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Jobs for the Girls: Two Years On

I apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), who should be responding to this important debate on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Sadly, she has been called to her constituency on fairly urgent business. However, I have been well briefed and shall try to follow my brief closely, for fear of criticism afterwards. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Glenda Jackson) talked about education, which reminded me of a joke that I like to tell on the dinner circuit. The police know that a man has committed a murder and that he will be at a certain house at a certain time. They enter the house and find four people playing cards: a teacher, a lorry driver, a scaffolder and a firefighter. They arrest the teacher. How did they know it was the teacher? Well, the other three were all women. It works on the circuit, because people in the pub or the hall do not think of the scaffolder, lorry driver or fire fighter as being women. But they should do. The purpose of this debate is to help to move attitudes on so that in 10 years one cannot tell that joke, because it will not be funny—no one will think it odd that the lorry driver or scaffolder are women, or that the man is a teacher. The Government are not helped when a Culture Minister remarks that little girls either want to be footballers' wives or win ““X Factor””—actually she said that they ““only”” want to be footballers' wives or win ““X Factor””. There are problems, but the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) made the point that 80 per cent. of young girls would be interested in other careers, and the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate said that given the opportunity they would pursue those careers, but that often parents and grandparents constrain them. The question is: how should we deal with that? The Business and Enterprise Committee recognised that the gender pay gap has reduced, as has been said, from 17.4 per cent. to 12.6 per cent. over the past 10 years. That is good progress on which the Government should be complimented. However, I think that the calculation is that it will take 20 years for the full-time pay gap and 25 years for the part-time pay gap to be eliminated. Only 10 per cent. of FTSE directorships are held by women, and according to the calculation that I have, it will take 65 years to close that gap. There are things that the Government can do to affect those issues far more directly than they are currently doing. As the report stated, 60 per cent. of women workers are employed in just 10 of 75 recognised occupations, with the heaviest concentrations in—hon. Members can guess it—the five Cs: caring, cashiering, catering, cleaning and clerical work. The Fawcett Society has labelled 30 October as ““women's no-pay day””, because, if we take account of the 17 per cent. pay gap, that is when their pay would stop each year. As we approach 30 October, this is an appropriate time for this debate. Why is the glass ceiling so pervasive in the workplace? All too often in this country we have a working culture of ““presentism””, whereby an employee's worth and dedication are assessed by the number of hours that they spend behind the desk or counter, instead of by the contribution that they make to the business or employer. Following a private Member's Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull to extend the right to request flexible working to parents with children up to the age of 18, the Government have gone some way towards that by announcing their intention to extend that right to parents with children up to the age of 16 and to carers. As was rightly said, the lack of flexible working lies at the heart of economic inequality between men and women. When children come along, one parent has to look after them, and of course it is usually the woman. That is not necessarily wrong in itself, and I am not going to say that women should not look after their children if they wish to. However, they should have the opportunity not to do so and to work if they so wish. We need employment regulations that allow them to do that. It is easier for parents and carers if they can work flexibly. It is also easier if men can work flexibly so that they can take care of the children as well. It works two ways, because often both parents need to have flexible working. It is not just a matter of women being able to work flexibly.