Kate Green
Main Page: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)Department Debates - View all Kate Green's debates with the Department for Education
(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Jenny Willott
The hon. Lady highlights some extremely important businesses, and similar examples can be found across the whole of the UK and in a lot of our rural areas. Women are extremely good at identifying new opportunities to diversify businesses in more remote areas. They are often incredibly business savvy and can make a real success of it.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
17. Many women see their careers stall when they become pregnant. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is carrying out a welcome, if belated, inquiry into pregnancy discrimination, but it will be many months before we have the findings. In the meantime, is the Equality Advisory Support Service monitoring the number and nature of pregnancy and maternity-related queries so that the Minister can take early action on systemic patterns of discrimination?
Jenny Willott
As the hon. Lady undoubtedly knows, it is about 10 years since the last research was done to look properly at the rate of discrimination against women as a result of pregnancy. That 2005 report showed that about 30,000 women had lost their jobs as a result of pregnancy. As the hon. Lady has said, the Government have commissioned the EHRC to do a proper piece of research to identify what the situation is now, and we hope that will give us a good idea of what needs to be done. It is clear that discrimination against women on the basis of pregnancy is completely illegal, and it also makes terribly bad business sense for businesses across the country. This Government want to do something to ensure that we get rid of that type of discrimination.