Today we have published Women and Recession, a report considering the impacts that this downturn will have for women in formal employment. While we are not arguing that women will be affected more than men we highlight that women will be hit more by this downturn than previous recessions, and that...

Lucy Powell: Tonight I'm speaking at An evening of Women's Politics in Manchester. The event aims to encourage and support more women to get directly involved in politics as candidates, governors or activists

An interesting article in the Observer about how women will be bearing the brunt of this recession: To the many thousands of female workers who have lost their jobs the recession may well look like a case of highly-paid men creating a mess, and low-paid women suffering the consequences. Women at work: the numbers • In the UK 53,000 women lost their jobs in the year to October 2008. The employ...

Scottish Parliament Motion entitled Inspiring Women Politicians S3M-03660 Rob Gibson (Highlands and Islands) (SNP): That the Parliament notes with concern, following International Women’s Day on Sunday 8 March 2009, the recent report by Girlguiding UK that found that 19% of UK women MPs are failing to inspire young women to become interested in politics; further notes that on average fewer t...

The mass sterilization of women in Uzbekistan, as reported this weekend by the Associated Press, is a shrieking reminder that the battle for the global liberation of women is being lost. It was reported by Mansur Mirovalev that Uzbek health officials are "threatened with salary cuts, demotion or dismissal if they do not persuade at least two women a month to be sterilized."

It's been a truly disastrous week for women at Westminster, writes Madeleine Bunting. How did things go so badly wrong? It's been a week in which women have dominated politics; their pictures have been on the front of every paper and TV bulletin. But no one is celebrating: this has been a terrible week for women in politics. Twelve years ago the Labour victory of 1997 brought a new gener...

This site provides free access to a 13 page Eurobarometer flash report (EB 266)which was published in March 2009. It presents the results of a public opinion survey conducted (mainly by telephone) on a sample of more than 35,000 women and 5,500 men, with the aim of discovering the perception that women have of politics in general, their image of the European Union, attitudes towards the European P...

Our Women and Recession report has been widely reported. But unfortunately much of the reporting has been wrong. According to the many sources we believe that women will face more job losses than men. This is absolutely not what our analysis shows. The point in publishing the report was to...

As a (relatively) young woman in politics, and one very aware of the gender dimension of politics – having both studied gender politics and also convening the SNP Women’s Forum for a time – I am disappointed that women are under-represented in this vital area of public life. There was some debate in a number of blogs in recent months over the issue of all women shortlists in the ...

We’re used to seeing the media discuss women in terms of their attractiveness, no more so than when those women are in politics. And ordinarily the subjects of this interest are firmly on the politicians. Has Ann Wideombe lost weight since she entered Strictly Come Dancing? Is Caroline Flint too sexy? I could go on