---

Jobs for the Girls: Two Years On

Oh we are! [Interruption.] I was not saying ““allowed”” in a political sense. I meant that I did not wish to make even more panic-stricken all those people who seem to be selling their shares. Okay? The Government were quick off the mark to say that additional money will be made available for retraining people who lose their jobs. We should regard that—touching on another part of the report—as a silver lining in encouraging older women to retrain. However, that will be very difficult, because of the lack of confidence in women. The longer that a woman has been in one particular job, the harder it is for her to think, ““Okay, I can retrain, relearn and develop new skills,”” because she might not know that she has skills to develop in the first place. Often that needs pointing out to women. We need a much more detailed approach starting much earlier in our schools. We also need to highlight the enormous potential value of a really good careers officer working much more closely with schools, local industries, businesses and, more broadly, the federations. I touched earlier on what I regard as a lack of imagination in the engineering industry in attempting to attract young women into training. We need more women in engineering, science and the boardrooms. Perhaps a changing world financial situation will encourage more people in the City of London who run banks to put women on their boards. Perhaps that could be one of the Government's requirements on banks—that the money will not be passed over unless there are clear signs that there will be more women, not necessarily in the higher-paid jobs, but in those jobs where the important decisions are taken. As a nation, we take what women do too much for granted, without paying them proper tribute. They do an enormous range of work that is undervalued and very often underpaid. Far too often, women are expected to simply grin and bear it and get on with it, but we have to acknowledge that to really open the doors for all our young women in the future, we will have to work quite hard on their parents and grandparents who still, in the main, would prefer them to take jobs where their hands are kept clean, and that will allow them to produce grandchildren and be near home so that they can always have them around. A friend of mine once produced a huge series of articles on Henry Moore. Yet another enormous tribute had been paid to Henry Moore as one of the greatest artists in the world, and part of the series involved an interview with his mother, who at the time was a very old lady. The interviewer said: ““You must be very proud of your son.”” Henry Moore's father had worked on the railways—I have a feeling that he was a fireman—and she replied, ““I always wanted him to have a job where his hands were always clean.”” I do not think that we have changed much since.