Women: Economic Empowerment

Baroness Rebuck Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rebuck (Lab)]

My Lords, as we approach the 104th International Women’s Day this weekend, I, like so many other speakers, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, for introducing this debate, which gives us an opportunity to reflect on how far women have progressed but also on how much more there is to achieve. There have been important strides towards greater equality and many of the opportunities that are taken for granted by young women today would scarcely have seemed possible for their grandmothers growing up in the last century. However, enormous issues of unfairness and inequality, most eloquently highlighted by my noble friend Lady Gould and others, are still there to be addressed, both here and around the world.

At the heart of my comments today is the belief that through achieving greater financial autonomy women are empowered. Education, improved literacy, decent work and an independent income give women the freedom to make choices, support their families and realise their potential. But women also need the role models, the aspiration and the confidence to take up these opportunities. This is crucial to the health of our society. One of the most effective ways to tackle childhood poverty is to support women into well paid work and, for a vibrant, innovative and successful economy, we need as many women in leadership roles as there are men. This is not opinion but fact, based on several close studies of the performance of mixed-gender teams.

Many speakers today have referred to the excellent work of my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and we can certainly celebrate the fact that in 2014 women made up 23% of board non-execs in the FTSE 100—close, if you like, to the 25% target set for this year. However, if you look at the FTSE 250, where women account for only 17.7% of board directorships, there is still work to be done. There are still 24 all-male boards and although that number is down from the 131 all-male boards that existed in 2011, we should certainly think about extending our targets to this sector. But the real problem we face is in the executive pipeline for women. Yes, more women than ever work—over 14 million in total—but only a small percentage are running their own businesses. Why? Because as the noble Baroness, Lady Mobarik, has already said, women are half as likely as men to start their own firm, with the majority saying they do not feel they have the right skills or adequate access to capital.

In the workforce, three-quarters of chief executives and 69% of full-time directors are men. Those rates have not budged since 2003. Some 75% of female employees say that they face a glass ceiling, a career bottleneck and little opportunity for advancement. A recent US study showed that women entered their business careers with the wind in their sails, expecting to achieve the same career advancement as men, but over time lost confidence in their ability to contest managerial positions and simply stopped trying. This may be one reason why a particular article caught my eye in the New York Times. Did your Lordships know that there are more men called John than women running America’s largest companies? I kid you not.

Back in the UK, women on average earn 20% less than men. They bear the main burden of child-rearing and caring for elderly parents. But while, as we have heard, the pay gap has almost disappeared for young women working full-time, there is a much bigger pay gap for women in their 40s and older. This suggests that some employers are inflicting a “motherhood penalty”, as Claire Enders describes it in her Women at Work report. We have heard about this from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, who will no doubt agree with me. Put bluntly, it appears that professional women of a certain age are simply sidelined. Next Wednesday we will have a opportunity to try to help close the gender pay gap by supporting an amendment to the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill to ask larger businesses to publish differences between men’s and women’s pay.

There is also another factor at play for women—I call it an aspirational gap—with too few successful role models to learn and gain confidence from. This is also true globally, where more than 126 million women entrepreneurs were running businesses in 67 economies in 2012. While many of those businesses were small and started out of necessity, in every single economy women reported worse perceptions of their own abilities than men and a greater fear of failure, which means that support networks and mentoring are as important globally as they are in the UK, and on a par with access to seed funding.

I was fortunate to pursue my career in book publishing, an industry that pioneered promoting women to top positions. My generation felt that they did break through a glass ceiling, often propelled by the memory of growing up with their mothers’ thwarted ambitions. But recently publishing has been wondering why all the senior women who have retired or left the industry have been replaced by men. With women very well represented on boards and at divisional level, why are they no longer the CEOs?

Corporations have to consider what structural and cultural barriers are still preventing women from reaching the top and what training and help need to be put in place—beyond targets—to achieve a fair and dynamic spread of talents. When I became CEO in 1991, it was common for women to feign illness when a family matter interrupted work. But what better excuse than a child’s event at school? A meeting can be rescheduled, a childhood cannot. Businesses simply have to become more flexible, both practically and in terms of attitude, in order to benefit both parents. I have mentored several young women in the media. They were all stunningly gifted and ambitious but after the first 20 minutes of discussing their professional situation, the conversation always turned to work-life balance and how on earth they would cope. So it is right that we reflect on the availability of good childcare, company culture and lack of flexibility.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, I am influenced by Sheryl Sandberg, whose book Lean In I published in the UK exactly two years ago. Sheryl identifies aspiration and confidence as pivotal qualities for women and the extent to which sometimes women’s awareness of the career pitfalls ahead leads them unconsciously to limit their ambition. When I speak to young women in schools, confidence comes up time and again. These students are intelligent and feisty but the world of executive achievement is often as distant from their reality as a show they might watch on television. One initiative that has been beneficial to young women was pioneered at the Women of the World festival at the South Bank, which takes place again this weekend. We have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, how important this event is and how grateful we are that BBC “Woman’s Hour” is now recording it. The initiative is called speed mentoring, where young women discuss problems with their mentors in 10-minute intervals, to really astonishing success.

We also have to recognise that while some women are struggling to climb up the ladder, others are fighting to get on it at all. It is a particular problem for low-skilled women, where lack of confidence and education relegates them to low-paid work. The rising cost of childcare also prohibits them from working, even when work is available. For example, the cost of nursery places has gone up a staggering 30% since 2010. One important reason for low aspirations and lack of confidence is poor literacy. A woman who can read confidently can find a better job, keep records and complete a training course. She can help her children with their homework and learn how to protect her health. Whether in the UK or internationally, there is precious little opportunity to escape poverty without the ability to comprehend the written word.

As we heard earlier from the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, of the 781 million adults globally who cannot read, two-thirds are women. But an educated girl will contribute 90% of her income to her family, compared to 40% from men, and will be more likely to insist on her own daughter’s education. The charity Plan points out that one extra year of girls’ education boosts wages by 20% and, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Nye, reduces infant mortality by the same amount. Yet global education on its own will not solve all women’s economic challenges. A UN report showed that unemployment rates among university-educated women in Turkey were three times higher than among similarly educated men; in Saudi Arabia, they were eight times higher. Education and literacy are crucial for women but they cannot compensate alone for discriminatory attitudes.

As we look forward to celebrating International Women’s Day, let us remember how much more there is to do in terms of both legislation and attitude. If we do, women will be a transformative force in the world. I will leave your Lordships with the words of 15 year- old Priya, speaking to the charity Plan, which powerfully express women’s potential. She says:

“Because I am a girl, every man in the corporate world puts a glass ceiling over my head. But because I am a girl, I have the power to shatter it”.