Pat Thane
There is serious gender inequality in contemporary Britain and much protest against it: inequality between female and male pay and employment opportunities; sexual harassment of women and sexual violence; outspoken misogyny promoted by far-right political parties and social media. Women are not the only victims, homophobia is widespread and transgender people of both genders experience antagonism. Inequalities are intersectional: women, gay and transgender people from poorer, Black or other ethnic minority backgrounds are further disadvantaged.
As this book describes, women have protested against gender inequality since the nineteenth century, when it pervaded every aspect of their lives. Their only role was assumed to be caring for husbands, children and the home. On marriage they lost all financial and property rights- if their handbags were stolen, they were assumed to belong to their husbands. Only fathers had legal custody of children over age seven. Men could divorce by proving the wife guilty of adultery, but could not be divorced for adultery alone, which was thought natural for men, without an additional offence like cruelty, sodomy, bestiality.
By the early twentieth century women’s campaigns gained minor improvements to property rights and a few better-off women attended universities, but employment opportunities remained limited. Poorer women suffered most, unable to afford health care causing high death and sickness rates including in childbirth. Women campaigned strongly for the vote as an equality in itself and a means to remove other inequalities. They gained much publicity and hostility but little else before the 1914/18 war, when the government felt it should reward the people for their wartime support and privations. Women gained the vote in 1918, with the 60% of mainly working-class men who were also disfranchised. But men could vote at age 21, women not until 30. They had long been a majority of adults in Britain and male politicians could not contemplate a majority female electorate. Women fought on to achieve equal voting rights in 1928.
They experienced other wartime changes, including replacing absent men in work and joining women’s branches of the armed services, newly formed not to fight but to serve fighting men. When the men returned to work women’s opportunities again declined, except in the business and state sectors mainly for unmarried middle-class women at lower levels as clerks, secretaries, telephonists. A ‘marriage bar’ in many occupations excluded married women, despite protests. Women used their voting powers to achieve some change, including entry to previously closed professions, including the law, though discrimination and limited opportunities persisted. Divorce rights were equalized, though it remained too expensive for most women. Mothers gained equal child custody rights and married women full rights to their own property.
In World War 2 women again entered some male employment. For the first time unmarried women were conscripted for the armed services (though still not to fight) or for essential work including teaching, nursing, the civil service. Due to labour shortage the marriage bar declined and married women were encouraged to work by the state providing more free nursery places than ever before or since. Pay remained unequal, causing strikes and stimulating a long campaign for equal pay.
Post-war, young women were pressured to marry and have children, due to government fear of revival of the pre-war birth-rate decline. Births rose in the post-war ‘baby-boom’, but free childcare ended despite women’s protests. Older women were encouraged to work and opportunities expanded as the new Welfare State created posts in education, social services and the National Health Service, which also improved women’s health. Continuing labour shortage forced the government to encourage immigration, including women from the Caribbean to serve as nurses and cleaners in the NHS, beginning a long expansion of immigration, racial tension and inequalities. The equal pay campaign continued, but the Labour government declared it could not afford it and employers argued that women did not equal men as workers.
Equal Pay for equal work in the public sector was introduced in 1955 by a Conservative government anxious to gain female votes. Campaigns continued for extension to the private sector. In 1958 women were admitted to the House of Lords, for which they had long campaigned. Female MPs remained few. Through the 1950s and early 60s more married women worked but their opportunities remained limited. Other inequalities became more openly discussed. Homosexuals had long campaigned for equal rights but with little support. In 1957 the official Wolfenden Report recommended limited legalization, which was rejected by the government but stimulated protest.
Key changes came in an unprecedented run of liberal legislation under a Labour government, 1964-70. In 1967 homosexuality was partially and abortion more fully legalized. In 1969 divorce became easier and many women now initiated it. In 1970, an Equal Pay Act required equality for the same or similar work by 1975, which was not achieved. None of this legislation was perfect and it aroused opposition, also active campaigns through the 1970s for further change by the newly formed Gay Liberation Front and other organizations challenging homophobia, by the Women’s Liberation Movement, organizations of Black and minority ethnic women and anti-racists.
Labour returned to government in 1974-9. The Sex Discrimination Act, 1975, enabled women’s appeals against discrimination in employment, education, provision of housing and other services. Paid maternity leave was introduced. Legislation protected rape victims and punished domestic violence, though both continued. More women were employed, often in poor conditions. Gradually their access to higher education, the professions and senior positions elsewhere improved.
From 1979-90 Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, was explicitly anti-feminist and rejected reducing gender, or any other, inequality. Income inequality increased and more women experienced poverty, including the growing numbers of single mothers. Cuts to services including childcare and social care increased pressure on women as carers, reducing their employment opportunities, which slowly improved at higher levels for better-off women. In education girls increasingly outperformed boys. The AIDS/HIV epidemic in the 1980s increased homophobia, encouraged by Thatcher’s refusal to support victims until it spread among heterosexuals. Little changed under John Major 1990-97.
In 1997 New Labour came to power under Tony Blair, later Gordon Brown, with an exceptional number of female MPs following Labour’s introduction of All-Women-Shortlists in a proportion of seats following female campaigns: 102 Labour and 18 Conservative women in a House of 650. More were elected to the devolved Assemblies established in Scotland and Wales from 1999, under the PR voting system which generally favours gender equality, for which women had campaigned. Labour in office to 2010 introduced reforms including the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to monitor and promote equalities of gender, age, race and sexual orientation. Employment rights adopted from EU directives benefitted women by introducing minimum pay, equal rights for part-time with full-time workers, improved maternity leave and protection of pregnant women from discrimination. Childcare services improved, unemployed single mothers were assisted to find work. Women remained concentrated in lower-level, poorly paid work, but gradually more were appointed to higher level jobs, still generally earning less than men, but poverty declined at all levels following improvements to the labour market and benefits. Gay couples gained civil partnership rights followed by full adoption rights and anti-discrimination laws. There was much hostility to rights for newly activist transgender people, who gained official recognition of their changed gender and rights associated with their lived gender, including the right to marry.
Progress to gender equality declined when Labour lost the 2010 election, though, unexpectedly, same-sex marriage was introduced in 2013. But Conservative-controlled governments until 2024 cut benefits and services and poverty rose, especially among women. The labour market was deregulated, creating lower pay and increased insecurity at work especially for women, especially those from ethnic minorities. Exceptional numbers of workers were so low-paid that they needed benefits or free food from foodbanks – previously unknown in Britain- to support their families. More better-off women accessed top jobs but not equal pay, while cuts to childcare and social care kept many women from employment. Deaths and injuries in pregnancy and childbirth increased, especially among poorer, especially ethnic minority, women, following cuts to the NHS. The covid pandemic, 2020/21, made conditions worse especially for deprived women.
Women MPs increased in Westminster from 143 in 2010 to 263 in 2024, 40% of all MPs, but they did not evidently increase equality nationally, despite campaigns. A major issue was sexual harassment and sexual violence, which may not have increased but triggered international protest following highly publicized cases, in Britain following the conviction of two policemen for raping then murdering women. Expanding social media increasingly promoted explicit misogyny. Transgender issues were increasingly discussed and controversial.
When Labour won the 2024 election PM Starmer appointed more women to the Cabinet than ever before (11 of 26), some from deprived backgrounds, including to senior positions. Labour did not promise to transform gender equality, despite its strong track record. We can only wait and see.
Over a century of campaigns has achieved some narrowing of gender inequalities, but they remain profound.