Examination of witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
WEDNESDAY 25 OCTOBER 2000
JENNY WATSON
and JAYNE MONKHOUSE
Mr Brazier
180. My final question, looking at it from a
slightly different angle—I think there are some questions
to do with submarines later on, to do with other areas—but
there is a particular point about crowding on submarines. Basically,
on a submarine you have all the kit there you need to sustain
the people and to run the motor, so you have the motors occupying
about a third. Then everything that is left is used for accommodation.
If you were to provide—and I give this as an example in
combat effectiveness, which is quite separate from the issue of
testing—a separate living facility for one or two women
on the submarine, the only way you could provide the extra space
for that would be by significantly reducing the amount of space
you would have for ammunition. The magazine would have to come
down because it is the only variable on it. Do you think it is
right that we should provide extra toilets, distinct living facilities
and so on, at the expense of the number of torpedoes that a submarine
can actually carry?
(Ms Monkhouse) No, a submarine goes to sea in a situation
for combat effectiveness. We would not want to see a submarine
going below its minimum combat effectiveness rating. We have had
the opportunity to discuss at some length with the Royal Navy
the issue of the accommodation for women on submarines. Both of
us have had the opportunity to go to sea in a submarine and see
for ourselves the cramped living quarters. There is no privacy
on a submarine. It is very cramped. It is bad for men and it would
be bad for women. But I think the Royal Navy believe they could
accommodate women. A proportion of the bunk space for women could
be arranged. There are a number of other issues to do with ensuring
that a nuclear submarine obviously has to be 100% manned all the
time, and those sorts of issues need to be thought through and
planned for objectively. However, I do not think there is anything
in the nature of the work on board a submarine which would prevent
a woman from doing it. Women could do all of the jobs on board
a submarine.
181. I did not ask about the nature of the jobs.
I asked about the fact that if there was a space penalty involved—let
us put it as a hypothetical, although I am assured that it is
an actual case—if there was a safety penalty involved, which
ultimately would have to come out of the magazines because there
is nowhere else you could take it out, would it really be right
to reduce the combat sustainability of a submarine in order to
provide one or two places for women?
(Ms Watson) We had a meeting not very long ago with
the MoD and Royal Navy about this. My understanding is, if I am
right about this, that on the Vanguard class it would be possible
to adapt the accommodation to allow women to serve. There are
two issues, and this is what Jayne has highlighted, but there
is one issue about where you want to be in ten or 15 years' time
and plan for that accordingly, which may well be for women to
be able to serve on submarines in exactly the same way as men
do. Another is to look at what you need now. Now because of the
100% manning and needing to be able to replace somebody immediately,
it is very difficult to sustain, with the current level of no
women serving on submarines at the moment, the building-up period
of having an adequate number to be able to have that 100% of manning
replacement, if you said providing accommodation would be a difficulty.
Clearly that is something that the Navy has to look at. There
is a difference between the nature of the jobs and the context
of the jobs.
182. Absolutely. It is all about context.
(Ms Watson) That is the point we are making. So given
the context at the moment, as we have said in our submission,
it may be possible. The Navy may want to consider the way in which
it approaches women serving on submarines, but that does not take
away the problem in the long term when you are thinking about
designing new submarines. Maybe you ought to plan it with women
in mind to be able to serve, and design new accommodation accordingly.
However, that is a long-term planning point.
Chairman: Frankly, I would like to see
any submarines going to sea, regardless of who is on board. Maybe
they should use the enforced absence of a submarine to look at
the design.
Mr Viggers
183. You said, Ms Watson, that when you go into
a room full of Servicemen they all stand up for you, and that
it is the only place where men do. How do you feel when that happens?
(Ms Watson) It is extraordinary actually. In a way,
it is neither here nor there. It is surprising the first few times
it happens because, as I say, it does not happen elsewhere in
the world in which I work.
184. Would you prefer it not to happen?
(Ms Watson) It really does not make any difference
to me, to be honest. The quality of the discussion that I have
is what I remember at the end of the day. Not whether everybody
stands up.
185. I would like to say that when it was first
proposed that women should go to sea in Her Majesty's ships, I
opposed this because I thought it could cause all sorts of social
problems. I based this on constituency experience. I have always
asked, whenever I have visited a naval establishment or ships,
whether it has caused a problem, and I have always been reassured
that it has not caused a problem. This is a tribute to the control
and self-discipline and the personal dignity of the men and women
of the Armed Forces. I pay tribute to them for that. Turning to
the issue of submarines, I would just like to say that there might
be insufficient accommodation on diesel or electric submarines,
which are much smaller, but on nuclear submarines the problems
will indeed be soluble. But there are some very special problems,
of course, if women who go to sea for long periods, especially
on extended tour, should be pregnant without perhaps knowing they
are pregnant. You said in your report to us: "We believe
that the Royal Navy may be unlawfully discriminating against all
women because of a possible perceived danger to a few." How
do you see the issue being resolved if the MoD is concerned that
it might be exposing women who are pregnant, unknown to themselves
are pregnant at the time on long patrols, and who might then decide
that they wish to take legal action against the Ministry of Defence
for exposing them to this medical risk? Do you see that as an
insoluble problem?
(Ms Monkhouse) It is quite true that some women may
not know when they are first pregnant, but they certainly know
if they are likely to be pregnant. A lot of women serving in the
Royal Navy would take sufficient precautions to ensure that they
were not pregnant if they were likely to go on a tour or on a
submarine. This is an issue and is a difficult one for the Navy
to be able to resolve to its complete satisfaction. I think that
the trust of the workforce has got to be become paramount here.
There are significant numbers of women currently serving in the
Royal Navy who either cannot get pregnant, do not want to get
pregnant, or are taking sufficient contraceptives to be able to
guarantee that they will not get pregnant. The Royal Navy should
be able to adapt its policy in that area. I do not think that
it should be a major problem as long as there is trust on both
sides and a commitment for women to work in submarines.
186. Would you wish to impose regulations or
restrictions on women who have volunteered to become submariners
and who are about to undertake a three-month submerged voyage?
In practical terms, how do you get over this very practical problem?
(Ms Monkhouse) We have made mention in our written
submission that this problem exists in space ships that go up,
that NASA send up into space. NASA have chosen to disregard this
as a problem by making it clear to women astronauts that they
should not be pregnant when they are ready to go on a space flight.
Similar circumstances could appertain to women who were due to
go on a submarine tour. It may be useful for the Royal Navy to
have a look at women who have gone on sea service on surface ships,
to see if this has been a problem of concern at all, that women
have ended up going on to ships and getting pregnant or discovering
they are pregnant once they are on board. But it would not be
a significant problem.
187. Very well. We cannot resolve it now but
I merely remark the fact that it could be a very serious practical
problem. Do you have any indication of the number of women who
might wish to serve in submarines or as clearance divers? Have
you any submissions or ideas on that?
(Ms Watson) No. Again it is one of those difficult
issues. At the moment, it is not possible to serve and so I think
many women, once they go into the Armed Services, go in and accept
a culture of discipline. That means, forgive the metaphor, they
do not rock the boat too much in terms of coming forward and saying,
"I want to serve on a submarine and I want you to take on
my case." There are very few cases indeed on combat effectiveness,
although we have taken one. As you know, we took a legal challenge.
Until the ban on women on submarines is lifted, we will not know.
It is interesting to see that what the Navy has done is to present
submarine service to men in the Navy as a very exciting and positive
opportunity. They have seen the rate of volunteering to serve
on submarines rise because of that. Again, if you look into the
future, if you were able to accommodate women on submarines and
you lift that ban, you would need to see a promotion of submarine
service to women, and again you would see the numbers rise accordingly.
(Ms Monkhouse) It is worth mentioning that the sex
discrimination legislation allows an individual to make a complaint,
so one woman could come forward and say, "I want to go on
board a submarine." For these reasons I believe that the
Navy's policy is discriminatory. In order to reduce the cost of
litigation, both to the Navy and to the cost of the individuals,
we have raised these issues with them in order to get fair and
equal treatment as far as possible.
Mr Viggers: From the women I have met
in the Armed Forces I am sure there are some who would wish to
commit themselves to this very exciting part of the Armed Forces.
Chairman: We will have some questions
on retention issues.
Dr Lewis
188. Just before getting on to that, may I take
up one or two of your points. Many people have been reassured,
as I have been, by the emphasis being placed on equality of opportunity.
Can you guarantee that if equality of opportunity is eventually
achieved, as I am sure it will be, there will not be a switch
in emphasis to equality of outcomes?
(Ms Watson) I want to clarify your question to check
I am understanding it correctly. I think what you are saying is,
can we give a guarantee to you that we will not come forward in
the future and say, you do not have 30% women or 50% women, so
you are not doing what you should be doing. What we would like
to see is the Armed Services being able to recruit more women
and keep those women for longer periods of time. We have not discussed
with the Armed Services any concept of target service. It is impossible
to tell, because we have this plan in place, what the true level
of women serving in the Armed Forces is. It needs time to grow
and develop.
189. What I am trying to get at is this: in
many roles in the Armed Services, and I would suggest quite a
heavy majority of roles in the Armed Services, gender differences
are obviously completely irrelevant. If a woman is a good shot
she has more than the necessary strength to pull the trigger and
so, therefore, one should expect to find roughly equal outcomes
in terms of people being recruited to shoot weapons. However,
as you yourself have acknowledged, there are some jobs which impose
greater physical burdens than others. What would concern some
of us, I think, would be if in those areas people then started
retrospectively saying that there must be some sort of discrimination
because only a small percentage of people doing those jobs where
physical strength is necessary are actually women.
(Ms Watson) I think Jayne Monkhouse made it very clear
that where the tests are appropriate the tests have to be passed.
Clearly in the Army tests they have designed tests around requirements
for the job. If you pass the test you get an opportunity to do
the job. They are a very good example of tests that are appropriate
and they comply with sex discrimination legislation. Where the
tests are appropriate I cannot see any difficulty. If that means
then that a lower percentage of women are able to pass them, then
that is a fact of life.
190. Good. Let us move from that theoretical
question to the retention issues the Chairman was indicating.
Given that we have now had women in the Armed Services for some
considerable time, have you any evidence so far of glass ceilings
preventing women from fulfilling their potential in the Armed
Forces? If so, at what sort of levels is that occurring?
(Ms Monkhouse) We recognise that women have had a
restricted career opportunity in the Armed Services up until the
mid 1990s, because on getting pregnant they were dismissed from
the Service. There was almost a glass ceiling for most women,
although not all women. Those who stayed the course and remained
childless had a, more or less, open career. The fact that women
are not allowed to do anything to do with operational fighting
certainly curtails their career aspirations and ensures that they
will not get to the highest level of the Service until such time
as they can have a wide range of opportunities to gain experience
on everything that happens in the Armed Services. There will be
a glass ceiling, certainly at the moment.
191. Would you think it a bit contradictory
that the higher up the service you go the further you tend to
get away from physically demanding tasks, so in a sense one ought
to be able to see women improving their ratio of representation
at higher levels in the Service?
(Ms Watson) I take your point. You need the experience
and you need to have been seen to have participated in some of
those sorts of jobs that women are currently unable to do. Without
that breadth of experience there are career opportunities that
are closed to you. Thus at present your expectation is not quite
relevant Dr Lewis.
192. Are there any particular areas of any of
the particular Armed Forces that you yourselves would recognise,
even given total fairness in terms of equality of opportunity,
where you are unlikely to achieve more than a very small representation
of women purely because of the physical differences and strength?
(Ms Monkhouse) Yes, there are a number of areas where
women remain under-represented in any significant number, anything
that requires a major proportion of physical strength. The Parachute
Regiment, the Royal Marines, many of those frontline regiments
will not attract and not be able to recruit sufficiently large
numbers of women. That does not mean to say that the one or two
women who do want to join should be prevented.
193. To have a go.
(Ms Monkhouse) Yes.
194. You are saying that if you achieve full
equality of opportunity to try for all these posts, providing
the tests have been fair, you are not going to come back before
this Committee in five or ten years' time saying, "It is
not fair because in the Parachute Regiment or in the Royal Marines
there is only a very small representation of women". You
will still say, "We accept the fact that they had their chance
but sadly, because of the strength requirements, only one or two
were able to pass the test".
(Ms Monkhouse) We may ask the Parachute Regiment to
increase the opportunities that it offers to women, to encourage
more women to apply, thereby increasing the recruitment pool.
195. Not to lower the standard.
(Ms Monkhouse) Certainly not to lower the standard.
196. That is very clear, thank you. Finally,
should the Armed Forces be doing more to monitor and to compare
the career progress which women are making?
(Ms Watson) Yes, they should. The Army has focus groups
to look at the way in which men and women serving see their experience
of life in the Army. I think that would be equally valid to be
extended to other services. That can look at the culture in which
people are working. It can test whether or not people are subject
to sexual harassment and not wanting to take it through to the
complaints procedure. It can assess the way in which they think
they are being treated. It can provide a lot of useful information
for those higher up the chain of command who have to make policy
decisions. You might well find that you get calls for career breaks
from both women and men. That would be something that the Service
could consider. It would be a way of helping to retain, particularly
women, who very often tend to leave once they have a family.
Mr Hancock
197. I want to ask some questions relating to
women returning after maternity leave. I want to ask two quick
questions, one is about inter-service marriages, where service
personnel have married, and the damage that can do to one or other
career. It is normally the woman whose career suffers. I wonder
whether you have experience there. The second question is the
relationships between service personnel and men and women of different
ranks, and the problems that has caused for you as an organisation.
(Ms Watson) To answer the question about inter-service
marriage or within a service marriage, it is usually the woman
who will give up the job and the husband will carry on. However,
we have seen a number of cases where both continue serving, have
good careers and carry on for as long as they can. Clearly there
are difficulties there. Where they are committed to having a career
they want to take it through. The Navy had a conference earlier
this year looking at diversity issues, and there was a woman there
who had had a child, whose husband had a different posting from
her and she said it had been hell. It was a job that she loved
and if she had been given the chance to make that decision again
she would have chosen the same decision, to go back on sea service.
It is very difficult but that is what she wanted to do.
198. The question about relationships?
(Ms Monkhouse) This is an issue raised in a number
of civilian services as well, the problems of one partner issuing
instructions to another partner. I think most organisations can
overcome it. Professionalism dictates that it should be possible
to work this through and there should be no problems with partners
working together. Our experience is that if there is a ban on
husbands and wives working together in different ranks people
just do not mention that they are living in partnership with people,
so it is not an issue. I do take your point that it can be problematic.
People have to work these things through on an individual basis.
In a professional service we would not expect it to cause any
problems.
199. What do you see as the main difficulties
for women returning to the Services after having had children?
(Ms Monkhouse) The main issue is to get back to work
and to take on a full range of duties at a time when it is suitable
for the mother and the child to be able to do that. At the moment
the Services give the statutory minimum requirement, and perhaps
it is not long enough for a lot of women to be able to then come
back to where you have to work after 18 weeks and immediately
go back on to sea service or to be sent to Kosovo, or wherever.
It is true that women then have to pass the fitness test to be
able to go back onto active service. We would be encouraging the
Armed Services to look very closely at the sorts of jobs and opportunities
that are open to women who are expectant mothers or who have just
returned to work after having children.
|
