The TUC is right to be worried that “women will be pushed out of the workforce” (Report, 3 September), and it is at the behest of men, still too often the decision-makers at all levels, that this is happening. To give just one example, my daughter works for a small specialist company that employs 20 people, which, until April this year, was proud that 50% of its workforce were women. Along came Covid-19, when the company furloughed almost half its workforce – all of them women. When this was pointed out to the male owner, he claimed not to have noticed.
With the furlough scheme coming to an end, and orders for the company drastically reduced, its survival plan determined that redundancies were necessary. Two women volunteered. Four more compulsory redundancies were announced – all of them women. The company has reduced its female workforce by 60% while the men remain unscathed. This doesn’t even make economic sense as, typically, most of the women made redundant were in lower paid and/or part-time roles. Were these skilled and experienced women employed just for decoration, one wonders?
I have every sympathy for hitherto successful small businesses whose existence has in so many cases been threatened by the government’s blundering and failure in the face of a widely predicted global pandemic. But it is heartbreaking for life-long feminists like myself to see the hard-won progress of the late 20th century wiped out, and our daughters the victims.
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