The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is Press For Progress in the worldwide campaign for gender parity. So how are we doing on the Isle of Man?

The truth is, the island might have been a world leader in giving women the vote but since then we have sometimes been slow to catch up with enshrining into law some fundamental rights for women and you might be surprised to learn how many of these we still don’t have.

Angela Moffatt, national secretary of the Prospect Union Isle of Man, remembers returning to the island to live in 1997. She said: ’I was appalled about the lack of sex discrimination legislation.’

In the UK, The Equal Pay Act had been passed in 1970, and the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975 but it was not until 2000 that the Employment (Sex Discrimination) Act was passed on the island.

Under the Act it became unlawful to discriminate in employment on the grounds of a worker’s sex; because he or she is married, or because he or she is in a civil partnership. Pretty basic stuff you might think.

Angela recalled: ’When the Sex Discrimination Act came in, they appointed an officer to a post to provide advice and monitor things as we lobbied for an Equal Opportunities Commission-type body to advise, educate and take on claims if needed. We also pointed out the lack of protection for other areas e.g. disability, race, age, sexuality, and political views etc. The government of course didn’t do that - and even that advisor post has now been lost.’

She went on: ’There’s zero proactivity on equality issues - and you can see from every successive earnings survey that there’s inequality on pay.

’Maternity pay is still not a right - and many employers don’t pay it. I would doubt there are many employment tribunals on sex discrimination, simply because there are less grounds to bring them than the UK and they are hard to fight unless you have help.

’As a union, we see plenty of indirect sex discrimination on pay - particularly the abuse of part time working which disproportionately impacts on women. Childcare and pregnancy issues remain a problem too, despite the legal provisions for flexible working and specific risk assessments for pregnant women. We’ve had some cases where heavily pregnant women have been ’capped’ on having toilet breaks, and not allowed to sit down on duty.

’We still lack equal pay legislation but the Equality Act aims to rectify that.’

Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas told the House of Keys last month that there are plans to include the idea of shared leave in the next Employment Bill. But he said that there are no plans to introduce statutory maternity and paternity pay.

’Any changes would affect individuals and businesses and as with all changes there would be winners and losers,’ he told MHKs.

Angela also pointed out the lack of female representation in many areas of public life: ’You can also see endemic sexism in the lack of females visible across public bodies and appointments. I asked a few years ago for information on government boards, committees, tribunals etc to look at gender and there was under-representation of women across the board.

’I might repeat the exercise as I doubt it’s changed. Politically, too, I doubt we’ll see much change: we may have a few more MHKs, and one MLC but that is still gross under-representation. It’s the same with senior government posts.

’No one is saying that people should be appointed because of their gender: it should be about ability. But if we accept that the current range of posts at senior level, and the boards/committees etc. are made up of people purely on ability, then we’re accepting that women generally must be less able. And frankly that’s utter nonsense.’

And there is one more thing that Angela highlights which has worrying implications for the future.

She said: ’The other huge gender issue is pensions - there’s a wide gulf here in pensions payable to women as opposed to men. When you ask for average public sector pensions, there’s always a big gap between those payable to men and women. So we have a ticking time bomb of pension poverty, which is going to be worse for women potentially than men.’