Oral Answers to Questions

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

3. What steps the Government are taking to increase gender equality in boardrooms in the (a) private and (b) public sector.

[The Minister for Women and Equalities (Elizabeth Truss)]

Women represent half of the population, and I believe that we are missing out on a huge amount of talent because we do not have enough women in senior positions. I commend the work of Helena Morrissey who has achieved fantastic results with the 30% Club.

[Carol Monaghan]

I do a lot of work with science and technology companies and there is still a struggle in many of them to get women into senior positions or get women in at all. We have been using the carrot for decades now to try to get more women into the boardroom; when are we going to start using the stick?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The hon. Lady talks about science and technology, and one of the big issues is the gap that we have in school education, with fewer girls going on to study maths and science later in their school careers and girls losing confidence earlier on in their school careers. The way for us to tackle that it is to improve our education system, which is why we introduced things such as the English baccalaureate and tougher maths GCSEs, and why we are working more on maths education. I am passionate about this, and I am very keen to drive it forward as Minister for Women and Equalities.