Women, stop moaning

According to Sir Stuart Rose the chairman of Marks & Spencer (one of the UK’s largest food and clothes retailers) women should stop complaining about gender equality in the work place;

“He said: “Apart from the fact that you’ve got more equality than you ever can deal with, the fact of the matter is that you’ve got real democracy and there are really no glass ceilings, despite the fact that some of you moan about it all the time.

“Women can get to the top of any single job that they want to in the UK. You’ve got a woman fighter pilot who went in to join the Red Arrows yesterday.”

He told the newspaper: “I mean, what else do you want to do, for God’s sake? Women astronauts. Women miners. Women dentists. Women doctors. Women managing directors. What is it you haven’t got?”

Well, perhaps equal pay for a start?

“The gap between men and women’s pay in the UK has started to widen again, according to official government figures just released. On average, men earn £15.54 an hour, compared with £12.88 for women (as of 2008).

The Office for National Statistics calculates the gender pay gap at 17.1%, up from 17% the year before.The TUC said the private sector gap was 21.7%, because many private firms were unwilling to carry out checks of their pay patterns to ensure they were fair.”

The United States & UK are among the most regressive industrialised nations regarding the employment of women, their pay and benefits such as maternity leave and child care reflecting the laissez-faire ideals of their liberal economic systems. The Scandinavian social democratic systems on the other hand achieve extremely high levels of economic competitiveness (the right wing World Economic Forum rate them all in the top 15 most productive nations), in no small part attained by bringing 80% of women into the job market by offering free childcare and extremely good benefits and pay.

Stuart Rose seems to be missing the point that although we all accept that a good number of women have broken through the glass ceiling, the ceiling remains and that on average, it’s mostly white males who control the country’s boardrooms. Many will argue that women have children during their lifetime and it’s therefore less attractive to employ them and pay them well, but as the Scandinavian model shows, that is merely an extremely poor excuse for exploitation, and reduces economic dynamism. If capital can employ cheap labour, they will do so and as women currently accept lower pay on average, it’s a good way for companies etc to increase profit. Any excuse to pay women less on average, or claim problems no longer exist is whitewash on the part of those who have most to benefit from women accepting lower pay.