Women’s Equality Party debuts on Trump ‘disaster’

BRITAIN’S newly formed Women’s Equality Party is thrashing out topics such as unequal pay and the “disaster” of Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton to the White House, at its first ever conference this weekend.

In a symbolic move, WEP’s threeday conference opened on Friday on the United Nations’ International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Violence was among the numerous topics discussed by WEP – which was formed in March last year – in a bid to fashion an identity and a political programme for the party, born out of frustration at a perceived lack of consideration given to women’s rights in Britain.

Of course, Britain has a female head of state in Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Theresa May is its second woman prime minister after her fellow Conservative predecessor Margaret Thatcher.

The first ministers of Scotland and Northern Ireland are also women.

But their prominence masks the true picture, argued WEP leader Sophie Walker, a former journalist, underlining that women were outnumbered in parliament’s lower House of Commons by two to one.

Furthermore, “two women a week are killed by their partner or their former partner” in Britain, she added. And women are still paid less than their male counterparts.

“We are saying that women rights are human rights and human rights should be at the top of the political agenda,” she said.

Meanwhile, property tycoon Trump’s election to the US presidency threatens to be “a disaster for women’s rights”, she added.

“It was a vote that said misogyny and racism doesn’t matter.” — AFP