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Brexit isn’t a threat to women’s rights

Ella Whelan

Ella Whelan
Columnist

Topics Brexit Politics

The latest in a long line of Brexit-related panics is the idea that triggering Article 50 will bring an end to women’s rights in the UK. The Women’s Equality Party (WEP), with the backing of politicians from Labour, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the SDLP and the Liberal Democrats, is calling for an amendment to the Article 50 bill, which is currently going through the House of Lords, to ‘protect women’s employment rights’ against the supposed threat of ‘Hard Brexit’.

‘Women have had to rely on the EU regulatory framework and the European Court of Justice to safeguard equal rights at work’, said WEP leader Sophie Walker. Professor Charlotte O’Brien, a supporter of the WEP amendment, added that Hard Brexit would allow our own government to hold a ‘bonfire of rights’. Meanwhile, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas called on fellow MPs to ensure that the ‘Brexit process doesn’t mean that the clock is turned back on gender equality’.

Let’s get a couple of things straight. First, the EU did not invent women’s rights. The Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1970, three years before the UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973. Second, the EU has actually done very little to extend the limited rights we have. The Employment Protection Act in 1975 only protected some workers, and after a European Commission directive in 1993 this was only slightly extended. Women today still face pay inequality after childbirth and provision of childcare is still poor, despite our decades of EU membership.

To suggest that we have the EU to thank for women’s rights undermines the struggle of women throughout history. Long before the EU, women fought for the freedom to leave the confines of the home and strike out in the world as equal participants. How did they do that without the protection of Brussels bureaucrats? How did striking women throughout history fare without the back up of EU directives?

The idea that Brexit will eliminate women’s rights is not only patronising, it’s historically illiterate. What the WEP and other political parties are unwilling to recognise is that women’s rights and women’s freedom have always been won through struggle, on the street and by the public, far away from the boardrooms and shady chambers of the elite.

In fact, it is this kind of struggle that defines Brexit. By voting Leave, we voted to wrest back control of politics from the technocrats of Brussels and Westminster. That the WEP and its backers are taking this amendment to the unelected Lords is telling. In the face of the loss of their cherished EU elite, these people turn to our homegrown unaccountable elite to push through the policies they want.

If we want to protect women’s hard-won freedoms, we must demand that the demos be in control of politics. That means ensuring that Brexit happens, without caveats or conditions. We must be able to hold our lawmakers to account. This means that if and when the government rules against things like abortion rights or women’s employment rights, we can pin them to the walls of Westminster for an answer. We can fight for freedom ourselves, rather than leave it to a faraway Brussels elite that never did that much for us in the first place.

Ella Whelan is assistant editor at spiked. Follow her on Twitter: @Ella_M_Whelan

To enquire about republishing spiked’s content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

Topics Brexit Politics

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