Women in Society

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Giddens, who has brought an unusual perspective to our debate today and showed the subtle and elusive forms that patriarchy takes in our society and how it perpetuates itself. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, on her wonderful maiden speech and the very considerable insights and passions that she has brought to the subject. We look forward to her contribution in years to come.

If one looks at the question of women’s development and representation in Britain, one is struck by the fact that very considerable progress has been made in most areas and some progress in other areas. The number of women MPs, for example, has doubled between 1992 and 2009. The same thing has happened in your Lordships’ House. The number of women Ministers has risen from 18 per cent in 1992 to 30 per cent in 2005. The percentage of women in senior grades in the Civil Service has gone up from 8 per cent in 1990 to 25 per cent in 2010. In 1999, there were no women to be seen in the Lords of Appeal; today they constitute 8.3 per cent of the Lords of Appeal. In the National Health Service, the percentage of women GPs was 29 per cent in 1995 and it has gone up to 42 per cent. As for consultants, the percentage was 18 per cent in 1995 and has gone up to 27 per cent in 2009. In my own profession, in academia, the percentage of female professors has gone up from 7 per cent in 1995 to 14 per cent in 2009. The percentage of female senior lecturers and researchers has gone up from 18 per cent in 1995 to 35 per cent in 2006.

I give these figures to indicate that considerable progress has been made in some areas, but not enough in many others. I want to ask a simple question. How has this progress been possible? What factors have played an important part? I ask this so that we can concentrate on those factors, consolidate them and make sure that this trend continues.

Another point worth bearing in mind is that, in the area of gender equality as in other areas, the progress is never unilineal; it is never inexorable. It goes up to a point and then stabilises itself. That point of stability is quite important. It may not go much further but it also does not tend to go much below, either. Therefore there is a tendency for it to swing around a certain percentage.

In looking at what factors have played a part in achieving this kind of progress during the past 15 or 20 years, I have identified seven, and I want to say something briefly about each of them. The first factor is raising the level of public awareness. All these achievements have been made possible because people have been made to realise that gender inequality is wrong, that it is not natural but manmade in both senses of the term, and that it can be changed by getting people to appreciate the contingency of the inequality that exists in our society.

The second factor that has played an important part has to do with political pressure exerted constantly and relentlessly by women’s groups and others at the local level, at the level of firms, local authorities, universities and others, at the national level and at the international level in terms of all kinds of treaties and covenants. That pressure becomes quite important at another level. Very often, when women get promoted, they tend not to think very much about the constituents they have left behind. It is therefore very important that pressure continues to be exerted on those who have been able to break through the glass ceiling.

The third factor that has played an important part is leadership at the top. In each of the major organisations, it is the leadership that is the driving force. It demands results and wants to know why those results are not achieved.

The fourth factor has to do with the internal audit of the organisation and finding out what the bottlenecks are. Why in some organisations is the proportion of women not as high as it should be? It could be direct discrimination, in which case that should be eliminated. It could be indirect discrimination, in which case one needs to find out how that discrimination articulates itself. It may also have something to do with the culture of the organisation. It may be that women are simply not attracted to that particular organisation or profession or, if attracted, do not stay long. Sometimes the organisational culture is not deliberately intended to keep women out; it simply creeps up within an organisation, almost unwittingly or unthinkingly, so that it has a built-in masculine bias without wanting to exclude women. This is the point that many women MPs have made about the House of Commons: it has a certain macho culture, not because people want to keep women out but because, having been dominated by men for all those centuries, it has acquired a certain ethos or ambiance that alienates and puts off women.

The fifth factor that has played an important part in the progress is education. In the field of primary and secondary education, we have made considerable progress and women achieve more or less the same level as men. However, when it comes to higher education and professional and technological faculties, there is still a long way to go.

The sixth factor that has played an important part is conditions of work. Women often have to maintain a balance between work and family. That requires that they should have flexible hours of work and arrangements at work where children can be looked after, or state-supported nurseries. Unless those conditions of work are congenial, women will not be able to take advantage of whatever qualifications they might have.

The seventh factor that has played a part—not always in all areas, but in some—is the state-induced or state-imposed quota. That has happened in India, where a Women’s Reservation Bill is going through Parliament so that a third of the positions in it will be reserved for women. This has also happened in Norway, an example that has been cited, where 40 per cent of seats in parliament are reserved for women. I gather that in our own country, whenever John Major received a list of nominees for public bodies, he would send it back if half the people on the list were not women. That is not a state-imposed quota, but it was a government-encouraged or government-induced quota.

One needs to be very careful in going down that route. In exceptional circumstances, when no progress of any kind is made, it may become necessary to have a quota of one kind or another but, by and large, it can be counterproductive, because if one group can ask for it so can others. If one were to say that women should be entitled to 50 per cent of seats in different walks of life, one might say the same about ethnic minorities or the disabled, and the problem has no limit. The quota can also be rather rigid and mechanical, and it can work in some areas but cannot conceivably work in others—for example, for admissions to universities or when appointing people as professors. You cannot have a quota here because so much would depend on merit and lots of other considerations. Although this is not the way we want to go, I can nevertheless imagine circumstances where the problem is so acute and the willingness to change is so scarce that we might need to go along that route.