Solidarity With Women

This Sunday (March 8^th) is International Women’s Day. Two weeks after is “Mothering Sunday”. Guess which one will have reams of newsprint devoted to it? Guess on which one at least one woman in your life (perhaps you) will receive flowers, chocolates, a meal out, or a card? 

According to the International Woman’s Day website the first celebration of women’s role was in 1908 when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights. But it was probably 1917 that gave birth to the modern version of IWD, when Russian women began a strike for "bread and peace" in response to the death of over 2 million Russian soldiers in World War 1. This strike was the prelude to the February Revolution and took place on March 8^th (according to the Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar used in Russia at the time made it February).

The UK version of “Mothering Sunday” has its origins not in political struggle but in the Christian Church. A large clue to its religious origins is that in the UK it falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent. It seems to have its origins in a tradition whereby  people returned to their home or 'mother' church once a year. Of course I’m not suggesting any readers of this blog ignore Mothering Sunday, I don’t want to be responsible for any family rows, but it is worth remembering that the event we all (or nearly all) celebrate is an establishment date now taken over by the confectionary and greeting card industries.

International Womens’ Day is an opportunity to reflect on the role of women, both within our movement, but within wider society. There is little doubt that whilst the position of women generally has improved in recent years, that women still face discrimination in so many areas. Outside of the UK the position of women in many societies continues to be inferior to the men who dominate their societies. But, in this post I want to talk mainly about women in the UK. I apologise for being parochial. Acknowledging that the struggle for women’s equality has some way to go is not a case of pointing the finger at men and saying “it’s all your fault”. Seeing women and men on opposite sides is, in my view, a mistake. Women’s struggles are men’s struggles and only through unity can they stand any chance of success.

In promoting womens’ equality the socialist movement has had both successes and setbacks. But, it is hardly a case of job done. At least not yet. 

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the average pay of women in full-time employment is still 8.9% lower than men. The average man can expect to receive £609 per week, whilst the average woman is getting £100 per week less. There is, however, good news for younger women (those under 40) where the gender pay gap has fallen to zero. Of course, many women under 40 will look at their take home pay, compare it to their male partners and conclude that the ONS doesn’t know what it is talking about.

Pay is, obviously, related to occupation. We all know, for example, that barristers earn more than solicitors, that doctors earn more than nurses and that all of those occupations earn more than the people who clean their workplaces. So the gender pay gap is not just about pay it is also, perhaps, crucially so, related to opportunity.

Let’s take a couple of examples. ONS allows you to compare the gender pay gap amongst different occupational groups. Among “legal professionals”, the average full-time pay for men is over £60,000 per year. For women, it is £46k, a whopping 21% difference. Among health professionals men “earn” on average £56k, whilst women struggle by on £52k. Among part-time cleaners and domestics women do tend to earn more than men. A mouth-watering (is there a sarcasm emoji) £8.57 per hour compared to men’s £8.50. But, even here when we look at full-time rates men earn £9.13 per hour compared to women’s £8.80. Reports that the gender pay gap has closed appear slightly premature it seems.

Of course, these averages are only a part of the picture, it is not just how much you get paid but what jobs you are getting paid to do. The House of Commons library produced a useful review in 2018. It’s findings show why women’s pay lags behind men’s. Women are more likely than men to be working part-time, and they are still overwhelmingly in sectors that are less well paid. 41% of women in employment were working part-time in 2018, compared to just 13% of men.

Often, women’s work is still a reflection of “traditional” ideas around women’s domestic and maternal role. Women and men still work in different sectors.  Actually I need to qualify that. There are few, if any, sectors of the economy that are not gender mixed. There are no longer jobs that women simply cannot do, or vice versa. But, and this is the point, women and men are disproportionately represented within different occupational sectors. Women are most likely to be found in health and social work (accounting for 21% of all jobs held by women at September 2018), the wholesale and retail trade (14%) and education (12%). Meanwhile, men are most likely to be in the wholesale and retail trade (14% of all jobs held by men), followed by manufacturing and construction (both 11%). There are still some areas where women hold only a small proportion of jobs. These include construction (14%), transportation and storage (23%) and manufacturing (25%).

If women want better pay and “access to all areas” then the best thing they can do is join a union, join with other union members (including men) and take on employers who think that women represent a cheap labour force. There is good news and bad news on this front. The bad news is that union membership has been on the decline. A TUC report from 2018 reports that union membership in the UK stood at 6.23 million workers, down from 13.5 million in 1979. This means that just 23% of workers are in a union, with only 13% of private sector workers unionised. 

Incidentally, the reason all the figures I am quoting are from 2018 is not because I was too lazy to look up the current ones, but because they are all based on official statistics compiled by the government. Unfortunately, the stats tend to have a time lag of two years meaning that figures for 2018 are actually the bang up-to-date figures. In most cases given the rate of pay rises and the slow movement in the economy nothing much is likely to have changed, unless things have got slightly worse.

The position of women as far as trade unions are concerned is rather mixed. Numerous articles in the popular press pointed out on the back of this report that “the average British trade unionist is a young, degree-educated, white woman working in the professions”. It’s not entirely clear from the articles whether the writers are happy with this development which is, in large part, a function of changes in the economy which have seen the destruction of traditionally male-dominated industries such as mining, steel and ship building. 

More female trade unionists and an end to some of the old sexist attitudes toward women workers is certainly to be welcomed. But, many of those sexist men were supporting families and the jobs which have replaced theirs, which may well be filled by their wives and daughters, pay less than the one’s they are replacing. And, this is supposing that there are any jobs at all. As the TUC point out:

“Once again women were more likely to be union members than men, with just over a quarter of all female employees now in a union compared to just over one fifth of their male counterparts. At the same time, the total number of women trade union members fell by 10,000.”

These statistics hide as much as they reveal. If women are losing jobs but are still a greater proportion of trade unionists, this means that unionised women’s jobs are disappearing although at a slightly slower rate than unionised men’s jobs. Most working class households rely on two wages just to survive. If either the woman or the man lose their income this can have devastating effects on the whole family. And, yes, I do realise that not all households are heterosexual, and that many people live on their own. The point is that in many households, particularly those containing children, two incomes are essential to keep the household ticking over. 

So, personally, I take no pleasure in seeing any worker losing their job. It is not an issue of whether that worker is a nice person or not, but when working class people lose their jobs (and their income) it is not just one person who is affected, but entire families. Indeed, that can also be the case for those who we (and they) regard as middle class. So, on International Womens Day 2020 I want to pay tribute to every woman in a trade union, and every man too. The socialism that I hold to does not see a distinction of female and male workers, but rather workers and bosses. That is the place where our struggles for a better future take place.

It is great that we have a woman as Head of the TUC and women trade union leaders such as Jo Grady the head of my old union UCU and Mary Bousted, the Joint head of the National Education Union, but as important as getting the top job may be, it is the work of grassroots members that is the bread and butter of Union life. People may never have heard of Shen Batmaz who has the date 4 September 2017 tattooed on her arm. “It was the best day of my life,” she explains. “It was the first day in my life that I felt I had power.”

This was the day she and her fellow McDonald’s workers first went on strike in what would become the start of widespread industrial action against McDonald’s, JD Wetherspoon and TGI Fridays in the fight for better working conditions, job security and living wages. Dubbed ‘McStrike’, the campaign has so far resulted in the biggest pay rise in 10 years for McDonald’s staff. Batmaz is now a union official with the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU), having spent two years at McDonald’s.

As Owen Jones reported in The Guardian, the strike which was international united low paid workers across continents. Most of the strikers were young and many were female. “Wetherspoons worker Katie Southworth, 22, speaks for many of Britain’s youth when she describes her impression of a union: “Old men sitting in a room debating issues that were out of date a generation ago.” When she saw young McDonald’s workers fighting for basic rights, it was an education: “They were under 30, we could relate to them.””

Of course, young people will emulate other young people. Just look at the climate strikes inspired by Greta Thunberg, but it is not just their youth that is inspiring but their vision of fairness and justice. That so many of this new generation of rebels are young women can give us hope for the future. That they perceived the unions as dominated by “old men” is hardly surprising. Just think about the media coverage of trade unions in the recent past and it can be boiled down to one man: Len McCluskey. And, he is usually reeled out to deny the latest allegations against Jeremy Corbyn.

Trade unions and trade union struggle has been presented to an entire generation as old fashioned and no longer necessary. It does not take long if you are on a picket line for a young worker to hustle past you. If you manage to talk to them at all they will tell you that as they are low paid they can’t afford union fees, or for that matter a pension. No amount of explaining will convince them that it is precisely because they are low paid that they need a union.

Women are not the worst culprits, if anything in recent times they have been keener on trade unions than men. But, this is simply following in a long tradition of women workers being prepared to take action to defend their jobs and their incomes. As Nicole Busby and Rebecca Zahn point out the first strike for equal pay was organised by 1,500 women card-setters in Yorkshire in 1832. We shouldn’t over-egg the story of women’s militancy because of a few well known examples, but women striking has always been a cause of concern for those who believe in women’s natural inferiority. “A commentator on a female mill workers’ strike in 1835 wrote that female militancy was ‘more menacing to established institutions even than the education of the lower orders.’” 

The idea that ‘a woman’s place is in the home’ was a convenient fiction for working class women for whom paid employment was about feeding a family not earning pin money. In recent times, some middle class “feminist” women, particularly academic feminists, have tended to see women as a homogenous whole universally oppressed by a patriarchal order which always places men’s concerns first. Whilst there is no doubt some truth in this claim the reality has always been slightly more complex than that analysis allows. If feminism has failed to take a hold in working class communities it is because those women do not necessarily see men as the enemy. Of course, male violence and sexual assault is a feature of working class life, as it is of middle class life, but the concentration on what divides women and men has always failed to resonate in communities that see employers, or government as the one’s doing the real damage.

Just to be clear here. Feminism has been an important social force, but as there is no one true socialism, there is also a considerable range of views which fall under the rubric of feminism. I have learned much from those at the socialist-feminism end of the scale. I am thinking of people like Hilary Wainwright and Sheila Rowbotham. So in ascribing to feminism a particular view I am aware that feminists come in all shades and sizes and on a sliding scale of where they place class struggle vis-à-vis patriarchy. My own take on this is that achieving equality for women is part of, but not subsumed by, a wider struggle which as a socialist I see rooted in working class struggle. Workers, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or other arbitrary characteristics win when they are united. Women have often been at the forefront of that struggle, but have been stronger working with men rather than seeing them as part of the problem.

At Grunwicks a strike led by Asian women, male trade unionists turned up, often in their thousands to lend their support. At Dagenham, whilst women were the leaders of the strike, men played a supporting role. Management tried to undermine their strike by smuggling their work out through back fences, which the women organised to prevent. The women’s action was helped by solidarity from their male colleagues. Dora, one of the strikers, said, “They had train loads (of work) coming in. But the men wouldn’t do it. Give ‘em their due. They did stand by us.” During the miners strike, whilst there were no female miners women formed Women Against Pit Closures and emerged as some of the most powerful grassroots speakers at the numerous support meetings held throughout the country. And, the McStrike movement is a movement of women and men acting in solidarity against unethical employers.

I am not saying that there are no instances where men are entirely insensitive to women or that on occasions issues that are seen as “women’s issues” are not actually caused by men. But, what I am arguing is that if you are a worker, or reliant upon a workers wage to live, your strength is not in your gender but your workmates. And, yes, you may work in a place dominated by women or men, but the job you do is almost certainly done by both. We have come a long way from the days of women throwing themselves under horses merely to get the vote. As Engels once remarked to Marx, and here I paraphrase, we now have a society in which women can both vote and be voted for. But, for all that progress, there are still battles to be won, we still live in a class based society. We may want to believe otherwise, but working class women still have far more in common with working class men than they do with upper class women. On International Womens Day I salute women everywhere who stand up for peace, justice, equality and social progress. I salute them not as women but as socialists and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in the fight for a better future for all of us.