LIKE most women activists of my generation, I’ve spent most of my adult life campaigning for equality for women as part of the struggle for social justice for all. There were times I even felt we were making progress.
However, as neoliberalism has taken a tight hold and inequality has grown massively, it has become very clear that as things worsen for our class as a whole, women bear the brunt of this.
As poverty has risen across Britain, women and children are the worst affected. A Women’s Budget Group analysis last year of women’s living standards since 2010 showed that, although most people in Britain have experienced a decline, on average, women experienced a higher annual loss than men, losing 9.4 per cent, to men’s loss of 5.8 per cent.
The poorest women lost out the most, with a 21 per cent reduction in their living standards, and single parents, most likely to be women, faced an 18 per cent drop.
Cuts to welfare benefits have had a disproportionate impact on women. The benefits cap implemented in 2013 saw women (and their children) punished by the two-child limit.
Women are almost invariably the principal carers for children as well as sick and elderly relatives. Any hopes that this travesty might be reversed by a Labour government have been completely dashed. The latest cuts to disability benefits will only add to the pressures.
Women are still over-represented in the lowest-paid jobs — low-paid not because these jobs aren’t essential to a caring society but because work viewed as “women’s work” is so poorly valued.
Add to this the massive increase in violence against women, described by police chiefs last year as reaching epidemic proportions, with an estimate that in Britain at least one in every 12 women will be a victim of violence at the hands of men. And when we look at the situation worldwide, the World Health Organisation reports that one in three women experience physical or sexual violence.
So it can often feel like all the rights we fought hard for and won are being comprehensively rolled back.
It is against this bleak backdrop that the Morning Star Women’s Readers and Supporters Group has been established by women in Scotland. We wanted to look at the issues facing us in society today through a women’s lens, recognising the need to focus on the impact of neoliberalism on women’s rights, locally and globally. We wanted to encourage more women to read and support the Morning Star and to write for it from a women’s perspective.
Our webinar topics have included women in work, women and poverty, women and war and women in Palestine. Our women and maternity webinar showed starkly how gains in women’s maternity rights have been drastically rolled back. Women are poorest when pregnant or new mothers.
TUC research has shown that across Britain, the “motherhood pay penalty” means that by age 32, mothers in full-time work earn 11 per cent less than those with no children, with studies showing that maternity “benefits” are a major cause of women’s poverty in pregnancy and early motherhood.
Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance is less than half of the National Living Wage. Just 13 per cent of women have occupational maternity pay agreements compared to 44 per cent in 2008 — a more than two-thirds reduction mainly due to the privatisation of services, especially in predominantly female occupations.
However, we also heard how trade unions can have a massive impact in improving things for women, with the FBU’s success in securing 26 weeks of paid maternity leave for women firefighters. Their “Fight for 52” continues.
Then there is women and war. We know that throughout history and up to today, women and girls are hit worst by the impacts of conflict. It is a serious threat to sex equality, with girls and women subjected to violence and abuse, while their rights to healthcare, sanitation, education, and freedom are undermined.
We heard a chilling presentation on how grand corruption, corporate malfeasance and militarism predominate in the global arms trade, accounting for around 40 per cent of all corruption in world trade and responsible for over half a million deaths a year. Shrouded in national-security-imposed secrecy the trade undermines democracy, the rule of law and good governance while making the world less safe.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has impacted women in a myriad of ways, with over 70 per cent of those killed women and children. But the impact goes much deeper for women, particularly affected by the destruction of the healthcare facilities including maternity care; and the lack of access to sanitary products, clean water and privacy for 690,000 menstruating women and girls in Gaza is a serious health concern.
The war in Sudan has reversed the gains made towards democracy and stability, leaving the country facing a catastrophic humanitarian crisis that will impact most on women. Fifty-three per cent of those internally displaced are women and girls.
It has never been more important to focus on the issues for women in Scotland, Britain and globally, and to highlight and call out how political decisions (still, in our male-dominated society, made primarily by men and serving their interests) impact on our lives.
Our next webinar in May is on prostitution with a call to focus on the support and protection of the women caught up in it, and to continue to criminalise the pimps and punters that use and abuse them. Please join us if you can.
For more information contact [email protected].
This article originally appeared in the Morning Star on 8th April 2025
RSS Feed