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Yvette Cooper, Shadow Home Secretary and Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities in a speech to Labour Women’s Conference in Brighton said:

Welcome to Labour women’s conference. Bigger and better than ever.

When Harriet started the Saturday conference 3 years ago, 300 women joined us in Manchester town hall. Two years ago it was 400, last year it was 600, this year 1,000 Labour women have registered and will join us at different times today.

Now we have 87 women MPs, over 2000 women councillors, women leading the Labour Lords, Labour in the Scottish Parliament and our MEPs.

50% of our target seats have talented women candidates.

And of course our own fabulous Frances O’Grady as first woman General Secretary of the TUC.

Ed Miliband’s commitment to supporting and promoting women means nearly half the Shadow Cabinet are women now – many joining us in the course of this afternoon. Women campaigning on issues from energy rip-offs to food banks, from bus fares to social care.

In our Women and Equalities team too the excellent Kate Green, Glenys Thornton and Seema Malhotra, working with Fiona MacTaggart as Chair of the Women’s PLP.

And of course special tribute to the woman who when she was first elected 32 years ago was laughed at when she asked a question in Parliament about childcare. Now everyone’s talking about child care. Thanks to our Deputy Leader Harriet Harman.

It is a good year to reflect on how far we have come.

2013, the centenary of the death of a suffragette – Emily Davison killed under the King’s horse as she protested for women’s right to vote.

Well you know something must have changed when even the Sun Newspaper decides it needs to commemorate the Emily Davison centenary with a double page spread celebration of women’s equality.

Well, almost.

The headline was promising. It said, “I’m a Feminist because…”

Yes, they were prepared to use the F word.

The seven people underneath for some reason were waving underwear.

In the middle its Glamour Model Nicole – who is so feminist she forgot to put her clothes on at all. She says, “I feel so proud to be a Page 3 girl – it has given me so much body confidence which so many girls in today’s society are lacking.”

I’m not sure they really got the point.

Frankly it’s about time the Sun Newspaper moved into the 21st century and ditched page 3.

But we have come a long way in a century:
The right to vote
Family Allowance – independent income for women caring for children for the first time
Legalising abortion
Equal pay act – steered through by Barbara Castle thanks to the campaign by the Dagenham women and the trade union movement

And remember the changes the last Labour Government made too:
Doubling the number of child care places
3,500 Sure Start centres
Equal rights for part time workers
65% drop in domestic violence incidence
Free breast cancer screening
Equal state pension rights for women
Doubling the level of maternity pay
2 million children lifted out of poverty – and their mothers too

As recently as the 1990s women didn’t have equality within marriage – they had fewer grounds to pursue divorce, and could still be legally raped by their husbands.

Over 20 years on thanks to Labour votes in the House of Commons we finally have equal marriage so women can marry the women they love too

So yes, given generations of progress you could forgive us for expecting the long march to equality to keep going forward
 
That’s why women across Britain are now so angry that the clock is being turned back

Families across the country are facing a cost of living crisis

And women are being hardest hit of all.

Month after month, things have got harder not easier.

Month after month, prices have gone up faster than wages.

Of the £14bn David Cameron and Georg Osborne are raising from people’s pockets, £11bn of it is coming from women.

Women are being hit more than three times harder even though they earn less and own less than men.

According to Which?, a third of women surveyed say they run out of money before the end of the month
Energy bills, childcare, school uniforms, rent and rail fares. The costs keep rising but wages aren’t keeping up.
And it is getting easier to discriminate. A shocking 1 in 7 women lose their job on maternity leave – that’s 50,000 women every year.

And if they want to stand up for their rights? The Government is now charging them 9 weeks maternity pay to go to an employment tribunal.

The number of women in low paid jobs growing.

Unemployment among black and minority ethnic women twice the average rate.

1 in 5 women living below the poverty line.

And at the other end, fewer women in executive posts than before.

Older women are particularly badly affected too.

The increase in unemployment among women over 50 since the election has been a shocking 41% - compared to 6% among older men.

So little wonder then that women of all ages, all backgrounds have told Mumsnet’s survey they are fed up with the Government.

David Cameron seems surprised that he has such a problem with women.

Yet look at his policies, and look at his approach
No women in any of the top economic posts: no women Treasury Ministers, no women on the Monetary Policy Committee.

In David Cameron’s last reshuffle he sacked 0% of the men and 60% of the women in his cabinet – and there are fewer women in the cabinet as a result.

And when women get angry?
He tells us we need to “calm down”.
Tells us we’re just “frustrated”.
Can’t we all just chillax?

This is the man who said there hadn’t been a British Wimbledon singles champion for 77 years – conveniently writing out of history Virginia Wade.

We’re all just a bit invisible to this Prime Minister.

As for the Lib Dems – they certainly don’t see women in Westminster because they’ve hardly got any women in Westminster at all.

But now – only when they see the polling evidence – does it seem the Tories and Liberal Democrats are getting worried about women.

We warned them from the start they were hitting women hardest in the pockets

Now they are only waking up when they fear being hit in the ballot box.

The Lib Dems have been provoked into their usual response
Shameless opportunism and another U-turn.

I am glad they have now embraced our calls for free school meals.

But we don’t forget that they cancelled our pilots, cancelled our plans for extension, campaigned against them in Southwark and abolished them in Hull.

Nor do we or women across the country forget that the £600m help follows £7bn cuts in tax credits, child benefit and other support thanks to the Lib Dems in Government.

Look at the Tories response.

We’re told it will be £600m for married couples allowance.

Paid to a man on his third wife, but not to the ex-wife he left behind looking after the children.

Paid to the man with the ring on his finger, but not to the widow or the single parent working hard to make ends meet. But £150 follows £4,000 a year cut from one earner families by George Osborne’s policies.

And of course they are paying it to men –
The House of Commons library analysis shows in five out of six families it will be paid to men –
So it won’t compensate the stay at home mothers who have lost child benefit, child tax credit or maternity pay.

That’s Tories for you. They think the best way to win back the women’s votes is to stigmatise single parents, and to take money from the purse and put a little bit back in the wallet.

They are out of date, out of touch and its time they should think again

That’s why we need an alternative approach.
We need an economy that works for working people.
That works for working women.
And that works for caring women too.
Action on the living wage.
A new 10p rate – a tax cut for ordinary people – paid for by a mansion tax
Action on zero hours contracts
And abolishing the hated bedroom tax too
And support for women’s equality too.

40 years after the Equal Pay Act it is a disgrace that women are still paid less than men for similar jobs.

Its time big companies started to publish how much they really pay women and men. And if we don’t see progress, we will enact the legislation that the Tories ditched to require it.

We want to see more women on boards and in senior positions.

More help for women starting their own business to get access to finance

But we also need more support for families.

For Labour that doesn’t mean turning the clock back, penalising second earners, or only helping some married couples.

Nor does it mean expecting women to change and live men’s lives.

It means choice for parents.

Our vision means changing the way the economy and society work – to better recognise working and caring, and by making it easier for parents themselves to work out how to manage.

It’s about dads as well as mums. Grandparents too. Supporting families. Supporting work. And boosting our economy as well.

Motherhood is a wonderful thing – so we cannot let it be the source for decades of inequality in women’s lives.
That’s why we will strengthen the law to stop maternity discrimination.

Why we need to do more to help fathers take time off, and more to help mothers or fathers who do take time out return to work later on.

Especially when children are young, we know parents need choices. Many want to stay home and care for their children when they are very small. And they shouldn’t be penalised for it for the rest of their lives if they do. Many women want to work, many want to work part-time, and many want to see fathers being able to take time off or share care too.
Families don’t have those choices they’ve been hit so hard by the Tories and Liberal Democrats policies. And parents who want to stay home are struggling too with the abolition of the baby tax credit, while maternity pay, child tax credit and child benefit are all squeezed too.

Sure start has been cut. Early years funding slashed. Child care costs are soaring while child care tax credit has been hit.

Our priority when the children are smallest must be to support families so they can afford to choose.
And as our children grow we need to make it easier for parents to combine work and family life. That means affordable child care.

For the last three years, women’s conference has made clear that child care is top of our agenda. And it must be top of the list for the manifesto too.

Which is why Ed Milliband will set out later our plans to make sure child care is available for all primary school children starting at 8 in the morning and until 6pm.
Because we know most jobs don’t fit neatly with school hours. And we know parents with early starts, or commutes to work need child care they can rely on.

Child care is now as vital to our economic infrastructure as transport, housing or IT.

It’s not all about bricks, trains and cars and boys toys. In the modern economy, half the workforce are women. And child care is the vital economic infrastructure that helps women and all parents work.

And we don’t forget that work still needs to change too.
It shouldn’t be so hard for parents and especially mums who’ve taken time out to get back into good quality work later on to find flexible work that fits in with school hours.

Why is it so hard to get promoted if you are working part time, or to get promoted in your fifties because you took time out and didn’t get a senior post a decade or so before?
Because that discrimination, and failure to use and hold on to women in the labour market isn’t just while they are pregnant, it stretches throughout women’s working lives
Family pressures aren’t just about school age children.
One in seven working people have caring responsibilities to older relatives too.

Older women provide more unpaid care than anyone else, increasingly relied upon by sons and daughters to supplement ever less affordable childcare and often caring for a sick partner or elderly parents as well.
That’s why Harriet Harman leading our commission on older women which today publishes its interim report
Tackling the double discrimination of ageism and sexism
And making it easier for a new generation of older women to balance work and family life
Because the generation of women who’ve broken glass ceilings and paved the way for their daughters and granddaughters deserve a better deal.

But we also know that women’s equality is not just about the economy, not just about women’s role in the workplace or role in the family.

It’s also about attitudes and women’s role in society too.
And at its worst its about hostility, harassment and violence that destroys lives.

Yet just at a time when we should be doing more to tackle violence against women, I worry again that the clock is being turned back.

Our Women’s Safety Commission found that cuts of 31% to funding for refuges and specialist advice.

The number of domestic violence incidents reported to the police is going up. Yet less and less is being done to help

Since 20% police cuts started, 13% fewer domestic violence cases and 33% fewer rape cases have been referred to the prosecution – even though reported cases are going up.

Two women a week still die at the hands of a partner or ex

If there was this level of violence and murder at football matches it would be a national scandal, there would be Government taskforces, new laws and standards to meet.
There should be on violence against women and girls too
It’s time for Theresa May to get her act together and do something about it.

Even in opposition we can make changes.

We’ll hear later about the work Vera Baird is doing as Labour Police and Crime Commisioner in Northumbria.
And we should pay tribute to the work Jan Royall did in the Lords to change the law on stalking too

Conference it was only two years ago here in Brighton that our party pledged to push for a new law against stalking.
We’d heard from women like Sam Taylor who lives here in Brighton and is with us today.

Sam’s former partner tried to kill her. He was arrested and released on bail. From then on he stalked her relentlessly. Appearing outside her house, at the end of her garden. He tried to steal her life.

But Sam was stronger.

She campaigned tirelessly alongside other remarkable women for stronger laws, and I’m proud that Jan Royall and Labour Lords forced the Government to accept it
But we need to go further. Laws alone won’t keep women safe
We need national standards for the training of police and criminal justice professionals and the provision of specialist services, driven by a new Commissioner for domestic and sexual violence and women’s safety – following the example set by the Welsh Labour Government.

And we also need to do more to prevent violence and harassment in the first place.

There is too much evidence of growing violence among teenage relationships.

That’s why it is so appalling that the Government is continuing to block compulsory, updated sex and relationship education in schools.

This is the Labour Lords new campaign. They are laying amendments now to make sex and relationship education compulsory and to update the content for the 21st century so we tackle online safety and online exposure to pornography too.

And conference we will be campaigning behind them every step of the way to get the proper education our young people need.

Preventing violence and abuse means changing attitudes more widely too.

As we’ve seen from the rise of new feminism, a new generation of women are fed up and fighting back
The fantastic work done by @everydaysexism UK Feminista, the Womens Room.

To give women a voice against harassment, discrimination and sexsim

The One Billion Rising campaign – women and men standing up together internationally against violence against women.

And we’ve seen the whole world rally round the remarkable Malala - shot for daring to argue that women should have the basic right of attending school.

But for all the strong campaigning, the need for us to stand together is stronger than ever.

Because those women who are speaking out are doing a fantastic job – but they are also being met with resistance and sometimes targeted with hatred too.

For daring to say a woman’s face should be on a banknote, Caroline Criado-Perez was bombarded with graphic, violent rape and death threats.

For daring to suggest facebook take down images of sexual violence so was Laura Bates.

And so was Stella Creasy, for daring to say that Twitter should act.

It’s not on.

As Caroline said in her blog, “Those images are with me for life, that hatred is in my soul… and I carry it with me everywhere”.

But she also said, “this is a matter of justice… a matter of standing up and saying no, and never letting up. It’s a matter of not being beaten …by rape threats,…by victim blaming.”

These women are standing up for women – and we need to stand with them too.

Some argue that the new feminism is not about politics.
But if we want stronger laws against maternity discrimination, stronger safeguards against domestic violence, more child care, we need the power of politics, the power of women and men standing together, and the power of Government too.

Others say its not about party politics because Tories say they are feminist now too.

But here’s the difference between us and the Tories:
In the end we believe in active politics and active Government to deliver social change.

They prefer laissez faire.

In the end the Tories concerns too often are rooted in social conservatism and in women playing traditional roles. Ours are rooted in equality.And we believe in supporting each other.

Winnie McLoughlin – one of the retired councillors in my constituency told me something important.
Winnie is 92 this year and she’s been a member of the Labour Party since the end of the second world war. Winnie became a councillor in 1955 – one of the first women anywhere in the coalfield communities.

I asked her why she went for it when so many people were opposed.

She said that Margaret Bonfield – Labour’s first woman cabinet minister in the post war government – came to Castleford. She held a meeting with local women and she urged them to join the Labour party and to get involved in politics.

So Winnie did. Because another woman encouraged her to do so and had confidence in her that she could.

Sheryl Sandford tells women to lean in.

I say women should lean out.

Women and men should lean out and reach a hand to other women to encourage them to go forward, encourage them to break new barriers, smash more glass ceilings, make the most of every opportunity and to stand together for women’s equality too.