Gender

The most open of folk, who spill saucy secrets about themselves, clam up when asked how much they earn. Revealing your salary, especially to colleagues, is taboo. Conventional wisdom says that knowing fellow workers’ salaries sows discord. I know first-hand how explosive it can be to learn what people you work with get paid. I’d been promoted to a senior management role where I needed to know everyone’s pay. On my first morning my new boss entered my office with an armful of employee files and told me to read them. Closing my door, he said he would return to take me to lunch with a bottle of red wine,

For a body supposedly committed to eliminating inequality between the sexes, the Women and Equalities Select Committee don’t exactly lead from the front. Only three of the 11 members are men. To some, this will be a welcome corrective to the still male-dominated House of Commons. To others (such as Philip Davies, one of the three male members), it is a sign of how, in Westminster, the cause of equality is narrowly focused on the interests of white professional women. There is not a single ethnic minority representative on the committee. This week, committee chair Maria Miller announced her ‘deep disappointment’ that the government has not adopted their proposals on

‘Never give up your career for a man.’ These words of my mother’s rang in my ears throughout girlhood, adolescence and young womanhood, until, about a decade into my marriage, she finally accepted I wasn’t going to. The very opposite of an Austen-esque Mrs Bennet, desperate to engineer a good marriage for her daughter, my mother’s belief was that any woman in possession of a brain must be in want of a job. A room of one’s own? Certainly. And a bank account, a pension and some shares. Although I have on occasion mused about how lovely it must be to be supported by a doting husband, my mother, as

Novelists can’t merely tell cracking tales. We’re supposed to save the world. At the University of Kent, a student implored me to inscribe The Mandibles with instructions for ‘how to keep this from happening’ — for the feverish young man now vowed to devote his life to preventing my new novel’s debt-fuelled near-future financial collapse. And I thought I was just doing a book signing. I wrote, ‘To keep this from happening, pay your bills. To cash in on this happening, get as deeply into debt as possible.’ The next student proffered a tiny spiral notebook, in which I was to jot ‘three things that are really important’. In desperation, I

There’s nothing like the issue of the gender wage gap to get people going. Research published yesterday by the Institute of Fiscal Studies revealed that women earn 18 per cent less than men on average. The IFS also found that the gap widens after women have children, raising the prospect that mothers are missing out on pay rises and promotions. According to the Institute, the pay differential widens consistently for 12 years after a first child is born, by which point women receive 33 per cent less pay an hour than men. Although the IFS points out that is partly because women who return to work often do so in a part-time

There were no women athletes in the first modern Olympic games. The next time around, in the 1900 Paris games, out of 997 athletes there were 22 women, who competed in just five acceptably ladylike sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrianism and golf. Over a century later, the introduction of women’s boxing meant that the 2012 Olympics were the first to feature women competing in all sports. But that moment of parity has been followed almost immediately by a drastic challenge to the very definition of women’s sport, as the International Olympic Committee brought out new rules last November on the inclusion of trans athletes. The change of rules has been

More women than ever face old age in poverty after a report this week revealed that they were sacrificing their pensions to accommodate the rising cost of childcare. The Fawcett Society, which campaigns against gender inequality, found that women were significantly under-saving and worryingly, many were relying on their male counterparts to make up for the shortfall. The charity said women were taking a significant hit to their pension when they had children, but many were unaware of the long-term financial consequences of taking on full responsibility for childcare costs. The concern is fuelled by the fact that women also live longer and are still victims of income inequality as

Our most-read piece this week was Fraser Nelson’s article about the Swedish government’s refusal to be honest about the crime and immigration. He said: ‘News of an attack brings grief and outrage, but the sense that the authorities are not telling the whole truth brings a new level of anger and suspicion. All of this further undermines public support for immigration.’ Read the article by clicking here The second most-read article was Melanie Phillips’ cover piece on gender. She said that it was dangerous and wrong to tell children they’re gender fluid. In her piece, Melanie added: ‘In short, the political class is obsessed by gender issues. I trust you

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/whysexmatters-thedeathofsportandistheeusinkingwhetherbrexithappensornot-/media.mp3″ title=”Melanie Phillips and Jacqui Gavin, a trans activist and civil servant, discuss gender”] Listen [/audioplayer]Once upon a time, ‘binary’ was a mathematical term. Now it is an insult on a par with ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ or ‘homophobic’, to be deployed as a weapon in our culture wars. The enemy on this particular battleground is anyone who maintains that there are men and there are women, and that the difference between them is fundamental. This ‘binary’ distinction is accepted as a given by the vast majority of the human race. No matter. It is now being categorised as a form of bigotry. Utterly bizarre? Scoff at your peril. It’s fast

This is the cover piece of this week’s Spectator, out tomorrow: Once upon a time, ‘binary’ was a mathematical term. Now it is an insult on a par with ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ or ‘homophobic’, to be deployed as a weapon in our culture wars. The enemy on this particular battleground is anyone who maintains that there are men and there are women, and that the difference between them is fundamental. This ‘binary’ distinction is accepted as a given by the vast majority of the human race. No matter. It is now being categorised as a form of bigotry. Utterly bizarre? Scoff at your peril. It’s fast becoming an enforceable orthodoxy, with children

This time last year I was running around excitedly telling all my friends that I had an African president in the family, something none of them could boast. My younger daughter Theo is married to Sasha Scott, son of Dr Guy Scott, who was president of Zambia from October 2014 to January 2015, and the only white African president since apartheid. When I first met him five years ago he was an opposition MP, but then in 2011 his party won the elections and the new president, Michael Sata, appointed him vice-president. Dr Scott’s job as veep seemed to involve constant travelling. President Sata was reluctant to leave the country,