International Women’s Day 2016

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly in this important annual debate. In the time left, I wish to focus on the gender pay gap and the lack of women in senior professional roles in this country.

The gender pay gap is stubbornly persistent, despite the Equal Pay Act 1970 having been passed more than 40 years ago, and women are still woefully under-represented in the higher levels of British industry. We are aware of the depressing statistic that more men called John serve as chief executive officers in FTSE 100 companies than women. We can laugh at the statistics, but they reveal a depressing truth: our major industries are still not reflecting our society and are therefore not drawing on as wide a gene pool as they could.

The causes often begin early. I believe that schools need to play a significant role in overturning stereotypes, both in what they teach and what careers advice they offer, given that the gender pay gap is, in part, driven by the types of job women do. We all know that attitudes can change. Nearly 40 years ago, my own sister was a straight-As pupil and informed her school that she wanted to go into medicine. The reaction of those at her school was to suggest that, as a girl, she might prefer to consider nursing. Characteristically, she totally ignored that advice, and fortunately the world was spared a first-rate but horrendously bossy nurse. Instead, we got a superb doctor.

Nearly 40 years later, the majority of applicants to medical school are women, and something similar is occurring in law, so we know that we can change attitudes. We need to make the same changes in other careers for women, especially in engineering, where we have a desperate need for more talent, but we need to do it faster than we have changed attitudes towards other careers. I welcome the progress the Government have made over the past five years and the huge improvement in the number of girls taking STEM A-levels, but we need to keep pushing the case to get more into engineering.

The problem does not end when girls leave schools. Women still face unconscious discrimination in the workplace, and too many women feel they must choose between motherhood and building a career. I therefore welcome the Government’s move to achieve shared parental leave. Anecdotally, we know that when women have families, their managers often feel they are less committed to the organisation, especially if they choose to take part-time work. Conversely, it seems, anecdotally, that when men become fathers, their managers sometimes feel they must require a pay rise and a promotion.

Shared parental leave, even if men do not take it up, will at least force men to face the dilemma and think through what effect it might have on their career prospects, which, if they become mangers of women in the future, could be of enormous benefit. As we have said, we want both men and women fighting to make sure this annual debate becomes something for the history curriculum in the future.