'We will be the biggest losers'

Louise Nousratpour
Thursday March 12, 2009
The Morning Star

BRITAIN is heading for a depression arguably worse than that experienced in the 1930s and working-class women are its biggest losers, speakers at a TUC women' conference meeting warned on Wednesday.

Charter for Women secretary Sharon Allen told the fringe meeting in Scarborough that there has never been a more pressing time for women to mobilise around demands for their rights as business-friendly ministers and bosses look to tear into equality laws to maximise profits.

The charter, launched in March 2003, sets out a list of demands including closing the gender pay gap, providing affordable childcare provisions, fighting racism and resisting the so-called feminisation of poverty.

"Support for the charter is going from strength to strength, with new unions and organisations affiliating to the campaign," Ms Allen beamed, urging delegates to make sure their unions are involved.

A recent TUC study found that women are losing full-time jobs at twice the rate of men, with employers using the recession to target single mothers, pregnant women and the disabled for redundancies.

Women are disproportionately suffering from the crisis because of the gender pay gap and because their unpaid caring responsibilities leave them stuck in low-paid and part-time jobs, where the pay gap is a staggering 40 per cent.

Ms Allen warned of a rise in violence against women as the recession bites and attacked the government for "clawing back funding from women's refuge centres and rendering them incapable of providing the support victims need."

TUC women's committee member Mary Davis warned that Britain was in a depression that could potentially be worse than that of the 1930s.

"Between 1929 and 1931, there was some restructuring of British industry as it moved into light industry which employed many women. But I don't think that opportunity exists now, as the manufacturing base has been destroyed," she argued.

"This is not a banking crisis alone, but a crisis of no industry. It is about an unfettered global market that zooms across the world and goes where rates of exploitation are at the highest.

"The financial deregulation, which began with the Tories and continued under new Labour, coincided with the destruction of our public sector as huge sways of services were privatised."

Ms Davis dismissed as "nonsense" the analysis offered by mainstream economic experts who use bourgeois terms to explain the capitalist crisis, arguing that to understand the nature of the crisis we must revisit Karl Marx's Das Kapital.

As the floor opened for discussion, delegates welcomed Ms Davis's Marxist analysis and made suggestions to improve the charter.

CWU delegate Tricia Clarke expressed disappointment at conference decision on Wednesday to reject a bold motion calling for support for the People's Charter that included demands for the nationalisation of the banking system and companies that threaten huge job cuts.

The motion fell on grounds that its demands were "unrealistic" and "too aspirational."

Ms Clarke said that the charter must emphasis the fight against privatisation.

NUJ delegate Lena Calvert said that the charter should also advocate international solidarity, especially with women in the developing world where the effects of the global crisis are more extreme.

"As more people fall into extreme poverty, reactionary traditions and religious fundamentalism will take roots, with devastating implication for women's rights," she warned.