Soaring childcare costs, mums missing out on promotions and a distinct lack of women in Westminster...

Professor PamCox believes it’s time things changed.

Professor Cox, University of Essex lecturer and TV presenter, says women are too quick to blame themselves for the stresses that come with work.

“Women take on the pressures of childcare costs and juggling work and children as their own personal guilt. Actually, we should be angry about how the labour market is run,” she says.

“The cost of childcare is outstripping any rise in wages and it is becoming untenable.

Also, employees are not flexible when it comes to working hours. If you work in a supermarket youmight have flexible hours, but you are paid a low wage.”

Professor Cox researched working women in history for her latest BBC Two series, Shopgirls: The True Story Behind the Counter and Servants.

After the show, she extended her research to cover the lives of women today.

She says: “I couldn’t touch on the modernday labour market in the history programme, so I carried on my work after the show had finished.”

She was particularly struck with a period in time during the Seventies when a group of female trade unionists, members of the Trades Council and civil servants put together a Working Women’s Charter.

They came up with a list of ten key demands to change the lives of working women, including equal pay, free childcare and more women in public and political life.

Professor Cox will be giving a talk at the Forum in Southend today on her series, Shopgirls, and the charter, as well as a lecture at the University of Essex’s Colchester Campus for International Women’s Day.

Although life for women in the Seventies was worse in many respects, there was still a sense of optimism for the future.

Professor Cox says: “Things were very different in the Seventies. For instance, women could not get a mortgage without some sort of male guarantor and there were not the same opportunities.

“However, there was a sense of hope that things could change and women were not afraid to ask for change. They wanted free childcare, whereas as today we would think it was unrealistic to even ask for that. But why not?

There were state-run nurseries during the Second WorldWar – why couldn’t we have that again?”

Unfortunately, the impact of the Working Women’s Charter was lessened, because the TUC rejected it at a conference in 1975.

Pam says: “They didn’t want to back minimum wage for women as a way to secure equal pay or entangle in reproductive rights.

“Looking at the charter today, I would say four out of ten of the demands can be ticked off – equal access to education and training, equal legal rights, free contraception and abortion, and increased family allowances. The rest still need work.”

Growing up in Southend, Pam saw her mum Maureen work full time and study as a mature student. She says: “My mother was lucky enough to have her mother living with us, who could take on childcare. When I came to have my own children, who are now 10 and 12, I was paying around £20,000 in childcare a year.

“It is not as though nursery workers are getting this money. They are on a low wage and they probably cannot afford to use the service for their own children.”

With a general election on the horizon, Professor Cox advises women to let their ballot paper do the talking.

Professor Cox says: “The main political parties will be competing for our votes.

Often it is the swing vote of women that decides the election, so I think women should vote for their interests. Which of the parties will deliver a platform that will allow women to do better?”

Is there a political party that she thinks will push for women’s rights?

“Labour has the pink bus initiative which is geared towards women and they are pushing the Equal Pay Bill and for gender pay transparency where companies will have to be open about pay grades and how much people earn.”

What points would Pam add to an updated Working Women’s Charter for 2015?

She says: “The gender pay gap is an issue and even with lecturers there is a different scale of pay and you will find possibly that women are more concentrated towards the bottom.

“Also women want equal opportunities regardless of parental, rather than marital status. Many women feel they can’t progress as they would like after they have children.”

It seems we are getting a raw deal compared to other countries. According to Price Waterhouse Cooper’s Women in Work Index, in 2013 the UK ranked 18 out of 27 countries for things like the gender pay gap and the number of women in work.

Pam says: “You might expect the UK to come out on top but it didn’t. Less than a quarter of MPs and less than one fifth of peers are women, a century after women got the vote, and in local government one third of councillors and just 10 per cent of council leaders are women.”