70 more years of state sponsored theft

The Equality & Human Rights Commission recently published a report on how women are still being excluded from power.  Called 'Sex & Power: 5,400 women missing from top jobs' it explains that :

"at the current rate of change it will take around 70 years to reach an equal number of men and women directors of FTSE 100 companies. It also found it could be up to 70 years before there are an equal number of women MPs in parliament – another 14 general elections. "

Just to show that Scotland, under Alex Salmond's leadership, will do anything England does but better, have a look at the evidence below of just how important women are in the Scottish Cabinet :

Aside from it being obvious that if you are a wheelchair user you have no political future in Scotland, it is also fairly clear that Scotland's government offers no measurable equality for women.


You will remember that in another blog, 'Hewers of the Stone of Hope', I explained why.  Our First Minister gave up the ghost on equality for anyone in his opening speech to the current session of the Scottish Parliament.  He said then :

"the struggle for fairness, equality, tolerance, rights of free speech and thought - these are struggles which are never won"

Not only are we going backwards on gender equality in power sharing between men and women, getting near equal pay is proving equally elusive.  What is particularly sad is that the Cabinet Minister with lead on equality matters is Nicola Sturgeon.  You might have thought that equal pay is something she would chase and with some vigour?  Not really.  As Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Cities Strategy [I don't make up these titles] she could have whipped the NHS into shape on equal pay.  She hasn't.


In a report she signed off in 2009, 'The Big Picture 2009' looked at benchmarking performance of Scotland's NHS Boards on a range of equality obligations, including Equal Pay.  The equal pay analysis of the 'Big Picture' found that only 3 out of 22 Boards said they had conducted an equal pay review, as required in law.  Analysis of the 3 who said 'yes' found that only 1 had actually done it, with the others a work in progress.


With the NHS one of the biggest employers in Scotland, you would have thought government would use its power to make equal pay happen in the lifetime of the Scottish Parliament.  You would have thought.  


You would have thought that with the government minister for the NHS being a woman, she would use her power to get the men who dominate the management cadre of the NHS to do what they should be doing in law.  You would have thought.

You would have thought that the prospect of men being allowed to thieve from the wallets, purses and bank accounts of women for another 70 years would have spurred women in government to make men to get their thieving hands out of there - now.  You would have thought state-sponsored thievery was something we left behind a couple of centuries ago.  You would have thought.

Looks like Nicola needs a nudge on equal pay

Looks like Nicola needs a nudge on equal pay.  You can nudge Nicola by email.  You can also nudge Nicola via Twitter  - @NicolaSturgeon.  

No sooner do I finish a blog on men thieving from women, than along comes the Guardian publishing yet another report on the subject.. Yesterday I used the Equality & Human Rights Commission report to give oxygen to estimates that equal pay will not arrive for women [assuming current rates of ‘progress’] for another 70 years. This inspired me to blog on the subject and suggest action to stop men thieving [for that is what unequal pay is] from the purses, wallets and bank accounts of women for another 70 years.

And then today the Guardian publishes news of another report [from the Chartered Management Institute], suggesting that it will take another 98 years for women executives to get equal pay with men who are executives.

Weird world we are living in. Rupert Murdoch gets dragged in to face a grilling by a Select Committee over phone hacking, his media empire share price takes a hit, people get sent to jail, senior police officers resign, and more will follow. Nicola Sturgeon [carrying the government’s equality bag in Scotland] isn’t being grilled over government’s failure to close the pay gap in the public sector. Nobody is to be sent to jail for the theft from women that has already gone on and is set to continue. No resignation is offered by civil servants who have failed to stop the continuing thieving from women in local government and the NHS.

I reckon women should vote for the Meerkat Party next election.