THIS year’s International Women’s Day theme is“Accelerate Action for gender equality.”
 
If you’re in the north-west any time soon, you’ve got until April 21 to pay the People’s History Museum’s Radical Women trail a visit. You’ll see the Manchester Women’s Social and Political Union suffragette banner emblazoned with the words “first in the fight,” first used in rallies for votes for women in 1908 and later cared for by Salford suffragette and factory worker Elizabeth Ellen Chatterton.
 
Sadly, there isn’t much in the history books written about Chatterton but I like to imagine her as a feisty working-class radical Salfordian woman who spoke her mind and would not be held back from fighting for what she believed in.
 
There are so many radical women like Chatterton who have accelerated action for gender equality, from the victorious Match Girls striking for better pay and conditions to the Suffragettes to the women during and after the wars who trailblazed paths into all areas of business and public life. These were all women who stood up together and demanded to be heard.
 
So I often wonder what they would make of our society today. It is clear that we have made great strides towards equality on their shoulders but sadly the fight is far from over and it is now up to a new generation of “Chattertons” to find their voice.
 
Under the previous government, 14 years of austerity took its toll on women. Cuts, underinvestment, hostility to trade unions, and privatisation by stealth of our public services have not just run them into the ground but in some cases buried the vital support services many women rely upon.
 
And then came the cost-of-living crisis which further entrenched already widening gender divides.
 
The Women’s Budget Group (WBG) is clear in their view that the cost-of-living crisis we are still living through is gendered, stating that women were often the “shock absorbers of poverty.” They found that women are more likely than men to be poor, have been hit harder by cuts to social security and the provision of public services, and have lower levels of savings and wealth than men.
 
Earlier this year further polling for the WBG conducted by YouGov revealed that this crisis was becoming even more acute. It found that more than a quarter (28 per cent) of mothers are struggling financially to meet their children’s needs.
 
Now we are finally under a Labour government, we have an opportunity to change things and positive action has already begun.

The long-awaited Employment Rights Bill will see the biggest transformation of workers’ rights in a generation, a plan for affordable social housing and reforming the private rented sector will pave the way to tackling the housing crisis and provide women with more security. These are just a few of the transformational policies currently being rolled out but there is much further to go.
 
Dr Sara Reis, deputy director and head of policy and research at WBG rightly states: “Strengthening workers’ rights and earnings is key, but this must go hand in hand with a strong social security system that ensures families do not fall into unacceptable levels of destitution. Because right now, paid work offers no guaranteed path out of poverty, especially for women who are more likely to work in low-paid and precarious jobs, and to have less access to paid work because they are caring for children and other relatives.”
 
The WBG calls for increasing social security support to ensure adult benefit rates and child rates guarantee an adequate standard of living, and remove punitive measures that are directly linked to child poverty, including the benefit cap and the two-child limit policy;
 
Tackling barriers to work and women’s disadvantaged position in the labour market by expanding training and upskilling opportunities, while making sure job centres offer support rooted in an understanding of the juggling of care and work single parents, in particular, have to face;
 
And bringing down the cost of essentials through public provision such as investing in early education and childcare, better and more affordable transport, free school meals and social housing. Particular importance is placed on the need to tackle food and energy costs, through the introduction of a social tariff and investment in renewables for cheaper bills.
 
The financial situation the previous government bequeathed Labour was dire, and the scale of the task ahead in rebuilding the public finances and revitalising our industrial base is immense.

But we must never lose sight of what the growth we are seeking is for and what tools are required to achieve it. We are growing the economy to ensure the improvement of quality of life for all. And to achieve that requires making not only strategic investments and policy interventions into industrial endeavours, it also requires investing in the everyday lives of women.
 
So to all the Chattertons out there: be bold, like the women who have paved the way for women to get into power, and let us see that accelerated action for gender equality, to improve life for everyone.
 
Rebecca Long Bailey is MP for Salford.