International Women’s Day

For over a century, the 8th March has been used to press the cause of women’s rights. Various reasons have been put over the years as to why that precise date was chosen, but the most likely being that it was the day women received the right to vote in the Russian Republic.

While it would be comforting to assume that securing equal status before the law is mission accomplished–something which still isn’t the case in many countries, the reality is that inequality is multi-faceted and for all the progress made, gender inequalities persist.

One way we can see this in our own society is that 53 years on from the Equal Pay Act, women remain underpaid compared to men. While arguments are put out differences in pay being based around individual choices, where domestic responsibilities continue to be unevenly distributed (at the very least in the form of the mental load related to the household and child raising tasks) and jobs fail to modernise to take into account the differing needs of employees, you cannot simply ignore away systematic structural forms of bias against women and claim that there is equality.

Progress is being made, from 2010 to 2022 the gender pay gap has contracted from 19.3% to 13.9% in the UK. However, on the current trajectory the gap still won’t be closed before 2049, and unfortunately in Crawley the picture is even worse than the average with a 21.1% pay disparity, putting the town in the bottom sixth of constituencies.

Unfortunately, the speeding up this process isn’t simple, the potential solutions involve changes to employment rights and reporting duties, but most importantly cultural shifts which are hard to legislate into effect. Yet, if we are up to the challenge, the whole of society benefits when every member is given the opportunity to thrive and deploy their talents for the benefit of our community.

Incidentally, businesses with more than 250 employees are required to report pay disparity data, these can be accessed online here. For those wondering, Crawley Borough Council has a 0% pay disparity between men and women. Equality is far from impossible.