4. Statement by the Leader of the House and Chief Whip: International Women's Day

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:34 pm on 6 March 2018.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 3:34, 6 March 2018

Thank you very, very much, leader of the house, for your statement today. It's very difficult to criticise anything in there, and I don't intend to do so. And I certainly welcome the list of activities that the Welsh Government has been involved in, and the number of women that have been encouraged to take part in those activities. I've no doubt that they will feel the benefits of that and progress well with those ambitions in their lives. But I'm wondering if there's any way—or even whether it's appropriate, actually—that we could monitor the progress of the women, and particularly the younger women, who have been involved in those programmes. I certainly don't want to spy on them, and of course their choices are their choices, but if we can come up with strong evidence—I don't know, even in 10 years' time—to prove that these have been really, really worthwhile and repeatable activities, then I think that that's good for all of us.

I'm really pleased to see that there's a focus on apprenticeships in the statement you've made today. I'd like to do a quick shout-out for Bridgend College, which has just won the apprenticeship provider of the year award—I've done my duty to my constituents there.

But there's still some very concerning information out there about gender stereotyping, and I refer in particular to a piece of work done by the Careers and Enterprise Company very recently, which found that young people have more, not less, gender-conservative views of the world than their parents did. Fifty-six per cent of young women aged between 17 and 19 believe that their gender limits their career options—only 37 per cent of young men felt that. And the research went on to confirm that career aspirations showed particular gender disparity, with 18 per cent more young men than women wanting to be engineers and IT professionals—perhaps not something we're surprised to hear here. But it showed that those biases are projected onto others by young people themselves, so that it's peers, in one way, who are encouraging young women in particular to go into careers that perhaps they went into. And the fact that gender equality, if you like, isn't a given, I think, is demonstrated in these brand-new figures, and a good reason why these debates, and these statements that you make, Minister, are still essential. I'd love to say that the job is done, but we're miles away from it, judging by these new figures.

As well as apprenticeships, I wonder if the Welsh Government has given some consideration to returnships as well—I don't know if that's a word I can use. The UK Government's just announced some money to support people back into the private sector after time off for caring. Of those people, 90 per cent are women—perhaps again no huge surprise. And I find this interesting if we're asking women in particular to go back into careers, rather than jobs, as certainly when you consider the recent statistics we had from 'Who Runs Wales? 2017', despite the good work that we're doing here, only 6 per cent of chief executives in the top 100 per cent businesses are women—that's in the private sector. Surely, we can be doing better than that. So, if there is a particular work stream here that you think you might be interested in developing, we'd be certainly happy to support you in that.

On childcare, obviously we want this to work. And I'm wondering if I could just draw attention to the pilot on childcare in my area—which, of course, is yours as well—where it seems that nannies aren't included in the scheme, for reasons of registration; I completely get why they're not. But it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that nannies are just for families who can afford them, rather than, on occasion, it is the welfare of the child that demands it. And the reason I'm raising it is because, apart from potentially reducing the number of jobs available to nannies, who tend to be women, there's a risk that it's the women in those families who will choose to stay at home to look after the children, rather than going out into the workplace, because of the needs of that particular child. So, I'm hoping that's something—I believe that it's an unintended consequence of the policy—that could perhaps be looked at.

And then I just want to welcome your very important comments on violence generally. I'm very pleased to see the level of training taken up by professionals, which you referred to. But even that's only going to pay dividends if you get the healthy relationships part of this right. I appreciate what you say that the curriculum will now involve that, but we do have the sort of pre-Donaldson gap, which I think—you may not be able to give me information today—we need to have some information on, particularly at secondary school level, where both young men and young women will have missed the opportunity for this to be very normalised at primary school level. So, if you're able to share any information on that, that would be great. Thank you.