Women: Contribution to Economic Life

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking everyone who has spoken for a fascinating and invigorating debate. We also listened to an excellent maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo of Southwark.

While other noble Lords were listening to the interesting speech to Parliament of Angela Merkel—another of our icons—I was at a reception at Clarence House given for WOW by the Duchess of Cornwall at the start of the 2014 Women of the World festival, being held this year at London’s South Bank. One of those present was Nimco Ali, an FGM victim, and many noble Lords will have seen her conversation with the Duchess reported in last Friday’s press. The Duchess has herself been appalled by this horrendous practice taking place in this country. Apparently, over time, some 66,000 girls have already been forced to have this illegal operation performed on them.

The good news is that, when combined with the strong views already expressed by your Lordships in today’s Question on FMG, the recent promise by Michael Gove to ensure that in future, schools, teachers and governors—all those responsible—will ensure that preventing FGM taking place on their pupils becomes a top priority. This should mean that this illegal practice will, at the very least, decrease considerably over the next few years.

I began begun my comments in this International Women’s Day debate with the example of FGM because if Britain can set an example here, after many years of brushing the issue under the carpet, it may indeed be a vital lead that other countries, too, may wish to follow—albeit perhaps not immediately in some cases. That is why I particularly want to congratulate the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, not just on securing this important debate today but on her success in broadening its title to include women’s contribution to economic life not just in the UK but worldwide.

Without doubt, one of the best initiatives was the Davies report, Women on Boards, published in February 2011. In 2010, when the noble Lord, Lord Davies, was asked to lead this strategy, women made up just 10.5% of board members on FTSE 100 companies, and 6.7% of those in FTSE 250 companies. Although, as the noble Lord himself says, there is obviously still a long way to go—not least, as other noble Lords have mentioned, because the vast majority of appointments were non-executive board members—by 2013, women accounted for 17.3% of board members at FTSE 100 companies, and 13.2% of board members of FTSE 250 companies. That represented an overall increase of 50%. The important route whereby this success is being achieved is for companies involved in this project to recruit and nurture female as well as male executive talent and ensure that they have adequate mentoring support en route to top-level jobs. The added requirement is that companies report yearly on the success of their policies, which then forms the basis of the yearly published progress report from the noble Lord, Lord Davies. It is that yearly basis that is so important. Thus everyone can see exactly what success is being achieved. My hope is that success here may well prove to be an incentive to other countries to follow—not necessarily by following an identical path but in ways that suit their particular circumstances.

Of course, earlier action in Britain is also needed to achieve our own targets, which again may prove to be a useful example for others to follow, not least during our children’s education. One such area is crucial—careers advice, which has been mentioned by many noble Lords. Sadly, a recent Ofsted report has indicated that considerable improvement is indeed needed here. Some time ago, in 1975, in my role as the first deputy chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission, one of my major concerns was the advice that girls were getting, which was limited to, for example, hairdressing and secretarial careers—the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, mentioned this area—rather than the wider careers advice that boys would get. I suspect that there is still more than an element of that attitude in the advice that girls are getting today. Certainly, for both sexes, careers advice should be based on the individual child’s abilities and aptitude. Equally, other aspects are important, too, such as what local job opportunities exist and the range of better-paid jobs that are needed in today’s environment. Within a school’s structure itself, one definite improvement would be to have more local employers appointed as school governors. Also, given that not all teachers are necessarily well informed about local job opportunities, visits to different kinds of businesses and employers should be part of every school’s curriculum.

The third and last issue that I want to address is flexible working, which has already been mentioned by other noble Lords. I emphasise that what is still needed here is for these opportunities to be available equally—I stress, equally—for men as for women. Again, this may be useful for other countries to consider. A much more active campaign is now needed for two important reasons. The first is because men are taking and enjoying a far more active role as fathers, which of course also means that mothers have greater freedom to return to work. The second reason is the new opportunities created by the amazing technological changes in communications, which has also been touched on in this debate. Nearly all jobs can now be organised flexibly. To illustrate the situation, if we need to get in touch with, say, a plumber, we all know that the person answering our phone call will almost certainly be living on another continent and using a mobile phone.

So if UK employers, large and small—and I suspect that the small employers are already among the most pioneering here—were to accept this changed situation, decide which were the very few roles that could not be worked flexibly and reorganise the rest on a flexible basis, not only would this better suit modern family lives but it would cut employers’ costs, as less office space would be needed, with much of the business done at home or on the move using mobile phones. It would be interesting to hear whether the Government have any plans to encourage this.

Again, I thank the Minister for introducing this debate. I very much look forward to listening to the remaining speeches and to hearing what gems we can expect from the Government in the future.