International Women’s Day

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, listening to the range of subjects covered already, it is quite clear that there is no shortage of issues to do with achieving equal opportunities for women that we can debate today. I fear the road to achieving equal opportunities is a long one and will continue to provide ample material for speeches on International Women’s Day for many years to come, before the goals that we are all seeking are at last achieved to everyone’s satisfaction. I will confine my remarks to two issues: women at the top, which has been covered already today; and women in the penal system.

I will start with women at the top. Clearly, the 2011 report by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, Women on Boards, was a major step forward. It reflected what had become, at last, a cross-party agreement; that is, that percentage targets for female company board directors should be set and backed by compulsion if voluntary efforts continued to fail. For the FTSE 300 companies, this involved both targets and a requirement to set out detailed plans of how their percentage of women would be achieved. The aim for the FTSE 100 companies was to achieve a full 25% representation by the same date, 2015—but that is only 25%.

However, there has been significant progress. All-male FTSE 100 boards have fallen from 21% to 7%, as we have already heard. Without doubt, too, the annual published updates of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, on the progress of these companies will certainly keep things moving in the right direction. However, for this debate, it was helpful to hear from the Minister about the plans the Government have to ensure that a satisfactory supply of qualified women candidates are aware of, and trained for, these opportunities at appropriate earlier stages in their life. Education in their school years will of course be vital and relevant careers advice is absolutely essential. Girls’ interests and aptitudes need to be taken into account, but so do national and international employment trends and, more locally, the likelihood of job vacancies and remuneration levels.

It would be useful, too, to know what further action the Government are planning to take to encourage employers to allow men as well as women to work flexibly or part-time, thereby opening up more opportunities for women as well as men to continue their careers while their children are young.

However, we all know that the percentage of women at board level is not the whole story. It is also about those other areas where power exists, whether for good or evil, a subject we have heard rather too much about during the past few weeks. It is here that the Sex and Power 2013: Who Runs Britain? report, which has already been referred to, tells rather a different story about women at the top. We learn from that, as well as the figures we have already been given, that women have slipped from 33rd to 57th place in international power rankings since 2001. So it would be helpful to hear a little more about the plans and priorities the Government will be pursuing to help increase the percentage of women featured in all categories ranked in Sex and Power.

Turning to women in the penal system, I want to draw urgent attention to the continued neglect by our criminal justice system of women held behind bars. In the UK we imprison more women than almost any other western European country. Decades of research and reports testify to the disproportionate harm that this does to women themselves, their children, families and the wider community. Although women comprise just 5% of the prison population, they account for a third of all self-harm incidents in prison, and every year nearly 18,000 children are affected by the imprisonment of their mothers. Just think of the range of the ways in which they and their future lives are affected.

About 13,500 women are sent to prison every year. One in seven of these women are foreign national prisoners, and recent research has shown that many of these women have been trafficked into the country and coerced into offending. Many of them have been subjected to appalling abuse and multiple rapes but are too terrified to report these crimes. They also have little English. However, only a quarter of these women have been identified and are referred through the national mechanism for the help and support to which they are entitled as victims of trafficking.

Seventy per cent of women entering prison every year in the UK are on remand. Most of these women have committed non-violent and petty offences for which they will not ultimately receive a custodial sentence. Many are imprisoned for breach of a community order, meaning they are sent to prison, often for a very short period and often for not turning up to appointments because of childcare responsibilities.

Women’s offending is linked to underlying mental health problems and a history of child abuse and domestic violence. Thirty per cent of women in prison have had a previous psychiatric admission, while more than a third of those who are sent to prison have previously attempted suicide. These women need help to turn their lives around, not imprisonment in conditions that make it impossible for them to take responsibility and address the causes of their offending. I welcome the new programme from the Prison Reform Trust, supported by the Pilgrim Trust, to reduce women’s imprisonment, as well as excellent organisations such as Eden House and the ISIS women’s centre in Gloucester. I want to stress how important it is to bring all these schemes together and publicise them well so that everyone around the country will see them as ways forward.

Alas, I have to end on a less happy note. Your Lordships’ House was able to secure an amendment to the Crime and Courts Bill that would have ensured the necessary statutory requirement to provide community support and supervision services designed with the particular needs of women in mind. Sadly, I have to report that the amendment was struck out in Committee in another place. I only hope and pray that somehow the Government will see sense on this. It is time that all the hard work in this direction by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, which resulted in her report, is put into action. We have put this off for far too long.