Dear Sir,
In the week we celebrate International Women’s Day, we are still reeling from the news that NHS workers will only be receiving a 1% pay rise, the equivalent of the cost of one sandwich a week. Why are these linked? Well, 77% of workers in the NHS are women.
Indeed, the majority of workers in front-line services are women. Women are also the majority when it comes to zero-hour contracts and insecure work, which have been hit hardest during the pandemic and women have suffered the biggest drop in earnings.
Most childcare responsibilities still falling on the shoulders of women, who have been expected to continue working from home, while also home educating their children. Yet it is known that future economic growth will depend on access to high quality, affordable childcare, which is still lacking.
A recent report by the Commons Women and Inequalities Committee stated that the economic fall out from Covid is having a worse impact on women, and covid support policies are ‘skewed toward men’ worsening inequality. It warns that any advances made in economic equality are rapidly going backwards. This is on top of ten years of Tory austerity policies and huge benefit cuts, which also mostly impacted women.
Given the lack of concern by this government about the impact of its policies on 50% of our nations population, who is best placed to speak up for women? The answer to that is women themselves.
We need more women speaking out to ensure women’s voices and their perspective is considered throughout our political system. This not only benefits women, but studies also show when women benefit from political decisions, men do to.
It’s not easy for women to have a voice, surveys show women in the political sphere receive the most abuse and are attacked for things their male counterparts are praised for, but, together we can stand up to this behaviour.
We need more women’s voices in politics, especially local politics, and in County Durham the Labour Party has a long history of local women speaking out on things that affect them and fighting the injustices they face, demanding change. Join us, vote for us, and together we will all be heard.
Sedgefield Labour Woman’s Forum.
