Women and Girls: Employment Skills in the Developing World

Baroness Manzoor Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for securing this important debate. It is important that economic and social empowerment and labour rights, which are critical if women are ever to play as full a role in the labour force as men, are addressed.

Today I will talk about women’s and girls’ access to education and nutrition as the foundation from which they can develop crucial skills and knowledge for success in the workplace. The day a girl is born, she is already placed at a competitive disadvantage as regards her male counterparts. Discrimination and socially defined gender roles will narrow a girl’s opportunities from infancy, creating a knock-on effect throughout her life.

When a family living in poverty is faced with school fees, parents are far more likely to send their sons to school over their daughters. Daughters will also face a much higher burden of domestic chores. At present, some 31 million girls worldwide do not attend primary school. We all know that there is a strong link between early child development and success in later life. The rate of return on school fees for earning per additional year of schooling is 9.7%. Those girls may never even learn how to read or write—a huge lost potential.

I commend DfID’s considerable support for helping girls, and particularly marginalised girls, access education. Between 2010 and 2015, the department supported 5.3 million girls, but there is still a significant financing gap in education and it is often the girls who miss out. If we are to widen the employment opportunities available to women, DfID needs to focus on supporting the delivery of free, quality and inclusive education systems that address gender inequalities and do not leave children behind. Even if a girl manages to complete primary school, the barriers to accessing secondary education will multiply. As other noble Lords have mentioned, an adolescent girl’s education is too often cut short by forced marriage and early pregnancy.

The parallel problem of undernutrition, which hampers the physical and cognitive development of so many teenage girls, cannot be ignored. Good nutrition is essential for improving school retention and academic achievement. I visited India in a delegation with RESULTS UK last year. It is a country where more than half of all adolescent girls are anaemic and just under half are underweight. I saw at first hand how a lack of basic nutrition can undermine a girl’s chances of staying in education and developing skills for the future. An undernourished girl is more likely to experience pregnancy-related complications, causing serious health issues or even death. At the same time, early and frequent pregnancy will stunt and slow her growth and harm the health of the infant once born. Too many girls are trapped in a vicious cycle and locked out of the labour market before they even reach adulthood.

I understand that the department recognises the intersecting obstacles that girls face, but this needs to be reflected in the design and delivery of all its programmes if we are to address gender inequality. Although I am pleased with DfID’s commitment to improve the nutrition of 50 million people by 2020, I must emphasise the importance of integrating nutrition into health interventions—particularly sexual and reproductive health interventions. This would present a unique opportunity to reach the most marginalised girls and deliver a number of vital interventions that would significantly improve their health and development.

As I said, good nutrition and education set the stage for women’s economic and social empowerment. Girls who have access to school and healthcare will have more choices: the choice to complete education, the choice to have fewer children and the choice to pursue a wider range of employment opportunities.

But we are falling short. In most countries around the world, women earn between 60% and 75% less than men. Women are more likely to work in low-skilled, unpaid or informal employment. If we want to give women and girls the right employment skills, we need to address the gender disparities that affect a girl’s life from day one and aim to rectify them at every stage of her development. I would welcome the Minister saying how this is being achieved throughout our aid budget.