Comment: ‘Offering cheaper rent to women treats the symptom, not the cause, but at least it’s action’

Happy International Women’s Day — at least to anyone who doesn’t think that ‘Woman has job!’ is an interesting subject for an email at this time of year.

I want to greet the day with unbridled positivity. After all, schemes such as White Arkitekter’s work with girls to redesign public spaces to feel more safe and welcoming, are worth celebrating.

But for every promising corner I turn, I crash into a big, fat barricade, among the biggest and fattest the enduring gender pay gap.

London is expensive — for women and men — but this most affects the worst paid, which women statistically are across pay grades, career levels and life stages.

This means they spend more of their salaries on rent, making it harder to save a deposit, while lower incomes reduce the mortgage women might be offered.

The London Assembly Housing Committee has suggested women in ‘affordable’ housing should be charged less rent than their male neighbours.

Some people have called this patronising. I’m not so sure.

We’ve been talking about a gender pay gap for decades and seen little tangible change.

Maybe it’s time for those with other means to mitigate the problem at their disposal to use them.

My main issue with this initiative is that it is restricted to gender. Why not extend the thinking to race, class, disability and so on?

In fact, why not means test all housing so that everyone spends the same proportion of their income on a home?

I’d certainly be up for a rent reduction.