Only by securing a place at the decision-making table can women challenge the status quo and fight for change On Equal Pay Day, the deputy leader of the Green Party speaks of the hope she has of reaching gender equality – and the obstacles

Hope. That is the feeling I had when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elected as the youngest woman ever to join Congress this week – representing a generation and a vision of change that is so desperately needed not just in America but here in the UK too, and across the world.

As a young woman in politics myself, I know how hard generations have fought to finally see the record number of women representatives elected in the US this week.

Yet this was a week which reminded me not only how much progress has been made, but how much work we still have to do. Because this milestone was reached in the same week that, closer to home, we hit Equal Pay Day – the day of the year after which women technically “work for free” until the end of the year.

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‘I ran, as Alexandria did, because no one was speaking out for the values and change I knew needed to be embedded in politics’

In 2014, I was elected as deputy leader of The Green Party of England and Wales at the age of 29 – the same age as Alexandria – to become the youngest woman in a leadership role in a political party in the UK.

I ran, as she did, because no one was speaking out for the values and change I knew needed to be embedded in politics. I wanted to represent a generation that has been repeatedly failed by politics and by politicians, and which, sadly but unsurprisingly, sees the current political and economic order as a failure as a result.

I still get asked if I’m the assistant

The reality of life as a young woman politician has at times been stark. After more than four years as deputy leader of the Green Party, I still regularly arrive at events to be asked: “Who’s assistant are you?” And I am still trying to forget the time someone patted me on the head after a speech I gave on re-election in 2016.

‘I am still trying to forget the time someone patted me on the head after a speech I gave on re-election in 2016’

Too often I have seen women’s voices – particularly young women’s voices – shut out. During the 2015 General Election, I joined a Channel 4 news panel where Jon Snow asked why there were so few young people and women in the Commons.

As the only woman on the panel, and almost certainly the youngest, I felt like this was my question. Yet Snow asked two men on the panel to answer before moving on to another question. I was furious – not least because I know it is these experiences which make politics seem inaccessible to young people and women.

Roadmap for change

When working to tackle problems unique to a generation or gender, it is essential the voices of those people are part of the roadmap for change. Yet the political class is reinforcing an inter-generational divide. People under 30 are nearly 30 per cent less likely to be a homeowner than a baby boomer, and young people still don’t receive equal pay for equal work.

Meanwhile, young people and women are set to be on the sharp end of the two greatest challenges we face: Brexit and climate change.

EU laws expanded the right to equal pay and strengthened working rights for mothers, and yet women were underrepresented in the referendum campaign and are still underrepresented in Parliament. While climate change is set to have the greatest effect on the world’s poorest people – the majority of whom are women.

Seeing Alexandria and so many other young women join Congress this week was a timely reminder of why we cannot become overwhelmed by these challenges. The experience of young women are immensely different to the majority of policy makers, here in the UK and in the US and around the world. Alexandria’s election feels like a cusp of vital change. Because it is only by securing a place at the decision-making table that we can challenge the status quo and fight for the desperate change this country and this world needs.

Amelia Womack is deputy leader of the Green Party