sense of strength and unity and Jane Ansell (Finchley CLP) representing the single fastest on.
her getting a job.
OBSTACLES
reduce.
- It please contact:
Doris Chic are therefore worse paid.
TORIES
DIVISIVE Back in 1952, when the welfare state was set up, Beveridge wrote: "The attitude of a housewife to gainful employment should not be the same as a single woman; she has other duties. In the next 30 years, housewives as mothers have adequate work in ensuring the continuance of the • British race and British ideals...
Millions of women may since have been drawn into the labour force -growing area of union membership nOTZOn but Beveridge's attitude still lingers Society still sees women's role as basically a domestic one and places numerous obstacles in the path of Married women, for example LABOUR currently occupy two thirds of the female labour force. While going to • ork, however, they are still expected to bear the burden of a wife and mother. This is reflected in the scandal of nursery provision which the Tories are trying to further It is this view of women as childminders first which explains the discrimination she finds in the workplace. First, she is hived off into jobs which are considered 'women's work' - typists, cooks, cleaners, teachers etc. - and unfit for men.
Second, she receives lower rates of pay. It's not so much a question of It's a question oi being eligible ior ine le only a small range of female jobs which are seen as less important and If the Tories succeed in their offensive, it will not only be a setback for women's rights, but for all working people. Thatcher knows that, by creating a climate that woman's place is in the home, she can weaken and divide the labour movement's response to her policies.
She knows that she can turn men against women in the scramble for jobs that is opening up as unemployment looms ever larger on the She also knows that, by making women dependent again on men, she can create a conservative "brake' on the militancy of male workers and their readiness to strike. The action by wives of Hadfield steelworkers -opposing the strike - is the type of situation the Tories want to develop.
Fighting back against the Tories therefore means fighting to win the labour movement to pioneer and support women's rights. Although women are half the present workforce, only 32% are unionised - a fact which reveals the attitude of union leaders to women workers.
Moreover, even when unionised. women are seriously under-represented in the union structure. In CAWU, for example, with over 80% women membership, women occupy a minimal number of places on the Executive Committee.
it women are le !!ese..
fight to win the laccur a to take women's rights serce FIGHTBACKR This means getting the uric:
pioneer women's rights in corvet action. The fact that the TUC was pushed into supporting mass actice:
against the Corrie Bill was a good example of what can be achieved with some determined effort.
Similar struggles have to be waged to make the unions - and Labour Party - take up the fight against nursery closures, the need it unionise women and to seek affirmative action in job prospects.
Why should women - purely or.
account of sexual bias - be exclude:
from a whole area of employment from engineering to shipbuilding? Icertain countries, such as the USA major break-throughs in these fields have occurred. It's time we had break-throughs of our own here.
'A female plumber is still a rarity