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The crisis is about people, not just statistics

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Professor Sylvia Walby OBE, speaking at the Inter-parliamentary meeting in BrusselsThe current financial crisis is gendered in its causes and consequences.

Speaking at the European Parliament building earlier this month, one UK speaker, Professor Sylvia Walby, presented findings from her research on how the spending cuts are impacting on violence against women and how other areas of women’s lives are being affected by the financial crisis.

Sylvia Walby is Professor of Sociology at the UK’s Lancaster University and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Chair of Gender Research, and awarded an OBE ‘for services to equal opportunities and gender and diversity’.

Her presentation was at an inter-parliamentary meeting and seminar with the title ‘Women’s response to the crisis’.

She said that women are increasingly being discriminated against during the financial crisis and that the crisis itself was gendered in its causes and it consequences.

This included through financial decision-making, the recession, narrowing budget deficits and economic growth strategies.

Currently almost all financial decision-making is performed by men, and men are more prone to excessive risk-taking, and risk-taking, she said, is exacerbated when companies consist of a monoculture of all-male groups at decision-making levels.

And to date, voluntary measures aimed at increasing the number of women in top economic positions have been slow in producing the required effects.

The European Parliament’s committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) is now pushing for a mandatory increase in board members to 40 per cent female quotas for listed companies, to try and provide a better gender balance within decision-making bodies.

It is recognised that 50 per cent is the ideal and ultimate target, but 40 per cent is considered ‘progress in the right direction’.

Walby argued that including women on the financial committees of governmental bodies, as well as on boards of directors, should be considered as an issue of democracy.

This inclusion of women is also necessary, she said, for protecting the employment rights of the women affected by any decision-making and also should ensure that the risk-taking associated with men is counter-balanced to protect the profitability of firms.

The recession and financial crisis is quite clearly impacting mostly on women.

One focus in the UK government’s decision to reduce public expenditure has been on cutting employment  in the public sector – and women made up 70 per cent of the public sector labour force.

Women are also more likely to be employed in, use and support the areas where the most critical cuts are taking place – health, education, child care and services aiming to prevent violence towards women, for example.

And in countries where governments have not made ‘gendered cuts’ to budgets, the effects of the crisis on women have not been as significant.

Professor Walby also argued that the gendering of the recession is uneven, with women disproportionately affected by the government’s response in choosing to cut public spending, rather taking steps to raise taxes and abolish tax loopholes.

What was made clear at this meeting in Brussels is that women are under-represented in key decision-making strategies within our democracy.

And if gendered interests are significantly under-represented in both governmental and business settings there should be a democratic entitlement for women to be represented at government level, at the EU parliament level and at the EU’s banking level.

The message that came very clearly from Professor Walby and other speakers at the inter-parliamentary meeting is that the financial crisis and the way out of it is about people, not just statistics.

Governments must place more emphasis on the gender implications of the steps they take and the EU – and the UK – needs to come up with legislation which affords greater protection to women.

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