UKWomen feel need to be 'looking over their shoulder' on public transport
Stewart Paterson
Tue, 7 March 2023
The research was carried out for Transport Scotland (Image: Getty)
WOMEN feel they need to maintain "a constant state of vigilance" on public transport, research has found.
The study found concerns about men as “potential perpetrators of harassment, assault or anti-social behaviour” made women and girls feel unsafe on buses and trains.
The research for Transport Scotland found women changed or adapted their travel plans to avoid the risk of harassment or assault.
Women reported avoiding public transport completely, asking a male relative to meet them and taking steps like holding keys in their hand for self-defence and wearing trainers or flat shoes to be able to run if necessary.
Scotland's transport minister Jenny Gilruth said the report found women and girls are “constantly looking over their shoulder”.
Gilruth said: “It has become normalised and tolerated.
“Women should be able to travel safely on public transport and men should learn to behave themselves.”
Glasgow Times:
Because of the risks associated with public transport, the study found, the likelihood of delays or cancellations put women off using public transport at night to avoid having to wait alone in the dark.
Young women were more likely to report sexual harassment, disabled women were more likely to report anti-social and intolerant behaviour and women from ethnic minorities were most likely to report extreme examples of verbal sexist and racist abuse.
Women also noted that people, including other women, were unwilling to get involved “in situations that didn’t involve them”.
The report made 10 recommendations to improve safety for women and girls.
They include strengthening existing rules around non-consumption of alcohol on public transport and at points of interchange.
Other recommendations include more credible and accessible information and guidance for women and girls on what to do and who to contact if they feel threatened or unsafe.
Better lighting and security and increasing staff presence on board and at stations were also suggested.
Gilruth said what women face is not acceptable.
Glasgow Times:
She said: “During our research, women and girls told us they shoulder significant responsibility for adapting their own behaviour to try to ‘be’ and ‘feel’ safe on public transport.
“They are often in a constant state of vigilance, particularly at night time, and as a result end up changing their plans, only travelling at certain points of the day or not using public transport altogether.
“This is simply not acceptable in 21st-century Scotland.
“We will now work with transport operators and stakeholders to carefully consider these recommendations and how we can implement them quickly and effectively, to ensure our transport network is safer and more secure for all who use it.”
Superintendent Arlene Wilson, of British Transport Police, said: “We will use these findings to work with our partners to ensure that sexual harassment will not be tolerated on the network and we will always take reports of this behaviour seriously.
“Our officers continue to patrol the rail network to catch offenders and reassure passengers.”
She urged the public to report anything by texting 61016 or via the Railway Guardian app.
She added: “In an emergency, always dial 999.”
The battle for safer streets is not zero sum: let’s safeguard women and fight racial stereotyping
Jinan Younis
Tue, 7 March 2023
Photograph: Dmytro Betsenko/Alamy
Over the past month, it’s felt like every day has brought a grim reminder of the dangers faced by women on our streets and in our homes. The inquest into the murder of the Epsom college headteacher, Emma Pattison, and her daughter; the conviction of the murderer of the charity worker Elizabeth McCann; the arguments over the release of Joanna Simpson’s killer; the life sentence awaiting the boyfriend of Elinor O’Brien, who stabbed her in a “rageful and violent attack”; the conviction of the serial rapist police officer David Carrick; and the murder of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey. And it’s three years since the disappearance of Sarah Everard, murdered after being stopped on her way home by the rogue police officer Wayne Couzens (affectionately known by his colleagues as “the rapist”).
Against the backdrop of these horrific headlines, I have been having more and more conversations with women about how they feel unsafe in the streets. We’ve exchanged stories of being followed and catcalled, of sharing Uber rides with each other and making sure we text when we’re home safe. We’ve lamented the increased risk of attack that trans women face, and how Black and minority ethnic women face the threat of both racism and misogyny. We’ve discussed the 800 Met police officers under investigation for domestic and sexual abuse, and what it means for women’s trust in the police – though that’s a privilege many women of colour have never had.
But in my recent conversations with some women about their feelings of safety, I have noticed underlying coded messages. They say things like “it’s a dodgy area”; that they “wouldn’t want to be alone around there”. They say they are scared of men in hoodies.
Some forego any pretence. One woman said to me: “I probably do find Black men in hoodies more scary.” Others admit they quicken their pace when they see a Black man walking down the street.
When women talk in general terms of “dodgy” areas or that some “types” of men feel scary, often a lightly masked stereotype has informed that fear. Studies have shown time and again that images of Black men were seen as larger, more threatening and potentially more harmful in an altercation than a white person. Being scared of certain areas where there are more of the “types” of men perceived as scary, then, becomes code for being more scared of Black and minority-ethnic men in public. When I’ve challenged these women, they protest: “It’s just the crime statistics!”, without acknowledging that behind these statistics lie stories of police harassment, ethnic profiling and racial criminalisation.
Studies have tried to get to the bottom of this. One, in 2014, questioned a group of women about their fear in public spaces and reported: “Racist comments came up in the discussion: although the young women acknowledged they were stereotypes, they conditioned their feelings anyway.” A study last year examined views of Australian women on street harassment and spoke of “some participants saying they felt unsafe or perceived behaviour as threatening because the person was ‘not like them’.”
I find that the women who speak to me in problematic terms are usually those who have either not spent much time in areas with a high minority-ethnic population, or are part of the gentrification of poorer neighbourhoods and are living side by side with different racial groups for the first time. These women would typically pride themselves on being “anti-racist” – they may even have joined the mass global outrage over police brutality against Black men and women in 2020. They may have dipped into an anti-racism reading list. Yet it seems they haven’t truly interrogated how racial bias has seeped into the way they perceive their own safety.
This racial stereotyping can lead to a very real feeling of fear and vulnerability in women. Because that feeling is so real, women find it hard when challenged to unpack what biases have informed that fear. There’s a sense of outrage that anyone would question a woman who says she feels unsafe. Yet I am not challenging the fact women feel unsafe in the streets. I am simply asking for women to look at how their prejudices may inform who they are fearful of and why.
There are consequences to making lazy generalisations about “areas” that seem scary, or the “types” of men who inhabit them. It’s part of the same stereotyping that leads to the violent overpolicing of Black men. The Metropolitan police, for example, are four times more likely to use force against Black people, because officers perceive them as “more threatening and aggressive”.
The impact of this coded fear of certain “types” of men in certain “areas” is clear: increased policing of these communities. That means more surveillance, more targeting and more racial profiling of groups who are already treated with greater suspicion and violence than their white counterparts. If the headlines have shown us anything, it’s that women’s fear shouldn’t be relegated to a specific type of person; that anyone is capable of violence towards women, from teachers to police officers to intimate partners.
The goal of women’s safety does not lie in racial stereotypes. We should instead direct our concern towards a culture of toxic masculinity that has seeped its way into every corner of society. It shows up as misogyny in our institutions, in our workplaces and in our schools. It can be seen in the normalisation of violence against women in our popular culture. It is rooted in rigid concepts of gender and “manhood” and is supported by a system that routinely fails to believe women, and that blames and intimidates them.
Everyone should be able to feel they can walk down the street without fearing attack, assault or humiliation. So when we tackle the very real issue of women’s safety, we have to avoid actions that make the streets more dangerous for others.
This is not a zero-sum problem: we can fight for women’s safety in the streets and avoid playing into racial stereotypes. To have a coherent, intersectional approach to women’s safety, we have to work towards building streets that are safer for all vulnerable groups.
Jinan Younis is Head of the diversity, equity and inclusion practice at the strategy firm Purpose Union, and a former assistant politics editor at gal-dem magazine. She has contributed to the books I Call Myself a Feminist and Growing up with gal-dem. She is the past winner of the Christine Jackson Young Persons Award
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Nurses and midwives should be able to approve abortions, UK study concludes
Anna Bawden
Tue, 7 March 2023
Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
Nurses and midwives should be able to approve abortions, MPs have been told, in what would be one of the biggest shake-ups of regulations in more than 55 years.
If adopted, the “two-doctor rule”, which stipulates that abortions have to be authorised by two GPs, would be scrapped.
More than 20 researchers from seven countries contributed to Shaping Abortion for Change (Sacha), the largest study on abortion in the UK, surveying more than 700 GPs, midwives, nurses and pharmacists in Britain, as well as interviewing women who had recently had an abortion.
The government-commissioned study concluded that regulations should be changed to allow nurses and midwives to authorise an abortion, prescribe abortion medication and perform vacuum aspirations. Researchers found that medical abortions, in which patients take abortion medication at home, now account for 87% of terminations in England and Wales.
Although nurses increasingly supervise these abortions, two doctors are still required to authorise an abortion under the 1967 Abortion Act. In addition, nurses are not allowed to perform vacuum aspirations for a termination, even though they can conduct the same procedures for miscarriages with patients who are up to 14 weeks pregnant.
The study, which was funded by the NHS’s research arm, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), examined international evidence, including abortion reforms in Australia, Canada and Sweden.
It found that almost a fifth of healthcare workers and a third of women were unaware that abortion is still a criminal offence unless it is signed off by a doctor.
Related: Women accused of illegal abortions in England and Wales after miscarriages and stillbirths
“Abortion legislation is more than 50 years old. Since 1967, medical and technological advances have transformed how women access their care. The law needs to be brought up to date with 21st-century opinions and practice,” said Kaye Wellings, Sacha co-lead and professor of sexual and reproductive health research at LSHTM.
In the study, 90% of healthcare professionals surveyed told researchers that they believe the decision to have an abortion should be entirely up to the woman. Medics also said anyone seeking a termination should, where possible, be offered a choice of whether to have it at home or in a clinic, what procedure they have – medical or surgical – and how they receive care and support.
The study also concluded that incorporating abortion services into other local sexual and reproductive health services could help improve access to care, but this would require the right training and resources.
Dr Rebecca French, Sacha co-lead and associate professor of reproductive and sexual health at LSHTM, said: “Abortion is one of the most common health procedures, likely to be experienced by one in three women in their lifetime. Yet, in our study nearly nine out of 10 healthcare professionals working outside of specialist abortion services said lack of training was a barrier to providing care. Abortion is a health issue and should be covered in health professional training”.
Responding to the findings, Elizabeth Barker, co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on sexual and reproductive health, said: “There has never been a more important time to look at bringing abortion provision in line with modern healthcare practice.
“I hope to see the government considering how these recommendations can be reflected in abortion policy moving forward.”
Related: Google adverts direct pregnant women to services run by UK anti-abortion groups
Clare Murphy, the chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: “BPAS has long campaigned for reform of abortion law across England and Wales. The current law is outdated, unnecessary and doesn’t reflect how modern services deliver care. This study reflects what we as providers know is the truth.
“Even more worryingly, the criminal law that underpins the current arrangements leaves both women and doctors at risk of prosecution. Today, two women in England are facing court proceedings for allegedly ending their own pregnancies outside the law. It’s high time politicians recognised the damage the existing law has – and decriminalised abortion care once and for all.”
Louise McCudden, MSI Reproductive Choices’ UK advocacy and public affairs adviser, said: “Abortion is a common, safe, essential healthcare service and it is unacceptable that today, women are still at risk of criminalisation under a Victorian law created in 1861. There is no reason it should require two doctors signing off every procedure and no reason it should sit within criminal law.
“It’s heartening to see such strong support for decriminalising abortion among health professionals. At this moment of renewed global focus on the importance of reproductive choice and abortion rights, now is the time to take abortion out of the criminal code.”
UKBehind the scenes with the environmental lawyers who are taking Shell’s Board of Directors to court
Rosie Frost
Tue, 7 March 2023
Last month, environmental law firm ClientEarth announced that it was taking Shell to court. This may not sound out of the ordinary. But what makes this case different is that there are real people at the centre of it. This time it’s not a corporation that’s liable, it’s their Board of Directors.
ClientEarth says that the 11 members of the board have breached their legal duties by failing to adopt a transition strategy that aligns with the Paris Agreement.
Essentially, Shell’s Board isn’t doing enough to manage the risks the company faces because of climate change.
“What we’re asking the court for is an order which requires the board to adopt and implement a strategy to manage climate risk in line with its duties under the (UK) Companies Act, in line with its duties under English law,” explains ClientEarth senior lawyer Paul Benson.
The shift away from fossil fuels towards low carbon alternatives, they call that essentially an existential crisis for the oil and gas industry.
The other extraordinary thing is that the law firm isn’t acting alone: they are backed by investors who hold 12 million shares in the fossil fuel giant. ClientEarth, crucially, is one of these investors. They became a Shell shareholder in 2016.
“The shift away from fossil fuels towards low carbon alternatives, they call that essentially an existential crisis for the oil and gas industry,” says ClientEarth senior lawyer Paul Benson.
“Shell’s board has identified some of that risk. The problem is that it’s not managing it in a proportionate and adequate way, and that leaves the company seriously exposed.”
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What exactly is ClientEarth asking for?
“It’s the first time where a board of directors is on the hook for failing to properly prepare the company for the energy transition,” Benson says.
Bringing this case was no small decision. Benson asserts that his team has spent months pouring over the documents and has significant expertise in the area. From that work, came this landmark lawsuit.
It’s something of a test case for the English courts. There’s still hope that media coverage and pressure from investors could force the board to act. But Benson says that’s now a “forlorn hope”.
He is confident that the High Court will grant permission for ClientEarth to proceed with the first-of-its-kind lawsuit.
The High Court in London. - AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File
How did it get to ClientEarth suing Shell’s Board of Directors?
Benson explains that it is a “coming together of a number of really serious concerns and frustration”. ClientEarth has been a shareholder in Shell since 2016 and is part of a network of investors.
But they aren't the only ones worried about the future. Benson says their position as shareholders means they have been privy to this concern and frustration about the direction of travel.
He adds that investors have been uneasy about the direction the Board is taking and complaints have been voiced to them several times over the years. Not only that, but these investments include peoples’ pension funds.
Shell denies there is any unrest, claiming that shareholders “strongly support” the progress it is making on its energy transition strategy with 80 per cent voting in favour of it at the last annual general meeting.
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What are Shell shareholders concerned about?
One of the key issues for ClientEarth is a 2021 Dutch court order which requires Shell to cut its emissions by 45 per cent by the end of 2030 - a judgement the company has appealed.
Friends of the Earth and more than 17,000 co-plaintiffs successfully argued that the company knew about the risks of carbon emissions for decades and that its climate targets didn’t go far enough.
“That judgement, the court said very explicitly, is what we call stayed pending appeal. So that means they have to do it now. They can’t just appeal and say ‘oh maybe we’ll win the appeal’,” Benson explains.
“They have to do it now and start complying with the judgement now.”
But he claims the response to the court order set alarm bells ringing.
The Board has said they will cut scope one (direct greenhouse gas emissions from sources owned by the company) and scope two emissions (indirect emissions from energy purchased and used) by 50 per cent by 2030.
Scope three emissions, or emissions from the products they sell which are responsible for 90 per cent of the company’s total, won’t be cut.
It's just not a reasonable or sustainable management model for a huge multinational company to just say: ‘Well, I don't like part of that court order, so we're not going to do it.’
Independent assessments have estimated that Shell’s net emissions are set to drop by just 5 per cent by 2030 - a far cry from what the court has ordered.
According to Benson, the board doesn’t believe this target is compatible with the business and so they aren’t going to do it.
“It's just not a reasonable or sustainable management model for a huge multinational company to just say: ‘Well, I don't like part of that court order, so we're not going to do it.’”
Shell: Handbrake turns and stranded assets
Last year, ClientEarth sent a lengthy letter to the Board setting out its concerns.
It believes that the longer Shell leaves it to adapt to potential changes in regulation, the economy, consumer trends and even societal developments, the less likely it is that it can respond properly. It increases the chance of a harsh “handbrake turn” to rectify the problem.
They didn’t receive a satisfactory response and at that point, Benson says, they felt they had no option except for a lawsuit.
“It’s a recipe for stranded assets if you continue to plough money into major new oil and gas projects when every single energy transition scenario from the International Energy Agency says there is going to be a decline in demand.”
Stranded assets are those that are likely to be worth less than expected. In terms of oil and gas, that means those that are devalued or become liabilities because of the energy transition.
You’re putting all this money, people’s shareholder capital, people’s pensions fund money, into these huge new projects. And those projects are most likely going to end up as stranded assets.
For example, he explains that there are some assets which the company has or projects under exploration and development which won’t start producing oil and gas until 2030 or 2040. According to Benson, the world will look a lot different by that point.
“You’re putting all this money, people’s shareholder capital, people’s pensions fund money, into these huge new projects. And those projects are most likely going to end up as stranded assets.”
Shell has said it doesn’t accept ClientEarth’s allegations and insists its directors have complied with their legal duties, acting in the best interests of the company. It also claims that its climate targets are aligned with the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement. The Board has said it will defend its position.
Now it is up to the High Court to decide whether to grant ClientEarth permission to bring the claim.
Inside BP's plan to reset renewables as oil and gas boom
BP's new Chief Executive Bernard Looney gives a speech in central London
Mon, March 6, 2023
By Ron Bousso, Shadia Nasralla and Sarah McFarlane
LONDON (Reuters) - BP hasn't fallen out of love with renewables. It just wants to have more power.
CEO Bernard Looney's pursuit of green energy outstripped all rivals three years ago when he outlined a radical blueprint to move away from fossil fuels. Last month he applied the brakes, slowing BP's planned cuts in oil and gas and scaling back planned renewables spending in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
The oil major isn't backing away from renewables though, its green chief Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath stresses, it's simply changing the terms of the relationship.
Dotzenrath told Reuters BP was reviewing its solar and onshore wind businesses as part of a revamp that will see it move away from selling the clean electricity it produces, and instead keep hold of most of it to supply its growing electric vehicle charging network and production of low-carbon fuels.
The onshore renewables scrutiny, which hasn't been previously reported, follows reviews by Dotzenrath of BP's offshore wind and hydrogen businesses over the past year which led to overhauls that saw the company install new managers, hire staff, scrap some projects and seek to revise terms of others.
"We made some changes internally and created a focused hydrogen organisation, a focused offshore wind organisation," Dotzenrath said in an interview. "I'm (now) just reviewing the onshore renewables part - so the onshore wind and solar part."
BP's head of renewables and gas didn't elaborate on the nature of the latest review. The green stakes are high, though, given solar alone comprises more than half of BP's 43-gigawatt renewables project pipeline.
Dotzenrath also put the first numbers to BP's rebalancing act, which comes amid deteriorating profits in renewables power generation, telling Reuters that the company aimed to retain 80% of the power produced to supply the global EV network and to make "green" fuels such as hydrogen, seen by many transition experts as a key fuel of the future.
She did not give a timeframe for the shift, which represents a major pivot given the vast majority of BP's renewables output is currently linked to power grids. BP will continue to build some projects under traditional power supply deals, she added.
"We will not grow renewables for the sake of growing wind and solar," said Dotzenrath, who is marking a year in the job after joining BP shortly after Russia's invasion undermined Europe's energy security, fuelled bumper profits for oil and gas and changed the calculus of the energy transition.
"Our strategy is not necessarily about asset ownership in renewables, but it comes as a consequence. It is really about securing access to cheap - the cheapest - green electron," she added, referring to electricity from renewable sources.
IN FOCUS: VENTURE WITH EQUINOR
The most eye-popping change in the strategy update last month was BP slowing its planned cuts in oil and gas output from 40% to 25% by 2030 compared with 2019 levels.
It also lowered its projected annual spending on renewables to up to $5 billion by 2030 out of a total group budget of up to $18 billion, from $6 billion out of $16 billion under its previous update in 2022, according to a Reuters analysis.
While BP's move to produce more oil and gas for longer puts it more in line with its peers, its 25% annual reduction goal is still more ambitious than any of its global rivals.
The paring of green ambitions has been cheered by the market, with BP shares leaping about 17% since the Feb. 7 strategy update, much more than any other rival Western major.
By contrast, BP had significantly underperformed rivals since Looney outlined his industry-leading transition plans three years ago, remaining largely flat until the announcement compared with a 20% gain for Shell and 84% rise for Exxon.
The renewables revamp reflects an acknowledgement that the company won't be able to sufficiently compete with traditional power generators if it simply sells the energy produced by its wind and solar projects, according to Dotzenrath.
"It's a critical feedstock," she said. "If it is not integrated with our other businesses, we will not do this because we don't believe that we have a competitive edge."
The company's new trajectory has placed its flagship U.S. offshore wind joint venture with Norway's Equinor in the focus of managers, five sources familiar with the matter separately told Reuters.
BP executives, including Dotzenrath, have held several meetings with Equinor in London in recent weeks to discuss ways to give the oil major greater clout in the venture, said the two BP and three Equinor sources, who are close to the talks and declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
BP wants more of its staff involved in the Oslo-based venture, the people said. One of the Equinor sources with direct knowledge of the operations said BP currently had more than 20 people working on the JV projects out of a total of over 270.
Equinor declined to comment on any "speculation" about changes to the venture sought by BP. It said it looked forward to applying their combined expertise to develop projects on the U.S. East Coast. Dotzenrath also declined to comment on this.
"I am very happy with the joint venture and the progress we are making with the projects," Dotzenrath said. "These are very, very complex, large, mega projects ... we have much more ability to support Equinor in the delivery of these projects."
THAT'S THE BRUTAL REALITY
When BP paid $1.1 billion for its 50% stake in the venture to enter offshore wind in 2020, it was more reliant on the know-how of Equinor, which had over a decade of experience and specialism in the sector.
Over the past two years, though, BP has brought in hundreds of staff from renewables firms. It has also broken from its tradition of developing leaders internally and hired senior executives such as Dotzenrath, a former CEO of Germany's RWE Renewables, and an offshore wind chief from Danish giant Orsted.
The UK major surprised many investors and analysts in December when it decided not to join Equinor in bidding on a floating wind project off California. Floating offshore wind is a nascent technology that remains significantly more expensive than turbines fixed to the seabed.
"This was a portfolio decision," Dotzenrath said. "The North Sea is much more important to us and our integration story than California. I think that's the brutal reality at the moment."
(Graphic: BP's investment plans, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BP-STRATEGY/byvrlkdzyve/chart_eikon.jpg
THE NEW NORMAL IN NUMBERS
BP's renewables revamp is underpinned by its projections about how much money it can make from the production and sale of green power versus higher-margin low-carbon businesses within its own integrated operations.
The company's outlook for its average core earnings from oil and gas in 2030 grew by around $10 billion to $42.5 billion over the course of last year, and by a meagre $1.5 billion to $11 billion from energy-transition businesses including renewables.
BP expects a return on investment of at least 15% on bioenergy including biogas as well as from combining EV charging with retail stores. Hydrogen is seen bringing in 10% returns, with renewables lagging at a maximum of 8% under the current model dominated by power sales.
While BP had a stated target in 2020 of trading 500 terawatt hours of electricity by 2030 – twice the volume in 2019 - no such target featured in its 2023 strategy update.
Dotzenrath said growth in renewables capacity would be in service to green hydrogen and other businesses it supplied internally with clean power.
"We take the green electron and do something with it," she added. "Access and control over the green electron is key because the world is short of green electrons."
Graphic: BP earnings forecasts for 2030 BP earnings forecasts for 2030, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BP-STRATEGY/EARNINGS-FORECAST/zjpqjwlqevx/chart.png
Graphic: BP production outlook, https://www.reuters.com/graphics/BP-STRATEGY/dwpkdemrdvm/chart.png
(Reporting by Ron Bousso, Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Pravin Char)
UK
Labour to launch review to go ‘further and faster’ in closing gender pay gap
Pippa Crerar political editor
Tue, 7 March 2023
Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex/Shutterstock
Labour is launching a review of the gender pay gap to help the party “go further and faster” on eradicating the problem, as part of its plan to boost growth if it makes it into government.
The former Trades Union Congress (TUC) chief Frances O’Grady, a Labour peer, has been asked to lead the review amid concerns that under current trends it could take until 2044 to bring pay for men and women into line.
The average working woman earns 15% less than the typical working man, with women aged 50-59 enduring an even worse gender pay gap of 21%, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will announce that O’Grady will join her, Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, and the shadow equalities secretary, Anneliese Dodds, to try to remove the remaining barriers to equal pay at the TUC women’s conference on Wednesday.
Related: Women in UK ‘more likely than men to be on low pay and struggling’
O’Grady will investigate the root causes of wage gaps in Britain, and her report, which will be published later this year, will be used by Labour to develop further policies to support working parents, help employers eradicate unequal pay and review the parental leave system.
Reeves is expected to say that closing the gender pay gap would help a future Labour government secure its challenging mission of the highest sustained growth in the G7. She will add: “Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Act in 1970 was groundbreaking in ensuring equal pay should be legally enforced across all sectors of the economy.
“She was clear it would be working-class women on the lowest pay who would benefit most from equal pay, and so it is today. Yet half a century later unequal pay claims persist while the gender pay gap is too great and progress has been too slow. I’m impatient and so are working women. We literally cannot afford to wait that long.”
O’Grady added: “Everyone deserves to be paid a fair rate for the job. Working part-time and shouldering caring responsibilities shouldn’t mean having to put up with low or unequal pay. But too often women’s work is underpaid and undervalued.
“At the current rate of progress it would take another 20 years to close the gender pay gap and women simply can’t afford to wait. My report aims to help Labour blow the lid off the state of unequal pay in Britain and set out the action we need to tackle it.”
Climate change will quadruple extreme rainfall events, study suggests
Danny Halpin, PA Environment Correspondent
Tue, 7 March 2023
Extreme downpours could become four times more frequent by 2080 if greenhouse gas emissions remain high, a new study suggests.
Climate scientists at the Met Office have found that for every degree of regional warming, the intensity of extreme downpours could also increase by 5-15%.
By the 2070s, deluges of more than 20mm of rain per hour could occur four times as frequently as they did in the 1980s. London typically receives about 40-50mm of rain in a month.
In July 2021, 40mm fell on the capital in just three hours, flooding 31 Tube stations and 2,000 properties.
The Met Office researchers said forecasting long-term trends for extreme rain will help planners and policymakers adapt to the changing risk.
Three million properties across England are currently at risk from surface water flooding, with urban areas in steep catchments, such as Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, particularly vulnerable.
Long-term climate modelling shows the number of extreme rainfall events are likely rise on average (Met Office/PA)
Using a high resolution model normally used for weather forecasting, Met Office climate scientist Professor Lizzie Kendon and colleagues examined how local weather patterns could change over a 100-year timespan – between 1980 and 2080.
They ran the model 12 times at a resolution of 2.2km which gave them a more accurate picture of how the frequency of heavy downpours is likely to change over the coming decades.
Previously, less accurate, lower resolution models had found a smaller increase of two to three times as many extreme rain events by the 2070s.
Prof Kendon said: “Being able to look at our projected future climate in such detail has unlocked an incredible amount of information and has shown how expected increases in intense rainfall events will actually manifest at local scale and for the coming years.
“Having this level of detail is crucial to ensure that we’re prepared for the possible extremes of the future.”
Higher temperatures create more extreme rainfall because warmer air holds more moisture – 7% for each degree – leading to a greater amount of water falling when clouds finally burst.
Much of the UK’s wet weather comes from clouds which form over the Atlantic and are carried east on the jet stream, which is why the west and north of the UK are generally wetter than the south and east.
The researchers found such regional differences in their climate modelling. North-west Scotland for example could see almost 10 times as many extreme downpours in 2080 as in 1980, whereas the south of the UK could see around three times as many.
The modelling also showed that extreme downpours are likely to fall in clusters because of natural climate variability adjusting conditions favourable for their occurrence.
Met Office modelling shows there will likely be large differences between the north and south of the UK in the number of extreme rainfall events (Met Office/PA)
Prof Kendon warned against trying to predict long-term trends through observation, adding: “The observed rainfall record in the UK is fairly erratic with a large amount of variability, these latest projections show that this is likely to continue through the century.
“What we can see from the higher resolution output is an even more erratic frequency of extreme events each year, so this could mean we see clusters of record-breaking intense rainfall events, followed by a period when no records are broken.
“Despite the underlying trend, these pauses in the intensification of local rainfall extremes can last a surprisingly long time – even multiple decades.”
She also said that alongside helping planners and policymakers, the study will be useful for other climate scientists seeking to attribute the likelihood of current extreme rainfall events being caused by climate change.
“Our study highlights the complexity of how natural climate variability and human-induced climate change will come together in the extreme rainfall events we experience over the UK – it is far from a simple picture of more extreme events decade by decade as a steadily increasing trend,” she added.
Racism, discrimination pose 'virulent threat': UN rights chief
Nina LARSON
Tue, 7 March 2023
In a passionate appeal, the United Nations rights chief decried on Tuesday the impact of racism, discrimination, and violence against women, LGBTQ people and other minorities around the world.
Listing countries from Afghanistan and Iran to the United States and Russia, Volker Turk warned "discrimination and racism are virulent threats".
"They weaponise contempt. They humiliate and violate human rights, fuelling grievances and despair, and obstructing development," he told the UN Human Rights Council.
Delivering his first update on human rights around the world to the top UN rights body since taking office six months ago, Turk voiced alarm at "the scope and magnitude of discrimination against women and girls", describing it as "one of the most overwhelming human rights violations worldwide".
He highlighted the situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have effectively squeezed women out of public life since sweeping back to power in August 2021.
"The repression of women in Afghanistan is unparallelled," he said. "Such a tyranny must not escape accountability."
- 'Deeply dangerous' -
He also pointed to Iran, which was rocked by months of nationwide protests last year after Mahsa Amini died in custody following her arrest for an alleged breach of Iran's dress code for women.
"It is urgent for the authorities to act on the demands of protestors, in particular women and girls, who continue to endure profound discrimination," Turk said.
Beyond country crackdowns on women's rights, Turk said he was "shocked to the core by the contempt for women... spawned across the internet by so-called influencers," condoning "the pervasive commodification of women".
Women and girls are not the only ones targeted by "vicious hate speech", Turk said, adding attacks on "people of African descent, Jews, Muslims, LGBTIQ+ people, refugees, migrants and many other people from minority groups".
He deplored "deliberate provocations... intended to drive wedges between communities," like the recent Koran burning in Sweden, as "deeply dangerous".
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights underlined how police violence in many countries disproportionately affects people of African descent, revealing "the deep structural harm rooted in racial discrimination".
He noted repeated reports from his office of "excessive use of force, racial profiling and discriminatory practices by police", in numerous countries, including France, Britain and Brazil.
- 'Very troubling' -
In the United States, where people of African descent are reportedly nearly three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, he hailed the unusually swift action taken to prosecute officers involved in the brutal death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis earlier this year.
"In the US and all other countries, swift and determined action to hold perpetrators accountable in each case should be the rule, not the exception," he said.
Turk also voiced concern at the "growing agitation against the rights of LGBTIQ+ individuals in many countries," and especially at recent crackdowns and political rhetoric inciting hatred against them in East Africa.
He highlighted the "very troubling" so-called anti-homosexuality bill tabled in Uganda's parliament last week, and 24 mainly AIDS educators arrested in Burundi.
"It is unthinkable that we are facing such bigotry, prejudice and discrimination in the 21st century," he said.
Amid a broad range of issues over the situation since Moscow invaded Ukraine a year ago, Turk also saw a "troubling development" with the recent broadening of a law in Russia banning so-called "propaganda of non-traditional relationships".
nl/rjm/bp
Midwives in Northern Ireland vote to take industrial action
Rebecca Black, PA
Tue, 7 March 2023
Midwives in Northern Ireland have voted to take industrial action short of a strike.
The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said in a formal ballot almost 94% of workers voted, in frustration over pay.
Midwives were given a 4% pay increase in December, which the union has criticised as being well below the rate of inflation, then at 10%.
Some 93.9% voted for industrial action short of a strike, based on a turnout of 55% of eligible RCM members working in the health service in the region.
Almost 90% also voted to take industrial action consisting of a strike.
People on the picket line outside the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast in January (Liam McBurney/PA)
The vote comes amid anger across the public sector, including recent strike action by nurses, health workers and paramedics.
Karen Murray, director for Northern Ireland at the RCM, said the vote is a reflection of “growing anger and frustration at a pay award that goes nowhere near to making up for a decade and more of pay freezes and pay stagnation”.
“The current political situation has left services rudderless for far too long, with no maternity strategy and no plan to drive improvements in maternity care for women and working conditions for midwives, maternity support workers and their colleagues,” she said.
“Not only is this taking a heavy toll on our members, it’s ultimately impacting care for women.
“This pay award and the growing crisis in our maternity services will do nothing to keep midwives in our maternity service, as many say they have had enough and will simply head for the door.
“We must see an improvement in pay for our members and we must see political action here in Northern Ireland and in Westminster to resolve the political crisis so that we can then turn to solving the maternity crisis.
“Our members are exhausted, fragile and burnt out.
“This is terrible for them and is having an impact on the care they can deliver for women, babies, and families. A solution to these issues must be found, and soon.”
Any decision to take industrial action must be approved by the RCM’s elected board.
The RCM will look at the result of the ballot and consider the next steps.
‘Ballet has the same appeal as Princess culture’: Alice Robb on how would-be ballerinas are taught to be thin, silent and submissive
Sarah Crompton
Tue, 7 March 2023
Alice Robb explores life as a student at the School of American Ballet in New York, in her new book (Nina Subin)
From the age of nine until the age of 12, Alice Robb was a student at the School of American Ballet in New York. She has the photographs and the psychological scars to prove it. She gave up ballet at the age of 15 and built a successful career as a journalist and writer. Yet it has defined her ever since.
Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet is her ode to her long-lost dream of dancing with America’s leading ballet company, New York City Ballet, but also an attempt to understand and unravel the effect that early training had upon her – and the effects that it might have on all the little girls who long to be ballerinas.
“Ballet does not exist in a vacuum,” she writes in her introduction. “It is a laboratory of femaleness – a test-tube world in the middle of modern New York or London or Paris, in which traditional femininity is exaggerated. The traits ballet takes to an extreme – the beauty, the thinness, the stoicism and silence and submission – are valued in girls and women everywhere. By excavating the psyche of a dancer, we can understand the contradictions and challenges of being a woman today.”
The starting point for her book is a photograph she unearthed of her class at the School of American Ballet (SAB) when she was about 11 or 12. There are 20 girls in the picture, hair scraped back, backs erect, necks stretched. Of those, only one is still a professional dancer, but they were all marked and shaped by the years they tried to achieve their ambitions, suffering eating disorders, loss of confidence and profound depression.
In this they are not alone. She quotes a Teen Vogue survey that estimated that of the 300,000 girls who train at a professional level every year, with a serious intention of becoming ballerinas, only 2 per cent will make it into companies, and that’s not even taking account of all those who take up ballet recreationally. “I read a lot of ballet memoirs,” says Robb. “But they are stories of ballet success. The narrative tends to be there’s all this pain and sacrifice but look how it’s paid off. Yet all the people who almost make it are also making pretty much exactly the same sacrifices and going through the same amount of pain, so I think those stories are also worth telling.”
We are talking on Zoom because Robb is currently based in New York, though she is about to move to London where her boyfriend lives and works. She is an attractive 31-year-old, her mass of hair loosely tied back, her manner warm and interested. “Ballet still has such a hold on the feminine imagination,” she continues. “So many little girls go through a ballet phase, so I think it is like an under-explored, under-analysed part of femininity. It has the same appeal as Princess culture, but it’s more attainable.”
That was its original attraction for her. “I just loved the girliness of it,” she says with a grin. But she pursued her ambition with steely determination. She was turned down for SAB twice before she was accepted; she carried on dancing at different academies when she was thrown out, even when it became obvious that her body was developing in ways that made it impossible for her to pursue a professional career – her hips that continued to widen, her feet that refused to arch. For years afterwards, she would dream she was auditioning for a role, and suddenly feel the joy of thinking it was not too late, that she could still be a star.
It’s a level of obsession that she examines in minute detail, but why did it hold her in its grip for so long? “SAB was the real goal of my childhood,” she explains. “And although I was only there three years, it was also the summer programmes, the extra classes, the schools I attended afterwards. On top of that I was practising at home, stretching every day, trying to walk with my feet turned out, dancing every Saturday. Ballet really was my identity.
“I think I knew that there was something seductive about ballet and about the way I acted within ballet. I was definitely a shy kid as so many dancers are, and it was a relief at some level to just follow instructions. To know what the rules were even if you’re trying to do things that are physically very challenging, or even impossible.
“Whereas the world outside can feel like this scary free-for-all. Particularly when I was growing up, I think there was this pressure to take advantage of opportunities that previous generations of women hadn’t had access to. Ballet was a way to sidestep all that. Of course, we were all very ambitious, but there was some comfort in the rules, and the structure, the sense that there was a ladder of progress that you could just put one foot in front of the other and climb.”
Alice Robb’s ‘Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet’ is her ode to her long-lost dream of dancing with America’s leading ballet company (source)
For each of her three years at ballet school, Robb was one of the children who performed in the professional production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker at NYCB. “It was so powerful to be in such proximity with those professional dancers,” she adds. “I think that I still have this romantic, idealistic image that dancers are the ideal woman, beautiful, controlled but also powerful.”
Yet her book is a searing testimony that lays bare the cost of that ideal. Its pages are haunted by stories of suppression and pain. Its title is taken from a quotation by Balanchine, the Georgian-American choreographer who co-founded both the School of American Ballet (1934), and New York City Ballet (1948), where he was artistic director for an astonishing 35 years. Famously, he said “ballet is woman”, and his works were inspired by the dancers he was working with, who were very often the women he loved. He had five ballerina wives and gave each a signature scent. His dancers by and large adored him and aspired to be his muse, but he cultivated a style that prized an extremely low body weight. Robb quotes him telling one corps de ballet dancer: “You are like inside a cocoon; your true personality will only be revealed when all the fat is gone, and you are down to your bones.”
He died in 1983 but his ethos was continued by his successor Peter Martins who left the company in 2017 after allegations (which he denied) of sexual abuse came to light. And Balanchine’s dominant shadow still haunts Robb’s own idea of what it is to be a ballerina. That obsession with a certain body type has influenced the view of what a dancer should look like ever since; the constant exhortation of her classmates to “lengthen” and “tone up” were disguised messages that they should lose weight to dangerously low levels. Robb not only quotes examples of famous ballerinas starving themselves to achieve their ideal weight but talks about a classmate who ended up unable to digest solid food.
The glorification of thinness is a recurring theme, but it is also an amplification of obsessions in the world beyond dance. “You hear so many justifications,” Robb says. “Like ballet just looks better on a certain type of body or it’s so you can see the choreography. But these are all conventions. Ballet is made up. When I quit ballet, there was some element of relief in realising that I didn’t have to wear a leotard anymore, and it didn’t matter if I gained five pounds. But it wasn’t like I was going into a world where looks and weight didn’t matter. People are still applauded and rewarded for being thin.”
When I quit ballet, there was some element of relief in realising that I didn’t have to wear a leotard anymore, and it didn’t matter if I gained five pounds
It is not just body dysmorphia that Robb identifies as part of the cost of ballet, through stories of both famous and unknown dancers. She also recognises the way that ballet – and it is specifically ballet rather than other forms of dance – requires self-sacrifice, a setting aside of self, an endurance of all kinds of hardship, both physical and psychological. All are qualities valued in women, but all seen at their most extreme in ballet.
She talks about Margot Fonteyn, the greatest dancer of her own and many other ages, who was always at the beck and call of worthless men; of the American ballet star Gelsey Kirkland, principal dancer with NYCB and then with American Ballet Theater in the Seventies and Eighties, who drove herself to cocaine addiction in her attempt to prove herself worthy. She describes the way that ballet studios can easily be a breeding ground for abuse of young girls by powerful men and for the cultivation of low self-esteem among the girls who study there.
“When I think about why ballet had such an impact on me, I realise I was doing it at such a formative time,” she says. “You’re discovering who you are and how you relate to your body. Yet people would say all the time, your body is your instrument. That’s just a different way to relate to your body. You are objectifying yourself, learning to see your body as not exactly your own, but as something that is serving an art.”
It is compelling reading, but I wonder how much her view is tempered by it being seen through the perspective of Balanchine’s NYCB. “I think that company has had this somewhat specific struggle of how to carry on without Balanchine,” she says. “But I don’t think it’s that different. A lot about it is universal. I think ballet culture and training are pretty similar everywhere.”
For all her trenchant criticism, she clearly values ballet as an art form – though she admits she finds it hard to watch because “it can still put me in a funny mood. I am saying this with an awareness of how ridiculous it sounds because I was not particularly close to becoming a professional dancer, but it can make me feel nostalgia and regret over not making it.”
For each of her three years at ballet school, Robb was one of the children who performed in the professional production of George Balanchine’s ‘The Nutcracker’ at NYCB (Debra Goldsmith)
Towards the end of the book, too, she notes some signs of change and hope. Her classmates find different kinds of resolution in their relationship with ballet; her friend who suffered the most extreme eating disorders carries on dancing and enjoys the best and healthiest years of her career in a contemporary dance company. Robb goes to see Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet and notes a new inclusivity.
Robb admits that writing the book has been therapeutic for her. “I do think things are changing,” she admits. “But I didn’t focus on what is happening now because I wanted to look at the long-term impact of this training that happened to people in the 1990s.
“So yes, it is changing, you are starting to see different types of partnering, and non-binary dancers. Misty Copeland has done a lot to change the image of ballet, both in terms of her muscularity and also obviously her race. Social media has given professional dancers more power and more of a platform. But I do think ballet is still a very insular world, it’s still so competitive that people feel they can’t afford to speak out.”
Looking back, does she feel it gave her anything? “Oh yes,” she says smiling. “I do spend a fair amount of time talking about the negatives, but there were many positives as well. I think the most obvious one is probably the discipline of ballet. You have to show up for work every day. It sets you up for so many things. Even for being a freelance writer. I am intrinsically motivated, I show up.”
‘Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet’, by Alice Robb, is out now
Japan's new H3 rocket fails again, forced to self-destruct
Hiroshi HIYAMA
Tue, 7 March 2023
Japan's second attempt to launch its next-generation H3 rocket failed after liftoff on Tuesday, with the spacecraft forced to self-destruct after the command centre concluded the mission could not succeed.
The failure is a blow for Japan's space agency JAXA, which has billed the rocket as a flexible and cost-effective new flagship.
Its launch had already been delayed by several years, and then a first attempt last month failed when the solid rocket boosters did not ignite.
Tuesday's launch from the Tanegashima Space Center in southwestern Japan initially appeared to be a success, with the rocket lifting off.
The first-stage separation appeared to go as planned, but signs of trouble soon emerged.
"It seems that the velocity is coming down," announcers on the JAXA live feed said while the rocket was about 300 kilometres (185 miles) above ground.
The command centre then announced: "The second stage engine ignition has not been confirmed yet, we continue to confirm the situation."
The live feed was briefly halted, with a message reading, "We are currently checking the status. Please wait."
When it resumed, the command centre confirmed the bad news.
"Destruct command has been transmitted to H3 because there was no possibility of achieving the mission."
The rocket was not going to reach its planned trajectory without confirmation of the second stage engine, JAXA Vice President Yasuhiro Funo told a news conference.
Debris from the destroyed rocket is believed to have fallen in waters east of the Philippines, he said.
- 'Efforts to restore confidence' -
The cause of the failure will be investigated, said JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa.
"When a failure like this happens, it is important that we show how quickly we can move and show our findings with transparency," he said.
"My responsibility is to focus on discovering the cause and make efforts to restore confidence in our rockets.
The H3 rocket was developed for more frequent commercial launches as well as better cost efficiency and reliability and has been mooted as a possible competitor to Space X's Falcon 9.
"The H3 rocket is a very important rocket for not only the government of Japan but also for private sector businesses to access space," Yamakawa said.
JAXA has said it envisions the H3 becoming a workhorse that could be launched six times or so annually for around two decades.
There were no details on how long the investigation into the failure might take and whether or when JAXA could attempt a new launch.
Developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the H-3 is the successor to the H-IIA model, which debuted in 2001.
Tuesday's launch was carrying the ALOS-3 observation satellite, touted as having improved resolution and intended to help with disaster management and other monitoring.
The incident is not the only recent blow for JAXA.
In October 2022, the agency was forced to send a self-destruct order to its solid-fuel Epsilon rocket after take-off. It was carrying satellites into orbit to demonstrate new technologies.
That was Japan's first failed rocket launch since 2003.
The Epsilon rocket has been in service since 2013. It is smaller than the country's previous liquid-fuelled model, and a successor to the solid-fuel "M-5" rocket that was retired in 2006 due to its high cost.
hih-sah/pbt
