Today the 83rd TUC Women's Conference opens in London and it is my great honour to be this year's Conference Chair. The following article was published in Sisters, the journal of the National Assembly of Women.
I grew up with the magazine Women’s Realm. It sat by my mum when she was knitting and sewing. I'm not sure when she found time to read it as my memory of her is that her hands were always busy.
The magazine has now marked a hundred years of publication. In the 1950s Women’s Realm had a print run of two million. Far fewer are printed today yet it remained a favourite of my mother until her death a few years ago.
Every month I put up a quote by a famous woman who inspires me. This month, it's from Mary Macarthur, a 19th century trade unionist and women's rights campaigner in the UK. She said:
"It should be illegal to employ a woman on the same work as a man for less pay. The standard of life must not be lowered by unfair competition. This in the highest interests of both the men and the women."
I thought readers would be interested in an article that appeared this morning in the Independent about my candidacy for General Secretary of Unite.
In particular I made the point to the journalist that I am the only candidate qualifed to lead Unite and pull us together as I am not reliant on any grouping or faction within the union:
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Comments Policy
Although I welcome all kinds of thoughts - supportive, dissenting, critical or otherwise, I will moderate them before publishing. I will therefore delete comments if the content is abusive; off-topic; promotes hate of any kind; uses excessively foul language; is blatantly spam. I hope to do this within 24 to 48 hours of a comment being posted, so please don't be surprised if you find that your comment doesn't show up immediately, However, please contact me to follow up on the status of your comment if it hasn’t shown up after 48 hours and I will do my best to sort it out.