Women: Contribution to Economic Life

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo, on an excellent and entertaining speech. He has moved from the Ministry of Sound to the Parliament of Speech. His speech adds to the many we have had and is an excellent addition.

It is always a great joy to take part in this annual debate as we are surrounded by noble Lords who have actually improved the lives of women in this country—whether that was last year or 10, 20, 30 or 40 years ago when they were active in the women’s movement. I would also mention the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Women’s National Commission, Ministers who have moved departments to be more women-friendly and Back-Benchers who have applied their specialisms to ensuring that women’s progress is an onward march.

I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for initiating this important debate to mark International Women’s Day. I will look specifically, and briefly, at the UK. The topic of women’s contribution to our economy might not seem overtly controversial, until we remember that only a few months ago we had the disgraceful episode of the Twitter trolls coming out from under their stones when it was suggested that women’s faces on bank notes might be a good idea. Anyone who suggests that women’s struggle for equality is now accepted in the UK has only to read about the experience of the victims of that Twitter episode to know that that is not the case.

The contribution of women to the economy is a story of some good news—we would be churlish not to admit the progress that we have all made—and quite a lot of not so good news. The good news is that women’s leadership role in the economy in terms of female directors of companies, which many noble Lords have mentioned, is at last growing, albeit from a very low base.

I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Davies of Abersoch for his report, which raised the bar for our expectations for women on boards. His proposal fell short of quotas—of which, I put my hand up, I am a big fan; I have seen what all-women shortlists and quotas have done to transform women’s activity in the Labour Party and, therefore, the Labour Government’s moves, measures and initiatives aimed at progressing women—but was that companies should achieve a target of 25% female membership of boards by 2015. In 2010 women made up only 12.5% of the members of corporate boards of FTSE 100 companies. Since the publication of my noble friend’s report, that has grown to 20.4%, an increase of 7.9% since 2010. He will for ever be an honorary sister.

However, before we get too excited, there are still all-male boards in the FTSE 100, hanging on by their fingertips, even if it is now down to only two. That is, of course, a nonsense. As Helen Cook, HR director of RBS, said recently, an increased gender balance on boards has become “a commercial imperative”, with boards with more women achieving “better financial results”. The Credit Suisse research report of 2012 found that over the previous six years stocks in companies with women on the board outperformed the stocks of companies with no women on the board. The study also found that the difference in share price was more marked after 2008—we all remember 2008—with stocks of companies with at least one woman on the board tending to perform better than male-only boards in markets where share prices were falling. It took an unprecedented worldwide economic crash to begin to convince men that women make economic sense.

Professional career paths and women’s tendency to produce children—shock, horror; hold the front page—continue to clash at some point in their lives, but there is at least some gradual but very good news coming from the boardroom floor. Have we finally moved on from the time when it is easier for a woman to become a bishop—or, in my religion, a cardinal—than a board director in a British company? Well, we shall see.

There is also some brighter news when it comes to female entrepreneurs. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills found that, in 2012, 19% of small and medium-sized enterprises were either run by women or had a management team that was more than 50% female. In 2010 only 14% of such businesses had a female majority leadership. However, much of the groundwork for that increase was laid in the actions and incentives of the previous Government in encouraging women to run their own businesses, and our party’s pledge is to back more women to start their own businesses in 2015 by cutting business rates.

I am grateful to the Federation of Small Businesses—it is not often I say that—for its timely briefing for this debate. Its figures drill down into different sectors where women are at the helm. We have heard about the retail sector. The federation tells us that nearly 50% of small firms established in the past two years in the retail, hotel, catering and leisure sectors are owned primarily by women. It also makes the important statement that it is vital to support female entrepreneurship, and that 150,000 additional start-ups would be created each year in the UK if women started businesses at the same rate as men. We will grow ourselves out of these times of austerity only if women’s contribution to the economy is recognised and encouraged in these ways.

When it comes to labour market activity, 67% of women are now active in the labour market. This is the highest figure since 1971 and is to be welcomed. On the higher education front, we see that women now constitute 60% of all new university graduands. That is not particularly new but represents a complete change from a generation ago when less than 40% of graduands were women. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked in his excellent speech, why do the executive positions in our professions, especially in science and engineering, not reflect the massive improvement in women’s skills over this generation?

There are so many encouraging signs for women in the economy but—a big but—the economic experience for millions of women across the UK has been far from positive. It is just not good enough that, according to ONS figures, women working full-time in the category “professional occupations” earn only 80% of what men in that category earn; in the category “director”, women earn only 75% of what men do; and in the category “skilled trades”, women also earn only 75% of what men do. This latest publication of figures from the ONS shows that there has been very little change in that gap since 2007. That is just not good enough. Of course, those figures only address women in full-time work. As we know, and have heard from many noble Lords in this debate, a larger percentage of women work in part-time jobs than is the case for men. Those jobs are often unstable, multiple and badly paid. In the last four or five years they have been on the increase.

My late mother’s long illness with dementia brought me close to the social care sector. My conclusion is that we need to respect the caring professions more than we do at present as a country. Some 1.5 million people, mostly women, are employed in the adult social care sector. Of those, 300,000 care workers are on zero-hours contracts and up to 220,000 do not earn the minimum wage. When we brought my mother home from hospital to die, her care assistants were the first on the scene. They dressed and soothed her bed sores with great love and attention, as if she had two more decades to live and not just two more days. Her eyes lit up when she saw them and they were there at her funeral. The status of caring, be it by family or care assistant, is an issue we have to grasp.

That comes to my noble friend Lady Prosser’s statement about the value of women’s work. We have to grasp that point if we are to be an economically credible country. It is not acceptable that women still struggle on in low-wage, temporary and insecure work. One in four women now earn less than the living wage. More women than ever before work in temporary jobs because they cannot find a permanent position. Women make up the majority of zero-hours contracts. Our aim must be to see women take their proper and rightful place in the economic future and prosperity of this country as we move away from the austerity of the last five years and into better times.