International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Labor
Fiona Margaret Mactaggart (Labour, Centre-left): Absolutely—my hon. Friend is quite right After the election of 101 Labour women in 1997, I did a piece of work about how much difference was made by having a lot of women in Parliament. One of the most obvious differences was a shift from the wallet to the purse. Fiscal decisions made by that Government hugely increased the income of women and, to a lesser extent, benefited men. The problem is that precisely the opposite has happened under the present Government. I am really sad about that. I do not believe that that was intended by Government women and I want them to be allies in trying to remedy the problem I want to talk specifically about older women and work, because there is a real crisis about keeping women in work. One statistic that is burnt on my brain is the fact that two thirds of the people who work beyond retirement age are women. Two thirds of those women earn entry-level wages, while two thirds of the men, who are the other third of people who work beyond retirement age, are on top-level wages. The story is that the guys keep going because they are enjoying themselves—they have chauffeurs, and there are all the nice things about being on the board—but women continue to work because their families need the money In public services, we do not have an intelligent way of keeping women in touch with the workplace. I praise the Government for appointing Dr Ros Altmann to look at the needs of older workers. I am very glad that she is about to produce a report that, for example, will look at women and the menopause. From talking to organisations such as the Royal College of Nursing and the National Union of Teachers, I know that the people for whom they are taking employment cases are women in their 50s and 60s who have been managed or pressed out of their careers. As one woman in my constituency said, "What happens is that you are always first in the queue for redundancy and last in the queue for a new job." It is very striking that our jobcentres do not make enough of a difference for such women. The Work programme has found sustained employment for just over 10% of the women over 50 referred to it, which is much lower than the level for men of the same age group and lower than the level for every other group. We do not have an intelligent strategy to help to keep older women in the work force What is worse is that one reason why older women come out of the work force is that we are the default carers, as other Members have said. We not only make sure that there is breakfast cereal on the table, but we look after the children, the grandchildren, the elderly relatives and our husbands when they have a sudden illness. Yet we do not have proper policies to ensure that a women who suddenly has to do unexpected caring can have a period of adjustment in her employment to work out whether the person she is caring for is going to die, which means that she could go back to work at that point, or whether they will have long-term caring needs. We do not have a policy on adjustment leave in the UK—some individual employers do, but the majority do not—and it seems to me a no-brainer that the Government should legislate to provide for such leave The Government should also legislate to enable women who take time out to stay in touch with the workplace. When they have to leave to look after someone, they lose contact with the workplace and cannot find help to get back into it. In a recent e-mail to me, Ms Altmann wrote: "I would like to see special programmes introduced to help women carers (and male carers…) back into the workplace after they have taken time out, or more flexible working to allow them to combine work with caring." The Government may have to incentivise employers to do that, but it is a no-brainer: if we want to use all the talent that exists in our community, we need to let women make such adjustments The problem with policies made when women are not in the room is that women are regarded as "not men"—as though their lives were the same as men’s lives when actually they just are not. For example, women’s prisons are very ineffectual at helping women to rehabilitate themselves. Why? Because they think that work is the best form of rehabilitation. That is absolutely true for men, but the best form of rehabilitation to prevent women from reoffending is being able to look after their children. If a woman is given the chance to be reunited with her kids and to look after them, she is enormously less likely to offend. Yet despite all the insights of the Corston report, we do not have a national programme to ensure that that happens for every woman, which is just sad That is an outcome of not ensuring that women can think through every bit of policy. In Back-Bench debates, we can criticise policy and say that we have better ideas, but we need to be on the Cabinet Committees and in on every decision. If we were, instead of women being treated as men who menstruate, we could treat them in accordance with the reality of their lives, and we could devise policies to ensure that we employ women’s talents in the work force, use women’s ability to care for our families and have a society in which women play the role of which they are absolutely capable, but which they cannot currently play.