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Women of the Day sewing machinists Rose Boland, Eileen Pullen, Vera Sime, Gwen Davis and Sheila Douglass of Dagenham. You haven’t heard of them? Of course you have. They were the leaders of the 187 women who refused to work at Ford Dagenham in 1968 until they were granted equal recognition with men for the quality of their work. It’s their day because OTD in 1970 - a landmark day for women - the Equal Pay Act came into effect. It was triggered by the ‘Women Workers at Lords of Dagenham’. The Dagenham women were skilled sewing machinists making car seat covers but they were told that their jobs would be regraded as Category B (less skilled) instead of Category C (more skilled). To rub salt in the wound, they were also told they would be paid 15% less than their male co-workers in Category B. They downed tools, soon followed by their sister workers at Halewood. It was the first time that women workers had forced a stoppage at Ford, which very quickly ran out of car seat covers. No car seat covers, no cars. Production of 2,200 cars halted, causing the cancellation of export orders worth more than £8 million. The strike cost Ford £40m in all. Mass layoffs of men within a week loomed and the women came under heavy criticism from neighbours, but they were determined. “We are fighting a great fight: equal pay for women.” The Dagenham Women wrote to Prime Minister Harold Wilson saying they were sorry for the disruption to the men’s work “but more sorry for ourselves”, that this fight was for “not only us at Fords, but all women everywhere”. The impact nationally was so great that the Employment Secretary, Barbara Castle, invited Rose Boland and the other strike leaders to tea. That’s when Rose raised the issue of equal pay for the first time. Barbara Castle had been going on about it for years but on this occasion, she was acting as a peacemaker and instead of directly addressing a just cause for equal pay, she sidestepped the issue of regrading and negotiated a pay rate of 92% of the men’s pay to persuade them to return to work. She did give them a commitment to have their grading reviewed but in the event, a court of enquiry failed to find in their favour. It was another 16 years before the women of Ford Dagenham got the status of their jobs upgraded to semiskilled - even then, they had to strike again - but the Equal Pay genie was out of the bottle. Their action sparked a surge in women joining trade unions, the founding of a National Join Action Campaign Committee for Women’s Equal Rights, an “equal pay” demonstration in Trafalgar Square in 1969 and - most importantly - it paved the way for the 1970 Equal Pay Act. During the second reading of the bill, Shirley Summerskill, MP for Halifax, spoke of the Ford Dagenham women playing a "very significant part in the history of the struggle for equal pay". The Equal Pay Act in turn precipitated the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 which set up the Equal Opportunities Commission with a duty to promote equality of the sexes. That Act was repealed when the Equality Act 2010 came into force and the Equal Opportunities Commission was replaced by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. So it’s all over bar the shouting, right? Yes, that is a rhetorical question. Even so, I raise a glass to Rose, Eileen, Vera, Gwen, Sheila and the “Women Workers at Lords of Dagenham”.

Woman of the Day computer engineer Wanda Rutkiewicz born OTD 1943 in Lithuania to Polish parents, who conquered Everest and was the leader of several all-women mountain-climbing expeditions. She was the first woman to reach the summit of K2. Wanda considered herself to be Polish. Her family returned to Poland immediately after the end of WW2 but it was still a hazardous place to be. Her seven year old brother was killed after he and his friends found an unexploded bomb. A naturally gifted athlete who excelled at shotputting, the 18 year old Wanda was out riding her Junak motorcycle, the heaviest Polish motorcycle, when she ran out of fuel. A passing motorcyclist and his passenger, a keen mountaineer, stopped to help and that’s how she developed an interest in mountain climbing. It was apparent from the start that she had natural skills. She climbed efficiently and effortlessly. “I adored the physical movement, the fresh air, the camaraderie, and the excitement.” Soon after Wanda began mountain climbing, she was approached by the Polish secret service which recognised her natural talent and believed she could be of great use to the communist state. At that time, Poland was still under the control of Russia. However, mountain climbing is very much an individual endeavour at odds with communist collectivism. Moreover, once climbers were in the mountains, they could no longer be kept under constant surveillance. Many Polish climbers found the freedom from authoritarianism liberating and Wanda was no exception. Her strong personality and fiercely individualist worldview meant that surrendering herself to the will of a communist regime was out of the question. Her first expedition was to the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan but she found it “unpleasant due to her difficult relationships with the male climbers”. She was belittled by the male climbers who didn’t regard a woman as an equal. Wanda, “a difficult woman”, responded by being confrontational. It was a pattern that resulted in her becoming isolated from the climbing community. She decided the only way to do things was her way and began leading her own all-women expeditions. In 1978, she became the first European woman to reach the summit of Everest despite suffering from anaemia. She had to take injections of iron with her to keep her haemoglobin levels high enough to remain conscious during the final climb to the top. It was the same day that her fellow Pole, Karol Wojtyła, became Pope John Paul II. He said, "The good Lord wanted this - that we rise so high on the same day." Six years later, Wanda became the first woman to reach the summit of K2. In fact, she scaled eight of the world’s 14 eight-thousanders, mountains more than 8,000 metres above sea level, but still experienced incredible hostility and scepticism from male climbers. One publicly doubted whether she had really reached the top of Annapurna until video footage proved otherwise. Well, why not? Male climbers doubt each other all the time and demand proof, don’t they? In 1992, after successfully climbing Cho Oyu and Annapurna, two peaks on her list of fourteen, tragedy struck on Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, the third-highest mountain in the world. A fellow climber saw her huddled in a snow cave and tried to persuade her to return to base camp. Wanda refused. She had one last leg to climb and was determined to conquer Kanchenjunga. Wanda never returned to base camp and after a few days, she was declared dead at just 49. Did she make it to the summit? Her body was never found so we’ll never know but such was her determination and grit, I wouldn’t bet against it. “I never seek death, but I don’t mind the idea of dying on the mountains. It would be an easy death for me. After all that I’ve experienced, I’m familiar with it. And most of my friends are there in the mountains, waiting for me.”