A Woman’s Place
19 July 2005
In a Man’s World
Everyone who spends any time at Westminster says the same thing. “It is just like a boys’ public school”. And it is, albeit, a nineteenth century one. First there is the cloakroom with its coat hooks and name tags; then there dining room with its toast and sticky puddings and, finally, there is the Chamber, with its shouting, name calling and gentle bullying.
But, above all, the place is full of boys, or rather, men behaving like boys in the absence of women. This is because, even in the twenty-first century, only 128 of Britain’s 645 MPs, or 19.8%, are women. Given that they account for almost 52% of the British population this figure is hardly representative.
However, it is a record. This year’s General Election returned the largest number of women MPs ever. Contrast this with the 1983 General Election which only returned twenty-three women. Much progress was made over the next twenty-two years. In the 1987 General Election the number of women MPs doubled; it trebled in 1992 and passed the 100 mark in 1997. There was a slight dip in 2001 but, thankfully, the upward trend resumed in 2005.
Theoreticians say that, if you want to make a real change to a institution, you need at least 20% of its members to be behind that change. So, in Westminster, women are still 0.5% under strength. But, despite this, they are managing to dissipate the boys’ public school atmosphere of Parliament. Give us another two general elections and, who knows, we may actually get it into the twentieth century.
Woman’s contribution
Meanwhile, there is a great deal of work to be done. Especially in the area of women’s pensions. Most people know that the majority of pensioners are female. But how many people know that only 16% are entitled to a full state pension in their own right?
This anomaly arises because women’s career patterns are not the same as men’s. They do not have long, unbroken, job and, more importantly, National Insurance contribution records. Women take breaks – to rear children, to nurse the sick, and care for the old. Society could not manage without their unpaid, and often unrecognised, work.
But they are penalised, not rewarded, for all this caring. That is why I was really glad this week to hear the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, David Blunkett, promise to do something about this injustice. This will not be easy and Mr Blunkett has a fight on his hands but he has women MPs behind him.
Working for women
Women have always played a big part in my life, starting with my mother. She was a truly remarkable person who, somehow, managed to bring up three reasonably normal children despite her husband’s alcoholism and bankruptcy.
Without the money she earned working in a well-known department store our family would never have survived. It was when she started working there that I first became aware of the fact that women are, on average, paid one-third less than men for doing exactly the same work.
This inequality persists and is one of the reasons why the income of British women pensioners is, on average, only 57% of that of men.
It is going to take a long time and a lot of hard work to bridge this income gap. But in my new job as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister for Women I intend to do my bit.
Housework
That is why I have spent so much time recently listening to debates in Westminster Hall. This is the overflow Chamber of the House of Commons where backbenchers can air their views, express their grievances and get an immediate Ministerial response.
Thanks mainly to the energy and initiative of the new intake of MPs, women’s issues have featured quite prominently in debates this month. Their pensions, enterprise and, finally, reproductive systems have been discussed in detail under the cold grey arches of the Hall. Tuesday’s debate was on the upper time limit on abortion. This terribly difficult and emotive subject was covered well by most speakers. However, one upstanding gentleman did himself no favours by advocating less sex education in schools. Apparently, the more pupils hear about sex the more they do it.
Just imagine if this novel approach was applied to other areas of life. Ignorance, in my experience, leads to misery not bliss.
Talking of bliss, Parliament recesses on Thursday and I am taking four weeks holiday. See you in September.
Barbara Follett MP
