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Jobs for the Girls: Two Years On

This is an important debate on an important report. I congratulate the Committee on that report and in particular I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber) on leading the work on the report, and on her tireless work on the issues. Like her, I sometimes feel that we have a seamless process of meetings and debates, and I wonder where we are getting. However, from what she said we can see that we are making progress, if more slowly than we might wish. There is obviously still a long way to go to close the pay gap. I am sure that the report is a step on the way. In Wales—and this will interest you, Mr. Williams, and my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith)—the gender pay gap between full-time workers is 12 per cent., but there is a staggering 31 per cent. gap between the pay of a full-time male worker and a part-time female worker. That is obviously unacceptable. My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley has already described how part-time work is undervalued. I welcome her emphasis on the Government's getting back on track and getting part-time work valued more than it is now. Because women make up the overwhelming majority of part-time workers it is obvious that they suffer from the devaluation of part-time work. We all know why women are the part-time workers: they are still the main carers. Despite some welcome changes and a move towards men playing more of a role in the family, particularly with young families, women are still the main carers in society. That means that they do unpaid work as carers and if they can work in part-time jobs they are paid at a lower rate than if they were in a full-time job. Women are hit both ways in that respect and it is important that the Government should get on track in valuing part-time work. I should like to hear what the Minister will say about steps to be taken about that. We have already discussed the Committee's recommendation that the right to request flexible working should be gradually extended to all the work force. I am glad that the Government have extended that right to parents of older children and to carers of elderly or disabled relatives. However, there is a case for considering extending that right to every member of the work force because it would have good results in every respect. As I said earlier, it is important to see how such a practice is working on the ground. According to Government figures, there have been a lot of successful requests for flexible working. It is great that that has happened in a voluntary way. However, for some women, flexible working does not work so well in practice, so we need to examine the matter further. As my hon. Friend has already said, the key to reducing job segregation is education. We need to give young people the chance to see all the opportunities that lay before them at an early stage. Not long before its absorption into the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Equal Opportunities Commission in Wales produced a document entitled ““The Apprentice: Making genuine career choice a reality””, which showed that young people, especially young women, were not given appropriate advice about the opportunities that exist that would give them a genuine freedom to enter any occupation. Arriving at the situation in which women feel that they can do any job is a huge step, but one that we must reach. We need to take small steps to get there. The EOC report showed that women were guided into traditional careers, even though more than 80 per cent. of the girls said that they would be interested in considering non-traditional jobs. Therefore, at an early stage, women are interested in going into other areas, but they do not get the opportunity or the advice to do so. My hon. Friend referred to a very important proposal, which also came out in the Committee's report, that young people should do two work placements, including one that is non-traditional. Male students should have the opportunity to take up child care placements and female students should be able to take up engineering placements. That is important not only for men and women but for the future of those industries. I was interested in what the Chair of the Committee said about his interest in engineering. I know that at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, there is a dearth of students applying for its engineering course. The university has frozen those courses while it sees whether any more students will come forward. When only 50 per cent. of the possible applicants apply for the course—that is because many women do not even consider going into engineering—it could partly explain why there is a huge problem for such courses.