Role of Women in Public Life

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be part of this debate, in which across the Benches of the House we recall an historic event and remember some of the brave and foresighted women who made change happen.

Opposition to women’s suffrage came, of course, from all quarters. The Labour and trade union movement did not much like the idea because these women were upper class, posh, and most likely to side with the Tories if they came into the House. Equally, the concept of feminism was neither universally popular nor widely understood. Rebecca West is quoted as saying:

“I myself have never been able to find out precisely what Feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat”.


We have been there. Then there were those women who felt the whole argument had nothing much to do with them: women with no money, too many children and no independence. It is no wonder that people said at the time that the coming of electricity was a greater liberator than the suffrage.

However, the point of increased representation or participation in either Parliament or public life generally was about more than the numbers; it was to bring about change and to bring a different perspective to the debate, with different experiences being brought to the table. That was the high intention but change was a long time coming.

In the 1940s, women in the Transport and General Workers’ Union held a conference. The general secretary of the day, one Arthur Deakin, was asked why so few women were employed by the union to work as organisers. He replied that every woman had the same opportunity as every man to apply and to be brought forward for interview. Over 40 years later, when I was appointed to work as the national women’s secretary, the union had about 2 million members. There were 400 paid organisers, of whom four, including me, were women. So much for the equal chance. That was an in-your-face example of wishful thinking going nowhere.

When Bill Morris—my noble friend Lord Morris of Handsworth—became deputy general-secretary, he and I introduced a series of positive actions designed to get more women involved in the work of the union and instituted programmes which were important to women, such as the Full-Time Rights for Part-Time Workers campaign. Every region had to employ a women’s organiser and run women-only education and training programmes. These programmes were intended to get women on to the union ladder. After initial separation, they would then join the mixed programmes. “Separate to integrate”, we said.

That brings me to the situation today. As far as I can tell, all and any pieces of legislation or policy designed to improve the position of women in society have been introduced by various Labour Governments. My noble friend Lady Gale has already mentioned some areas of legislation, such as the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, and the Social Chapter was also brought in. It was a wonderful basket of initiatives designed to enable women to participate more fully in the world of work.

I cannot find any such initiatives which have been introduced by a Conservative Government, and therein lies the rub, because just like the situation I have described from all those years ago in the T&G, women’s lives will not improve as compared to those of men unless positive action is taken. In fact, the coalition Government of 2010 actually did away with programmes which were going very well at the time. The Women and Work Sector Pathways Initiative was a programme designed to improve women’s employment skills and was vigorously supported by employers, both financially and practically. It trained or retrained more than 25,000 women, enabling them to move up the ladder or move into work, but it was done away with in a swipe.

That initiative came out of the Women and Work Commission report, presented to the then Prime Minister in February 2004. All 40 of its recommendations were accepted by government and a general programme proceeded, including, for example, looking with employers at ways in which better-quality part-time work could be provided, training programmes, as I have mentioned, and initiatives in schools to get more girls into STEM subjects. I get slightly fed up with discussions on the gender pay gap when there is a pretty clear and well-trodden area of debate as to how to help eliminate it.

I cannot conclude my remarks without quickly mentioning all-women shortlists, which have already been referred to. These were another recognition that there comes a time when softly, softly is simply not enough to bring about the change that is required. However, we will not be defeated. Let us remember the words of Charlotte Whitton, who was the first woman mayor of Ottawa. She said:

“Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good”.


Then she said:

“Luckily, this is not difficult”.