High Heels and Feminism

A couple of days ago, Parliament had a debate on whether to make it illegal for companies to require women to wear high heels in the workplace. Up until now, companies could force women to wear high heels at work and fire them for refusing.

The debate started due of a petition by London receptionist, Nicola Thorp, after she was dismissed as a receptionist because she refused to wear high heels at her place of work. The petition reached 150,000 signatures which meant that it had to be debated in parliament. More info on Nicola and her campaign can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-36264229

Nicola Thorp was dismissed for refusing to wear high heels

It came as a great surprise to me that this issue even had to be debated in the first place, especially in the 21^st century when many politicians and people claim that men and women have equal rights. Yes, technically maybe they do. But, in reality women face gross inequality and sexism in the workplace on a daily basis. Speaking at the debate Gill Furness, a Labour MP, told Westminster Hall that her daughter had suffered a metatarsal fracture while at work due to wearing high heels for a prolonged period of time. Then was denied any compensation or sick pay while she recovered. Another Labour Party MP, Helen Jones, spoke about how some women were told to wear revealing clothing in order to sell to male customers and some female flight attendants were forced to wear the same shade of lipstick. This forces women to suffer pain for long periods of time and makes them feel sexualised while at work, while some women said it is demeaning.

Labour MP Helen Jones

Women still also face an 18% pay gap in the UK, according to the IFS. And a separate report showed that male managers are 40% more likely to be promoted than female managers. These are outrageous statistics and go further to demonstrating the inequality women face in the workplace. More than 40 years since the supposed Equal Pay Act has been put in place and women are still, on average, being payed less than men.

Feminism is as important now, as it always has been. Furthermore I think that the definition of feminism has been lost, not helped by controversial figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos when he describes it as “cancer”, or when Piers Morgan says there is no need for a women’s march. We need to remind them that feminism isn’t complicated, it isn’t controversial. Feminism is simply equality. I am proud to call myself a feminist and support the complete equality between both genders.

Connor French (@_connorfrench)

20 million people face starvation – what are we doing?

Yesterday, the United Nations warned the world that we are facing the greatest Humanitarian Crisis since 1945 – the end of World War II. They say that more than 20 million people face the threat of starvation concentrated across 4 countries; Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. This was echoed by UNICEF when they warned that up to 1.4 million children are expected to starve to death.

UNICEF warn 1.4 million children face starvation

To put this into context, as there are approximately 60 million people in the UK, this is the equivalent of 1 third of the entire population starving to death. This is an alarming figure and I think when put into context really shows how shocking that figure is.

A separate study for the UN shows that the richest 1% of adults in the world own approximately 40% of the world’s wealth. With few individuals owning vast amounts of money. This is grotesquely unjust and these kind of figures show that the current capitalist model our richest nations are governing themselves by, is making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The divide is large and the combined wealth of the most powerful nations could do something, but they are simply idle about it. Divides create levels of power and power is what they want.

However, it is clear that there is a serious issue in the distribution of wealth worldwide and although they help, simple donations from ordinary people isn’t going to solve the issue. There needs to be serious reform in how wealth is distributed to seriously improve the absolutely abhorrent levels of inequality that millions of people on the planet currently face.

Connor French (_connorfrench)