By New Worker
correspondent
AROUND a thousand angry women, along with friends and
supporters, last Saturday marched from Temple
to Whitehall to demand that the
Con-Dem Coalition stop making cuts that take away women’s chances of an equal
life.
The march, organised
by the Fawcett Society, was a protest at the way the cuts are turning back the
clock on women’s rights and freedoms.
Many marchers wore
1950s style clothing – from French Haute Couture to overalls, pinnies, hairnets
and head scarves with rubber gloves, to make the point that this was an age
they did not want to go back to.
In what it describes
as its first nationwide "call to arms" in nearly a century-and-a-half
of activism for women’s equality, the Fawcett Society urged people to turn out
to deliver a message to David Cameron that his austerity measures threaten to
"turn back time" on women's rights.
Similar rallies were
held in other cities, including Coventry,
Bristol and Manchester,
and finished with tea parties.
In Oxford,
a 1950s-themed "flash mob" took place with some marchers coming in
handcuffs the most to chain themselves symbolically "to the kitchen
sink".
The Fawcett Society
has previously shied away from militant feminism in favour of measured,
persistent campaigning.
But last week the
number of women out of work reached 1.09 million, the highest in 23 years and
Fawcett's acting chief executive, Anna Bird, said there was no time to lose.
"We think we are
very much at a watershed moment for women's rights in the UK,"
she said. "We think that the impact of austerity has brought us to a
tipping point where, while we have got used to steady progress towards greater
equality, we're now seeing a risk of slipping backwards. We cannot afford to
let that happen."
Women will generally
be harder hit by cuts to benefits and public services such as SureStart
children's centres, and will be more likely to take on roles, like caring for
the long-term sick and elderly, which will plug the gaps once such state
services have been withdrawn.
But the Fawcett
Society believes the most serious damage is being done in the jib market, as 65
per cent of the public sector workforce, female employees will be
disproportionately affected by job cuts.
The TUC
last week released a "tool kit" guide to raising awareness about the
impact of the cuts on women; it estimated that 325,000 of the 500,000 people
who will lose their jobs as a result of public sector cuts will be women.
Dave Prentis,
general secretary of Unison, said: "Is it any wonder that the coalition
are losing the support of women voters? It is a triple whammy for women who are
being hit hard by unemployment, the rising cost of living as well as cuts to
benefits and services to young people."
Many of the marchers
had experienced first hand the impact of the cuts. Maggie Cowan, 59, from
Walthamstow in north-east London,
is one of those: after working in the careers service for 22 years, she was
made redundant in July as an indirect result of local authority cuts to
Connexions advice centres. Because of the closures, the organisation that
employed her decided to close its head office. Of about a dozen of her
colleagues, only one was male.
Since September, she
has had a part-time job on a temporary contract working with young people to
try to keep them in education. But the summer was hard.
"I was anxious,”
she said. “Looking for work is difficult – because of my age and I accept I may
not look like the best prospect," she joked. "I applied for lots and
lots of jobs … I just seemed to be filling in application forms and sending off
CVs left, right and centre."
As her contract is
due to end in the spring, Cowan, the breadwinner in her family, admits she is
insecure. "I have to be really careful about how much money I spend
because come next March I don't know what I'll be doing," she said.
"There is pressure. The only other time in my life I haven't worked is
when I stopped to have my children."
Fawcett has outlined
policies it wants the Government to take, including the ring-fencing of funding
for SureStart children's centres and pressure on local authorities not to cut
services concerned with combating violence against women.
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