The Great Debate UK
Battle for key professional roles ongoing for women
-Angela Eagle is Minister of State for Pensions and Ageing Society. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters will host a “follow-the-sun” live blog on Monday, March 8, 2010, International Women’s Day. Please tune in.-
International Women’s Day is still as relevant today as it was almost a century ago when it was first established. In Britain, when the suffragettes won the right to vote on equal terms with men in 1928, there was a feeling that there would be an inevitable journey towards full equality with men. But we now know that there are other battles that still need to be won.
Earlier this month, I attended a meeting of the European Women’s Forum in the Spanish city of Cadiz where leading female politicians met to evaluate the EU’s compliance of the Platform for Action approved at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. We concluded that there was still much work to be done in the fight against gender-based violence and the incorporation of women into key decision-making positions in business and politics.
While the UK is a country where women have made good progress in the path towards equality, there still needs to be structures put in place in society to fit in with the shape of women’s lives. For example, the labour market needs to properly recognise women’s duties as carers of children and older people. The gender pay gap which still exists in many places also has to be eliminated.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2010: the year of living incrementally?
One of the labels being attached to President Barack Obama is that he is a committed incrementalist - an insult or a compliment depending on which side of the political fence you sit, or indeed whether you believe it to be true.
A couple of articles on U.S.-led strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan fill out what that could mean going into the new year.
Tides may turn in the forex market into 2010
-Jane Foley is research director at Forex.com. The opinions expressed are her own.-
The final weeks of 2009 have brought a sense that tides may be turning in the foreign exchange market reflecting broader developments in the global economy. The predominant changes relate to the dollar.
A year of austerity looms in 2010
-David Kuo is director at the Motley Fool. The opinions expressed are his own.-
If you thought 2009 was as bad as things will get, then think again: 2010 could be worse. It is likely to be a year of enforced austerity with both the government and households making obligatory cuts to their budgets.
High on the government’s agenda will be reducing the Budget deficit, if the UK is to avoid the embarrassment of having its sovereign debt rating cut by rating agencies. This will have a knock-on effect on households, which could see their disposable incomes slashed by hikes in both direct and indirect taxes.
2010: Another year, another crisis
- Laurence Copeland is a professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School and a co-author of “Verdict on the Crash” published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The opinions expressed are his own. -
If the financial crisis were a theatre production of Hamlet, we would now be at the end of Act III.
Peering into a murky crystal ball for 2010
-Jeremy Batstone-Carr is director of private client research at Charles Stanley. The opinions expressed are his own.-
It’s that time of year again! The time of year in which the writer’s desk, never a pretty sight at the best of times, becomes clogged with the product of the investment community’s crystal ball gazing.
