International Women's Day

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, first, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lady Gould for initiating this debate and for her tireless work for women over many years.

The theme of this year's Commission on the Status of Women that is currently taking place at the UN is:

“Access and participation of women and girls to education, training, science and technology, including for the promotion of women's equal access to full employment and decent work”.

That seems like a good starting point for today's debate in terms of how the UK is measuring up to those goals.

Overall, the past decade has been a great success story for girls in education. They do better than boys at basic standards of literacy and numeracy at age 11 and are leaving boys behind in terms of their attainment at GCSE and A-levels. In addition, in 2008-09, for the first time, more than 50 per cent of young women entered higher education, compared to only 40 per cent of young men. However, behind those statistics are some major causes for concern, because, in the UK, women continue to be underrepresented on courses for physical science, technologies, mathematical and computer science and engineering. In fact, in some areas, we are going backwards. For example, five years ago, 24 per cent of computer science students were women, whereas now the figure is only 19 per cent. Meanwhile, women increasingly dominate more traditional female subjects such as teacher training, where they now make up 76 per cent of students and where 85 per cent of primary school teachers are now female, and nursing and nutrition, where women make up 82 per cent of students. Women are also overrepresented in arts and humanities degrees.

I have talked a lot about students, but these same issues run throughout the education system. A recent report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which looked at the career aspirations of 14 to 18 year-olds, found that the top three jobs that girls believe that they would be working in were teaching, childcare and beauty. At a time when we have much to celebrate about women's success in education, there are also considerable concerns about the subject choices that they make and the consequences for their future careers. Of course, there are numerous reasons why girls make those choices. Parental aspiration and peer pressure clearly play a role, as do the media and celebrity portrayals, but in terms of practical politics, there are things that the Government could be doing now to open up new opportunities for girls at school. I have time for just a few examples.

First, there is evidence that career and subject advice in schools continues to stereotype pupil choices and needs to broaden the offer, both academically and vocationally. Secondly, more needs to be done to encourage young men to become primary school teachers. That could help develop alternative role models and perhaps facilitate better teaching of science and technology at that early age. Thirdly, a programme to raise the educational attainment of working-class girls should be introduced to help to break the cycle of early motherhood, low parental skills, low family income and high unemployment. Fourthly, the Government should rethink their plans to abolish coursework and re-emphasise exams at GCSE level, as that will disadvantage girls and measure a very narrow set of skills. Finally, the Government should reassess their priorities for funding higher education to ensure that our arts, humanities and social sciences retain their rightful place in the spectrum of courses on offer and at which, currently, women excel.

The Commission on the Status of Women has set us a challenge. It is an issue on which the UK should be leading the world. Let us hope that we can continue to make progress in broadening opportunities for women and not have to look back at the past 20 years as a high point of women's educational achievement.