Equality

The concept of equality has been redefined, at least according to the minister responsible in a speech last week. But on closer inspection, the government has still not unshackled itself from all the entrenched assumptions of the more collectivist understanding of fairness. Liz Truss’s speech marked a break from identity politics, with its pernicious division of society into victims and their oppressors, but it left untouched two other linked ideas. The first is social determinism: the idea that outcomes such as poverty are the result of social and economic forces beyond individual control. The second is faith in the ability of government to transform these external forces.

After the explosion of international self-abasement over George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, much theatrical soul-searching ensued. So your basic man or woman on the street might have reason to puzzle why it is that in the wake of all this hyper-awareness about race (which the left simultaneously instructs us both does not exist and explains everything), relations between the hues seem only to decay. In order to redress ‘structural racism’, the state of Oregon (impressively still extant, given the determination of both nature and Portland’s Antifa activists to burn it down) has reserved $62 million, out of a total Covid relief fund of $200 million, for black people.

Taken to the Garrick Club one evening, I was surprised when a mouse ran across the carpet. I squeaked and pulled my legs up. Not a murmur from the other armchairs. My host leaned over. ‘No one minds the mice,’ he explained. ‘It’s the women they don’t want.’ It made me laugh then and it makes me laugh now. I thought fondly of this story when I read in the paper that Emily Bendell, founder of the lingerie brand Bluebella, had instructed lawyers to seek an injunction preventing the Garrick from ‘continuing to operate its discriminatory policy’ of excluding women would-be members. As it happens, I don’t mind being there on sufferance between the allotted hours and in the permitted rooms. Boys will be boys, gentlemen will be gentlemen.

Over a drink recently I sat next to a man who announced, barely before he’d taken his first sip, that he was a feminist. ‘Like you,’ he added ingratiatingly. Like me?!? Poor sap. Did he imagine that this creepy statement would actually endear me to him? That I admired his courageous stand and was prepared to hang on his every word? Not a bit of it. From that moment, I despised him. Firstly, I’m no feminist and never have been. Like Mary Wollstonecraft, I’m an equal-but-differentist, or would be if such a thing existed. And I have no desire to get my own back on women’s oppressors, if indeed, today, in western society, they are oppressors. I’ve never experienced them as such.

I have decided that my work is of equal value to that of Claudia Schiffer and that therefore in future I should be paid the same as her. Why not? Okay, we don’t quite do the same thing, but we both get up in the morning, go out and do what we do as best we can. Yet she is paid more than I am, which is indefensible. That is pretty much the basis of the claim by 100 female Tesco shop floor workers who have launched an action against the supermarket claiming that they should be paid the same as men who work in the store’s warehouses. It is discrimination, they say, because their work is of ‘equal value’. It is estimated that, if successful, Tesco could face claims for up to six years’ of back pay for 200,000 workers – amounting to as much as £4bn.

There was much fanfare last week when Holly Willoughby's apparent 'huge £200k pay rise' meant she'd finally be earning the same as her This Morning co-host, Phillip Schofield. The closing of this pay gap was hailed by some as a victory for womankind, but it seemed a travesty to me. After all, why had there been such a mighty imbalance to begin with? What's worse, though, was that the whole saga highlighted a bigger problem with feminism: its obsession with equality. The reality is that Willoughby isn’t equal to Schofield. She's better than him – in a commercial sense – and therefore deserves to earn more. If you doubt me, just take a look at the numbers on their respective social media accounts.

I’ve grown to dislike the term ‘equal pay’. Without doubt women deserve to be paid the same as men for the same job performance, but it is the argument that stands against them. ‘Equal pay’ has an underlying tone of ‘it’s not fair’ – which is a weak position from which to negotiate. I say this from experience, as a woman in the City who could and should have been paid more than her male counterparts. My argument was always equal pay. It failed me. I was an equity research analyst at a large and prestigious US investment bank. Client rankings, as measured by the leading surveys (Extel and Institutional Investor), were the main indicators of job performance.

Once upon a time, ‘binary’ was a mathematical term. Now it is an insult on a par with ‘racist’, ‘sexist’ or ‘homophobic’, to be deployed as a weapon in our culture wars. The enemy on this particular battleground is anyone who maintains that there are men and there are women, and that the difference between them is fundamental. This ‘binary’ distinction is accepted as a given by the vast majority of the human race. No matter. It is now being categorised as a form of bigotry. Utterly bizarre? Scoff at your peril. It’s fast becoming an enforceable orthodoxy, with children and young people particularly in the frame for attitude reassignment.

Many women still suffer from a touch of the Cinderella complex. These days, few want men to sweep up the bills as well as sweeping them off their feet. But many women implicitly expect to rely on their men’s private pensions in retirement. 'My husband is good with money. I leave that stuff up to him', said the young woman at my hairdressers. I just managed to stop myself from giving her the full two barrels and screaming: 'No! Don’t put your future into someone else’s hands!' Despite women achieving equality in so many other ways, that is what more women are doing, according to the latest Scottish Widows’ Women and Retirement Report.