The Women’s Equality Party reaffirms its commitment to end gendered economic inequality in the broadest sense and moves to engage the Policy Committee and members on these issues. Economic equality is not simply achieved through equal pay at work but also through an understanding and appreciation of women’s unpaid work.
WE call upon the governments, assemblies and local authorities throughout the UK to explicitly recognise that:
- women are disproportionately affected by cuts to services and by changes to social security that women rely on more than men. Over 85% of such cuts and changes affect women, and BAME women and disabled women are hit particularly hard;
- women are more likely to experience poverty, including wage poverty and family poverty;
- women predominantly earn at the lower end of the wage scale and enjoy less job security, including through zero hours and near zero hours contracts;
- women undertake the majority of unpaid work, including caring, which also damages their pensions in retirement; and
- men are in the majority of those who benefit from tax breaks for high earners, and they are more likely to make use of tax havens, so avoiding contributing to the societies they live in.
WE further call upon governments, assemblies and local authorities throughout the UK to enhance measures to end the economic inequality between women and men as a matter of extreme urgency by:
- implementing gender budgeting and gender-sensitive policy-making at all levels of decision-making;
- improving quality part-time work;
- ending the gender pay gap;
- ensuring that the social security system works towards gender equality rather than increasing inequalities;
- investing in the social infrastructure on which women more heavily rely, including affordable childcare for all, rather than enforcing the current system where only higher earners can afford to work;
- adopting a truly shared, non-transferable parental leave; and
- recognising women’s paid and unpaid labour as carers for children, the elderly and disabled people.
Investing in women will pay back immediately in the form of increased tax revenues, more spending and an overall higher GDP.