The equality gap -- home and away

I’ve just received a copy of the Equal Opportunity Commission’s new publication, ‘The Gender Gap’.1 It makes for a depressing read. Take a look at the statistics:

• The average woman working full time is still paid 17% less than men — for part-time workers the difference is 38%
• Conviction rates for rape stand at 6% — so it’s not surprising that 95% of women never report an attack in the first place
• At the present rate of progress, it will take 195 years for women to be equally represented in Parliament (20% of British MPs are women, a lower proportion than in Afghanistan!) and 65 years for women to make up half of FTSE 100 directors.

As a well-educated, professional woman doing a job she loves, it would be easy enough for me to be complacent and think that any woman could get where they want if they want it enough. (‘But do they have to want it more than men?’ was the question put to me and another eight women ‘role models’, at a ‘Leadership and Networking’ lunch at a large financial firm. Only one of the eight had children: is it still the case that to get to the top of her profession a woman has to, in effect, live like a man?)

If it can be this hard to achieve equality here in the UK, how much greater the challenges are for the women WOMANKIND works with in Africa, Latin America and South Asia. Even the directors of our Afghan partner organisations have to leave the office dead on 4pm so that no one might suspect that they are doing anything other than working at their office. And the beneficiaries of the projects we support in Afghanistan have to invest enormous amounts of their time and energy in gaining permission for women and girls just to leave their homes to attend a training session.

It can be easy for women in the UK to think that the equality debate is history and that it doesn’t concern them any more. But this ignores some ongoing structural inequalities in our own country and the fact that women’s struggle for equality is only just beginning in many other parts of the world. If you want to stand alongside these women, I hope you will consider becoming a WOMANKIND supporter — there are many different ways to help and you will make a real difference to the lives of girls and women across the world.


1. Find out more about the EOC’s Gender Agenda at: www.gender-agenda.co.uk
Note. From 1 October 2007 the EOC will be replaced by the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) www.cehr.org.uk