Employment: Gender Equality

Lord Tebbit Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I hate to take issue with the noble Baroness, but, in fact, the gender pay gap is at the lowest level since records began. It is now 19.1%, and more women are employed than ever before: there are now 14.4 million in the workforce.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend not think it strange that, when these gender gap questions come up, there is always a call for more women ambassadors, generals and air marshals or such like; there is never a call for more women to be plumbers, electricians and so on. Can my noble friend also explain why the Government do so much to give incentives and help to women to leave their children at home and go out to work rather than to stay at home and look after their children?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Well, my Lords, the Government are giving incentives to women to be plumbers and engineers. Only around 7% of engineers in this country are women, and there is a whole host of programmes to try to encourage girls and young women to go into STEM subjects. We need more women plumbers, too. Women who become plumbers find that they can be very successful because quite a lot of customers rather like having a woman coming to help them out.