Well – the debate in Parliament yesterday on support for women during the economic downturn went pretty much as you might expect. We all (cross party) made contributions highlighting the differential impact the recession will have on women (and it will) whilst being very careful to acknowledge the pain that will hit everyone.
From domestic violence, to bailiffs, child care, discrimination in not giving jobs to women in case they get pregnant and paying them off cheaply if they do, lack of women decision makers, the hit on the service sector and the lack of financial resilience of women – who have often not been able to put anything aside etc etc. Women’s vulnerability to the recession was very, very clear.
The problem is that when the opportunity arises to actually change the rules (i.e. the Equalities Bill – which Harriet Harman had said would be with us in April but in this debate said in a few months – what was that about?) the opportunity is not being taken.
Outside of the Prince of Darkness signaling to the media that anything that costs money to business should be scrapped – the Govenrment is being very faint-hearted in putting in the measures that would expose those companies that do discriminate.
One point I raised was about how keen some councils are to bring in the bailiffs – and less keen to talk about rescheduling debt:
It is heartbreaking and terrifying that the debt is transferred to the bailiffs so quickly, because they are relentless, and impose extra charges that deepen the debt. Would the hon. Lady agree that the local authority—in my case, Haringey—should be far more willing to sit down with the person in debt to reschedule it? People are willing to pay off such debt over time and should not be forced to deal with bailiffs immediately because the council does not have time for people in trouble.
You can read my speech itself (this was an intervention earlier in the debate) here.
Lynne Featherstone 
Well I guess Lynne didn’t appreciate my previous comments about Ms Harman – apologies if you didn’t appreciate them Lynne but an awful lot of people would agree with me.Anyway I’ll make the point again without mention any specific individuals.Bascially As i suggested a few days ago the whole debate is based on a lie. Women aren’t more affected by the recession than men, in fact it’s worse than that – men are suffering VASTLY more than women.IT isn’t some obsure survey that proves this – the Office for national statistics themselves are the onss saying it!”The ONS claimed the economic downturn ‘impacted less’ on working women than on men.””The redundancy rate for women was 6.6 in 1,000 employees in the three months to December, compared with 13.6 for men.””The employment rate for women was down 0.3 per cent, compared with a drop of one per cent for men.””Sociologist Brendan Burchell, of Cambridge University, believes men handle losing their job worse than women and are more vulnerable.””‘Men, unlike women, have few positive ways of defining themselves outside of the workplace between when they leave school and when they retire,’ he said.”http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1160028/New-Harman-row-claims-women-suffer-recession.htmlQuite frankly I find it insulting to focus specifically on the group doing best in the recession and somehow pretend they are the ones hardest hit.
Talking of domestic violence, have any MPs congratulated the bbc for their excellent coverage of the government’s failure to help male victims?Both the bbc and the government had swept the issue under the carpet for so many years, and it’s great to see the bbc at least somewhat making amends with programs on 1xta, radio 5, radio 2, bbc1 and bbc radio Scotland.It was particularly honest and accurate programming at times, and highlighted just how many barriers male victim of abuse face and the countless people who are ignoring them and discriminating against them.They have to deal with a lack of sympathy from friends, false arrest by the police, a refusal by the government to help, and even belittlement by feminist run domestic violence charities.Anyway i recommend people view some programmes in the series, particularly the 1xtra documentary