Women and Girls: Employment Skills in the Developing World

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I too start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for securing today’s debate and I pay tribute to his tireless commitment to these issues. Women in countries across the globe still face, and fight against, endemic social and economic discrimination and gender-based violence. It is a personal tragedy for every woman and girl who is undervalued, not safe in her home or at work and not allowed to realise her potential. It is a shared tragedy for the communities and economies which miss out on such a vast array of their own talent. We are proud of the record of successive UK Governments in tackling global violence against women and girls, and leading the push for an explicit commitment to gender equality in the post-2015 framework. Your Lordships’ House is all too aware, after last weekend’s women’s march, that this is no year in which to be complacent about women’s rights.

The fifth sustainable development goal reads:

“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”.


Goal 8, to promote inclusive growth,

“and decent work for all”,

is vital to achieving opportunity and personal security. Recent news has not all been encouraging. According to the World Economic Forum, gender equality in the economy moved backwards last year, to 2008 levels. The Oxfam report highlights levels of wealth inequality which have had a hugely detrimental effect on women. We must be careful not to give the impression that women are not already working. Women and girls shoulder the burden of the majority of household and care work, taking on three times more unpaid work than men. The millions in paid work tend to be employed in sectors with low pay and poor working conditions.

We know that the barriers to economic advancement are multiple: violence, infrastructure, access to education and training, access to capital—I could go on. The Minister will be aware that the UN High-level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment has identified seven key drivers for economic empowerment, including positive role models, legal protection, a redistribution of unpaid work and changing business practices. Is the Minister able to update the House on what the Government are doing to consider each of these drivers and to build on the work the UK is already doing?

Access to education and training is clearly vital. The UK has led on work to get more girls into primary and secondary school. Will the Minister say what work is being done to replicate any successful policies from these schemes to improve access specifically to technical and vocational education as a means of moving into employment?

The theme of the sustainable development goals is “no one left behind”. I pay tribute again to the excellent work of the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, in raising the plight of widows. What work is the Minister’s department doing to look at rural women and older women and what can be done to remove the specific barriers to training and employment that affect these groups? I have a particular interest in this subject because of my wife’s involvement with Sreepur Village in Bangladesh. It was formed by a movement led by a former British Airways stewardess, Pat Kerr, some 28 years ago, and has taken in homeless and destitute women and their children. Many are single mothers who have extreme problems in such societies. For three years, the women receive training and their children receive schooling before they settle back into the community. There they are able to utilise their skills and gifted equipment, such as sewing machines, to support themselves and their children. This is an outstanding example of how investment in women has a powerful wealth multiplier effect. Whether we men like it or not, investing in women often has much higher rewards than investing in the general community.

Former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon said,

“Gender equality remains the greatest human rights challenge of our time”.


I welcome today’s debate as an opportunity for noble Lords to keep building momentum and awareness, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.