Man-made laws still need breaking down: 40 years of Rights of Women

Sexual harassment, confinement to less lucrative areas of the law, and not achieving the seniority they deserve are the biggest challenges identified by the first project officer of women's charity Rights of Women (ROW).

Tonight ROW celebrates its 40th anniversary. During the past four decades, the organisation was the first recipient of a grant from the Equal Opportunities Commission and supported the first woman to bring a claim under the Sex Discrimination Act in 1976.

However, the organisation's first-ever project officer, Jenny Earle, says ROW is as important as ever.

'I am very proud ROW still exists as a force for change and I'm very proud that it has achieved so much over the last forty years, and only sorry so much still remains to be done before we can claim substantive equality for women in the UK and internationally,' she said.

ROW describes many of the established laws as 'man-made', and when asked what else there is to do for an organisation which has championed 'a bias against women in family law and in the social security system', Earle says the war is still not won on financial and legal independence for women.

'Women are still confined to low-paid, part-time work,' explains Earle, 'and the Equal Pay Act has not proved very successful in tackling the pay divide. Also, violence against women and girls is still horribly prevalent and we need more political will, I suppose, to really tackle that.'

Earle, a lawyer at the Equality and Human Rights Commission from 2009 to 2012, says that the message to anyone unaware of the project is that it reaches out to isolated, marginalised, often non-English-speaking women, and provides them with a path to a better future.

'Women are still silenced within the family and within society, and ROW helps to give them a voice and free them from often very oppressive circumstances.'

Earle continued: 'It's still quite focused, ROW, on family law, and there is a prevailing assumption that women have equality within marriage and within society, and actually that's very far from true. Many are still trapped in violent, abusive relationships, and when those relationships break down, women are literally left holding the baby with very little financial support - that it is still not uncommon and it's actually an age-old problem that persists and ROW does a huge amount of work to challenge and change that.'

ROW's current focus is on holding the government to account on their promise to make legal aid available to women affected by violence, ensuring safe outcomes for women in the family justice system, and increasing the protection available in the law for vulnerable migrant women.

To find out more about Rights of Women, visit rightsofwomen.org.uk or follow them on Twitter @rightsofwomen.

Laura Clenshaw is the managing editor of Solicitors Journal

@L_Clenshaw