Promotion of Women in Business

Debate between Helen Grant and Anne Marie Morris

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris]

I absolutely agree. That is absolutely right. However, the real challenge is changing that culture.

My second point builds on the idea of confidence and experience. I welcome the idea of a Select Committee, which would be a first-class way of encouraging more thought on this issue. I was delighted to hear about the FTSE 100 mentoring programme, which sounds like a first-class initiative. The challenge is to have more role models and better mentoring programmes—I agree that they should be for men and women—and to help rebalance individuals, so that they have the broad suite of skills that we all need.

In that respect, perhaps I can dwell on men for a minute. If we look at what is happening in schools, we see the reverse of that. Boys’ results are not as good as girls’. Girls are tenacious and exam focused, and they are good at the process involved in passing exams. More and more women are going into the professions, and more women than men are going into the junior level—not the top level—of medicine and law. Leaving aside the leadership issue, we therefore also have a problem with the gender balance in those professions. We need to help men to go into those professions and to compete, just as we need to help women to go into the corporate world and compete there. The gender balance in the professions and corporate life is completely different.

One of the challenges facing us is that the skills that make people successful in the corporate world are not embedded at school, and I suspect that that may be an issue for the Secretary of State for Education. The issue is which skills we need people to gain at school to help us right the imbalance that I have described. Another challenge is to ensure that we have better integration between school and the workplace. One of my frustrations is that the children we talk to about the requirement to do work experience talk about it as if it were a tick-box exercise; there is no real sense of the role they will have in the workplace. Indeed, there is still a bit of a sense that the expected option is to stay at home.

[Mrs Grant]

Does my hon. Friend agree that embedding enterprise awareness in school education would be helpful?

[Anne Marie Morris]

That would be very helpful. In the same way that we have looked at the intellectual aspects of education, including issues such as the English baccalaureate, we are now looking at the skills aspects of education through the Wolf report. I agree that we need to develop a fundamental understanding of these issues among boys and girls at school. I do not have an answer as to how we can more effectively integrate business into education, but the issue absolutely needs to be resolved.

My third point relates to child support, which is a real issue. Partly, it is about money, but is also partly about culture, expectation and provision. A number of organisations are looking at crèches, part-time working and job sharing. However, it is one thing to look at introducing such provisions and to recognise that they are the right thing to do, but another thing to work out how to make them really effective. There is a bit of a tick-box approach, with people thinking that they have ticked the box because they have a crèche. In that respect, I was really struck by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith). What is important is the ability to sit down and have a meaningful conversation about how we can work together and take on board the fact that, biologically speaking—certainly in our lifetimes—only women will have children. The question is how we make a different outlook more of a reality, and a Select Committee could probably sensibly spend some time looking at the issue.

When I was thinking about today’s debate, I remembered that we had a married man’s allowance in the old days, and I wonder whether a working mother’s allowance might be appropriate in the modern world. I put that out as a thought, and I appreciate that the piggy bank is a little empty at the minute, but such a proposal might be food for thought. We need a holistic approach to the fact that women have the babies. We need to integrate that and enable women to contribute in the workplace, which is crucial.

My final point relates to the corporate issue. I was impressed by what I read in the report to which a number of contributors have alluded. Diversity is certainly key. I agree that it would make a lot of sense to ensure that the numbers of women coming through an organisation are published in the accounts. Although I agree that we do not want more bureaucracy, such a process would not be a big issue for the top FTSE companies. We have information about the very senior women, because of the reports to Companies House, but we need to see the progression planning, and we will not get it without information about the women coming through the organisation. That is what I would describe as a nudge, rather than a push. I agree that legislation is not the answer, because we need to shape and encourage. Once organisations begin to see that there is a spotlight on the issue, it will begin to make a difference.

The real difference in corporate life will come, however, with the review of the governance code, which is important. How do we ensure that we are really talking about diversity, not trying to right the gender balance? We have to acknowledge that women want to be recognised for the different skills that we bring. I would almost like to see job descriptions that show that companies have thought through the different skills that they need and how roles might work slightly differently to encompass the broader range of skills that are available through employing women. When we look at the governance code, we could try to give some guidance on what might go into it. We are not talking just about men and women, but about the qualities of good management. If we can articulate that, it would be a good way forward. However, I am conscious of the time, so, on that note, I will conclude my contribution.