Alice from FiLiA meets Sam Smethers CEO of the Fawcett Society

Alice: Hello and welcome to the FiLiA podcast. I'm Alice and today I'm talking to Sam Smethers, who is the CEO of the Fawcett Society, and we are going to be talking about the coronavirus and its impact on women. Hi Sam. 

Sam: Hi, thank you for having me. 

Alice: So for anyone who hasn't heard of the Fawcett Society, it's probably one of the biggest charities in the UK that fight for women's equality and they've done some incredible work on women's political representation and the gender pay gap. Sam is the CEO. And prior to that, she worked for many years at the Equality and Human Rights Commission. 

So, how is lockdown going for you? 

Sam: Well, uh, I think in week six, I have to say, it's starting to get to me.

I think I've been coping pretty well, until now, but this week I felt a bit fatigued with zoom meetings and then I discovered that that was a bit of a thing, cause there's a, a sort of scientific basis for why we're all feeling very exhausted for having too many zoom meetings. So it's quite common that people are all saying the same thing. They're finding it quite draining. so it just reassured me that I wasn't alone really, that that was kind of normal and just staring at a screen and talking to multiple people at once on a screen is apparently not great for you in terms of your own wellbeing.

So, trying to look after yourself and also I've got two kids at home being home-schooled as well. So that's the juggle I'm doing domestically, but apart from that we're keeping everything going. And I think the campaigning work we're doing is really important. And it's really kind of keeping me focused on what matters and also those who are in a much more difficult position certainly than I am.

Alice: So speaking of the campaigning work that you are doing; the Fawcett Society has organised a joint call for women's visibility in the coronavirus response. How did that come about? 

Sam: Well, it seemed really clear to us actually from the beginning of this crisis, that women were absent from decision making, absent from our screens in terms of, you know, the line-up at the daily press conference in Downing Street that we were seeing and that really the messages coming from government, the decisions that were being made by government were being made with no real consideration of the impact on women's lives at all.

The fact that the lockdown was introduced without any reference to women who were in abusive relationships and what the impact on them might be, no lifelines thrown to them, no thought to how we were going to safeguard them in that situation when almost certainly, and we've seen already in the data that it would make their lives more difficult. We put them at risk and guarantee that more women would die as a result of it. So I think that was the thing that really kind of galvanized us.

And then the only way really forward in this crisis is that we work together. So, you know, the women's sector's got some wonderful organisations in it, but many are small organisations, many are really vulnerable, at risk of losing funding for example, we could see a number of those organisations go under if they're not supported.

So we really have to unite across the UK, across the nations of the UK and build at what is essentially a movement of organisations and individuals to try and both make women visible now in the crisis, but also to get government and other decision makers and policy makers to think about the impact on women's lives as we start to make decisions about ending the lockdown. As we start to plan for how Britain emerges from this crisis, because the ramifications of this crisis could be really quite profound. And the big risk is it will have a significant negative impact on women and girls for many years to come.

Alice: So, what are some of the things that you are doing? Because I know you are, you're doing a wonderful webinar series at the moment with women from lots of different organisations giving their expertise. What's going on behind the scenes that we're not seeing? 

Sam:  Well, yes the webinar series has been a great way to get everyone involved in the conversation.

And we're going to be running that for the foreseeable future, we've got some great ones coming up, which I'll tell you about in a minute. Behind the scenes we've been putting survey data out in the field. So we're just getting that back now and it's us and the Women's Budget Group and LSE and Queen Mary as well. A couple of academics we're working with and that's really looking at the impact on women's lives. 

We've got a sort of representative data sample, but with particular focus on low income women, BAME women and parents as well because we know it's hitting low income households hardest. It's certainly hitting parents of young children, very hard, single parents, very hard. We've got booster samples, which means we can also talk about the impact potentially on disabled women as well. So we are really trying to, through this research trying to surface what's actually happening to particular groups of women who we suspect and we know are most at risk.

In addition to that, we've got a diary series running. So we're collecting diary evidence at the moment from 75 women who are keeping weekly diaries for us. We haven't published any of that yet. We're just starting to analyse the data, but it's incredibly powerful stuff, very, very moving actually, quite distressing to read and you can just really see the struggle that people are going through. It's so difficult for them. 

So, we'll be gradually over the next few weeks, releasing that data as well. So it's a bit of qualitative data and quantitative data and then we're trying to get more funding. So, we're bidding for funding at the moment try to do more research and really carry this program through over the next year to two years.

So this isn't just about this immediate crisis. It is absolutely what happens short term, medium term and longer term for women and girls because it really is something that's going to have a long lasting impact. So we have to follow that. We have to track that over time and there are a number of questions we can keep coming back to in terms of survey data, to see what's changed over a period of time.

So, that's basically the plan so far. But it's an evolving plan. If I can put it like that. 

Alice: Sounds like it's already a massive plan. I should just say before we all get inevitably trolled on this, that women are less likely to die directly from COVID-19. That's what the data is suggesting at the moment.

Men are sadly more likely to die from coronavirus, but women are more likely than men to be impacted in other serious ways. As we've just been talking about. So I think now if it's okay, if we can focus in, on a few different areas where the difference between the impact on men and the impact on women is particularly notable.

You talked about some of these in your initial call in your letter to the government.

 So the first one is care work, in terms people who are paid, but also women who are doing unpaid care work. Why are women more likely to be impacted in this area? 

Sam:  Just before I come to that question, can I just pick up on your difference between women and men and the sex data? Because I just think it is really a very, very important issue this, and I want to reemphasize the point. We are seeing it played out in real time, the significance of sex differences in terms of the impact of this virus. So the call for sex-disaggregated data, the reason why we have to think about the differences between women and men in terms of sex-based differences in terms of design of PPE, and whether they fit women properly and fit women's bodies, all of these issues, we are literally living, experiencing and seeing it now. So it really demonstrates in the most powerful, possible way that we need sex-disaggregated data and we absolutely need data disaggregated by ethnicity and disability and so on as well. So it's, you know, we can see BAME workers are much more at risk at the moment as well, disproportionately dying on the frontline, incredible, incredible numbers, actually terrifying numbers.

The reason why, those of us who talk about the equality impact assessments, it sounds like a sort of policy wonk type thing to talk about, but it's actually vital. It's actually how we solve this crisis. It's how we address and meet the needs of people who are both more likely to be ill or more likely to die.

So, let's not have any more debate about whether or not we need equality impact assessments or disaggregated data. Let's just get on and do that as a matter of course from now on, because we can't afford to leave that unaddressed.

On the point about care and the impact of care is really interestingness because you can see. And again, it's sort of coming through the data. I haven't got the numbers to hand cause it literally, they it's only just coming hot off the press, but we'll be releasing it in the early part of May. We know already that women are more likely to take responsibility for unpaid care work in the home, disproportionately caring for children.

We know that. Men have been doing more care though, over the last sort of 20, 30 years. If you look back over from the seventies until now, you know, dads definitely do spend more time caring for the children and want to spend more time caring for their children, all the survey data suggests that too. So that's why we've always supported calls for improved leave entitlements for fathers as well. Because if we equalise that sharing of care early in a child's life in that first year, they're much more likely to play an active role later in life, which is good for mothers, good for women. 

Through this crisis, what you can see is that with both parents at home and you've got households with both parents at home, it still seems to be falling disproportionately on mums to take on the care of those children. They're doing their paid job and they are spending more time caring for children. Dads might think they're doing more and maybe they are doing a bit more, but it certainly doesn't look like it's being equally shared.

I think that sort of: whose job is the serious job and whose job is the one that can be kind of just fitted around the kids -  that is polarising and men are the ones who are basically saying, well, I've got the property job, I’ll lock myself away in the office upstairs, you can go and sit downstairs and juggle yours with the kids. 

Sometimes these aren't deliberate decisions, even that we just kind of default to it because that's the sort of gender norm we've kind of evolved either in our households, in our society, that's what's happening, but it's putting huge, huge pressure on women who are doing un paid care work. 

If you think about the impact on single parents in particular as well, you know, huge, huge challenges for them trying to juggle paid work and caring for children and we can also see through resolution foundation data that parents of young children are more likely to be in frontline jobs. So they're actually more likely to be in a place where they're at risk of catching the virus themselves as well as being often in low paid work. 

Single parents are doing huge amount of care for children, but really struggling with that balance without having that informal childcare, perhaps to rely on, or have lost nursery places where nurseries have closed as well as schools, can't even get to the shops, some of them, because they can’t get out of the house with the children, they might have vulnerable children they're caring for.

 So really some difficult challenging circumstances, and people really struggling with low incomes and job insecurity as well at the moment. So it's mental wellbeing and financial security are really major issues.

Alice: I saw a really awful story about a woman in Scotland who was shamed in a supermarket for taking her children shopping with her. And when she made the point that well I'm a single mum and I can't really leave my kids at home because they're too young, no one really seemed to have actually thought that might even be a possibility.

Sam:  Yeah. What can she do? I mean, single parents are always blamed, mothers always blamed for what happens to children, but single parents always get sort of a double judgment in society, sometimes this sort of idea, that's a lifestyle choice being a single parent, it's this hangover from the eighties of the sort of damning of single parenthood.

 The idea she shouldn't take her children with her to go shopping shows just how ready we are to make those sorts of judgements. And we want to judge her and that's the sort of underlying misogyny in our society, really, that sort of plays itself out in when we are looking to blame someone. It’s the single mother who's most like to get the blame for making the wrong decision because she's also made the wrong decision to become a single parent in the first place. So it's really, really unfair and really, really challenging. 

And again, you know, Women are not visible and we're trying to make women visible, but there are some particular groups of women who are even less visible 92% of single parents are women. 

Alice: So moving on to another group who in your letter you wanted to draw particular attention to and that's women who are victims of domestic violence or abuse and I think that there are some new statistics out which suggest that domestic abuse killings have actually doubled during lockdown.

Why is this happening and what help is the government providing for women at the moment? 

Sam: Yeah, I think it's actually more than doubled now. 

Why it's happening is because they've put women in a very, very difficult place. They've told them to stay at home with someone who is abusing them, threatening their safety and not giving them a route out.

We called at the beginning and we supported all the domestic abuse charities to say they needed to create a safe place for women to go. So it isn't just about a help line. It's also about actually physically, where can they go? So hotels, for example, were offering to provide accommodations. Southall Black Sisters were leading that campaign, Women's Aid as well.

They said, right we’ll create a place for women to go. Hotels can't be used at the moment for any other purpose. That was at least a short term safety mechanism. and government were asked to fund that. They still have not funded that. 

We've got the Domestic Abuse Bill going through parliament at the moment. It's just had its second reading. I know many politicians are lobbying hard on this as well, but as yet, we still have not seen significant resources ring fenced for the sector. It's just really worrying and just simply not good enough. That should have been a priority at the beginning. And if we took a gender lens at the beginning of this crisis and actually put women and girls front and centre of the strategy that was actually going to be rolled out, we would've made very different decisions and that would've been a priority from day one because it was absolutely predictable that that was going to happen. All the experts said that, and it's, it's exactly what we've seen play out. 

And there would almost certainly be an increased demand for services when we get to the end of the lockdown. So once women can get away from home, there probably will be a surge in cases and a surge in demand. And will the sector to be able to cope with it? Absolutely not unless they get some more money. So government has to prioritise that and see it as another emergency service, because it's about saving women's lives and saving children's lives as well. 

Alice: So I know that the government did allocate a few more million pounds at some point in the last few weeks to domestic abuse. I feel like if you don't really know what the situation is, that sounds great that they're giving more money to it. But someone made the point that actually this is really just a gesture because what's happened is that since, well probably 2010, domestic abuse services have been systemically underfunded. So by giving them, I don't know what it was 2 million, 4 million in the last couple of weeks, actually just a drop in the ocean. 

Sam: It was just a bit of funding towards helpline support. It wasn't actually, you know, funding the rest of the service provision at all. And you're right and also some of the specialist providers have been unable to get contracts.

You've got some bigger players who can get the contracts and provide some of the sort of support that's provided at local level. Local authorities are tendering for example, and sometimes specialists domestic abuse charities aren't able to bid for those funds and get that funding. So that's another concern in terms of the sort of structural fabric of what we are losing in terms of the sector.

There are many, many organisations and individuals now all calling for the same thing. I know the End Violence Against Women coalition have lobbied really hard on this as well.

So I'm really hopeful that that will eventually turn into some funding. But my concern is it's a bit too late, really, and it should have been a priority early on. and the Treasury, I think, well it looks like from the outside at least, as if the Treasury is sort of dragging its feet a bit. 

There are other voices within government who are also lobbying to get more money for domestic abuse organisations, but who haven't at the moment been successful.

So that needs to turn into action, it needs to be pushed up the treasury agenda and they need to be given that funding. And that announcement needs to be made as soon as possible. 

Alice: I just wanted to touch on one other group of people, who are women in unstable jobs and women working on the front line, in places like supermarkets and other shops.

So in the call to action, you say these women are usually the lowest paid or in insecure work. And of course this means that these workers also have the fewest resources to cope with a situation like this. 

Sam: Absolutely. We've got a sort of legacy effect here for people in this situation as well.

So in 2008, we had the big kind of financial crisis. We then had a period of austerity after that. So a lot of the lowest paid the most vulnerable workers, you know, black and ethnic minority women, people who are really vulnerable, they already took a hit in that period. So they've already had 10 years of challenging difficulty when it comes to finances and survival, really. So they're not in any kind of position. They've got no resources. They've got no cushion to fall back on in terms of financial cushion, or even in terms of support friends, family around them in some cases. So they are in a really challenging place. They haven’t got money to last them beyond the end of the month they can't get through to the end. They don’t know where the next meal or income is coming from. 

So how are they supposed to cope with being the ones who are also most at risk now and what are we going to do as a society, as a government? What decisions are we going to make that actually recognises that and creates a different future for those workers?

So right now, they're at risk on the frontline because they're physically more at risk of catching the virus because they're there out doing key worker jobs, supermarkets, refuse, collectors, cleaners. Cleaners in hospitals are really fundamental to how we tackle this virus.

Do they get PPE? Are they treated as part of the NHS? Most of them are contracted out. Some might get PPE. Most of them probably won't. Will they be prioritised even visible in any of this? So all of those lowest pay jobs have been identified as being also where people are most at risk. Precarious work means precarious lives.

If you are living a precarious life, then actually that also undermines your ability to contribute to the economy as a taxpayer or as a consumer. Right? So we are actually undermining our whole economy by keeping people in those very low paid precarious jobs. If we could lift the lowest paid and if we could improve their terms and conditions, then actually our whole society would benefit.

A more equal society would be a more productive one for everybody. And that's the kind of direction forward that we want to try and achieve. You know, we can choose at the end of this crisis to go forward in a progressive way, or to go forward in a way, which actually just is a race to the bottom and says, well, we can't afford to do anything else. We're going to pay the lowest wages. We're going to deregulate our economy. We're going to remove protections of part-time workers. That's the choice we're facing. 

Let's not forget we're playing this out in the context of Brexit, you know, coming over the hill as well, which is another source of anxiety in terms of where we might be in economically and in terms of workers' rights.

So I think we have to really push as a third sector alliance, but actually beyond the third sector with business voices, trade union voices, and so on to really set out a vision and the criteria for what kind of future we want and the choices we expect our government to make.

Alice: Which brings me onto my next question, which is: What is missing?

Why are the government's measures falling short for women at the moment in so many different ways? 

Sam: Well in the immediate crisis, the first thing that was missing was no plan for domestic abuse survivors in the lockdown. So, absolutely that was a glaring omission. Secondly, the furloughing scheme, although it's very generous and to be to the government's credit, it is a good scheme in terms of what's on offer.

It doesn't really respond to the reality of women's lives. So it's come through coronavirus conversations in the chat function, both times actually, where people have been saying, why can't we have part-time furloughing? Why can't we just do one or two days a week of work and then be furloughed the rest of the week?

And actually as an employer, I'd be really happy to implement the scheme that offered that. But we haven't got that flexibility because it's this very inflexible scheme that's been created. And I think that lack of thought about what would work for women's lives actually shows it doesn't really work for everyone anyway. So we get it right for women. We'll get it right for everybody because other people want flexibility too. It isn't only about what women want. 

So, I think that's been another omission. I think also that the way pregnant women, both in terms of the health advice they've received, but also their employment rights and the way that's been communicated. I think they've been really poorly served. Actually. 

They should have been told at the beginning that they were a group at risk and told to take extra care and that didn't happen until quite late on into the crisis. and then we've had real confusion about women workers on the front lines. So if you are a pregnant woman working as a nurse or as a care worker, what rights do you have? Have you got the right to say you don't want to work in that environment? and actually you do. If it's not a safe environment, you do have the right to say that, but that hasn't been communicated clearly.

We've had no focus really on how we give women clear guidance as to what they can and can't expect from their employer. 

So organisations like Maternity Action and Pregnant Then Screwed and others have been really campaigning hard on this and we've been supporting them, but at each step they've had to fight to get the government to clarify what it means for pregnant women.

And again, why didn't we think about them at the beginning? There were lots of pregnant women in our society and in the workforce, it's not a surprise but somehow that was an afterthought. 

All of these things would've been addressed if we'd taken a gendered approach from the beginning, I think actually that the other group that we ought to be talking about as well is Black and Asian Minority Ethnic workers on the frontline who have now been told, with new guidance, that actually, maybe they should be removed from the frontline because it's not safe for them.

To have that six weeks into a crisis in an NHS, which frankly couldn't exist and survive without its BAME workers is just extraordinary. And I think if, if government had actually protected all our care staff, social care staff as well, at the beginning, with decent PPE supplies, with testing and tracing at the beginning, then we would not be in this position. We wouldn't have lost all those lives. And I think it's going to become really apparent actually, when we start to examine the decision making in this crisis, that those early decisions have been glaringly wrong. And, government is going to have to face some quite hard realities about what it did and didn't do in the first few weeks. 

Alice When that inquiry comes about.

So usually, and you know more about this than I do, but usually when policies like these are implemented, they're implemented after months of careful consideration, research, lots of civil servants, kind of doing the due diligence on them. Do you think that some of these gaps have appeared because actually the people who have been making these decisions have been a very small group of people at the top of government who have been making them very quickly? Or do you think that there is a kind of more insidious structural discrimination that's going on here?  

Sam: I think the absence of women from senior decision making in this crisis has definitely been a problem and a concern.

And we've been talking about that since the beginning. The thing about pandemic responses is it's supposed to be a plan that kind of already exists. So, government has a risk register. A pandemic is kind of top of the risk register that we're told. I think the simple response to that then is if it's top of your risk register, you have to then prioritise what your mitigations are to deal with the plan when you have to roll it out. So I think some problems that we are seeing now with the rolling out of that plan and the decision making, actually go back probably years in terms of how that plan was resourced, how it was supported, the extent to which government was planning for this at all, in 2018 and 2015, we've got to look further back to really understand why the decision making has been so poor.

What we haven't got, and we still haven't got transparency actually about who the Sage advisors are, the sort of government experts. We don't know who they are, they haven't published the list. There's a few educated guesses going on as to who's involved. We are not seeing diversity decision making and that's clear.

And actually we're also, when you look around the world and see how other countries are dealing with this crisis, many of them led by women, you see very different decision making. You see very different approaches. Strict testing and tracing from the beginning a really strict lockdown at the beginning to try and minimise the pressure on the health services and minimise the number of deaths. And that seems to be working in other countries. 

Now we are not at the end of this yet. We don't know where we're going to end up, with a second wave and it could be 12 months a year, another year before we can really look back and have any assessment of which strategy really worked. But it's quite clear that you can get very different decision making in response to this crisis. And I think the lack of diversity of decision makers in this government, no women in the Treasury, no senior crisis response decision makers who were women at all. I think that shows that we've got, potentially at least, a bit of group thinks going on and that ultimately doesn't lead to good decision making.

Alice: How do you think the structures of government or the makeup of government would have to change in order for this not to happen in the future? I mean, hopefully let's just say hopefully we never ever encounter another situation like this, but say we do. What do we need in order to be able to do this differently and do it better next time?

Sam: Well, the reason governments have to plan for pandemics is actually they do happen, it's not that they're that rare. SARS and Ebola aren't that long ago. I know they didn't touch us, but they happened in other countries and so I think in terms of what, how we do it differently, we would say absolutely you need equal representation. You need diversity of representation and decision making. You need real transparency from the beginning. And I think we haven't actually had that in this case either and we need good accountability. I think that will come.

But at the moment, I don't think we're getting enough scrutiny of those decisions either. I don't think Parliament's able to function perhaps as effectively as it might have done. The PM hasn't been as visible and as accountable. I know he was ill, but I think there is a genuine concern about the extent to which he is really being held accountable at the moment.

So I think we do need to address those issues of transparency and accountability, as well as representation going forward. 

Alice: And on the issue of representation, when you say there's very few women who are actually in decision making positions during this time, so on the group of people that, that give the press conferences every day, you have Dr Jenny Harries who is the deputy scientific advisor and then Priti Patel who sort of mysteriously reappeared after a while, after everyone was saying, where are the women? 

Is there in your sense, has there been any progress in diversifying the group of people who are making the decisions? Do you think that if we continue to ask after a couple of months, the government will say, do you know what? Yes, you're right. Let's have a patient representative and let's have someone who is a working mum and let's hear from them. 

Sam: I don't think they will make those changes. No, I don't. Because I don't think they see the point. I think that as far as they concern they're in the middle of a crisis, they just want to crack on a deal with it.

And all this talk about diversifying who is representing government or making decisions they think is all a bit extra frankly. And they don't think there's a priority because they're not connecting the two about the quality of decision making and who's making the decisions.  

We just don't know really, because there's not enough transparency around the advisors and decision makers. And I think that's another issue. If we were really clear about who the Sage advisors were, if we were really clear about who's at which decision making table any one time, then I think that would help. But I think that's another area where they could be more open.  

Alice:  Wishful thinking. So my last question is a kind of a million-dollar question.

I guess, something that a lot of people are saying at the moment, which you've already made reference to is that COVID-19 is showing us who the real essential workers are. And they're not the investment bankers or the CEOs who are earning hundreds of thousands a year or millions of pounds in bonuses.

They are the people who are like usually in middle to low paid jobs and often with considerable job insecurity. And as we know, those people are also disproportionately likely to be women. So when we ‘rebuild’ after COVID-19 Can we expect an economy where women's work is valued more than it is currently having seen what we've seen?

Sam: I think we have to demand it. I don't think we can necessarily expect it if I'm really honest with you. We're heading for a major recession, a global recession, right? So there's going to be far less money around that. The narrative will be, the Treasury coffers are empty, we spent all the money trying to cope with the crisis. We can't, as much as we'd love to pay our carers more, we can't afford it. We haven't got the money there. So some people will be making that argument quite strongly. Some people within government and outside government will be making that argument.

So what's the counter to that. What's the counter argument and how do we make it and how do we make it effectively? And I think. The point about valuing care and valuing women is absolutely central to that argument. But I would say even that isn't enough because some people say, well, we showed we valued them because we clapped every Thursday night and we were out there thanking them. So therefore we really do value carers. 

You have to translate that into action and you have to get others who don't necessarily buy into your vision to see that they've got a stake in it as well. So I think there is a broader alliance between business, you know, progressive organisations and progressive voices who have to come together and say, no, this is the kind of level we want to work out. This is the standard we expect to apply, and we want a different future. We want a different way forward. We don't want to go back to precarious workers and precarious lives and normalising low paying job insecurity. We want a social security system that is actually a safety net for everyone because more people have tried it out and actually discovered it doesn't really work that effectively. Let's try and move differently then and create one that does. 

We want to actually have a decent standard of living with a real living wage, not just a, a minimum wage that is a bit of an apology for living wage. So let's try and get to a place where we get to that much more quickly.

So I think there are a number of things that are really going to be central to how we go forward. But the key thing is absolutely getting the diversity of voices behind that and valuing women is absolutely essential to what we are going to be saying. We've got 50 years of Equal Pay Act in May.

So value women value carers is going to be absolute central to the messaging that we are going to be using because we know that fundamental to pay inequality is the fact that we don't value women's work. Equal pay isn't something you get when you can afford it, it's actually the lack of equal pay playing out now that we're seeing in our society now, in terms of those women and how they're so poorly served and then poorly paid. 

But I think we're going to have a real fight in our hands because lots of other people making very different argument and the economic circumstances are going to be very, very difficult. Probably the most difficult we've seen in our lifetimes. 

So how do we win? I think work very, very hard to win and not expect that somehow, because we've all been cared for and we've all been out clapping for carers that's going to convert into them getting a decent wage and a decent standard of living. It doesn't. It means we have to fight to make that argument. 

Alice: I'm glad to think that the Fawcett Society will be leading that fight. 

Sam: We'll certainly be amongst the leading organisations and many others the TUC and other trade unions as well to give them their credit and getting the CBI talk about inequality, which Caroline Fairbank did this week, I noticed in a comment piece for the FTE. That’s helpful. We need those voices as well. 

So, that's what we need, a bit of a consensus around ‘We can't go back to business as usual.’ We've got to build back better, which is the slogan everyone's using. Well, let's define what that means then. And set some basic framework for that. So we know what we're all aiming for.

Alice: And speaking of consensus, do you just want to tell us a little bit about your plans for future webinars, with other organizations, things that, that people can listen into? 

Sam: Yeah. We've got a number coming up. 

We are doing one on Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic women and workers. 

One on violence against women and girls, looking at domestic abuse, but also the increase in online abuse, which I think is important. In this context, we're all busy staring at our screens, but lots of people are using that as an opportunity to harass and abuse women.

50 years of the Equal Pay Act. And what does that mean in the context of coronavirus? So that is all about valuing women, valuing care. 

Alice:  How can people support or get involved with the Fawcett Society during this time?

Sam: Well, we're a membership organisation, so you can become a member.  We start have a membership rate that starts from just a pound of month, so you can, uh, get involved in Fawcett. You can make a donation on our donations page to support our campaigns, including the coronavirus campaign that we're running now. Or you can just sign up to our newsletter and to our coronavirus events for free, we're not charging for any. So you can't afford to spare any money right now. And we understand for many people that's difficult. Just get involved by signing up and being a part of the campaign that we're trying to build.

Alice: Sam Smithers. Thank you very much. 

Sam: Thank you.