Sorry to begin with a negative in this year of suffrage celebration. Sadly I feel there’s no choice but to illustrate my contribution with what – for me – remains a startling reminder of the job still to be done to end downright discrimination against women in all parts of local government.
It happened during NJC pay negotiations a decade ago. During the recess a large member of the employers’ side confronted me. Councillor X banged the table and complained I was demanding an unreasonable pay increase for my ‘ladies’, who did in the workplace what his wife did for ‘nowt at ‘ome.
Far from berating him, I thanked him politely for saying what I always believed passed through the minds of most men on the employers’ side during each pay round. The fact he was a Labour councillor and ex-miner should perhaps have made it all the more shocking, but as we women know, sexism and patriarchal boorishness – conscious or unconscious – respect no political boundaries.
Very little has changed for women in local government in the last ten years – or even further back. Despite the excellent work of many women councillors and chief executives, the great efforts of Dr Jane Roberts’ Councillors’ Commission a decade ago and the ceaseless fight of the Women and Local Government Society, the recent Fawcett/LGiU Inquiry into Women in Local Government has once again highlighted that the council chamber remains a male preserve.
Most ‘guvnors’ and decision-makers remain mostly and stubbornly men, mostly white and mostly over 60. Those they ‘govern’ in council chamber and workplaces or those who rely most on local services are overwhelmingly women. The new forms of so-called local democracy, such as combined authorities, have simply amplified this shocking gender divide.
This gender divide matters. A democracy can only comfortably call itself one if it reflects the diversity of the people it seeks to represent. It can only understand and meet their needs if it reflects the range of their life experiences. That is why equal pay and single status were treated with nonchalance until the courts and no-win, no fee lawyers intervened, why local government pay is the lowest in the public sector and why women’s jobs are often the first to be privatised when money is to be saved.
This situation will probably only change if forced by women breaking down the doors of the council chamber – metaphorically you understand. The suffragettes might have taken hammers to them, and that might still happen, if nothing shifts, but local democracy has perhaps its last opportunity with the Fawcett/LGiU report to put its own house in order. I’m sure the greedy council ‘ladies’ will help. If it won’t change, then let’s just call it what it really is – local patriarchy – and take to direct action.
Heather Wakefield is head of local government at UNISON
