Marion Sharples is leading an exciting new project for the Women's Budget Group envisaging a gender-equal economy for the UK. Having collected women's inputs from across the UK, Marion joins us to explain why care must be at the centre of our economic future. Marion makes a strong case for government investment in care, as well as the need for care work to take centre place in bold new proposals for our economy - including plans for a Feminist Green New Deal. Find out more about the Commission on a Gender-Equal Economy here: wbg.org.uk/commission/ See this short video on the spirals of inequality related to care: https://vimeo.com/409866367 And find out why we need a feminist green new deal: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/its-time-to-talk-about-a-feminist-green-new-deal/
00:47 - Why the economy is central to gender equality; about the Women's Budget Group's Commission on a Gender-Equal Economy
03:41 - Gathering inputs across the UK to design a gender-equal economy
You can read about the evidence submitted to the Commission here.
07:46 - The economic barriers women face
09:01 - What women want from a gender-equal economy
10:19 - Care and the cycle of inequality
You can take a look at this short video which the Women's Budget Group created to illustrate the spirals of inequality related to care and read the report here.
14:28 - Might there be a silver lining for care in COVID-19?
Here, Marion mentions a poll from the Fawcett Society which showed that 65% of respondents supported an increase in income tax to fund a pay rise for care workers.
She also highlights this Financial Times editorial which argues that COVID-19 has made clear "the fragility of the social contract", and that "radical reforms — reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table."
20:53 - The need for huge government investment in care, including universal childcare provision
23:46 - A Green New Deal should be a feminist deal; care jobs are green jobs
Find out more about the WBG's proposals for a feminist green new deal through this webinar recording, paper and article.
29:11 - What's next for the Commission on a Gender-Equal Economy
You can find upcoming webinars from the Women's Budget Group here.
And read more about the Commission on a Gender-Equal Economy here.
Alice Merry (00:04):
Welcome to the podcast that takes a feminist look at the world of money. My name is Alice Merry, and this is The Feminist Finance Podcast. Today, I spoke with Marion Sharples from the Women's Budget Group in the UK. Marion is a trustee of Women Working Worldwide, and sits on the Gender and Trade Working Group of Women in Development Europe. At the Women's Budget Group, Marion manages the Commission for A Gender Equal Economy, an exciting initiative begun last year to envisage a gender equal future for the UK economy. I began by asking Marion what is meant by a gender equal economy? Why not just a commission for gender equality?
Marion Sharples (00:47):
Yeah, that's a great question. Why not just talk about gender equality? I mean I think it kind of goes back to the origins of the Women's Budget Group in general and how we've always focused on the economy, and basically seeing the economy as kind of the basis from which we build the society that we want to live in, and what the Women's Budget Group has traditionally done has been to challenge the rules of the game, I suppose. Challenging assumptions that determine how economic policy is formed and how it's decided on, and how impacts on certain groups of people are taken into account or, as may be the case, not taken into account. I think it's about kind of challenging this idea that economic policy is neutral.
Marion Sharples (01:38):
A lot of the Women's Budget Group's research over the last few years has shown, for example, how austerity measures in the UK have hit different groups harder or less hard depending on who you are, and we know that austerity hits women of colour, single mothers, and disabled women the hardest of all. I guess a lot of what the women's budget group does is about bringing those realities to light and really showing up that the economy... the way that we conceive of the economy is not neutral and not gender neutral, and does have really different impacts on different groups of people. So what we wanted to do with the commission in terms of building a gender equal economy was about constructing a kind of alternative vision of the economy, really, and looking at what kind of principles of gender equality we want to base this on putting, centring the importance of care, and the care economy, unpaid care work, really bringing that right to the centre of what we talk about when we think of the economy.
Marion Sharples (02:39):
And I think it's been really interesting to see, for example recently how in the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown that we've been having in the UK, there's been a lot of talk about needing to kind of get the economy going again, and all of that as if everything's ground to a halt, but I think what's really interesting is that actually a lot of economic activity, as we would recognize it in the Women's Budget Group, has continued to happen. Childcare has been happening. Home schooling has been happening, caring for ill people, caring for older people, caring for vulnerable people, all of those things have been happening. And those activities are really kind of the foundation of our economy, but traditionally they're not counted in economic measures. They're not counted in terms of output. They're not counted in terms of productivity of GDP, anything like that, but really they are crucial. They are the backbone to the economy. And that's what we're trying to do. We're really trying to highlight that and show how important that kind of work is for the economy more broadly.
Alice Merry (03:41):
It's really interesting to me that kind of care has come up at the centre of this piece of work, because I have to tell you as a very informal proof of concept, I suppose, that care has come up in almost every single interview we've had for the Feminist Finance Podcast. I mean, everything from investing to insurance to women founders, care is really, I think, at the centre of every conversation about women's finance. And I want to get stuck into that in a little bit, but maybe you can start by telling us about how you carried out that research. Now, you mentioned that you wanted to put together a new kind of vision for the economy. So how did you get the inputs for that new vision?
Marion Sharples (04:25):
Sure. What we've done over the course of the commission, which has been running for kind of just over a year now, and we will be launching our final report in the autumn of this year, we travelled to the four nations of the UK and we've held consultation sessions, learning sessions, exchanges, dialogues with local groups, with grassroots organizations, frontline organizations, the voluntary sector, local women's groups, unions, women's business networks, refugees, of all sorts of different organizations really, which have been active at local levels. And what we wanted to do there was really kind of basically ask these organizations, what are the main barriers that women that they work with or that they represent, or their service users, what are the main barriers that they face in the economy, and what would they like to see done differently? And those are kind of two very broad and open questions, but we wanted it to be that way to just open it up really and get in all sorts of different inputs.
Marion Sharples (05:29):
And then we kind of have been categorizing the inputs that we've received along with different lines, loosely around paid and unpaid work, public services, social security, and taxation, and then this broader theme of creating an enabling environment. So looking at kind of macro things like trade policy, ideas of a wellbeing economy, looking at Feminist Green New Deal and ideas around that, those kinds of questions. So we've been really fielding info from our consultation sessions as we've travelled across the four nations of the UK, which has also been a deliberate decision to make the commission a project of the four nations, and we know that a lot of the time there is a bias towards England or particularly England and Wales when we're analysing the situation. And I think we really wanted to make sure that this project was rooted in the experiences of the four nations of the UK.
Marion Sharples (06:26):
We held calls for evidence, open calls for evidence along the lines of those different themes, and we also had some inputs there. We've also done some work promoting the commission, particularly at union events, different unions, Unite, the TUC, going to women's conferences and women's committees, and as well as other bits and pieces to kind of gain those insights as well. And we're really keen that the results of this work go back to the communities that it came from and that it serves them. So, after we do publish the final report, we will be returning to the places we travelled to and holding follow-up events with the organizations there, so that we ensure the cycle of knowledge, I guess, returns to the communities that it came from.
Alice Merry (07:14):
That's a really exciting piece of research. And it's just wonderful to hear about something that's dealing with these hardcore economic topics--economic policy, trade and so on--coming bottom up, coming from grassroots organizations, and I think that's really exciting. And I'd love to know more about the results about what you found out. You mentioned that you wanted to know about the barriers and you wanted to know what these people wanted to see. So let's start with the barriers. What kind of barriers were you seeing?
Marion Sharples (07:46):
We heard a lot about the impacts of austerity and cuts to public services and the impact that that had had on women's lives across the UK. That was really kind of a shared experience. Also, a strong theme that came up was around childcare, it being expensive and unfordable, often inaccessible, things like that. So that was another strong theme that came out. But then at the same time there's quite a degree of divergence between the four nations as well. If we look at Scotland, for example, where their Scottish government is now paying the poorest families in Scotland, an additional 10 pounds a week for every child that they have, in addition to child benefit payments, and that was really held up as a policy that in Scotland that people had really, really felt made a tangible difference. So it's really interesting to learn from the differences as well across the four nations, and see what lessons can be learned, how can we draw this out, what implications might that have for a cross UK policy as well. So that's been really interesting.
Alice Merry (08:51):
And can I tease you out a little bit on what kind of things people wanted to see out of economic policy when you were speaking with them?
Marion Sharples (09:01):
A lot of what we were hearing was about focusing on reversing a lot of the changes that have been happening over the last few years. And we often wanted to bring out some bigger questions about what a gender equal economy means to you, what that might look like at a more kind of conceptual level. But I think often the reality is that for a lot of frontline grassroots organizations, people are just trying to cope with the reality of the situation right now. And particularly when they've noticed tangible changes over the last few years, that those are the things that they immediately focus on in terms of reversing. For example, cuts to public services, cuts to public transport, for example, that came up a lot. Adult education and how that used to be a lot more affordable and accessible, and how that's really been kind of cut way back, and bits and pieces like that.
Marion Sharples (09:50):
So I think a lot of the time it was about reinstating what has been cut. But again, that feeds into if we look at what exactly those asks are, that can definitely bring us to looking at this broader question about, right, okay, if we were to come up with this vision of a future gender equal society, gender equal economy, what kind of principles would that be based on, and how would that be reflected in the realities that the women that we spoke to want to see?
Alice Merry (10:19):
You mentioned that care really came up as a central topic in all of those conversations, and I know that you've released some really interesting work on this cycle of inequality and how it ties into care. I'd love for you to talk us through that.
Marion Sharples (10:37):
Yeah, sure. This was a piece of work that we released in April this year. And what we really wanted to do with this was kind of create a visual image which showed how all these different elements of gender inequality in the economy are connected, and also how they compound each other. And so we ended up kind of presenting a spiral diagram, spirals of inequality we called it. And it was about... what we wanted to do was to show that inequality in unpaid care work really sits at the centre of this issue, and then as we move around the spiral of different elements of the economy, which I'll talk through in a second, we see how this maintains momentum, and how each element is connected, but it also just builds that momentum around the system, and you see how you see how these things kind of maintain one another.
Marion Sharples (11:29):
So what we wanted to kind of explain, I guess, visually, was just showing how women's unpaid care work has a knock on impact on so many other parts of the economy. So we see that women do 60% more unpaid care and domestic work than men. So it's kind of seen as natural or logical, I guess, that they do more paid care work too. This paid care work is then massively underpaid. In the UK it's about seven pound 40 an hour is the median hourly pay for care worker, and it's seen... And one of the reasons it's so underpaid is because it's seen as an extension of the unpaid care work that women do at home and in the community.
Marion Sharples (12:10):
So their caring responsibilities, women's care responsibilities mean that they have less time for paid work, so the get part time work, which might be local to home, which would then restrict their job choices, and then in turn results in lower paid work. And we see that women are 69% of workers on low pay. And then that has all sorts of other impacts. It has impact earnings, so poverty in older age. It has an impact on how you're affected by changes to taxes and changes to social security, and your dependence on public services. And of course it has an impact on whose voices are heard in decision making positions, and then because women's experiences and women's voices are marginalized in decision making positions, it's more likely that this whole system is perpetuated because they're based on the experiences of certain people who may not appreciate, or do less of, not understand, the needs and the necessities and the importance of this unpaid care work.
Marion Sharples (13:12):
I think what we wanted to show, what we wanted to kind of bring out in this diagram, we just wanted to emphasize the kind of structural systemic nature of gender inequality within the economy, and show these different elements, and see how kind of social norms, expectations, discrimination, all of these things compound and create this structure of inequality, which really is... which exists all around us. It's Intangible, but it determines so much about how we live our lives and what is expected of us, and what we're encouraged implicitly or explicitly to do.
Alice Merry (13:52):
That's really interesting, and it kind of feels like we shouldn't need to have the debate anymore about whether it's systemic or whether women are making choices that choose lower paid jobs or whatever, but you do often hear those kinds of arguments being made. So it is powerful to put it together in this kind of really strong visual format that you've done.
Marion Sharples (14:12):
Completely. I mean, for sure we will make decisions in life, but we make decisions within a structure within which we are born and raised, and we don't make decisions abstracted from the social and economic environment within which we find ourselves.
Alice Merry (14:28):
Exactly. Exactly. So this report came out in April, which was perhaps pretty interesting timing, I guess, for you, because this report comes out in the middle of the beginning of COVID shutdowns. I mean, they're hitting Europe this March, April time, and this whole care topic is kind of thrust under the international spotlight. We suddenly have new conversations about how parents are going to juggle home schooling with their work. So I just wanted to ask you about how this conversation has hit, how this research has hit in this very particular time that you, I guess, weren't anticipating when you finished the research.
Marion Sharples (15:12):
Yeah, definitely. I think you're right. It has definitely been... the timing of this has been really, really interesting for us. And I think on the one hand it's been really, really interesting to see the kind of issues that we work on, particularly around care, for example, and the importance of care work, just be really kind of thrust into the limelight and into the mainstream. And people have been gathering out on their doorsteps to clap for carers. And we know that the majority of these workers are women, right, 70%... 77%, sorry, of healthcare workers are women, 83% of social care workers are women. Of the lowest paid highest risk jobs in the UK, there's around a million of them, and women make up 98% of those jobs. You really see these trends really, really starkly.
Marion Sharples (16:03):
And we have done that. These kinds of things have really come to the fore, and I think really become real for people as well. These statistics have really come to life during this, during the COVID-19 pandemic. What we see, as always, there's positives and negatives. I think what we have seen is that there is real potential to do things differently. And there was some polling that came out a couple of weeks ago that was about how there's popular support for an increase in income tax if that would mean that the healthcare workers and social care workers could receive a pay rise for it sample, which I think is a huge shift in public thinking. There was a Financial Times editorial as well a few weeks ago, which was about... which kind of accepted the necessity of radical reforms, which would reverse the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades, they said.
Marion Sharples (17:04):
And I think that was really another signal that this is potentially a turning point, but at the same time, when we look about, when we have now started to gather data about who is doing the home schooling, who is doing the additional childcare, which has been happening, who's been more likely to lose their jobs, that kind of thing, actually, we see these trends coming out even more starkly. So, we've seen, for example, that mothers in the UK typically providing at least 50% more childcare, as well as spending around 10 to 30% more time than fathers home schooling their children. We've had seen that women are armed-
Alice Merry (17:45):
At the moment with COVID.
Marion Sharples (17:47):
With COVID, during the lockdown. Women are more likely to have lost jobs, to have given up work, or reduce their working hours, or have been furloughed during this period. And they're also, interestingly, more likely to be interrupted when they are working at home by dependents, which I just think is... it sums it all up, really. Even when you're able to work from home, even when you haven't lost your job, you haven't been furloughed, perhaps you haven't had your hours reduced, even when you are still able to work at home, you're still interrupted. And also women are still doing more... almost the same amount of housework as men, even when men are not working or have been furloughed.
Marion Sharples (18:27):
So I think what we've seen really is that these trends are real. During COVID we see them even more starkly, perhaps. Even when there is a crisis, a health crisis like this, that happens on top of existing inequalities. And this has really been extremely stark in terms of who's been bearing the brunt of the crisis, not only in terms of employment and risk of contracting COVID, but also in terms of the burdens that are in paid work, and how those are really kind of perpetuating themselves, I guess, even within a crisis. But at the same time, I think it is really an opportunity in terms of the limelight, as I said, the limelight, the spotlight even, that's being shown on social care, on the importance of social care workers.
Marion Sharples (19:19):
And I do think that that kind of brings hope for a fundamental change which can happen. A kind of widespread thinking of whose jobs are crucial in general, and how that's been highlighted by the crisis. And also, I think a kind of recognition of the contributions of migrant workers in particular have been crucial, particularly in these frontline jobs which have kept the country going and who've really kind of prevented the situation from being as bad as it could have been. And so I think there has been increased recognition over the period of the crisis, that care work, both paid and unpaid care work is really the backbone of the economy. And I'm definitely hopeful that that appreciation, that recognition, that acknowledgement will continue long past the end of this pandemic.
Alice Merry (20:13):
We're going to have an interview with your colleague, Sara Reis, to pick up on these ideas around migrant workers. So I think listeners, do keep an ear out for that one. It's going to be really interesting topic to delve into in more detail. When I knew that I was going to be interviewing you for this podcast, I posted the spirals of inequality video on LinkedIn, and I mentioned that I was going to be interviewing you. And I have to say it got a lot of attention. This is really a topic, and especially as we mentioned in the timing when it came, that picked up a lot of attention, and I actually got some questions from some listeners that they wanted me to put to you.
Marion Sharples (20:52):
Sure.
Alice Merry (20:53):
And we had one from, from Lisa Gus, and I wanted to bring it up now because it's really relevant here. And I think that the gist of the question was really kind of pushing on this idea of a possible silver lining in all of this, a possible silver lining to how we address care work. And if there is the potential of a silver lining, if there is the potential that this kind of spotlight on care right now can have positive consequences, what do we need to do? What needs to happen? What would be your ideas perhaps as individuals, but also as a society, to make this a positive turning point?
Marion Sharples (21:30):
Okay. I mean, great question.
Alice Merry (21:32):
Great question.
Marion Sharples (21:33):
I think the main thing we need to see is huge government investment in care, and that covers adult social care, that covers childcare. A lot of the materials which we've seen as part of the commission have looked at the different models in other countries, seeing what other kinds of childcare models there are. For example, looking at different systems mainly across different European countries and seeing the impacts that that can have of providing, for example, a free or affordable universal childcare service, which ensures there's no gap between parental leave provision and childcare. And we've seen the impact that that can have on child development. We've seen the impact that that can have on parental participation in the labour market. And I think there is a real appetite in the UK to roll out a program of affordable universal childcare provision.
Marion Sharples (22:32):
And at the same time, I think there is also a real kind of need. There's definitely a need for a social care system, which actually meets the needs of the people that are so dependent on it. And I think that creating such a system, a well-funded, a needs based, sustainable system of social care would have such a huge impact on people who are dependent on that, who need that, who need that for a good life. Who need that for their wellbeing. And I think also just a recognition that we will all require care at some point in our lives, and care isn't this kind of abstract thing which happens over there. It's actually crucial. It's a fundamental part of being a human, of human existence. And I think, I guess what we need to see now, the next step of what we need to see now is really the government basically putting its money where its mouth is, and really resourcing care systems across the board. Learning from best practice around the world and really showing and recognizing the importance of care, and the importance of properly resourced needs based care systems.
Alice Merry (23:46):
I'd like to talk now a bit about this idea for a Feminist Green New Deal. So especially before COVID took over the news cycles, the green new deal was really gaining some traction in the media, gaining some traction in politics. And I've seen that the Women's Budget Group is proposing a Feminist Green New Deal. And I'm really curious to hear more about this idea.
Marion Sharples (24:13):
For sure. I mean, this is a new area of work for us, and it came out of a paper which was written for us, for the commission, on developing a Feminist Green New Deal. And we did a webinar actually on the paper, on the issue together with the Women's Environmental Network, which was really popular. People were really interested in this idea. And I guess it's been... the concept of a Green New Deal has been as been floating around for a little while now. And the idea of bringing together a gender equal economy, a feminist analysis, to this idea of the Green New Deal proved to be really an interesting one for people, which was great to see.
Marion Sharples (25:00):
And I think really the essence of the argument is that when we're talking about a Green New Deal, what we... the gaps, I guess, that this analysis has kind of pointed out, tend to be around the kind of the way that Green New Deal proposals have often adopted traditional ideas about what work matters and particularly who does work. Who is the worker? Who is that idea of the worker? And I guess what we've seen is that care work, again, and domestic work, tends to be ignored, tends to be undervalued, even within these new progressive proposals around green transformation. And I think concretely, we see that in proposals around green ideas for technological innovation, improved... talking about fixing on improved conditions for productive workers, but in male dominated sectors, so that's where the conversation around work kind of begins and ends.
Marion Sharples (26:04):
And it doesn't really... It doesn't incorporate, doesn't acknowledge the need to reduce or redistribute unpaid care work. And so I guess a consequence of that is that as they talk about, as these proposals talk about jobs and green jobs, the future of jobs, that this kinds of thing, what's not seen as is the reality that care jobs, social infrastructure jobs are already greener than a lot of other jobs out there. So we already have this kind of pool of jobs which desperately need investment in the first place, but are also lower-carbon then than a lot of other industries. So what we argue, what the paper argues, is that investing in care is also investing in a sustainable future. Of course, that can't happen in isolation. And of course we need to make sure that the housing and the energy production that is required to sustain care work as a sector, that needs to be addressed as well and decarbonized and everything else.
Marion Sharples (27:11):
But there's a great deal of potential for developing sustainable jobs of the future in the care sector. And that we feel is kind of one major oversight of a lot of the mainstream Green New Deal proposals. So again, it's about adding this lens onto the economy and how it's conceived of, and really questioning, bringing into question what work we value and what work counts. What work is worthy of investment, what work comes to mind when we think of work and worker, who comes to mind, what kind of labour comes to mind, and just ensuring that care is really brought into the conversation there when we're talking about building a sustainable future.
Alice Merry (27:59):
And perhaps given our collective re-evaluation of what is a key worker, what is an essential worker, that could also be... that could also support this conversation, I think.
Marion Sharples (28:10):
Absolutely, absolutely. But that's not to say, just to kind of add onto what I said, that's not to say that we don't want to see this kind of technological investment and innovation. Of course we want to see that, but at the same time, who's going to be taking up those jobs? How do we make sure that that workforce is a truly diverse workforce and that it's not, in the case where it is now, where the tech sector is incredibly male, incredibly white, and how do we ensure that future jobs in that sector can really welcome a wide range of people?
Alice Merry (28:48):
It's interesting thinking... I was just reflecting on this cycles idea that we talked about in previous questions. I was just thinking about the fact that how environmental factors also cycle back around and impact on care in the sense of the very high air pollution levels in our cities, which have really big consequences on our care needs. And so I guess-
Marion Sharples (29:09):
Absolutely.
Alice Merry (29:11):
These cycles are everywhere, aren't they? So I just want to finish up by asking you about where this all goes next. So care is absolutely everywhere, as we've mentioned. How will the commission be taking this forward? How does the Feminist Green New Deal fit into all of this? What's next for you?
Marion Sharples (29:29):
Completely. So, as I said at the start, we are launching our final report in the autumn of this year, and between now and then we've got lots of different bits and pieces on. We're doing a series of webinars over the summer. The first one was on our Feminist Green New Deal as I mentioned. Then we've got another webinar in July about how to pay for COVID from a feminist perspective, how are some of these bills going to be met? How should they be met? And then we've got another webinar in early September ahead of our launch about, no surprises here, putting care at the centre of the post-COVID recovery.
Alice Merry (30:11):
I love the work of the Women's Budget Group. What we talked about today showed how a feminist analysis of the economy can change political priorities in the current moment, and make an enormous difference in how we define our future. Marion showed that feminist analysis of the economy must put care firmly at the centre of political priorities, and she made it clear why affordable or free universal childcare and a strong social care system is vital to the success of an economy and a society.
Alice Merry (30:43):
COVID-19 has confronted us all with the importance of care work to our very survival. But of course, it always has been, and it has to be at the centre of bold plans for the future too. Proposals for a Green New Deal have been building momentum around the world, but Marion showed us that not only tech and green infrastructure should be considered, care is inherently green, in desperate need of funding, and deserves recognition as a cornerstone of our future.
Alice Merry (31:13):
Thanks for joining us today for this episode of the Feminist Finance Podcast, please do rate, please do subscribe, please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. I really appreciate it. See you next time.