Women campaigners issue inequality warning

by LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR in Manchester
Monday September 22, 2008
The Morning Star

Convention of the Left:WOMEN campaigners called on the Convention of the Left conference in Manchester on Sunday to fight the "feminisation of poverty" and expose the ideologies that are used to perpetuate gender inequality.

During a lively debate, activists argued that women's key demands for equal pay, fair pension and affordable child care were all part and parcel of the wider class struggle and must be given the attention that they deserve.

Margaret Boyle of the National Assembly of Women urged the left to unite around the Charter for Women, which is a campaigning programme backed by most unions and some left groups.

Ms Boyle condemned new Labour's "deeply shameful" record on gender equality, noting that, over the past decade, the gender pay gap had widened and women representation at top levels had, at best, stagnated.

"This is a government that is supposedly on our side, but it has allowed bosses a veto on mandatory pay audits and has rejected our demand for permitting group action," she told the convention. "Labour's attack on lone parents, mostly women, is also disgraceful."

From November, the government will stop child benefits for lone parents with children aged 12 and over to force them back to work.

"Starved of cash, they will have to settle for shitty, low-paid jobs that have no future," Ms Boyle warned. "Another scandal is ministers' refusal to raise the state pension in line with earnings."

Socialist Review editor and trade unionist Judith Orr warned against dividing the movement along gender lines by "guilt-tripping" men.

"It is about class struggle, not gender," she stressed, adding: "Is Condoleezza Rice our sister? I don't think so."

The convention also criticised the trade union movement's failure to remedy its "male, pale and stale" image and called for more "women-friendly" structures to boost female representation.