Thousands of people gathered at Trafalgar Square for a rally after marching through central London, to promote women's and human rights a day after the inauguration of US President Donald Trump. Photo: Press Association/Isabel Infantes. All rights reserved.
The LSE’s Gender, Inequality and Power Commission has been conducting inquiries into the multidimensional character of inequality and power imbalances between women and men. Their work takes place almost a century after the full admission of women to the legal profession; almost 90 years after the extension of the right to vote to all women; nearly half a century after the implementation of equal pay and anti-discrimination legislation; and at a time of increasing female participation in the labour market. Yet we found that inequalities between women and men, largely to the disadvantage of women, persist.
In our report we explored the links between the different forms of gender inequality and operations of gender-based power across the economy, the political sphere, the legal system and the world of media and communications. For the social forces which shape gender inequalities do not operate independently within different social sectors: rather, vectors of power which affect the position of women and men in one sector standardly affect their opportunities, status or position, or their work-life balance – or the worth of their rights and entitlements – in others. The economic inequalities which persist in the labour market and the distribution of income, for example, curtail opportunities for women in the political sphere and within the law; the persisting inequalities and biases in the representation of women in the media and culture affect the opportunities of and attitudes to women in other spheres; the inadequate design or implementation of legal provisions shapes the status and opportunities of women in economic life. Gender-based violence might be thought to be a concern primarily of the law, yet gender inequality in the political sphere dilutes the will to tackle it; media representations enact and normalise it and the government’s austerity policies perpetuate it. In other words, power relations in the media, the economy and the political system shape the relative worth of rights formally established by the legal system.
