Jess Phillips has revealed she was told not to apply for a job because she was pregnant.
Speaking to The Independent for International Women’s Day (IWD), the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley opened up about her experiences of being discriminated against as a woman, as she called for action to be taken to push for gender equality.
The minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls said: “I have definitely been discriminated against. I have not been able to continue to go through a job application because I was pregnant – I was asked not to come back.
“I was told on one occasion that I had to be judged by my parents’ income about whether I could get student finance, even though I had a baby of my own, because I wasn’t married to my husband – so I was owned by my parents because my husband didn’t yet own me.
“Those are both state institutions that have discriminated against me.”
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As a woman in the public eye and as a female politician, Ms Phillips, 43, said the gender discrimination she has faced has been especially relentless, even sometimes including prejudice from fellow MPs in parliament.
She said: “I have suffered violence and abuse and threat like almost every woman, but women in the public eye and women in frontline politics face a constant barrage of gender discrimination every single day.
“And it’s from colleagues in the House of Commons, saying ‘you’re too emotional’ when you’re talking about murder – yep, you’re not wrong I’m emotional.”
While she acknowledged this can be “tiring” to endure, she described it as mostly acting “like rocket fuel”, spurring her into action. “It’s like something you put in your belly and essentially say ‘f*** you’ tomorrow,” she said.
The theme for IWD this year is “Accelerate Action”, which is a worldwide call to take action to progress gender equality, with Ms Phillips calling for “every single possible step” to be taken.
“We all have to recognise everywhere that it happens that we tell girls that they are lesser, that they are sexual objects, that they are owned,” she said. “And we have to do everything possible – my responsibility is to make sure that our laws do that.”
For Ms Phillips, IWD not only offers an opportunity to celebrate women but also for activism.
The MP has marked the day every year for the past decade by reading out the name of every woman killed in the UK by a man over the previous 12 months, with some unknown women and those killed in incidents where the primary suspect was a man also included. She described this annual moment as not only a tribute to the women but also as a reminder “to stop it happening next year”.
Ms Phillips spoke of the pushback happening across the world as women have gained more rights, with many arguing a period of regression is currently being seen.
She said: “Us having more power and more freedom doesn’t take away from someone else’s freedom – but for lots of men, and this is a growing problem, equality feels like oppression.”
Ms Phillips described true gender equality as when women no longer have to do the “micro work”, such as thinking about when and how they are going to get home. “That’s what gender equality looks like to me,” she said. “Ease for women just to be who they are and feel free.”
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