Women's Equality Party wants to close the gender pay gap with a vagina purse

The Women’s Equality Party have released a hard-hitting campaign addressing gender inequality head on.

A purse in the shape of a vagina appears on posters throughout Liverpool ahead of the city’s mayoral elections.

“Women are being shortchanged by £23.7 billion. Close the gender pay gap in Liverpool,” the strap line reads.

The figure is said to be the amount lost every year in the northwest economy thanks to the pay gap between men and women. Men reportedly earn a fifth more than women in the UK overall.

Yesterday, the government announced a new initiative that will force thousands of companies to publish their salaries for men and women. Companies that employ 250 people or more will have to demonstrate if they have a gender pay gap by April 2018.

“For too long, politics in the city has been dominated by white men, who have done little or nothing to prioritise policies that will help women and families in the region,” Catherine Riley, head of communications at the WEP, said. “We’re in the race to change all that.”

Another poster by the party depicts the back of a battered woman with bruises reading May 4th: the date of the mayoral election.

The chief executive of the agency behind the domestic violence and pay gap campaigns, Melissa Robinson, said they were intended to bring “the brutal facts about inequality in Liverpool to life in a visually arresting way. It’s all about making people stand up and take notice because the more people understand the problem, the more they can be part of the solution.”

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