Women

Women face pressure from all directions these days. Trying to juggle competing demands from work, family and home life, it’s easy to feel like you’re running as fast as you can just to stand still. The media screams out an endless list of things still to do: get a bikini body in 20 days, plan the perfect children’s party, how to look 10 years younger. And despite great strides forward in equality, women still get paid less than men, and generally still end up taking more responsibility for childcare and looking after elderly relatives. This can be hugely rewarding, but combining this with a job can seem almost impossible.

In Government we’re doing what we can, where we can, to make things just a little easier for you. We’re asking employers to be vigilant in driving out pay discrimination, to ensure that women get equal pay for equal work. We’re modernising the system of maternity and paternity leave to enable parents to make their own choices about who returns to work and when. We’re enabling everyone to ask for flexible working to change the rigid work culture, and make it easier to juggle various commitments. And we want to inject some realism into the media’s portrayal of women, instead of the suggestion that nothing less than air-brushed perfection will do.