A LABOUR MP revealed today that she had been trolled online by a convicted sex offender and said she had received a “significant volume” of online abuse since becoming a politician.
Shadow equalities and women’s minister Charlotte Nichols was speaking at a fringe event today at the TUC women’s conference, which called for delegates to pass a motion to end gender-based violence, saying it was a “priority issue” for the movement.
Delegates heard on the second day of the virtual conference that gender-based violence had escalated during the Covid-19 pandemic, including domestic abuse and harassment online.
“Unfortunately the internet has now become just another weapon in an already oversized arsenal for perpetrators to wield,” train union Aslef’s Debbie Reay told delegates.
CORONAVIRUS does not discriminate when it chooses its victims, but the pandemic has shone a light on the health and social inequalities in society that have led to certain groups suffering more than others with woman being especially severely affected.
The effect of Covid-19 on women and their work is a major theme of the TUC’s Women’s Conference.
A survey of National Union of Journalist members carried out at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 showed more than half have experienced mental-health concerns suffering from stress and anxiety because of the virus, lockdowns and over losing work or income.
No parent should be in a position of making spending choices that include whether or not they can afford to feed their child, says ANNETTE MANSELL-GREEN
WOMEN have been “invisibilised” and left out of the government’s pandemic response and recovery plans, researchers told the TUC Women’s Conference today.
Independent Sage member and race equality expert Dr Zubaida Haque said that sectors where there are a high proportion of women workers are being ignored in pandemic recovery plans.
“Whenever sectors are referred to in this pandemic, it has been disproportionately about the male sectors, about taxi-cab drivers, about the manufacturing industry,” she told a fringe meeting discussing the impact of the pandemic on women.
“But little [has been said] about how we are going to support women in the retail industry, in the tourism industry and the hospitality industry.
By Bethany Rielly
EXISTING inequalities and discrimination has been magnified by the Covid-19 crisis with women workers bearing the brunt of the pandemic, trade unionists heard today.
Women workers are “first in line” for redundancies and “last in line to receive decent sick pay,” TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady declared during her opening speech at the TUC Women’s Conference today.
The three-day conference is taking place for the first time online, with hundreds of trade unionists tuning in remotely across the country.
In the opening session, delegates heard how the pandemic has exacerbated gender inequalities in the workplace, with women disproportionately hit by redundancies, wage cuts and furlough.