Nicky Morgan: 'Women died for the vote – it's incumbent on all of us to use it'
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Version 0 of 1. Women have a responsibility to participate in the coming general election, the equalities minister has said, because of their predecessors who died to win the vote. Nicky Morgan, who holds the equalities brief in addition to her role as education secretary, said it was “hugely disappointing” that the proportion of women who vote has fallen more steeply than that of men in recent decades. Asked how women could be persuaded to vote, she said: “I find it incumbent on myself — and I hope I am some kind of role model – when I talk to girls [in schools] to say, ‘Look, women died for the vote: I think it’s incumbent on all of us to use it.’” I’m instinctively against quotas, because they don’t drive the sort of systemic cultural change we want to see Research published earlier this year by the House of Commons library found that while 78.5% of women voted in the 1992 general election, a higher proportion than that of men (77%), by 2010 the figures had fallen to 64% of women and 68% of men. Speaking to the Guardian at an event for women in business before Sunday’s International Women’s Day, Morgan said politicians of all parties had failed to engage fully with women, but rejected that there were particular policies that applied only to them. In a coded reference to Labour’s “manifesto for women”, which the party will publish separately covering areas including childcare, domestic violence, equal pay and equal representation, Morgan said: “One of the things about engaging women in the coming election [is] realising there aren’t ‘women’s issues’, there are all the issues women are interested in. “But they may have a different perspective [to men] sometimes, different life experiences. It’s about the language we use. And I think MPs do understand that.” She ruled out introducing quotas on female participation in corporate boards, as Germany did last year, where the country’s biggest companies are now required to have at least 30% of their boardrooms made up of women. Related: How can politicians court the female vote when they don’t know how we live? | Suzanne Moore “I’m instinctively against quotas, because what they don’t do is drive the sort of systemic cultural change that we want to see. I think if people are appointed on the basis of ticking a box, that doesn’t necessarily change the attitudes of everyone else around the boardroom table. “I’m certainly ruling it out. I’m instinctively against it and I’ve not seen any evidence to change my mind.” While some progress had been made at non-executive level, she said, with no FTSE 100 boards remaining that are still all-male, “the next challenge is going to be the level of the executive directors, and actually, the layer below that, because it’s important we have women [represented] all throughout organisations.” In her speech to the Celebrating Women in Business conference, jointly sponsored by the government and the business support organisation Enterprising Women, Morgan said that only 31% of women felt they had the skills to start a business, compared to half of men, while women seek significantly lower amounts of finance to get business projects off the ground. On the subject of pay, she said that the stubborn gap between men’s and women’s pay was partly because of the roles that women chose to enter, and partly about childcare. Our whole plan for education has been about trusting heads and teachers to do the right thing “Part of this is wanting our women and our girls to go to jobs that pay well, and also to get to senior levels in those jobs before they will take time out potentially to have families.” She pointed to shared parental leave, which will be introduced in April, allowing parents to choose how they divide leave between then. “Having children is not a women’s thing, it’s a parents thing,” said Morgan. In her own case, she said, “I have a situation where my husband is at home looking after our son [who is seven] and I am here doing this fascinating, challenging, crazy job. We have worked that out for us, and I think that’s what you want for families.” Asked when she believed men and women would be paid the same, Morgan said: “I’d love to say it’s in the next parliament. I suspect we are looking at least a couple of parliaments beyond that, and I think we have to work out how we speed this up.” Morgan has recently pointed to ONS figures that show the gender pay gap in the UK — where men still earn 17.5% more than women — is at a historic low, although this is in part accounted for by the fact that real wages have fallen more for men than for women during the economic downturn, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. Responding to an OECD report published on Thursday that said girls lack self-confidence in their ability at maths and science, Morgan said inspiring young women is key. “If you don’t know what you are missing out on, you can’t apply for it. And I think it’s not just for government, it’s for the science establishment, for teachers, schools and for government as well, to all work together to make sure girls don’t limit their horizons before they are made aware of all the options.” Related: Harriet Harman is right: women hold the balance of power – if they vote | Polly Toynbee She repeated her opposition to the compulsory introduction of sets based on ability in secondary schools, a policy that David Cameron last week backed, saying: “All schools, in my view, should set by ability, particularly in English and maths.” But Morgan said: “Our whole plan for education has been about trusting heads and teachers to do the right thing – that’s the thing behind having academies and more school autonomy. The right thing is for schools to make that decision. “If they decide that’s the right thing for that particular class or set of students, I’m certainly not going to stop them, but I’m going to leave it to them.” |