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LONDON 2021 Because equality is better for everyone womensequality.org.uk CONTENTS Equality Can Win 3 Reimagining LONDON 4 The shadow pandemic: violence against women and girls 6 Our shadow economy: care 8 Building a more inclusive London: housing and transport 10 Pledge to vote for the Women’s Equality Party on 6th May 14 on the orange ballot Why Orange? 20 2 EQUALITY CAN WIN This election you are choosing the Mayor and Assembly who will be in charge of London’s recovery from Coronavirus. Nobody has been unaffected by the pandemic. Many thousands of Londoners have lost loved ones, their own health, their jobs, their financial security. The poorest and most vulnerable are so often women, in particular black and minoritised women and disabled women, and they need to be prioritised if our recovery is to succeed. Everyone agrees we need to build back better. The Women's Equality Party says we need to do more than that – we need to Build Back Equal. The pandemic has laid bare the inequalities in our economy and society, and the government’s response has magnified many of those inequalities. If we are to Build Back Equal, then we need diverse perspectives round the table to help reimagine jobs, housing, transport, policing and communities. We need a plan that will meet the moment. The Women’s Equality Party narrowly missed out on a seat on the London Assembly in 2016, when the party was only months old. This time we are encouraging Londoners to share their votes with us on the orange ballot, so that we can send our first representative to City Hall and help deliver such a plan. That plan must, as a starting point, make ending violence against women and girls a political priority. Equality Can Win 3 REIMAGINING LONDON London is globally admired and rightly so. The diversity of talent, innovation and opportunities here are incomparable. But our city has been hit hard by the Coronavirus pandemic, compounded by years of austerity and a damaging Brexit agenda, increasing the inequalities in our society and economy. It is clear that urgent action is needed, not just to get London back on track but to set it on course for a brighter and more equal future. During the pandemic we have seen what is essential and usual response of politicians popping on a hard hat to we cannot unsee it. When everything else was closed, announce more investment in construction simply won’t what had to remain open? It was our hospitals, care work. We have to think differently this time. homes, schools and nurseries - our social infrastructure. WE will negotiate from government a recovery The vast majority of our essential workers who saw package that understands the realities of this crisis, us through the worst of the pandemic are women, and helps futureproof our economy. We will maximise especially black and minoritised women, working in high- expenditure from city hall to support apprenticeships risk jobs for poverty wages. We have to right this wrong. for young women in the jobs that businesses are saving, WE will create a care revolution from City Hall, driving and help drive capital investment to women- and down zero hours contracts, investing in skills and minority-owned businesses. driving up pay. And we will build homes with social We won’t stop there. Drawing from the work of great rents to stop our essential workers being priced out of female leaders in places like Finland, Iceland and New London. We will make London the best place to be a Zealand, we will bring forward a wellbeing budget that care worker and the best place to receive care. measures crucial indicators of a city’s success beyond Wherever there are gaps in our social infrastructure, GDP, and for the first time includes the value of unpaid women are expected to fill them. During lockdown, care. We will allocate funds on the basis of what’s best carers and parents have provided £73 billion worth for the wellbeing of our people and our planet. Across of unpaid care every single day in London. They have London, we will work with employers not just to pay a been forced to reduce their hours or quit their jobs and London Living Wage, but to ensure Londoners live well. 60% of Covid job losses in London are now expected to WE will convene an annual citizens’ assembly, fall on women. With nearly half of London’s childcare to scrutinise the London budget and make providers also expected to close, even more women recommendations for change before it is approved. could lose their jobs. If we want to save jobs, we have to Without a deliberate effort to extend power to a more save childcare. diverse cross-section of London society, we will not be WE will make a landmark investment in childcare by able to remove the intersecting barriers that prevent us extending the free childcare allowance to parents from becoming a truly successful city. studying or in training. This will support parents who And there is no bigger barrier than violence against have lost their jobs, stop families being driven into women and girls. Over the last five years, cases of poverty, and help keep our nurseries open and our violence against women have increased while charging economy running. rates and funding for support services have fallen. Unlike in previous economic crises, the sectors that have Domestic abuse now accounts for one in ten of all crimes been hardest hit are dominated by women. Hospitality, in London and is a major driver of homelessness. We retail and the arts are the lifeblood of London’s need to make ending violence a political priority every economy and are vital to women’s employment. The single day. 4 WE will make London a place where every woman can pay gap means that 80% of women’s income currently live free from the fear of violence. We will ensure that goes on rent, and women are more likely to rely on no woman is turned away from safe refuge and make housing benefits and to be made homeless. London the UK’s first Sanctuary City - overriding the WE will redefine so-called affordable housing to put it government’s hostile environment policies to ensure within reach of those on low incomes. We will introduce migrant women with No Recourse to Public Funds are a strong social rent policy for London and a separate not tethered to their abusers. target for social rent delivery. And we will fight like hell WE will introduce a specialist policing unit, drawing on for housing benefits to catch up with rents - to stop expertise from outside the Met Police and increasing homelessness in its tracks. the number of independent advocates to rebuild trust In the wake of this pandemic, with the official toll alone and achieve justice. And we will develop the first standing at more than 150,000 deaths, business as usual comprehensive perpetrator strategy - because we need is not an option. Coronavirus was able to rip through our to stop managing violence and start ending it. communities at devastating speed and scale, aided by A woman’s ability to live free from violence is also inequality and poverty. In these elections it therefore falls dependent on her capacity to afford a home of her own. on each of us to demand a new normal. We must send a The housing crisis in London combined with the gender message to government that equality matters. Vote for the Women’s Equality Party on the orange ballot on 6th May to make equality a reality. Reimagining LONDON 5 THE SHADOW PANDEMIC: VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS We cannot achieve equality until every woman can live free from the fear of violence. Coronavirus and the accompanying lockdown measures have exacerbated an existing pandemic of male violence. While for many of us staying at home became the safest option, for too many women that meant being trapped at home with their abuser. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline reported an 80% increase in calls in the first three months of lockdown, as the restrictions designed to keep us safe were weaponised by abusers to exert control over their partners and families. Reports to the police of sexual offences including rape Even before the pandemic, over 60% of referrals to have never been higher and London is no exception, refuges were turned away across the capital; equivalent with over 18,000 cases reported to the Met Police in the to around 2,000 women in a single year, many with last year. But the high-profile collapse of a small number children. Unable to access support, more women are of rape trials in 2017 caused the justice system to step dying at the hands of violent men. Domestic homicides backwards, making new demands on survivors’ privacy increased in number and percentage of murders, from and leading to rape being effectively decriminalised. 7% in 2017 to 17% in 2020. The estimated economic cost In London a pitiful 3% of reported rapes now end in to London of domestic abuse is £8.4 billion a year. a conviction and many victims have lost faith in the Cuts to core funding along with an end to ring-fenced police and the justice system. funding for vulnerable people, resulted in councils The sudden increase in demand during Covid has slashing funding for refuges by an average of 32% also revealed the lack of services available to support across London boroughs between 2010 and 2018.

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