International Women's Day

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton for instigating this centennial debate and for all her work on behalf of women over many decades, including her expert chairing of the Women’s National Commission, which I, too, had the privilege to chair between 1999 and 2002 before handing over to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser.

It is a very great shame that, as we celebrate 100 years of International Women’s Day, we also acknowledge the demise, in the past few months, of the Women’s National Commission, a body that has represented the entire women’s voluntary sector since the Wilson Government, and through all Governments until now. I have to say to the Minister, who I know takes her brief very seriously, that abolishing the WNC will be seen as short-sighted, not only in the years to come but now, with the Government’s current promotion of concepts such as the big society, which we know can work only if it is organised and driven by women.

In the course of 100 years, women’s lives in this country have changed out of all recognition. Hugely improved health and education systems, universal suffrage, access to family planning, and some control over economic independence through entry to the labour market, all add up to incredible progress. Yet before we become too self-congratulatory, we have only to look at the hard facts in any area of UK life to pull us up short. In the political arena, for instance, we see that, since women gained the vote, there have only ever been 32 female Cabinet Ministers—32, my Lords, in 82 years. I am proud that 21 of those were Labour Cabinet Ministers, and that former Cabinet Ministers are taking part in this debate, but the shortness of the list is derisory, spanning as it does two centuries.

In the world of work, women are still vulnerable, despite many advances. The present speed and scale of public sector cuts is not helping that vulnerability. The recent labour force survey finds that the cuts will lead to hundreds of thousands of job losses for women, as my noble friend Lady Morgan has said, because women form 53 per cent of the jobs in public sector services that have not been protected from the cuts. These are all held by women. It is clear that, despite the coalition’s expectation that,

“all sections of society who are able to contribute to deficit reduction should do so”,

women are bearing the brunt of the present cuts.

Finally, I briefly mention the world of the boardroom, as mentioned by several others this morning. I very much welcome the report of my noble friend Lord Davies of Abersoch, Women on Boards. It is a vital contribution to the debate on achieving more women in decision-making roles in our economy. Since the crash of 2008, a much wider pool of executive talent is needed more urgently than ever. As my noble friend points out, only 12.5 per cent of directors of FTSE 100 companies are presently women. This is not a statistic of which any of us can be proud. Does the Minister agree that companies and CEOs will take the problem of a lack of diversity on company boards seriously only if the spectre of legislation casts its shadow over them? Would she also give the House some idea of how the Government intend to respond to my noble friend’s 10 recommendations, especially as boards and chairmen are being asked to announce their goals in response to his report within the next six months?

This has so far been a positive, expert, useful and sparkling debate, with wonderful maiden speeches. If we ask ourselves how women have fared in the past 100 years, the reply of Mao Tse-Tung, when he was asked what the lessons of the French Revolution were, would suffice: “It is too soon to tell”.