Traditional WI leader takes aim at ‘hipsters’
And if women had parity in hours, pay and seniority at work up to £150 billion could be added to our GDP
A leading member of the Women’s Institute has criticised younger, “hipster” groups who are “knitting for protest” rather than taking part in traditional activities. Stephanie Gaunt, president of the Hastings & Ore WI, said groups such as the Shoreditch Sisters thought of older members as “bats”.
IN RECENT years the reinvention of the Women’s Institute as a fashionable venue for women to practise activism and learn traditional skills has widened its appeal from the simple days of jam and Jerusalem.
But one leading member has suggested things might be going a bit too far, as she criticised younger “hipster” groups who, she says, see older members as “old bats and battleaxes”.
Stephanie Gaunt said the “radical energy” of younger WI groups, like the Shoreditch Sisters, “do not represent the future I’d like to see for the WI”.
Ms Gaunt, president of Hastings & Ore WI and an East Sussex trustee, attacked the trendy London group in a now-edited blog post after one member, Charlotte Gough, spoke at the Royal Albert Hall in celebration of 100 years of women’s suffrage on March 24. In 2011, the Shoreditch Sisters, founded in 2007 by Jazz Domino Holly, 34, daughter of the late Joe Strummer, of punk rock band The Clash, knitted a vulva blanket for a campaign to raise awareness of female genital mutilation.
Ms Gaunt’s post stated: “Modern, cool, hipster knitting seems to be about knitting for protest. They are proud of knitting a ‘Solidarity Blanket’ for the
If you actually look at what they do, it is no different from the activities of any other WI group’
women in Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre. Is this any more commendable or interesting than the thousands upon thousands of WI women who quietly get on with knitting clothes for premature babies, twiddle muffs for dementia patients, daffodils for Marie Curie Cancer Care, toys to sell to benefit their chosen local charities and so on?
“What would us lot in Hastings knit for those unfortunate women in Yarl’s Wood? Practical things – hats, scarves and mittens maybe.”
On her blog, called Hastings Battleaxe, Ms Gaunt also said of the Shoreditch Sisters: “This is one of the new young hipster cool WI groups that have sprung up around the country, all bright-eyed youth and ‘radical’ energy.
“They are held up to the rest of us presumably uncool un-regenerated ‘unwoke’ old bats and battleaxes as the role-model future of the movement.
“I put ‘radical’ in inverted commas because if you actually look at what they do, it is no different from the activities of any other WI group. They present it as ground-breaking – and it feels like they are presenting it as better than the boring nonsense the rest of us frightful old dinosaurs fiddle about with.”
The post has since been modified to
remove the references to unwoke, old bats, battleaxes and dinosaurs.
In a later post Ms Gaunt added that the edits had been made and the post deleted from an unofficial Facebook page because “the WI is still smarting from a little flurry of publicity in the Daily Mail”.
She said the Facebook comments “got increasingly angry. One woman kept on and on commenting and responding with escalating hostility”.
Lynne Stubbings, chairman of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, said: “Cross-generational friendships make the WI unique.
“The WI gives women a space where they can be themselves, and do what they want to do, surrounded by other supportive women. One aspect that members, young and old, cherish is the opportunity to meet people of different ages, as well as cultures and backgrounds. Many say it’s the only opportunity they have to speak with women of different generations.”
The Shoreditch Sisters declined to comment.
Ahundred years ago, some women first won the right to vote. But for all the welcome progress in the decades since, major injustices still hold too many women back. When I became Prime Minister, I committed myself to tackling the burning injustices which mar our society. One such is the gender pay gap.
The difference in the median hourly wages earned by men and women in Britain currently stands at 18 per cent. This is a historic low, but progress in shrinking it remains far too slow. We need to act if we are to close the gap for good within a generation.
It is essential that we do so. Most importantly, because equality for women is a right, and our whole society is the poorer as long as it remains unrealised.
There is also a clear economic imperative. It is estimated that if women and men enjoyed parity in their hours, pay and seniority at work then we could see up to £150 billion added to our GDP. Making full use of women’s academic achievements, experience and talents would help boost UK productivity, to the benefit of our whole economy.
This is an area where the Government has taken a decisive lead. Last year, we introduced mandatory gender pay gap reporting for large employers. This means that every organisation with more than 250 staff must publish on their own website, as well as on the Government’s online reporting service, their gender pay gap, bonus gap, and other information about the differences between the salaries that men and women receive.
When the BBC published the salaries of its highest-paid stars last July, revealing a stark division between women and men, we saw the profound impact bringing that information out into public view had. There is still much for the corporation to do, but it started the process of a major culture-change for the BBC and a greater public awareness of the issue.
Today marks the deadline for private companies to publish and register their statistics. They will make for uncomfortable reading. Figures for public sector organisations published last week show the scale of the challenge. The Telegraph is rightly facing up to its own gender pay gap, and has committed to reduce the disparity to zero by 2025.
By making this information public, organisations will no longer have anywhere to hide. We will have established a baseline from which to hold them to account in the future. Shareholders and customers will expect to see improvements, and will be able to hold organisations to account if they fail to achieve them.
The gender pay gap is only one symptom of the much-wider problem of under-representation of women in business. The Telegraph’s “Women Mean Business” campaign is shining a light on the funding gap faced by Britain’s female entrepreneurs. The proportion of funding going to start-ups run by women is far too low, and last month the Government launched a review into this wasted potential. When it publishes its findings later this year, it must be the catalyst for a fundamental shift in favour of a level playing field for investment.
While facing up to these challenges, we should also celebrate success and congratulate those firms and organisations which are taking action to make the world of work a more equal place.
Virgin Money reported a larger than average pay gap, but has set an ambitious target to achieve a 50:50 gender balance throughout its business by 2020. Aviva is providing all employees – regardless of their gender, sexual orientation or how they became a parent – with 26 weeks’ leave on full basic pay following the arrival of a child. TSB is operating a scheme to help women returning to the workplace from time out for caring responsibilities.
These firms understand that helping to make the most of women’s talent is in their own commercial interest, and it is in our national interest too. That’s why the Government created shared parental leave, so childcare responsibilities can be shared and both parents can maintain their careers.
Nearly nine out of 10 people who are out of work because of caring duties are women. To help all those returning to work, the Government has made £5 million available for returner schemes, to provide training and help update skills, so that they can return to work with confidence.
We need to rid ourselves of outdated stereotypes and accept that everyone brings his or her experiences to bear in the workplace. While that might sometimes mean different approaches, we should accept that these are equally valid.
It seems extraordinary to us that women 100 years ago were not only denied the right to vote but had to fight so hard for it. It is our job to make sure that it doesn’t take another 100 years for the gender pay gap to become a thing of the past.