---

Women in Public Life

I thank my noble friend for securing this debate and for giving us the opportunity to focus on an issue that is dear to the hearts of so many of us, as women and as parliamentarians. We are mostly people who became parliamentarians as a result of participating in public life. I endorse the comments of my noble friend in validating the steps taken by the Labour Government to increase the participation of women. Your Lordships’ House, as only one example, is a very different place in composition and, I venture to suggest, in culture since I first entered in 1997. Much of that change is due to the increased number and participation of our women Peers. I also acknowledge the commitment of the Civil Service and local authorities to encouraging women. Only last week, the Women in Public Life Awards were launched for this year; the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has been a recipient in the past. I think that there was a series of stamps with women’s heads on them indicating the success of some women in public life. The Cabinet Secretary puts time into this. We have seen some increase in the number of women councillors, while the voluntary sector is famous for its women leaders. And yet, and yet. Any glance at the numbers shows us that progress is painfully slow. There are fewer women as permanent secretaries than there were five years ago and, even in the voluntary sector, where huge numbers of women work, the number at the top, as chief executives or chairs, is very small. We must conclude, as my noble friend has done, that the problem is more cultural than structural. That is what I will focus on in my brief time today. I shall highlight two aspects of culture, both of which can be found in women themselves and in wider societal attitudes. The first is the reluctance of women to put themselves forward. We all know—do we not?—that an ambitious man is tough, hard and focused on success, whereas an ambitious woman is strident, shrill and unfeminine. Of course that is not true, but those images are firmly embedded. Moreover, women are usually good at negotiation rather than confrontation and are often relaxed about letting someone else take the credit that is rightfully theirs. I see nods from noble Lords. Women know that that is the way to get things done, but it does not always get you noticed by those who can advance and promote you. Moreover, the media focus on the personal is considerably more off-putting to women than to men. Whatever our personal views of Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, I doubt that any of us would condone the attention paid to the colour of the one’s trouser suit or the shape of the other’s spectacles. I do not remember the husband of a Prime Minister being pilloried or praised for the cut of his suit or the type of shoes that he wore to hear his wife’s speech to a party conference. Is it any wonder that women may be reluctant to enter politics, when the Home Secretary is judged more by the shape of her neckline than by the quality of her argument? The other area to which I want to draw your Lordships’ attention is how poor we are at acknowledging the transferability of skills and experience from one field of life into another. Women who have taken time off to bring up a family often report huge difficulty in convincing an employer that their time has been profitably spent and that it has developed, rather than stultified, their skills. Any woman who has run a household, managed a budget and organised after-school activities, while cooking the dinner and setting up a package of care for her elderly mother, has all the skills and more to be an efficient manager. That is leaving aside all the negotiation that she has done as a matter of course with the school, the surgery, the local authority and the Inland Revenue. Yet how often is that acknowledged, not least by women themselves, who do not know how to package up the skills so as to look good on the CV, or how to fill in the application form in a way that is sufficiently economical with the truth to get her an interview, a skill at which most men are adept? Even when you are well established in public life, it is difficult to get anyone to see that skills learnt in one part of life are easily transferable to another. Many of us around this Table have had that experience. Addressing such entrenched attitudes is the next stage of development in our crusade to get more women into public life. We must start early. I commend the Lord Speaker’s programme and all colleagues who work with schools. We must develop the best possible role models and encourage women who are successful in public life to sponsor others—our daughters, our granddaughters, our younger colleagues. We must be prepared to undertake what can be the most rewarding, as well as the most challenging, of occupations. We should, of course, challenge sexist attitudes where we find them but, like most women, I have found the carrot rather more effective than the stick when it comes to culture change. The rewards of encouraging women into public service should always be emphasised, using the wealth of talent available and encouraging flexibility in the workforce—I seek assurance from my noble friend the Leader of the House that the current economic situation will not discourage us from doing that. Above all, we must seek to develop the acknowledgement of the strength and relevance for the whole of our population of encouraging more women.