International Women’s Day

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jolly (LD) [V]]

I have a confession to make: until I came to this place I had never heard of International Women’s Day, but I am now happy to celebrate it each year none the less. Our decisions are based on our experiences, and I want to discuss this issue from a personal perspective. I went to a girls’ grammar school in the Midlands, where most of my teachers were women. I did A-levels in maths and physics and wanted to be an engineer. My teachers were hugely supportive, and it was only last year that I learned that many of them were at Bletchley Park. I was the first in our family to go to university.

After my degree I decided to get a job in engineering, but with a new mortgage there were only so many times I could take, “We do not employ women”, so I trained to teach maths and the new subject of the time, computer studies. After children and a move to Cornwall, I was appointed as a non-executive director of an NHS trust, and I never looked back. I was empowered in one teaching job by a head teacher, a man, who accepted without question my recommendation that we bought 15 mini-computers, which was a huge chunk of his budget at that time, and by another head teacher, a woman, who regularly posted in my pigeon hole ads that she had cut out of the Times Educational Supplement, which was her way of ensuring that we looked to move on. These were all the nudges I needed as a self-starter, and several jobs in the not-for-profit sector later I find myself here.

So how do we best support those who need more than a nudge? I am a great believer in networks, formal and informal. Inviting a young woman where you work to a networking meeting could be all she needs to give herself confidence. With envy, I watch my children, who, thanks to social and professional online networks, have worldwide contacts. Since Covid, as I am briefed via meetings by hugely bright up-and-coming female civil servants sitting in their homes with a laptop on a table, I wonder how I could have coped juggling a job and home-teaching in lockdown. I hope that they keep their contacts as they move from job to job. LinkedIn and similar databases have really taken off in the pandemic, and I know that many young women have found work just that way.

What have we learned from the epidemic about empowering women? What could we do better in the future? We could accommodate flexible working and working from home. We could promote online and in-person networks. We could give start-up grants to female online business and work networks. We could put more women in the boardroom. We need to look at examples from elsewhere—who does it better? We could give young women who are jobseeking a mentor and pay them the same as men doing the same job.

What makes a woman come across as empowered? A sense of self-confidence; holding her own in any situation or in front of any audience; knowing what she is about and what she wants, and doing what she can to achieve it; being approachable and personable; having a presence. We all know that she probably did not get there on her own—behind her was a mentor or two who pointed her in the right direction. I know I valued those who pointed me there, shared a few home truths and watched from afar. I try to do for others what they did for me.