Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Women's Equality Party Haringey and Barnet - first public meeting

The first public meeting of the Women's Equality Party Haringey and Barnet will take place on the 16th of September at 7pm at Our Lady of Muswell Lawn Tennis Club (51 Rhodes Ave, London N22 7UR). WEP leader Sophie Walker will be speaking at this event.

Everyone is welcome.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on August 31, 2015 at 9:55

I think you raise a fair point Philip but WEP is in very early days. I think it will be important for them to plan how they will work to make themselves know and relevant to women (and men) who are not middle class. I do think they have huge potential to do this as the 50% of the population who are their focus cross all boundaries of class, race......

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Permalink Reply by Rainbow_carnage on September 2, 2015 at 10:47

That's a valid point. Unfortunately, the other parties have not been addressing the issues.

From what I've seen, WE are very much aware of the risk of becoming a party that mainly represents middle class women. They're trying to reach out to people, both men and women, around the country and across the socioeconomic spectrum. If you have any suggestions on how they can be more inclusive, they'd love to hear them.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on August 31, 2015 at 15:01

I think you are making some invalid assumptions. Firstly you assume that those involved or with an interest in the party are not interested in international issues. Secondly you assume that a party in one country can change the entire world. I doubt those who formed the party are quite so ambitious.
Also, your argument that women are worse off in other parts of the world so we shouldn't be concerned about gender inequality here is a strange one. Some children live in property in the UK but it doesn't compare to the poverty of children in other parts of the worlds. Does that mean we should just ignore child poverty on our own doorstep because it is more severe elsewhere? Elsewhere on this website people are campaigning about a local library. Is that campaign also invalid because in most of the world people do not have access to free books?

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on August 31, 2015 at 15:43

Look up data on average earnings and I think you'll find there are great inequalities. In every workplace I have been in women disproportionately occupy lower paid jobs. Unless you think that is because they are less capable of doing more responsible and better paid work, some other factors must be at play.
A good example is the job my sister did. She was a worker in a children's residential home. A highly skilled, demanding and frankly bloody awful job. She was paid less than the bloke who came to fix the boiler from time to time. Jobs that have been seen as traditionally female (care, nursing and so in) are consistently undervalued compared to jobs that have been seen as traditionally male work.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on August 31, 2015 at 17:17

But surely at the heart of this is equal pay for work of equal value. I would argue that someone working with some of the most disadvantaged, and in some cases disturbed, children in our society provides at least as valuable a service as someone fixing a boiler. By the way, she did have to study for two years in order to take up the job.
Many people go into professions like caring and nursing because they feel passionate that they can make a difference by doing the work. Telling them to go and get a better paid one does nothing about the fact that these jobs are vital to all of us and grossly underpaid.
On average earnings, I'm afraid I don't understand the apples and pears thing. Men and women work and on average women are paid less than men. Why would any woman choose to earn less than a man? Isn't a simpler explanation that the professions that women more traditionally work in always have been, and still are, less highly regarded than those done by men and rewarded less in terms of money?
By the way, there is some data on gender pay inequality on the website of the newspaper that is well known as the paper of choice for idiot progressives, The Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/11453093/Britain-has-sixth-...

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Permalink Reply by John D on August 31, 2015 at 20:24

Michael - too simplistic.

Many, perhaps most wage / salary scales have built-in annual increments. Thus two people doing the same job may get different wages because one has been with the company for longer than the other.

Many women choose to, or are forced to, have a career break to raise a family and thus inevitably fall behind. Not many men do. As I said earlier, there will be no equality until men can become pregnant.

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Permalink Reply by Philip on August 31, 2015 at 18:23

You seem to be living in a parallel universe. People can't simply chose what job they would like. Employers would pay us a pittance if they could get away with it, so the market analogy doesn't work. We are, for example, stealing nurses and doctors from other countries who have paid for their training, while cutting training courses for nurses here. The result is that their wages are artificially held down. They are now threatened with deportation if they fail to reach a wage level which is set by the State! Likewise it is the public sector that we rely on for our basic services. They are not decided by the free market. Quite the opposite; they are set by the State again. It is a reality that many women work in the public sector, which, despite the Daily Mail agenda, is not a highly paid sector.