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Women, Justice and Gender Equality

I would like to agree that the US is different, but I am not sure that it is. As a country, we have a reputation for very long working hours. I do not have the figures at my fingertips, but I think that this country’s working hours are among the longest in Europe, if not the longest of all. What problems do women who have had children and who want to re-enter the work place encounter? How can we remove the pressure on them to downgrade their jobs and take lower pay? One difficulty has to do with integrating the idea of part-time and flexible working with more senior jobs. For example, just 3.6 per cent. of jobs at the higher occupational and managerial grades are performed by females working part-time. In contrast, well over half of the women in clerical jobs are part-time. That shows the mismatch between the numbers of women able to work part-time in the better paid and more highly skilled jobs and those who can do so in less skilled and lower-paid employment. We need to consider how we can ensure that flexible, part-time working can permeate all levels of the job market. At the opening of the debate, I listened with great interest to the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird). She talked about the great advances that had been made with part-time working in the judiciary. I am not sure that I share her positivity about that, as I believe that much work remains to be done to encourage a more flexible way of working in all areas of professional employment. An idea was floated earlier about part-time working or sharing jobs in this place, but I think that that may be a little further off. Another problem, according to the statistics, is that women who take up part-time employment on re-entering the work force earn 27 per cent. less per hour than their full-time counterparts. The financial burdens that women face mean that they need to re-enter the work place—and they may also choose to go back to work—but what can the Government do to support them? Going back to work must be a positive choice for women, and they should not be forced to downgrade and accept lower rates of pay. That will not help us to maximise the potential of women in this country today. Many statistics show that there are many benefits to be gained from adopting a more flexible approach to work for women. For example, two thirds of the organisations that have implemented part-time and flexible working report reduced absenteeism and staff turnover. However, we must make sure that the part-time jobs that are available are the right ones, and that they fulfil the potential of the women who do them. The Minister for Women and Equality will wind up the debate, and I hope that she will set out what the Government are doing to help mothers to return to the workplace. Helping mothers on benefits back to work is very important, but so is helping all mothers, regardless of whether six months or six years have passed since they had a baby. Too many women in my constituency feel left behind by the advances in IT, for example, but they have also lost confidence in their ability to participate in the workplace. What are the Government doing to help them go back to work and be economically active in a way that fits in with their family commitments and with the training that they received earlier in their working lives? Also, what can be done to help small and medium-sized employers, as they are often the ones that find it most difficult to understand the benefits of flexible working for women, both now and in the future? I am not talking about introducing regulation and making them feel that part-time working for women is a burden. Such companies need to be able to understand that flexible working can benefit them—something that I found out when I employed women on a part-time basis in the company that I worked for. Earlier today, at the event that many Members attended to mark international women’s day, Baroness Boothroyd, the first woman Speaker, reminded me of the words of John Stuart Mill. In his work The Subjection of Women, he said:"““I think that almost everyone, in the existing state of opinion in politics and political economy, would admit the injustice of excluding half the human race from the greater number of lucrative occupations, and from almost all high social functions.””" Those words were read out today as we laid flowers at the memorial to Emmeline Pankhurst, and although they were written 140 years ago they are still highly pertinent, so I urge the Government to consider whether the policies they are pursuing truly address the issues.