Women: Representation and Empowerment

Baroness Drake Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, John Stuart Mill in response to the petition became the first MP to speak in favour of women’s suffrage in 1867, but the stereotypes and attitudes he identified as holding back equality still prevail today. He challenged those men who believed that politics are not women’s business and would distract them from their proper duties. He asserted:

“The ordinary occupations of most women are, and are likely to remain, principally domestic; but the notion that these occupations are incompatible with the keenest interest in national affairs … is as utterly futile as the apprehension, once sincerely entertained, that artisans would desert their workshops … if they were taught to read”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/5/1867; col. 820.]

But even in that radical assertion he acknowledged the persistence of women’s proper duties: domestic responsibilities and caring for children.

Labour’s introduction of the welfare state and the social security system improved the lives of millions, but it was supported by an assumption that the man was the bread winner and the role of married women in work was secondary to their domestic responsibilities. This principle was enunciated by Beveridge in his 1942 report, which stated:

“The attitude of the housewife to gainful employment outside the home … should not be the same as that of a single woman. She has other duties … Taken as a whole, the Plan for Social Security puts a premium on marriage, in place of penalising it … In the next thirty years housewives as mothers have vital work to do in ensuring the adequate continuance of the British race and of British ideals in the world”.

There was a harmony of view across male-dominated organisations. The TUC General Council commented in 1948:

“The home is one of the most important spheres for a woman worker … It would be doing a great injury to the life of the nation if women were persuaded or forced to neglect their domestic duties in order to enter industry”.

Closing his speech, Stuart Mill stated:

“Sir, before it is affirmed that women do not suffer in their interests, as women, by the denial of a vote, it should be considered whether women have no grievances; whether the laws, and those practices which laws can reach, are in every way as favourable to women as to men”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/5/1867; col. 826.]

It is to that theme that I turn and, in particular, to whether private pension policy is as favourable to women as to men. Because all the inequalities that many women face—in lower pay, occupational segregation, the carer’s penalty and more—are writ large when they come to retire and are too old to mitigate the effects.

The state pension was originally designed to provide for women through their husband’s entitlement. It did not cater for women’s lives as lower earners and carers. In the mid-1990s many thousands of women were living in pensioner poverty. It is still the case that two-thirds of pensioners living in relative poverty are women. The reforms to the state pension system introduced by the Labour Government in 2007 and accelerated by the coalition are designed to provide women, at last, with a pension in their own right, but there are still inefficiencies. Changes in the labour market mean that more women are in mini-jobs, zero and minimum guaranteed hours contracts and other casualised forms of employment, resulting in significant numbers being excluded from building up a state pension.

At the heart of the 2010 consensus on private pension reform was the principle that it must work for women, but recent private pension changes appear to have been, at best, gender-blind and, at worst, to discriminate against women. The coalition’s decision to raise the earnings trigger for auto-enrolment into a pension means that many more women are excluded. Of the 10 million workers eligible for automatic enrolment, 38% are women compared to 62% who are men; that is fewer than two in five. That reality made the Government freeze the earnings trigger until 2017, but hundreds of thousands of women remain excluded.

Government policy is focused on incentivising individual saving, but bread winner attitudes still influence women’s behaviour. The pay gap may have narrowed, but women are saving less into their pension pots than men across the income spectrum. Flat-rating the state pension increases the importance of the private pension pillar. Whereas the state pension can be adapted, in part to reflect carers’ needs and in part to reflect national insurance contributions, private pensions, with their closer link between contributions and entitlements, may magnify employment inequalities.

Caring is recognised as contributing to the overall economy and so is credited with pension entitlement in the state pension system, but not in the private system. The government consultation on pension tax relief has generated much heat, but any suggestion of a policy to provide carer credit into private pension pots for periods of family caring, most of which is done by women, attracts no consideration.

The Pensions Advisory Service—I declare an interest as a member of its board—gets nearly 190,000 contacts a year. It observes that in particular women face emotional and physical barriers that make it difficult for them to feel empowered to make informed choices and so achieve a good retirement income. What TPAS observed will be confirmed by a new survey, to be published tomorrow by the Fawcett Society, which will show the true impact of having children on the way women and men are treated at work. Many employers still believe that women become less committed to their job when they have children. Maternity discrimination has increased. The continuing motherhood penalty drives inequality and pushes many women and men into traditional male bread winner and female carer roles. The theme of International Women’s Day is the “pledge for parity” but without a greater shift in attitudes and more equal sharing of care we will not achieve equality at work or in retirement.

Finally, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for enabling what I believe will be a very rich debate.