local Economic Partnerships.

GENDER AND THE ECONOMY - PAY INEQUALITIES

FULL-TIME VERSUS PART-TIME WORK

Age and Gender

• Current Government’s view

There is legislation in place (section 78, Equality Act 2010), which would force companies to report their gender pay gap.

However, the government is not minded to commence these provisions. It believes that a voluntary, business-led initiative will be better at driving the culture change we want to see on this issue, where reporting on a range of workforce information - not just the gender pay gap - becomes the norm.

Think, Act, Report encourages companies to publish as much information as possible - including their gender pay gap, if they feel comfortable doing so - but it's a voluntary initiative, and it's for companies themselves to choose what they make public, and where.

Of the 23.4 million households in England and Wales in 2011, 1.7 million (7.2%) consisted of lone parents with dependent children; this increased from 2001 when the comparable figure was 1.4 million (6.5%). Around 9 in every 10 lone-parent households were headed by a woman, both nationally and across English regions and Wales

Family ResponsibilitiesTable 7.6 Number of violent incidents against men and Women by violence category 2011/12

     

  Number of incidents (thousands)

 Men Women All

        All violence1 1,265 786 2,051

        Wounding 321 177 498 Assault with minor injury 255 186 441

Assault without injury 503 355 857

Robbery 186 68 254        

• Equality Legislation•Unlike most of the E.U., the first laws addressing discrimination in Britain concerned race and ethnicity rather than gender. 1965 Race Relations Act.

•A Women’s National Commission was established in 1969, but cut by the Coalition Government in 2010.

•The first major law on sex discrimination was 1970 Equal Pay Act which came into force in 1975. It focused on employment.

•Tribunals and courts looked at Class relationships, between employers and employees e.g. Low Pay Commission 1997; National Minimum Wage 1998.

•Developments in Europe influenced the U.K. E.g. Treaty of Amsterdam 1999 & Human Rights Act 1998.

•Equality laws have become more concerned with the sale and distribution of goods and services.

•Equality policy was established around Ethnicity, Gender and then Disability. Other issues of Age, Religion/Belief and Sexual Orientation were built on this legacy.

•Since 2006, new laws on equality dealt with all forms rather than treating each separately. This new model sees all inequalities as having similar origins and as structurally generated.

•In 2007 the Equality and Human Rights Commission was established.

•There have been contests between the different strands e.g. Religion clashing with the rights of Women and the rights of Sexual Minorities.

•Currently the policy is not merely about justice but attempts to be transformative. E.g. Not just equal pay but looking at how child care may enable a woman to go to work.

•Crime Policy: Over the last 30 years there has been improvements in the policies and prosecution of ‘Hate Crime’, particularly violence against women and minorities.

•There have been intersections (or overlap) between these groupings E.g. Forced marriage and Female Genital Mutilation