This article originally appeared in T&S Issue 37, Summer 1998.
In May 1997 Britain got its first Labour government for almost 20 years, including a record number of women MPs. For feminists hoping to influence public policy, it seemed like a new era of opportunity. But has the government’s record on gender lived up to its rhetoric? Jennifer Marchbanks thinks New Labour could do better…
Now, don’t get me wrong — I am delighted that we have a Labour Government, something I’ve been waiting for all my adult life, something that I have worked for and a Party to which I used to belong. So, on May 1 1997 I lived in hope of the great changes that would be made and the great advances which would accrue for women. Now what do we hear? Accusations of the new New Labour MPs being robots and Stepford Wives, of pre-programmed Millbank mannequins for Mandelson, of ‘staying on message’ and, let’s not forget that wonderful sexist appellation ‘Blair’s Babes’, which of course, is never once used to refer to the first time MPs who happen to be men!
May 1 was wonderful, for most it was seeing Twigg beat Portillo, but for me, a Scot, it was the demise of Michael Forsyth that precipitated the pouring of the first celebratory drink. Then, the election of all those women — and 101 of them for Labour — seemed to justify the affirmative action policy of women-only shortlists and to herald a new way for politics. The next morning, still jubilant, I contacted Labour Women in Australia to share our good fortune, and in that communication I trumpeted my belief, and Labour’s promise, that we would now see the establishment of the UK’s first Ministry for Women — how wrong I was.
Ministers for Women
So, we didn’t get a Women’s Ministry, what we did get was ‘Ministers for Women’ — namely Harriet Harman and Joan Ruddock. In addition, the Ministers for Women are supported by a Women’s Unit in Whitehall and by a Cabinet Sub-Committee for Women. Now, I recognise that the title Ministers for Women is a positive move, it reflects the lessons learned from the experience of Women’s Officers in local government and much feminist academic writing. Those lessons tell us that separate Women’s Initiatives can suffer from marginalisation in political bureaucracies and that it is only already committed feminists who will wish to dedicate time to the cause since the whole area is viewed as a promotional void. The experiences of Women’s Units in Local Government have been many and varied, with some more successful in creating change than others. What my own research has led me to conclude is that marginalisation is less likely to occur when women’s interests are placed in the centre of policy making and not left to be ‘add-ons’, revisions and appendices. Therefore, a generous analysis of the creation of Ministers for Women, with their declared aim to: ‘..ensure that women’s concerns are core business, not “Any Other Business”, for every government department’ (Ministers for Women website, 20 January 1998), would be to see this move as ensuring the centrality of women’s interests in the creation of all policies in all fields.
However, I am more cynical. That cynicism began with the realisation in June last year that the appointment of the Minister for Women, Joan Ruddock, MP had obviously been an after-thought, Blair realised that Harman could not possibly manage to act both as Secretary of State for Social Security and Minister for Women. What doesn’t seem to be recognised is the contradictory policy demands which must face her as she tries both to promote the interests of women whilst simultaneously, due to her more senior position in Social Security, reshaping welfare policies in such a way as to differentially affect women (i.e. removing lone parent benefit may look genderless but as the majority of recipients are women the effects certainly are not). I have to say that it didn’t take me long to work out which role would take precedence if a conflict arose. Welfare to Work started with lone parents (read single mums) and the interests of these women to choose to be mothers not workers without being vilified, simply evaporated. Despite Brown’s Budget pledge to U-turn on this by providing lone parents with a 12 week ‘linking rule’ which means that they won’t be disadvantaged financially if they take a short term job and which is designed to protect these people’s benefits rights, the very fact that this had to be a U-turn and not part of the initial policy design indicates a lack of understanding of the needs of single parents.
So, it is vital that a dedicated Minister exists to represent the interests of women. Yet the appointment of Ruddock, an appointment without pay, surely points to the fact that her post is viewed as less important than other Junior Minister posts, (all of) which are paid at the full £67,483 whilst Ruddock is expected to represent the interests of more than half of the country without any additions to her MPs’ salary. Money is far from everything but it is an indication of the differential value placed upon policy areas and is further evidence that pursuing women’s interests will not advance one’s career. Ironically, Ruddock recognises this when referring to the gender balance on public bodies:
there are now more women on public bodies than ever before. But men still dominate on many bodies — and especially in the more powerful and best-paid posts. We are determined to change that. (Ruddock, speaking at the National Council of Women, Annual Conference, 18/10/97) [this reference and all others from Ruddock are from Press Releases available on the Ministers for Women Website]
Shame that the most powerful public body in the land treats her as a second class member, and by association, the interests of women as secondary.
So, what are the aims of the Ministers for Women? Well, a visit to their web page is informative to a degree. Six aims are listed:
1. Childcare
2. Family friendly working
3. Tackling violence against women
4. A new dialogue with women
5. Women at the heart of government
6. Women’s representation
Aims 5 & 6: Women in Government
It is clear from the last two aims that there is a real feminist acknowledgement that to be effective all policy areas must consider the effects policies will have on women and that women need to be represented ‘at all levels of government and public bodies’ (Ministers for Women, Website). This bodes well and should really act against the marginalisation of WII’s (Women’s Interest Issues — a phrase I use to denote that all issues, whether gender-specific or not, have gendered effects), allowing the Ministers for Women (and others) to raise gender and feminist issues in the initial stages of policy making. This is a far preferable situation to that which often pertained in many local authorities where Women’s Initiatives were simply grafted onto existing bureaucratic structures without any other adjustments being made. That ensured that WIIs could only be raised as revisions to existing or completed policies in such situations, a practice which the sceptic could conclude was a deliberate attempt to reduce the effectiveness of the Women’s Unit in certain Councils.
This process of placing women at the heart of government is referred to as mainstreaming, which, in Ruddock’s own words means:
ensuring that the interests and concerns of both women and men are taken into account in the design and implementation of policies at all levels and in all areas. (Ruddock, to Commission on the Status of Women, March 1998)
To achieve this all Government Departments are to be issued with revised guidance on mainstreaming (Ruddock, Women’s National Commission, Edinburgh, 22/10/97).
A former Dutch civil servant and now writer on feminist policy making, Joke Swiebel’s experiences and analysis are very relevant here. She shows how various factors within a bureaucracy can hinder policy making which is women-orientated, one of which is the existence of tensions within the administration and the fragmentation of the bureaucracy which could be overcome by mainstreaming. However, I am sceptical that Ruddock’s aim of mainstreaming women’s issues can be achieved when it seems that the rest of the political structures have not been modified; guidelines may have been issued but it is unclear exactly what authority Ministers for Women have over civil servants in other departments and other Ministers. Without such authority the diffusion of responsibility for including a gender perspective on policy making is abrogated into the hands of policy drafters who are non-specialists in gender and who have no reason to believe that developing such an interest would be rewarded within their own department. As such, there is a danger that in attempting to ‘write women into’ all policies what could occur is simply that women become marginalised and hidden within departmental briefs. It appears to me that the Ministers for Women, and the members of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Women, will expend much energy on simply achieving and monitoring bureaucratic changes and arguing for adjustments in policy making practices before any meaningful gains can be made. However, I really do wish them luck (I think they’ll need it) for, as Swiebel argues:
[policy making] for women is not recognized as a professional activity in its own right.. [and].. the bureaucrats responsible for women have no stronghold of their own to defend and lack the weapons to impress their adversaries
Let’s hope that the Ministers for Women can employ their seniority, can overcome generations of traditional policy making machinery and use the political process to further our ends. Nonetheless, the lack of recognition that Blair has given to this process, as indicated by his treatment of Ruddock, must surely send unspoken messages to both politicians and civil servants that WII’s are of lesser importance to the affairs of state than other matters.
Aims 1 & 2: Childcare and Family Friendly Employment
As someone with an academic, political and social interest in the development of policies which will facilitate the creation of decent, affordable and desirable childcare I encourage the Ministers for Women in their prioritised aims to develop family-friendly employment and childcare policies. It is obvious that both Harman and Ruddock recognise the vast backlog in provision. However, I hope that the presentation of the issue as an economic requirement is simply that, a presentation which will be acceptable to non-feminist audiences. There is a real danger in WII’s being redefined away from the original agenda. The way an issue is defined is vitally important. Joyce Outshoorn has shown how Dutch feminists refused to allow the passage of an abortion policy which permitted abortion on medical, sociological or psychological grounds rather than on feminist terms, and who eventually won the argument. Similarly, there is great jeopardy in permitting childcare to be defined and presented in economic terms for, once economic arguments are diminished then so too is the case for childcare. As feminists we must argue for childcare policy and provision on the basis of the rights of women and families to utilise these services when they choose.
However, my worries are increased when I reflect back on the origins of childcare and family-friendly employment policies. That source is to be found in the document The Family Way (written for the Institute for Public Policy Research by Anna Coote, Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt and which was critiqued in Trouble & Strife, No. 20, 1991 by Jayne Egerton).
This document seems to remain the basis for Labour’s policy on the family. Surprisingly, given the feminist credentials of the authors, the paper marginalised women’s rights by equating them with the rights of the child, not considering that the two often come into conflict. The prioritisation of the reasons for increasing childcare provision illustrates the secondary place of women. Firstly, it stated that childcare was needed to improve the education of the pre-fives. Secondly, that changes in work patterns of adults create a demand for childcare as this can lead to children being placed in inadequate facilities and thirdly, ‘the promotion of equal opportunities for women’. The place of women’s rights in The Family Way reflected the Labour Party’s attempts to outflank the Conservatives on family policy in the early 1990s, and it is a shame that there doesn’t seem to have been a revision in view of Labour’s more powerful position.
Even when promoting policies to enable families to manage their lives there is an assumption that it is mothers who are being served and, of course, pragmatically the majority of those directly affected will be women but it still implies that policy is being made in an environment which is not wholly accepting of feminist demands:
family-friendly employment and flexible working patterns…. are vital if women are to balance their home and work responsibilities (Harman, TUC Conference, 9 September 1997, emphasis added)
However, on the positive side it has to be acknowledged that Labour have recognised and support the Working Time Directive which, as part of the Social Chapter, is intended to reduce the number of hours worked by Britons. Although not a formal policy to enable men to perform their share of family duties it could assist them to do so.
The presentation of childcare in economic terms also permits the presentation of the solution in economic terms. So, the development of the new jobs which will be required to fulfil the National Childcare Strategy can also have a specific economic role within Welfare to Work. Childcare is to become the domain, not of mothers who might wish to stay at home but, of young adults trained through voluntary organisations as childcare assistants. The message that this sends out is that childcare is something that does not require a professional qualification, and can be left to the low paid and the marginalised within our workforce. As such, it indicates and reinforces the lowly status (and consequently the financial rewards) accorded to the care of children in our society.
Thus, although the Labour Party has instigated Britain’s first National Childcare Strategy there has been no overt recognition of childcare as a parental, let alone a women’s right. Much of the rhetoric has been couched in terms of economic efficiency and returning people to work. Perhaps this is a pragmatic dilution of actual beliefs in order to have a policy accepted by a anti-feminist public agenda. Even so it could be argued that any childcare gained on these terms remains a pyrrhic victory. The suppression of specifically feminist voices in the creation of childcare policies does more than marginalise the validity of women’s demands on the polity it also diminishes the nature of that childcare. Original feminist childcare demands were for facilities which were locally controlled, flexible and provided choice. No matter how good state nursery education is, or how good the New Deal childcare assistants are, this Strategy does not meet these criteria. Further, as women witness their needs being ignored once more, or their arguments being sidelined in favour of economic and fiscal benefits, another layer of suppression and marginalisation is created.
Aim 3: Violence Against Women
The inclusion of the issue of violence against women as a priority for the Ministers for Women is only right. According to their own publicity it is the aim of the Ministers for Women to ensure that each Government department takes effective action on this matter, including measures to assist survivors, to ensure swift and effective legal recourse and to educate on prevention. I have no quarrel here.
However, I do have a quarrel with the Labour Party generally. Since the 1980s feminists and activists have worked alongside local government Women’s Officers on the policy of Zero Tolerance, a policy with its British beginnings in Edinburgh with large scale, pro-woman, anti-violence publicity campaigns. As Susan Hart tells us, this policy employed the fruits of feminist research on violence against women and children and developed a real, effective feminist praxis to tackle the myriad concerns around male violence. What makes me spit is the (mis)appropriation of the phrase Zero Tolerance by Labour, and in particular by Jack Straw, to refer to socially unacceptable behaviour of all descriptions. As such, what has been created in the national consciousness is the impression that this is not a campaign specifically addressing feminist concerns regarding male violence. It is hardly a women-orientated act to obscure this innovative and effective policy behind autocratic restrictions on deviant youth!
In addition, there is no mention or recognition in the press releases on violence against women regarding funding and supporting strategies which are not controlled by Central Government. As is obvious from the spread of Zero Tolerance across local authorities, from the work of Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis etc. it has not been Central Government which has developed policies and services in this area. Rather if it were not for the actions of women’s groups in establishing, and illustrating the need for, such services violence against women would not have made it onto the agenda. I hope that the Ministers for Women will use this expertise and ensure that local authorities continue to be adequately funded so that they can, in turn, continue to financially support refuges. As I write Midlothian Women’s Aid is under threat of losing its funding due to the cash-strapped status of the local council. Central-local government relations may not initially appear to be a concern for feminists but it is all too frequently the case that those lobbying for funds for refuges and services are told that deficiencies in the Standard Spending Assessment (grants to local councils) are the cause of cuts. Try as I might I could not find any reference to these matters amongst the priorities of the Ministers for Women.
Aim 4: A New Dialogue with Women
In an attempt to reduce the alienation felt by many women regarding Parliament, often seen as a male-dominated environment, Ministers for Women have established a new strategy for communications with women’s organisations and plan to review the Women’s National Commission which is the body traditionally trusted with channelling the views of women to Government. They have also committed themselves to ‘..reaching out to all those other women who are not in organisations and whose voices are almost never heard’ (Ruddock, IPPR Conference, 3rd July 1997). This has already begun, with the first ‘Women in Scotland Forum’ being held in April, chaired by Scotland’s Minister for Women, Henry McLeish.
Referring back to the six priorities it is clear that this aim is part of any campaign to develop gender-sensitive policies, via the creation of a new dialogue, a new bond of trust between women and the Government. Unfortunately, for this woman, that bond of trust which I offered up unquestioningly on May 1 (and before) has been severely dented, not just by the treatment of the Ministry for Women but also through the policy steps taken by our ‘New’ Labour Government, and the actions of many of our new MPs, both women and men. Having now discussed the priorities for the Ministers for Women I now address the areas where I feel women have been let down.
Welfare to Work
As part of the Government’s commitment to reducing unemployment they have devised a Welfare to Work programme offering a New Deal for lone mothers. Last July it was announced that this New Deal would invest, according to DSS figures (DSS Press Release, 2/7/97), £150 million from the windfall tax to assist lone parents into work and off welfare. This was a very commendable aim, an aim which acknowledges the barrier of lack of affordable childcare which forces many women not to work. Extra allowances will be made to lone parents, including increases in the amount of childcare payments disregarded in the calculations of such benefits as Family Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. In the words of Harman, this is an attempt to offer a ‘hand up’ not a ‘hand out’.
It was clear from the last Budget that Labour were trying to present not only a fundamental reform of the taxation and benefits system but also to help those viewed as socially excluded into work. In certain places this policy explicitly related to the position of many women — e.g. the exclusion in the past of the female partners of unemployed men from training programmes and recruitment schemes and the development of childcare assistance for lone parents.
As laudable as all this sounds — in that it is an attempt to remove certain barriers which prevent women choosing employment as an option — there are some problems with it and its presentation to the public. First of all, despite Labour’s condemnation of the stigmatising of lone parents as the harbourers of all social evils, their concentrated focus on this issue did not indicate the importance of creating a nation of economically independent women and families, nor highlight the absolute necessity of developing a genuine National Childcare Strategy, but reinforce the idea that the major social problem to be tackled is women having babies on benefit. Of course, part of the blame for this presentation has to be laid at the door of the media but the undue haste with which the policy of cutting future lone parent benefits payments was pushed through Parliament did little to encourage feminist confidence. Fortunately, due to the response this proposal elicited from the public and from women’s groups the aforementioned U-turn was announced in the last Budget. Nonetheless, the Budget clearly indicated that the road to citizenship in the UK is not to be via a recognition of the value of caring but only of the value of participating in paid work.
Despite this U-turn, this debate points to another concern of mine. At the time of the original proposal I read a very informative article by Ann Clwyd, MP (The Observer, 14/12/97) in which she detailed the tactics with which opponents of this measure were silenced and ignored: from the refusal to delay the debate to the actions of the Labour Whips in closing the parliamentary debate when at least 15 Labour MPs were still waiting to speak. It is little wonder that the press refers to ‘Blair’s Babes’ and I think of ‘Mandelson’s mannequins’ when Labour MPs who wished to speak for women and their children were denied a voice through the privileged use of parliamentary procedure. It is difficult to see how the Ministers for Women can achieve a real dialogue with women when dissenting voices within Labour are silenced from the centre. Furthermore, just how supported are feminist opinions when, despite 101 woman MPs for New Labour, there appears to be no move towards establishing a woman’s caucus within the Parliamentary Labour Party — what implied retributions exist which have ensured that no such gathering has been created?
Budget ‘98
I have already referred to a couple of aspects of the recent Budget, however, I think it is worth discussing a few more. Gordon Brown very clearly stated that his Budget was to offer four things to the country: firstly economic stability; secondly, an encouragement to enterprise with the promise that work will always pay more than benefit; thirdly, reform of the welfare state to offer opportunity for all and; lastly the creation of strong public services. As I listened to the Budget and these pledges I initially felt elated, yet underneath all of this lurk dangers for women.
Obviously, economic stability will benefit the whole country (though the methods of achieving such stability could result in the reduction of certain rights, e.g. trade union recognition). Further, making work pay must be a positive step — though again it is an indication that individuals can only achieve the status of citizen through paid employment. The development of opportunities for all via the welfare system is, to my mind, admirable. The recognition that women partners of unemployed men have the right to services which could enable them to find paid employment if they so wish indicates that Brown does not see such women as economically dependent upon ‘their’ men but believes they should be treated as individuals. Despite what he said about the family being viewed in this budget as Beveridge had viewed it this is not the case. Beveridge situated married women as economic dependants and as a separate class of people (the other two classes being the employed and the self employed); at least Brown has gone some way to indicate that the Government sees people as individuals not as dependants within a family unit. Nonetheless, despite Brown’s presentation of this as an opportunity for women, it is possible to view it as yet another attempt to reinforce the view that membership of civic society comes with earning a wage.
It is probably not surprising that I have another gripe about the Budget. This time it is with regard to the announcement that Family Credit will be replaced by a Working Families Tax Credit. The aim of this move is to ensure that, as stated before, those who work will be rewarded for doing so — that work will pay. As such, it is intended to remove the anomaly whereby people in low paid jobs can claim Family Credit and, due to the construction of the system, be financially penalised if they start to earn a little more. By this measure the Chancellor will guarantee a family income of £180 per week with no taxation being due until a threshold of £220 is reached, if one adult in the family is in full time paid work. In other words, it is the removal of an anomalous tax system which disproportionately taxed the lowest earners. So, what is my concern? It is simply that it is the replacement of Family Credit, a benefit, with a tax credit, that is, an allowance of earnings before tax is calculated. Despite Brown’s insistence that families will be able to choose whose wages are advantaged with this tax credit (man or woman) it strikes me as obvious who will receive it. Given that women still earn only around 75 percent of men’s wages and that any tax credit will be more useful attached to the larger income, it is clear that, on the whole, this will mean that rather than a family collecting a benefit, a boost will be given to the male wage packet — with no guarantees that it will ever reach the family purse.
Similarly, I am disappointed in the Budget plans for Childcare to be covered by a tax credit rather than a benefit payment or free provision. Once more this means that those who earn and who can arrange for, and choose to have, formalised childcare will benefit.
Statistics and Policy Making
One of the first lessons I learned about policy making is that it is very difficult to develop a convincing argument when ‘hard’ data is not available to support your case. The next lesson that I learned is that the refusal to gather such data can be a deliberate act of obfuscation. As such it was very welcome to learn that Joan Ruddock, at the Gender and Statistics Users Group launch conference (31 March 1998), argued against the masculinist assumptions in current data collection and committed Ministers for Women to a ‘policy statement which will promote the collection and dissemination of statistics broken down by gender’. As she has recognised, ‘without a statistical base that is recognised by those in authority women’s needs remain hidden’. However, despite Ruddock being aware of the dangers of assuming gender neutrality in the collation of data and warning against the dangers of subsuming women’s experiences under the experience of men this seems not yet to have permeated the Cabinet, for I would argue that such policies as tax credits for childcare do exactly what Joan Ruddock was warning against.
As I started to write this I heard on the radio that the Conservative Party is once more trying to encourage women within their organisation. Within these reports is included the usual rhetoric about women achieving office through their merits, my retort was ‘fine — but did all the men get there on theirs?’ Despite all my criticisms and concerns I do believe that, given our current political system, New Labour provides the best route for the promotion of WIIs and that some form of alliance between feminists in and out of the bureaucracy with traditional bureaucrats and politicians might achieve the degree of change we seek. However, neither we, nor New Labour can rest on our laurels.