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Women, Justice and Gender Equality

It is certainly the case that advice is often better digested from a peer when it relates to their personal experience. Sharing best practice and, probably, worst practice in schools through school councils and peer groups is likely to be more effective than advice dispensed by adults. When women get into the workplace, there are many pitfalls, mostly related to the fact that they have responsibility for children. Women with young children are bound to have to take time off work occasionally when the children become ill or something important is going on at school that they want to be involved in. They are therefore very reliant on child care, and it has to be good child care provided by somebody utterly reliable with whom the child is happy. That is not the easiest thing to find. When working women have child care problems—carers can get ill from time to time—that causes complications. Flexible working is needed, especially during school holidays. Often, two parents will need to have separate holidays to try to work in child care for their school age children. That affects the ability of the whole family to have a holiday together, which is extremely important. All those factors make life very complicated. Of course, women are multi-skilled. They do not work outside the home instead of inside the home, but outside it as well as inside it. They run the nuts and bolts of everyday life in the house, probably doing the garden and the decorating as well; they often do pretty much everything apart from maintaining the car. They take full responsibility for the children and their homework. How many Members have been lying in the bath and had a child knocking on the door saying, ““Mum, can you remember how to do quadratic equations?””, or ““What’s the French for so and so?”” There is not a moment’s peace, and life becomes a bit like a treadmill, but women can do it—we are multi-skilled.