Government and equality

In this member post, Young Fabian member Kwaku Adjei argues that government should be at the forefront of the equality agenda.

As staunch progressives the word ‘equality’ is not simply a concept we champion arbitrarily. It is an article of faith. For equality is an ideal that should always find expression in every policy proposal the Labour Party puts forward. In order for our policy prescriptions to have the optimum effect there are three elements that our initiatives should guarantee; the elimination of unlawful discrimination; the promotion of social harmony and good relations between all people; and the promotion of equal opportunities. Where equality becomes tricky and politically contentious is when the concept is used to imply all people having approximately the same material wealth. Consequently, the Right has always harboured very pejorative attitudes towards this ideal on the grounds that any attempt to address material inequalities shall inevitably involve state intervention.

However, the issue is not about so-called “big government”, a label often used to discourage policy makers exercising their power in order to make good a wrong. The issue is about fairness and how we use the power of state institutions to enforce fairness in the market place when unscrupulous individuals in business, and in particular financial services, have failed to do so. Those on the Right must acknowledge that over the last few years especially, unfettered free market economies have not favoured families at the middle and lower end of the income scale.

People understand the value of public services. They understand the importance of access to good tuition and good medical treatment because invariably it will be these factors that condition the life chances of every man, woman and child in the country. This is why in healthcare especially, medical provision has in large part been the preserve of the state.

Those nations with more expansive public sectors, notably the Scandinavian countries, fair better than the Anglo-Saxon economies in Britain and the US in terms of managing wealth disparities. Britain remains a country where the top twenty percent earn seven and a half times as much as the bottom twenty percent; and the wealthiest seven percent own fifty percent of the nation’s assets. Reversing these trends cannot always be achieved simply by throwing money at the problem.

However the Coalition is significantly misguided if it believes that solutions can be found in the absence of the state. Yet this is the trajectory ministers are following as they legislate for smaller welfare provision. As the welfare retrenchment agenda continues to bite, it is difficult to envision how communities can support individuals or enable equal levels of capability across race, gender or disability if the government is not prepared to lead from the front. Public services afford people from many different backgrounds the opportunity to be fully fledged participants in our democracy. The current government’s insistence on smaller government shall only marginalise some groups and engender greater social discord. Life is then reduced to the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. This is clearly the case in higher education where those with insufficient financial resources cannot afford a university place.

Even during periods of high national debt, the “big government” label should not throw progressives of course when attempting to answer questions around poverty, social mobility and general economic inequality. Government must always serve to empower. This means finding ways to make material wealth matter less.

Kwaku Adjei is a member of the Young Fabians.

Why hasn’t Cameron apologised yet?

In this member post, Young Fabian member Lola Okolosie takes the Prime Minister to task for his ‘calm down, dear’ comment.

On the same day in which a conservative councillor, Payam Tamiz, was kicked out of the Tory party for calling the women of Thanet “sluts”, the Prime Minister himself made sexist comments during Prime Minister’s Question Time. And it appears Cameron got away with dismissing Angela Eagle, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, with the offensive rebuttal ‘calm down, dear’. The media’s excuse for not taking more time over Cameron’s quite blatant sexism will be that the Royal Wedding was prominent on all minds.

There is no denying that Angela Eagle was not the only MP taking umbrage with Cameron during PMQs last week, yet she was the only one he thought to single out. Even more alarming was his patronising reliance on gender.

Cameron should have done the right thing and apologised for his comments. He has not.

Instead he has gone on the offensive and claimed “socialists have no sense of humour”. To apologise would be to admit that his comments were sexist, offensive and plain wrong.

I smell a double standard here.

I wonder if Angela Eagle should write directly to Theresa May, the Home Secretary and Minister for Women and Equality (obviously her first job doesn’t have a wide enough remit and there are no other women in the Conservative party that can dedicate the time and attention she can to the second position), about the treatment of women in politics? I wonder too, how Samantha Cameron, as a ‘British business executive’, would react if she was told to ‘calm down dear’? And why is any challenge to such obvious sexism in the Conservative Party dismissed as ‘political correctness gone mad’?

The cover of this quarter’s Fabian Society publication, Fabian Review, has a number of startling statistics that clearly show how we must vocally challenge the still marginalised position women hold in our politics and society:

• since 1918, 4719 men have been elected to the House of Commons, as opposed to 355 women in the same time frame;
• in 2010 267 constituencies had all men candidates, the same figure for women is just 11;
• only 14% of local authority leaders are women, 86% of them are men;
• the percentage of female MPs in the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party is 32%, 16% and 12% respectively.

We are nowhere near equal representation.

So how can women – feminist or not – sit back and not be completely furious at the patronising treatment of one of the few female MPs in the House of Commons? It is disingenuous to suggest that this ‘throw-away’ comment was not meant to offend. It is such an obvious example of the undermining of women and just the same as that heard by women up and down the country, who, when articulating their disagreement in the workplace or the home, are just dismissed by the notion that they are taking it all too seriously. They can’t, the argument goes, by virtue of being female, grasp the real dynamics of the given situation because their female hormones make them blow things out of all proportion.

In comparison, Gordon Brown’s ‘that bigoted woman’ incident resulted in more of a sustained media storm. In the media’s eyes Cameron’s casual sexism is not comparable to Brown’s off-mic faux pas. It would seem that there are far more people worried about EU migrants than there are women in this country.

Particularly in light of Tamiz’s comments and subsequent dismissal, you might expect the Conservatives to be a little more sensitive to gender equality issues. But this is the party that is comfortable with seeing women lose £8.80 a week as a result of the Budget cuts while men will only forgo £4.20. And it is the same party that seems unaware of the fact that women make up 90% of the group most affected by the cuts: single parents.

The reality is that casually sexist comments like this one often reflect an ingrained attitude that is in some ways more sinister – that ‘political correctness’ is a terrible thing and is stopping us from saying what we really want. In truth, we should always, especially the Prime Minister, be conscious of the power of language and what it is there to do: to communicate our thoughts and feelings.

To somehow claim that the comment wasn’t sexist is, in my eyes, unforgivable. This is yet another example of how the existence of these deeply embedded and disempowering attitudes is denied.

The Gender Agenda

In her first column for the Young Fabian Blog, Young Fabian Member and Membership Ambassador Anna Bage juxtaposes the coverage of Kate Middleton in recent weeks with the (lack of) coverage of women in politics.

It’s safe to say that in recent weeks Britain has been struck by Royal wedding fever. The engagement and wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton has dominated the news of late, with the UK in manic preparation for last Friday’s event.

Kate Middleton has received a huge amount of media attention, from interest in her wedding dress to how she’ll perform as Prince William’s wife. As a woman, watching Kate Middleton dominate the newspaper headlines has been bittersweet. Whilst it’s brilliant to see a woman on front page news being celebrated, the reason for the extensive coverage is less about applauding her capabilities and achievements, but more about her changing weight, her fashion sense, and of course, her appearance on the big day.

And although Kate enjoyed a successful three years at a red brick University, she now declines her right to vote by marrying into the Royal family – a right that was fought hard for by previous generations of women. In addition, she almost certainly forgoes a conventional career in which she might use the skills and knowledge attained via her degree.

With their focus elsewhere, the metropolitan media have missed the really big female story of the last few week. The Fabian Review study on gender inequality, both inside and outside of the houses of parliament.

Now, while I wouldn’t pretend that the ongoing lack of female presence in politics would sell as many headlines as the speculation over whether Kate Middleton would be wearing cream or ivory at the Royal wedding, it does highlight an important point. In a society that seems to venerate the status of the celebrity, what chance of intellectual exposure do the admirable qualities of our hard working Labour women stand? Not for them the front page news, endless headlines and photo opportunities. In fact, in the recent Fabian Review, the focus on gender equality, on feminism, and on highlighting the ever present lack of women in the Houses of Parliament showed that we have a long way to go.

It’s not that women aren’t as interested in politics as men, as accomplished women already show. Maybe it is rather that the political environment is not conducive to fostering fledging female ambitions.

In my work as a membership ambassador for the Young Fabians, I have come across young women who are passionate and enthusiastic about politics; women who are hard working, dedicated, and who want to get involved, but quite simply lack the confidence to do so. The Labour party need to both recognise and then realise the untapped potential that so many of these women hold. If this potential is to be harnessed for the future of both our party and our country, they need to be nurtured and supported for their future roles, just like Kate has for hers. Young women must realise and be shown that they have the support of their party behind them.

The Labour Party needs to do more to provide environments in which women can comfortably express their ideas and opinions, and can be guided through the workings of public life, and of the political environment. If we are to tackle the problem of under-representation in the houses of parliament, we must first surely energise women interested in politics by providing them with a strong and secure platform from which they can grow. And we should highlight Labour successes, such as Susan Nash and Luciana Berger, who are proving that being both political and female can be a perfect match.

For any union to be successful there needs to be a strong and caring framework on which it can rely. As Kate enters the cloisters of the Royal family, let’s hope that one day the Labour party can find renewed energy to work on providing a safe and supporting sanctuary for its young women.

That really could distinguish Labour from a party led by a man who, in the same week as Royalty crowned the media, thought it might be amusing to tell an elected representative of the people to ‘calm down dear, calm down…’

I wonder what Kate thought of that?

The same, but different

The ECJ ruling that insurance companies cannot charge different premiums for men and women is lunacy.

According to the ECJ:

Taking the gender of the insured individual into account as a risk factor in insurance contracts constitutes discrimination.

This is a rather absolutist view of gender equality, and ignores an important point: that gender differences may be the proximate cause of differences in observed outcomes, such as the ability to keep a car on the road.

Behavioural studies, as well as observed claim data available to actuaries who calculate insurance premiums, show that the risk of having a serious accident, and therefore having a large claim against insurance, is lower for females. (Other studies show that female drivers may be involved in more ‘low-claim’ accidents, and that over-75s are the riskiest group to insure). Essentially, the gender of driver is a reliable component in assessing the probability that a driver will claim against their car insurance.

The consequences of forcing insurance companies to ignore risk factors which may contribute towards the variance in the expected pay-out for a given individual is that some consumers are likely to overpay for cover – in the case of car-insurance, this is likely to be women who will be charged higher premiums.

Put another way, the link between the fundamental cost of the service and the price charged to some consumers will be distorted to the detriment of those consumers. Worse still, female drivers may now subsidise the cost of insuring more risky men.

Isn’t that a form of discrimination?

And where does the ruling end? Will insurance companies be banned from basing contracts on a person’s age? Or levying a higher price because someone is bad at driving – isn’t that discrimination?

A grown-up view of gender equality will recognise that there are some situations where acknowledging differences in gender is potentially important and desirable. The ECJ’s efforts would be better spent sorting out those situations where it is not.

Alex Baker is the Secretary of the Young Fabians.

How best to solve gender imbalance in the workplace?

A new paper by researchers at the University of Innsbruck suggests that from a young age – three years old – boys are more likely than girls to enter into competitive behaviour, and that this observed behaviour persists through childhood into adolescence. The paper is consistent with earlier studies which find a persistent and large gender gap in the willingness to compete amongst adults, but its conclusions are more instructive – willingness to compete may be less likely to be contingent on nurture, rather than nature, than we had previously thought.

Willingness to engage in competitive behaviour is important in the context of labour markets, where competition is likely to be higher (in general) for high-profile or well-remunerated jobs. This research might have important considerations from a policy perspective when designing programmes to promote competition in the workplace. Namely, when is the right time to intervene?

It might be possible to have greater impacts on outcomes later in life by targeting intervention from a very early age (pre-three years old) to boost the willingness to compete amongst females. However, this implies that the impact of nature and nurture are more balanced before the age of three (as there are no studies into competitive behaviour at such a young age, it is difficult to know).

Of course, if willingness to compete is largely innate, then it may not matter too much at what stage any interventions occur and, on balance, programmes are likely to have greater impacts if they focus on reducing competitiveness in the labour market to encourage wider participation amongst females.

On a broader, normative point – if we accept there are differences in willingness to compete given gender, then I’m not sure which course of action is more preferable – encouraging females to be more competitive, or making labour markets less competitive? Thoughts welcome…

Women still earn 20% less than men

An OECD study, published today to mark International Women’s Day, reveals that, globally, women are paid almost a fifth less than men, with the gender pay gap varying greatly, from a 30 per cent gap in Japan and Korea to a a 10 per cent gap in Belgium and New Zealand; in Britain, the figure is closer to the 20 per cent average.

Today’s OECD report also reveals 62 per cent of women in paid work, with a quarter of all women working part time compared to just 6 per cent for men. Women spend more time doing unpaid work and “spend at least twice as much time on caring than men”, adds the report, with the number of children in a household one of the biggest determining factors.

Another point of note was that public spending on childcare and pre-school services in OECD countries was on average only 0.6% of GDP, the amounts again varying sharply, from 0.1% in Greece to 1.3% in Denmark, with Britain once more in line with the average.

Earlier today, the prime minister described the absence of women from the boards of some of Britain’s top companies as “completely unacceptable”, saying it was “wrong” that only a tenth of directors in the UK’s top 100 companies are women.

His remarks come in the wake of recent evidence from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) showing the movement of women into positions of power and influence had reversed or stalled, reports today’s Guardian:

“It [the EHRC] likened women’s progress to a snail’s pace and said it would take a snail 73 years to crawl from Land’s End to John O’Groats and halfway back again before the numbers of women becoming directors of FTSE 100 companies was the same as men.

“The snail would have to cross the length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years before women would be equally represented in parliament.”

This article was originally published on Left Foot Forward