The following information has been supplied by PCS HQ:
The following
details have been provided by political activist and comedian Kate Smurthwaite:
Our
individual actions have consequences and can help change the course of history.
We often hear
about the “tide of progress”. It’s easy to imagine that individual actions
don’t
matter; each
generation seemingly inevitably has things a little better than the last.
June saw the
100th anniversary of the headline-grabbing death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison. Our
mothers and grandmothers had the vote, our mothers had the right to take on any
job – unless it was bishop in the House of Lords – and we benefit from equal
pay and
anti-discrimination laws
While these
rights are a great leap forward for women from privileged backgrounds, real progress for
all women can only happen when they have the financial resources and freedom to follow
their ambitions. The Changing labour market report from the Fawcett Society
shows this
government is dead set on thwarting those ambitions
Thoughtless
cuts his women.
Unemployment
among women is now over one million, the highest it has been in a generation.
Thoughtless
public sector job cuts have disproportionately affected women.
Now millions
of pounds are being stripped from the welfare budget. We know cuts affecting
single parents hit women disproportionately but we forget that cuts to care for
elderly and disabled people mean women, more often than not, being asked to
pick up extra caring responsibilities.
This might
seem irrelevant but a decade ago, seeking new friends after relocating, I
joined an Amnesty International group and wrote letters demanding the release
of a Laotian political prisoner. Six months later the campaigning led to his
release.
Actions have
consequences
We might feel
like small powerless fish in an unstoppable ocean of inhuman politics but actually our
actions have consequences. Emily Wilding Davison’s remarkable story is not a historical
relic. She personally changed history.
Throwing
ourselves in front of racehorses may be asking too much but we must act decisively
now or tell our daughters that we were the generation that allowed the tide to turn on women’s equality.
