Inequality

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Shadow chancellor George Osborne launched a bold attack on one of Labour's traditional strengths in The Guardian today, charging that the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor in Britain is at its widest since Victorian times:

When it comes to developing a policy agenda that delivers fairness and social justice, the Conservative party is leading the political world away from the target-driven, top down, statist approach that Miliband pioneered when he ran the Downing Street policy unit. That approach is failing because it relies on a flawed assumption that only the state can guarantee fairness.

 Damian O'Loan (Paris): The Prime Minister has sent a response to the 15,700 people who petitioned him to reprimand DUP MP Iris Robinson following her claim that members of the LGBT community should seek a cure. Predictably, Gordon Brown has chosen only to point to the strong anti-discrimination legislation in place in Northern Ireland, and links to the Equality Commission.

Geoffrey Bindman (London, BIHR): The interesting OurKingdom debate on Labour After Brown risks becoming too remote from actual policy needs as it discusses general strategy. Of course, government needs to be fairer and extend justice in a way that supports individuals while building shared values. If this is what David Miliband and Sunder Katwala mean by combining social democracy with liberalism, who could disagree? Except that it runs the danger of phrase-making. What I am looking for is a much more principled approach to endorsing the need for public values that explicitly face down the marketisation of government that has been the tragic hallmark of New Labour. After a lifetime of support, I have witnessed this process at first hand, as the legacy of 1945 is systematically undone. What is happening is wrong. We need the new generation to identify that it is wrong and pledge to reverse it.

Patrick Corrigan, (Amnesty Blogs: Belfast and Beyond): There were more politicians at Saturday's Belfast Pride parade than you could shake a stick at. Or at least an Amnesty placard which, once again, was the hottest item in town.

In the wake of the now infamous series of anti-gay comments made by DUP MP Iris Robinson – not to mention the huge response of the LGBT community and their supporters – Northern Irish politicians of every party (except the DUP, of course) were out in force to prove their gay-friendly credentials.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK):There is a terrific article about homelessness in Britain in 2008 by Adam Sampson who is the Chief Executive of Shelter. It is in our sister blog openRussia. It sets out to tell Russian readers why wealthy Britain has so many homeless people - and how an NGO tries to tackles the problem. Here is the opening para, may be it is for Russians but the more Brits who read it the better!

Beatrice Barleon (London, Women and the Vote): 2008 marks the 90^th anniversary of women winning the right to vote and to be elected to the House of Commons, as well as the 80^th anniversary of women gaining equal voting rights to men. This clearly calls for a celebration!

But what exactly is it we are celebrating? Are we celebrating the fact that the UK ranks 60^th in the world in terms of female representation? Or that we still have parties that show less than 10 percent of women among their elected representatives? No, wait; maybe we should rejoice at the fact that out of 4654 Members of Parliament since 1918 only 291 have been women?

Jon Bright (London, OK): Yesterday, I posted a picture from the ERS showing how under represented women have been in the UK in the 90 years since they have had the vote. Beatrice Barleon at Women and the Vote, which is a new ERS campaign, emailed to say they have a more recent one (which the f-word also points out), part of which looks like this:

Jon Bright (London, OK): Today is the 90th anniversary of women first winning the right to vote in the UK. This is from Katherine Rake at the Fawcett Society:

Ninety years ago on Wednesday (6 February 2008) one of the most important steps to women’s enfranchisement was secured with the legal right to vote. Yet nine decades later we find that women’s full enfranchisement has not been achieved

Jon Bright (London, OK): openDemocracy's 16 days project drew to a close yesterday. Zohra Moosa summarises the incredible range and diversity of contributions - from political statements to personal stories of survival - here. She concludes:

Ultimately, the issue of violence against women is about the abuse of power. Not just at an interpersonal level between perpetrator(s) and victims and survivors, but also at the level of politics and democracy as Helen O'Connell outlines in her contribution. The failure of the state to protect its citizens from murder, mutilation and assault is, in the most literal sense, an abuse of power. It's the deliberate mishandling of power that systematically denies women's needs and entrenches gender inequality. I say deliberate because I know that, in the UK at least, the Government is not unaware of the issues or the solutions thanks to the annual Making the Grade report.

Sabrina Hashem (Cardiff, MEWN Cymru): As Bethan Jenkins writes below, over the last 8 years the gender balance in Welsh politics has been changing. Out of the 60 elected Assembly Members in 1999, 36 were male and 24 female. In 2003, the National Assembly for Wales had the ideal gender balance of 30 male and 30 female AMs, a world first. Also, out of a potential 9 cabinet posts, 5 were appointed to women.

Jon Bright (London, OK): How do you set about changing a culture? A lot of debate in the feminist movement at the moment seems to be touching on this. Women have achieved a type of legal, theoretical equality in the UK that has yet to be fully realised in practice. Rape conviction is a case in point - despite legal precedent for convictions of marital rape and increases in the number of rapes reported, conviction stands at a lowly 5.7%. It's not much of a surprise that there is frustration with what can be achieved through legislation. Julie Bindel was in the Guardian yesterday arguing for massive public information campaigns - first change the culture, she says.

Jon Bright (London, OK): openDemocracy has recently launched blog coverage of the annual "16 Days against Gender Violence" movement, which marks a period of activism between the tongue-twisting International Day Against Violence Against Women on the 25th of November, and International Human Rights Day. There's a particularly interesting article by Rahila Gupta, who argues that, on the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain, the number of people forced into work in this country is higher than ever.

Bethan Jenkins (Neath, Plaid AM): Whenever a journalist researches a piece on women in politics, you can guarantee that the National Assembly for Wales will form a key element of their work: almost 50% of the elected politicians there are women. I have taken part in radio discussions on stations all over Europe who view Wales as a shining beacon of political equality, and as an example of their own aspirations.

Zohra Moosa (London, The Fawcett Society): Ethnic minority women lack access to power. They are severely underrepresented in senior decision-making positions across the public, private and voluntary sectors. The statistics are stark: less than 1% of top civil service managers are ethnic minority women, only 4 are directors of FTSE 100 companies (0.4%), and none of the 50 highest earning charities have a chair or chief executive that is an ethnic minority woman.

Nan Sloane (Leeds, Centre for Women and Democracy): Does it really matter that only 19.8% of our MPs are women, that women constitute a mere 31% of local councillors, and that BME women are even more poorly represented at these levels? After all, women have the vote, and are free to stand for local councils or parliament if they want to. If they don't choose to, why should it be a problem?

Kiran Dhami (London, Women's Resource Centre): Women's Resource Centre, Urban Forum and Oxfam are calling on the Government to set targets to improve women's representation on Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) following research which shows that women are dramatically under-represented at senior levels. LSPs are key decision-making bodies at local level, controlling significant resources in the context of increasing devolution of power. The recent Local Government White Paper, ‘Strong and Prosperous Communities' emphasises the importance of community involvement in local decision-making processes. It is not only an issue of fairness that this decision-making includes women; priorities can be affected too. Women representatives are more likely to focus on social services, the safety of women and children, and gender equality. But as well as this, all public bodies now have legal obligations under the Gender Equality Duty to actively promote gender equality.Our report reveals that only a quarter of chairs of LSP Boards are women. We also found that the voice of women's voluntary and community organisations is hardly heard at all. Less than 2% of voluntary and community sector representatives on LSPs are women's organisations, despite making up 7% of the voluntary and community sector. The report also found that 80% of LSPs are not monitoring women's representation, and no LSP demonstrated awareness that issues, such as economic development or transport, affect men and women differently.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): As Gordon Brown declared that he would reach out to all people of goodwill to overcome the country's problems, was the man who embraced globalisation aware that Merrill Lynch and Capgemini reported that the total wealth of high-net worth individuals rose 11.4% to $37.2 trillion (£18.6 trillion) in 2006.