Here’s the most important takeaway* from Progress’ seminar on the female contribution to Labour’s growth strategy at last weekend’s Winning With Women conference: according to Rebecca Simon of the Labour Women in Business Network, not only do women have something to ‘contribute’ to Labour’s growth strategy, women could BE Labour’s growth strategy. But the why and how is interesting – so you’ll want to read the rest of this review.
Overall, the session covered two principal areas: the current state of affairs for women in employment and what Labour should be doing to harness women’s economic power.
Working women have made huge strides forward over the last 50 years, as Daisy Sands, policy and campaigns manager at the Fawcett Society, outlined. There are more women in employment, in part facilitated by state investment in childcare, women have a greater appetite to work and better employment rights.
Good news over. We’re nowhere near harnessing the full potential of female employment and women’s participation in the economy has actually declined in recent years. Currently, almost twice as many women are economically inactive than men and three times as many women are in part-time work than men. The gender pay gap remains: women in full-time work currently earn an average of 15 per cent less per hour than their male counterparts. Women dominate lower-paid work – around two-thirds of those paid the minimum wage are women. Moreover, austerity and public sector cuts have disproportionately hit women and the female workforce.
As Seema Malhotra MP, chair of the parliamentary Labour party BIS group, highlighted, women are absent from a great many tables of power, particularly in business and finance, not to mention the political establishment. There is no female Treasury minister, no female member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee, no female chief executive or chair of the five major UK banks, no female chair or chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority. The list goes (depressingly) on.
The female deficit is particularly pronounced in the running of SMEs – often seen as the lifeblood of our economy – as Victoria Groulef, Labour’s PPC for Reading West and herself a small business owner, pointed out. This is in part, in her view, down to a lack of confidence to take that initial risk. Seema Malhotra observed that the UK has a higher-than-average gender pay gap in earnings from self-employment and, if women were setting up new businesses at the same rate as men, there would be a million more female entrepreneurs.
Discrimination against women at work is, unfortunately, far more common than it should be and represents a real barrier to women in business according to Seema Malhotra. Victoria Groulef agreed, pointing to research by Slater and Gordon which found that one in four women believe they have been subject to discrimination, either before or after the birth of their child, and of the 45 per cent of women who saw changes to their position after having a child, more than half didn’t see fit to challenge their employer about it.
It’s not just women themselves that lose out – the economy as a whole loses out. It’s a tremendous waste of talent, not to mention a waste of the state subsidies which have helped women achieve their qualifications. In fact, if the skills of women who are currently out of work were fully utilised, the UK could deliver economic benefits of over £20bn per year. As Rebecca Simon, noted, if the 2.4 million women who don’t work and can, did, the UK’s GDP would increase by around seven per cent. Governments would kill for that kind of growth. So you see the earlier point: increasing the number of women in work could be THE growth strategy.
So, what should the Labour party be offering in policy terms to harness this wasted revenue? We need more women in work. How? Well …
First, we’ve got to eradicate the inequalities in the workplace which hold women back from achieving their potential. Frankly, it’s a disgrace that the gender pay gap exists in Britain in the 21st century – let’s get rid of it. Fast. The best way is with pay transparency. Let’s address the underrepresentation of women in male industries with positive action. Again, fast.
Second, and related, we need to understand that some women give up work when they have children – and don’t go back – for a variety of reasons, but often because they often earn less than their partner. As Daisy Sands made clear, we will continue to see rising levels of female unemployment unless we see governmental action to take more people out of tax and raise the national minimum wage.
Next, the way we think about bringing up children and childcare has to change – a point made forcibly by Rebecca Simon. It’s not just about the plentiful supply of affordable childcare (although this is absolutely vital), it’s more than that. It’s about government, business and wider society taking a collective view that parenting is a shared responsibility – that means it is expected (not just accepted) that men would take equal parenting leave to women. It also means more availability and acceptance of flexible working for parents – both parents.
Fourth, let’s encourage more women into entrepreneurship. There are some small, dispersed initiatives which exist already but, as Seema Malhotra noted, trying to navigate them to find integrated support as a nascent start-up is overwhelming and confusing. She suggests that the UK follow the US Small Business Association’s example of state-backed women’s business centres, mentoring and positive action via procurement. For example, the US government introduced a goal that five per cent of federal contracting dollars are awarded to female-owned small businesses. India also provides us with an interesting example via their state-run women’s bank, which will employ women, lend predominantly to women and women-run businesses and address gender-related aspects of empowerment and financial inclusion. Victoria Groulef suggested that a British Investment Bank would help by bringing back more relational banking. She also backs support groups linking experienced business owners with those starting out and broadening girls’ aspirations and careers advice by creating more effective partnerships between schools, career development professionals, parents and employers.
Let’s also start ensuring that working women who go on maternity leave are advised as to how taking a long period out of work may (emphasis on the may) make them feel – but let’s explain that any perceived decline in confidence or esteem is short term and that the economy would like them back, if that’s what they want. To come back, they may need to work flexibly or to use childcare – so let’s explain to them their employment rights, the childcare and nursery options which exist and signpost them to local services.
It is, of course, true that not all necessary changes lie within the grasp of government and regulators. As Rebecca Simon told the seminar, it is government’s role to create the best infrastructure and regulatory environment for businesses and individuals to prosper but, on a micro level, employers need to create a workplace where both sexes in the workforce are motivated and high performing to ensure productivity and profitability – its ultimately better for everyone’s bottom line.
We can’t pretend we currently have all the solutions to encourage and to enable more women to work, but the prior lack of creative thinking on this score to date is certainly striking, given the economic rewards on offer. I return to where I started: getting women into work is, in and of itself, a growth strategy and it’s one we’d do very well to adopt.
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Lucy Rigby is Labour PPC for Lincoln. She tweets @LucyRigby
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*Forgive the corporate speak, it was a session on the economy … you’re lucky I didn’t use ‘download’.