Jo Swinson has written a piece for the Huffington Post as part of their “All women everywhere” series in which she warns that progress on gender equality is under threat.

The chairman of Tesco’s board may feel that white men making up three quarters of his board constitutes being an “endangered species” but Jo sees the progress she made as a minister being eroded:

With the efforts of Vince Cable, Lord Davies, Helena Morrissey and many others we drove women’s representation in FTSE boardrooms up to record levels, yet Egon Zehnder found that the proportion of women appointed to Boards in 2016 actually decreased. The Equality & Human Rights Commission finding last year that 54,000 women a year lose their jobs due to pregnancy and maternity discrimination is shocking in itself, but even more so when you consider that this figure has almost doubled since 2005.

In all the metrics about how many years it will take to achieve gender equality in any given field we are used to depressingly distant dates like 2067 or 2095. For women in technology the answer to when equality will be achieved if current trends continue is never.

Some men, she remarks, see a tiny number of women in power as a threat. She wrote this before the Tesco Chairman’s comments so clearly proved her point but she cited the usual social media whinging about International Women’s Day:

Comedian Richard Herring again patiently marked International Women’s Day with public service responses to the scores of stroppy men, apparently unable to use a search engine, who tweet “when’s International Men’s Day?”. Those keyboard owners seem markedly more exercised to complain about International Women’s Day than to actually celebrate International Men’s Day on 19 November. One in eight people say women’s equality has gone too far. How much higher than 18% do they want the gender pay gap to be? If women leading 11 out of 195 countries in the world is too many, how many more male leaders do they think the world needs?

She adds that we will have to work hard to make further progress to gender equality:

Perhaps the silver lining of Donald Trump’s victory is to shatter our complacency. Gender equality won’t just happen automatically by itself. Women and men need to work together to challenge the myriad of gender inequalities in our daily lives, from the little frustrations to the huge injustices, from the structural biases to the gender stereotypes that constrain everyone. It is hard work to unpick the sexism deeply ingrained in our institutions, our culture and our own experience.

You can read the whole article here.

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