Worth Less = Worthless

That's not what I believe. Of course. But it's hard not to draw that conclusion from today's newspapers in the UK. Skipping over the whole Josef Fritzl case because I can't even think about it without throwing up, let's focus on two main UK stories, back to back in the Guardian:

Rape complaints were not classified as crimes by police
Equal pay is a step too far in recession, says rights body

It's been widely reported in here, and I'm sure it's the same in Canada, that women are being disproportionately affected by the global recession. Women make up the largest percentage of part-time, casual and agency workers, who have the least job security (as well as earning the least and having zero benefits). So rather than recognise the fact and do something to rebalance the economy, the so-called Equalities and Human Rights Commission has had the brilliant insight that this is just not the time to impose equal pay on businesses.

That's right: in a recession, women should nakedly continue to receive less money for equal work. No mention that the extra cash could come off the fat bonuses of the bosses, which is where the biggest inequity lies. The EHRC is doing what governments have long done: making believe that the people threatened by equal rights are men in low-waged jobs who will (the threat runs) see their pay packets cut in order to "compensate" women workers (who stand to lose £360, 000 over a working life, on average, not to mention lower pensions and benefits). Divide and conquer at its nastiest, to stop workers coming together to campaign for each others' rights.

As Amelia Gentlewoman writes, the right to be paid an equal wage has been turned into gender warfare, which shows up some pernicious social values:

Anything perceived to be a caring role, looking after children and old people, has always been rewarded less well than the predominantly male jobs, partly because the skills women bring to the work are regarded as innate, rather than qualities they need to be specifically rewarded for

. So the three 'C's (cooking, cleaning, caring) are seen as something women do 'naturally', an argument that could surely apply just as doltishly to male soldiers [men 'naturally' want to kill things].

That argument from 'nature' is a dangerous slope for lots of reasons, not least because women tend to be subject to it more than men (and non-white people more than white people). It implies that women's work is worth less because it's just "what they do." It's a small leap from there to thinking of women as worthless. And presuming that 'naturally' they're nothing but bodies, fucking machines. Kate Alley writes in her letter to the Guardian that as a passenger in London taxis, she was

repeatedly told I could pay for fares "in kind", asked how far I could spread my legs - this was a bewilderingly regular question - and so on.

I don't think it's a huge leap from women's work is worth less to women are worth nothing but what comes 'naturally'.

It's part of the same cultural blindness that equal pay doesn't exist as a matter of course (despite the fact that, as Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson demonstrate in their new book The Spirit Level, equal societies "almost always" do better) and that police treat rape reports as "crime-related incidents." In fact, the police in the UK go so far as to treat the woman making the complaint as a criminal in some cases, harassing her, making accusations about her lifestyle choices. Because getting fucked is just what women do.

It's natural.

Right?