Equality myth
Socialist Organiser1981 1981-09-10Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 3 →
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READERS whose memories go back that far will remember International Women's Year, when we had all sorts of well-heeled ladies asking us to celebrate the great strides forward towards equality made this century.
We've got the vote, more and more women are working and everything is getting equaler and equaler in the most equal of all possible worlds.
The extraordinary thing about this research, which does provide useful ammunition for arguments, is that anyone should find the results "startling" (New Society).
Are there really people in the world who are that innocent? If there are, they no longer have that excuse.
And will the DE now take up the proposals contained in the survey that the only serious way of dealing with ill-health among women workers is to create a situation where women have an "unqualified right" to take up different kinds of work and where childcare and domestic responsibilities are not seen solely as the responsibility of women?
Good
Or will it just be used as a further argument to justity women being thrown out of the jobs they do have •for circ gonủ of their health*?
We may have laughed hollowly, as our jobs started disappearing and wage differentials between men and women crept back down to what they were before "Equal Pay". Now it seem» even that trend toward› equality, which is now being reversed, was a myth in the first place.
Same
Dr Catherin Hakin. principal research officer in the economic and social division of the Department of Employment told the British Association for the Advancement of Science that new ways of analysing data show that the proportion of women working in 1971 was the same as in 1861!
All that's happened !: that women were driven out of the labour force at the beginning of the century and have only just got back is their previous position fand are now being driven bara again). Nor has there becany great advance iwomen's position at work No change Over the last 70 there's been little 1: change in job segregat -except that overall the :- -has been towards being concentrated lowest grades of men.. white collar work we're getting mor that' another surve! is many as In Inner (1:1 resiscret