Highly Paid Professions: Girls and Women

2. If she will meet the Children’s Commissioner and the Ofsted Chief Inspector to discuss barriers to girls and women entering highly paid professions.

My colleagues in the Department for Education regularly meet Ofsted and the Children’s Commissioner, and I will ask them to raise that matter at their next meeting. It is critical to get more women into professions where they are under-represented, not least because that will help close the gender pay gap.

The Minister knows the information and data that those two organisations hold on the fact that so many bright girls are diverted early on away from science and maths, and away from other subjects that have a clear link with progression to high management. Surely that is criminal, and we should do something about it on an all-party basis.

I think the hon. Gentleman for the opportunity to discuss this issue again. He is right, and this is an issue on which Members across the House will agree. Progress has been made, including a clear increase in girls choosing those subjects, which shows that effort does pay off, but there are still too few such cases, and we must not let up in our work to encourage women to have such choices and to go forward in those professions.

Women who enter high-paid professions face blatant discrimination—40% experience sexual harassment, 50,000 women a year feel forced to leave their jobs because they are pregnant, and organisations such as the BBC feel that it is okay for them to break the law by paying men and women differently for the same job. Why is there no mention of enforcing antidiscrimination law in the Government’s “Good Work Plan”, which is their employment strategy? Surely that should be at the heart of what they are doing.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is consulting on that matter. My right hon. Friend mentioned a list of issues, and it is important to track the impact that policies are having on women and their choices. We will produce measures and metrics to sit alongside the strategy that the Government Equalities Office will produce on women’s economic empowerment, so that we can all see how we are doing.

On 20 February I raised concerns with the Ofsted Chief Inspector that some schools are not following new safeguarding guidance on peer-on-peer sexual abuse, but at best, the Chief Inspector’s response required improvement. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can enforce safeguarding in schools?e

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this issue. It is a very serious matter indeed. I will certainly ask the relevant Minister at the Department for Education to meet her, and I will also follow up.

We should accentuate the positive. Last year, 68.8% of those accepted on law undergraduate courses were women. The future for law in this country is bright. Does the Minister agree?

Every human endeavour depends for its success on women’s involvement, so, yes, I am pleased about progress, but more needs to be done.

Further to the question asked by the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), one of the barriers to women holding highly paid positions is maternity discrimination. What further steps will the Government take to tackle this issue?

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is leading on a number of pieces of work. The women’s economic empowerment strategy is considering all these policies in the round to look at what more we can do to ensure that women are supported and treated fairly, and can have full careers. It will be published later this spring.