It’s International Women’s Day again. A time of year that often leaves me reflecting on why we still need a special day each year to highlight the lack of equality in our society.
It is 55 years since Barbara Castle, as Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, introduced the Equal Pay Act 1970. The catalyst for that legislation was the 1968 strike by women sewing machinists at Ford Dagenham.
Unfortunately, the UK has still not managed to achieve Equal Pay and the situation is getting worse.
According to the Fawcett Society, 20th November 2024 was Equal Pay Day. This is the day that women stop being paid compared to men. They say that the gender pay gap is now 11.3% up from 10.7% last year. Translating that into hard cash – it’s £631 less in monthly take-home pay for women.
You can read the full research report here but in summary, about a third of the gender pay gap is because women get trapped in part-time, low-paid or insecure work to balance caregiving responsibilities. For mothers, a lack of affordable and accessible childcare exacerbates this situation, known as the ‘Motherhood Penalty.’
That leaves nearly two-thirds of the gender pay gap unexplained. I would argue that some of this relates to institutionalised discrimination in the form of internal grading structures, obscure recruitment procedures and hidden pay deals.
There is work still to be done but it’s clear from the Equal Pay Act onwards that new laws and policies directly benefiting women are more likely to get raised, discussed and tackled if women have a seat at the table where decisions are made.
Evidence shows that the Labour Party had the biggest one-off impact on getting more women into Parliament through their All Women Shortlists (AWS) – only opposed by those who thought selections should be ‘on merit’ – a position that pre-supposes prior to 1997 all white men were elected to a standard women were unable to reach. This is not only blatantly untrue but clearly farcical and ignores any sense of unconscious bias.
Writing in The Guardian, Harriet Harman said:
“When I was elected in 1982, only 3% of MPs were women and I was one of only 10 female Labour MPs. Women’s voices were not heard in parliament and women in the country could not see their concerns reflected on the political agenda. We believed that we needed to do three things: transform our policy agenda so that it reflected women’s concerns, get more women elected as Labour MPs and ensure that Labour’s frontbench team included women as well as men.”
Whilst AWS is no longer in operation, it has successfully changed both the gender balance of Parliament since and the perception of what an MP looks like.
According to the House of Commons Library report, Women in Politics and Public Life published on 4th March 2025;
‘After 1918 when women became eligible to be MPs, the number grew slowly until a jump in 1997 when 120 women were elected. Since then, the number of female MPs has continued to grow. Following the 2024 general election, 263 MPs were women. At 40%, this was an all-time high.’
Whilst 40% women MPs are an improvement, it still doesn’t reflect the UK population which is broadly 51% women and 49% men.
Changing the voting system could help.
In the Commons, the prevalence of ‘safe seats’ under Westminster’s voting system, means that once a seat is in an MP’s hands, it may be theirs for decades. This has historically entrenched gender bias by reducing the number of seats available to which women could be elected
Countries with proportional electoral systems are generally more representative. The top ranked democracies in the world for women’s representation – such as the Nordic states – use forms of PR in their legislature. In addition, PR is an enabler of techniques for increasing women’s representation such as ‘zipping’ in which party lists alternate genders. Instead, with just one seat up for grabs in each area, First Past the Post benefits the already powerful.
Women need to occupy a representative number of seats in the UK Parliament. We need to be part of that power base, arguing the case on behalf of women now and in generations to come. To achieve that requires more than affirmative action by political parties, it also requires the support of the State. We need to legislate for a proportional voting system so that that the Mother of all Parliaments consistently delivers for women in the future.