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Jobs for the Girls: Two Years On

Well, I praise the Minister on the achievement of getting £12.5 million out of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I think that she ought to try to get a little bit more because it is an important area. I am not sure whether that money was extracted by the Minister or by someone else who is not here. I know that getting money out of the Treasury is very difficult for any Minister, but I believe that more could be done if there was more money for that package. Fortunately, organisations that help women entrepreneurs to get started and build their own businesses do exist. Prowess is one such organisation. It has helped more than 100,000 women looking to start or grow businesses every year, and has helped 10,000 women get a business off the ground, contributing an additional £1.5 billion to the UK economy. In the context of what women can contribute by starting businesses, the £12.5 million that the Government have made available does not seem very much. Prowess has supported the launch of 25,000 new businesses each year, 35 per cent. of which are owned by women. In the UK, women-owned businesses make up approximately 16 per cent. of the business stock and 27 per cent. of the self-employed population. Total early stage entrepreneurial activity rates for women in the UK are 3.9 per cent of the total working age female population, and the female entrepreneurial activity rate is only half of the male entrepreneurial activity. In the USA, the female entrepreneurial activity rate is stronger—more than double the UK's rate. This year, a new organisation called WEConnect was launched to foster and register women-owned businesses in the UK. It enables companies that wish to consider procuring from women-owned businesses to search a register of companies. It started without Government funding, but with backing from companies such as IBM, Accenture and Pfizer, which recognise the value of procuring from women-owned companies, it helps companies that want their suppliers to look like the people they supply to. The Government could do much to facilitate the growth of women-owned business by imposing quotas on procurement using taxpayer's money. With little or no cost, the Government could lead that growth instead of letting global companies forge the way in exercising corporate social responsibility. The reality is that there are barriers for women in business that men simply do not have to negotiate. There is unequivocal evidence that women-owned businesses start with lower levels of overall capitalisation, lower ratios of debt finance and are much less likely to use private equity or venture capital. The level of start-up capitalisation used by women-owned businesses is on average only one third of that used by male-owned businesses. Recent evidence from the UK survey of the finances of small and medium-sized enterprises reported that women were charged more than men on term loans—2.9 per cent., as opposed to 1.9 per cent. That must be addressed so that women can grow their businesses, especially at a time of financial instability. As the report highlights, one of the reasons why girls have historically taken low-paid jobs is that they had lower educational attainment than boys, but that is not now the case, as girls are achieving and succeeding. So if girls are succeeding educationally, why are they not taking up the other jobs? We now have female doctors and lawyers as role models, which was not the case in the 1970s. The question of careers advice was raised earlier, and what is said to girls in school to enable them to realise that potential is important.