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Women: Government Policy

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, for securing this important debate. Last year, my starting point was that we had made considerable advancement in terms of the membership of women in your Lordships’ House. I mentioned at the time that my only regret was that the Bishops’ Benches still had to recognise the need for the first ever woman Bishop to sit on those Benches. I hope that the message goes out that we will look forward with interest at what they are trying to do in that respect. I am delighted to see that the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, will be making her maiden speech later. When I look at the Cross Benches, I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, and I, who are members of the Appointments Commission, have removed some of the anomalies that women faced before. I am delighted not only that those women are here but at the contribution that they make to important debates in your Lordships’ House. No one doubts that the Government have ambitions and commendable targets on reducing the number of children in poverty. However, the government strategy on tackling child poverty has so far paid limited attention to the clear links between the disadvantage faced by women and the poverty of children. The key tool of the Government’s strategy on child poverty to date has been increased spending on tax credits. While this is an essential component in tackling poverty, it is not feasible for the Government to reach the 2020 target of eradicating child poverty by this means alone. What is needed is action to address the structural drivers of child poverty, foremost among which is the mother’s poverty. Currently in the United Kingdom, having a child in itself puts women at risk of moving into poverty. That is not inevitable. In Sweden, for example, having a child does not put you at greater risk of moving into poverty and the child poverty rate is dramatically lower. So what are the facts? Some 39 per cent of children in poverty are in single-mother households. A further 17 per cent are in couple households where the father works but the mother does not. From the moment they conceive a child, many women face immediate financial penalties. Every year, 30,000 women lose their jobs as a result of becoming pregnant and many more face discrimination and reduced opportunities in the workplace. It is no accident that two-thirds of those on the minimum wage are women. Following childbirth, the majority of women move into part-time, low-paid and low-status work, if they are able to access work at all. Recent research based on the British Household Panel Survey and conducted by Mary Gregory at Oxford University and Sarah Connolly of the University of East Anglia highlighted the downward mobility that many women face in their career after childbirth. It found that almost half of women managers of shops, salons and restaurants gave up their managerial responsibility to work as sales assistants or hairdressers or in other low-paid roles when they sought part-time jobs after motherhood. Women are often unable to find work that is flexible enough to be combined with caring for a child and pays well enough to bring them above the poverty line. The loss of benefits and the expense of childcare mean that the transition back into work is often costly for mothers in poverty and can be a trigger for them to move into debt. It is a striking fact that only 50 per cent of lone mothers feel that they are better off financially shortly after a move into work. The Government have taken considerable steps to improve the situation for lone mothers through initiatives such as the New Deal for Lone Parents. However, figures for the past two years show that progress in this area is stalling. I should like to outline four vital areas in which the Government could do more to tackle the poverty of mothers: the collection of data on poverty, measures to improve women’s position in the workplace, benefits design, and investment and training. The first area is poverty statistics. Key reports such as Households Below Average Income measure poverty using the household unit and, therefore, obscure the gendered causes of poverty. Secondly, the Government could do much more to address the disadvantage faced by mothers in the workplace. Discrimination against pregnant women must be tackled head on. Greater transparency could be created by the introduction of gender audits, which would require organisations to publish figures on what women and men are paid. In addition, the Government purchase huge amounts of goods and services from the private sector. Much more could be done to ensure that contractors take pay equality and maternity rights seriously. Thirdly, a number of reforms could be made to the benefits system that would enable more mothers to access work. Finally, the Government must make it a priority to enable mothers to access training. That will involve making a commitment to improving the quality and not just the quantity of women’s employment. Where necessary, mothers should be given the opportunity to gain appropriate qualifications before entering the labour market. Overall, there should be increased financial support for mothers to study part-time; adult learning grants, for example, are available only to those studying full-time. The Government are beginning to design a road map for moving towards the 2020 target of eradicating child poverty. If this strategy is to be successful it will have to take into account the fact that women’s poverty and children’s poverty have common causes and common solutions. Let us now look at the international dimension of issues affecting women and girls. I am privileged, as are my colleagues Lady Howe and Lord Dubs, to be invited to regular briefing meetings of Plan UK. I commend this organisation’s work both in the UK and internationally. Sixty-two million girls are currently not in primary school and millions of them face a life of poverty and inequality. They face double discrimination based on sex and age, which almost renders them to the bottom of the social and economic ladder. There is ample evidence that girls are less likely than their brothers to go to school and more likely to be malnourished and victims of violence. We attach much importance to women’s education, which has a significant impact on people’s health status and a direct impact on a nation’s food security and overall malnutrition rate. I commend to all colleagues Plan International’s path-breaking report, Because I am a Girl: The State of the World’s Girls. It is a must-read. Its striking conclusion is: "““Real change in national development cannot occur without significant investment in girls and gender equality. Appropriate financing for girls will yield real economic returns to even the poorest nation””." The Department for International Development should receive praise for its commitment on the rights of girls and women in its publications Gender Equality at the Heart of Development, Poverty Elimination and the Empowerment of Women and the 2006 White Paper Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor. Millennium development goal 3 calls for eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education at all levels by 2016. Perhaps I may urge DfID to be more ambitious in setting its targets on achieving gender parity by ensuring that there is adequate, predictable and untied aid to women and girls while respecting principles of transparency and openness in alignment with the national poverty strategy. DfID’s current gender-parity targets in education have been set for 2015, 10 years after the millennium development goal target for gender parity, which has been set for 2005. Adequate resources must be made available at all levels for girls and women to secure their rights. In order to make sound economic arguments for financing on girls, donors such as DfID must commit to allocating adequate resources to collect quality data disaggregated by both sex and age and make use of it in all relevant policies and programmes. The poorest and most vulnerable girls and their families would benefit from comprehensive social support, which could include regular and predictable school grants, scholarships or stipends. All children, including girls, have a right to participate, as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Girls have the potential to articulate and to secure those rights. The voices of girls and young women need to be heard in the policy-making and decision-making forums that many noble Lords have cited in their speeches today. Improvements in equality between boys and girls come when there is political will and cultural change and when we are committed to real gender equality. It is time to take a united stand in this effort to ensure that when a child is born she is not discriminated against simply because she is a girl.