Women: Economic Empowerment

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Baroness Jolly for introducing the debate so well and giving us the opportunity to hear some quite astonishing speeches.

I start by congratulating the five brave men who have spoken in the debate. What a pleasure it was to hear them. But sitting here, I have also been reflecting on what an astonishing collection of women we have heard from in the House today. These hugely high-achieving women have given us absolutely remarkable accounts of their thoughts and their lives. As I was listening to them, one thought suddenly came to me: let us suppose that instead of those of us who are here on these Benches, each one of us was replaced by our mother. How many of our mothers would have been able to have the opportunities to achieve the things that we have achieved? Yet it was their strength and their teaching that made us who we are.

I am very pleased to have an opportunity to speak in this debate. It will surprise no one that I would like to talk about the role of education in women’s empowerment. It is on the quality and reach of its education that the prosperity of every nation depends. I am very proud to be the person who ran one of the first two access courses for women into higher education nearly 50 years ago back in the 1960s. We have come a long way, have we not, from those days? Now, it is taken for granted that women attend university in equal numbers to men and in some cases more so. In those days, it was a very small proportion, as the noble Baroness has already said: 6%, I think it was, back then.

There is much to celebrate in what is happening today. We have come a long way and a great deal has been accomplished in recent years. I would like to talk about some of that good news in a moment, but I pause for a moment to pay tribute to the many splendid women who have fought the good fight for women and girls to be properly educated in times past and on whose shoulders we now stand. Without their courage and determination, we would not have seen the huge contribution that women today bring to the economy, about which we have heard much today. First, I think of London in 1848, when the famous pair, Miss Beale and Miss Buss—names to conjure with—started the Queen’s College school for girls.

In higher education, my own British hero is Emily Davies, the doughty woman who fought the 19th-century prejudice and chauvinism of Cambridge University to found Girton College, my happy home as an undergraduate many years ago. Emily believed that the equality she sought could be achieved only if no concessions were made on the grounds of gender. The girls who came to her fledgling college were to be admitted on the same criteria as the men and to take the same examinations and within the same timescale. Time and again, she was offered compromise to the demanding standards which men at the university had to meet. Time and again, she said no: no lower entry requirements, no longer timescale to reach final, no watered-down easier examinations. I am on Emily Davies’s side. I strongly believe that offering concessions to women because they are women, whether through quotas, targets or distorted shortlists, is not equality, and it perpetuates the myth that women are second class and can achieve only if they are given special treatment.

Around the world, as we have been hearing today, the struggle for women’s education is still being fought. We have been humbled by the courage of Malala in Afghanistan, seeking the benefit of equal access to education for girls at huge personal cost, and inspired by the work of women like Sheikha Mozah and Sheikha Sheikha bint Saif, who have pioneered good education for the girls and women of the Middle East.

So where do we stand in Britain today, and what have the current coalition’s policies brought about for girls and women in education? There is good news to report. If women are to take their full part in the economy of the future, it is essential that more of them achieve in the hard subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and other noble Lords have mentioned the importance of these subjects. I am therefore particularly pleased to see the rise in the number of girls in the STEM subjects. Since the Government introduced the EBacc, the number of girls taking science and maths at A-level has increased by no less that 12%, and the number taking maths and the separate sciences of physics and chemistry has steadily increased year on year since 2010.

This good news is part of the hugely successful increase in the overall number of pupils taking maths and science subjects at A-level: an increase of 13% in maths, 21% in further maths, 16% in physics, 17% in biology, 6% in chemistry. More girls than ever are taking A-level chemistry and physics, while at GCSE the number of girls taking chemistry, for example, has almost doubled since 2009 from over 37,000 to over 63,000. That is indeed good news. We have much reason to thank the former Secretary of State Michael Gove for his insistence on a broad, balanced and rigorous curriculum, which has brought about this much needed change. The young women who have achieved in this new range of tough subjects will be well equipped to take their part in a world economy that depends so much on technology and its supporting sciences.

But it is not only in academic achievements that the Government have succeeded in bringing girls into success, for themselves and for the national economy. Our economy will depend just as much on those qualified through apprenticeships as on those who go on to university. The little-recognised success of this Government in this field is tremendous. Since 2009-10, the number of female apprenticeships has increased by a magnificent 70%. Within those numbers, those starting apprenticeships in engineering and manufacturing has increased threefold. Here, my glass is half full. I rather think that my noble friend Lord Storey’s glass was half empty on these facts, but I rejoice in the good news that there is here. Indeed, it is particularly rewarding to note that in 2013-14, almost 53% of young people starting apprenticeships were female. I cannot adequately express the pleasure that I feel at this news. I feel immensely proud of the Government’s record in bringing real change in the ambitions and prospects of young women through apprenticeship training.

In the academic higher education route, the story is also encouraging. The number of UK women students entering universities here increased from more than 188,000 in 2010 to more than 197,000 in 2014, which is an increase of about 9,000. Adding the numbers from the rest of the EU and overseas, the number of women students entering British universities has increased by almost 20,000 since 2010. That is in spite of dire predictions that the increase in fees would drive down the number of women willing to pursue a university education.

It is also encouraging to look at the recent report on academic staff in universities by Amy Norton, senior HE policy adviser in the Higher Education Funding Council. Her report shows that women academics now make up almost 47% of full-time teaching and research staff. This has been increasing steadily in recent years, and has gone up to around 4,000 just in the last three years. At senior level, especially vice-chancellor level, however, the men still dominate. This is of particular sadness to me, as I was—I do not know whether I would say proud—pleased to be the first woman appointed executive vice-chancellor in the UK. I had hoped that after me the floodgates would open and there would be many more. It has not happened that way.

When we look at the place of women in the state school teaching force, however, we see that the picture is more mixed. At primary level, 81% of all primary teachers are female, and many carry leadership roles below the head. Of primary heads, 71% are female. At secondary level, the picture is much more stark. While 62% of all secondary teachers are female, only 32% of secondary heads are women. Women are still finding it difficult to scale the steep-sided pyramid. Perhaps the women of the future will right the imbalance that leaves so many talented and professionally skilled women who could contribute so much to the quality of our schools lacking the recognition that they should achieve.

In conclusion, I celebrate what this Government’s policies have achieved for girls and women in enabling and empowering them to take a full part in the economic future of this country. With more women skilled and fully equipped to play an even bigger role, I believe that the world of the future will be a better place.