Unite stands up for working women on centenary of International
Women’s Day
7 March 2011
Speaking on the eve of the hundredth anniversary of
International Women’s Day (Tuesday, 8 March), Diana Holland,
Unite’s assistant general secretary for equalities condemned the
Tory-led coalition government’s divisive agenda of cuts.
She said: “This government’s discriminatory, divisive agenda of
cuts and changes will disproportionately hit women, the poorest and
most vulnerable hardest. While this government is setting women
back, Unite stands up for working women and for equality.
“Unite women are active, involved, angry and deeply concerned
about the future for our children and young women and men. In
workplaces across our communities, Unite women are saying no to
shameful, discriminatory cuts to services, to equalities and to
jobs.
“With eleven times more millionaires than mothers in the
Tory-led coalition government, their distorted priorities mean the
poorest and most vulnerable are hit hardest, and women and children
come first only when it comes to cuts and closures.
“There is an alternative, and it doesn't include a VAT hike,
attacking the Post Office or women's state pension, charging to use
the Child Support Agency, or abolishing free fruit in schools.”
Over the last hundred years of struggle, women have won the
right to vote and have won the right to equal pay, ending the legal
justification for treating women as second class citizens.
Diana Holland added: “Over the next hundred years, we must end
the second class treatment itself and end women’s poverty and the
underrepresentation of women everywhere.
“That struggle continues today, not in a hundred years’ time. As
it says in the song ‘we will march not just for bread, but for
roses too’. Women of all ages deserve nothing less.”
ENDS
For further information contact Ashraf Choudhury in the Unite
press office on 020 7420 8914 or 07980 224761.
Notes to editors:
‘Bread and Roses’ was a song written as part of a women textile
workers struggle for justice in 1910. Words: James Oppenheim,
Music: Martha Coleman
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