Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Dr Heather Williams

I am a professional physicist within the NHS, honorary secretary to the Institute of Physics’ Women in Physics Group, and Director of ScienceGrrl (www.sciencegrrl.co.uk)

I am responding to this call for evidence in a personal capacity.

I would particularly like to submit my views on the following questions:

What has been the impact of the current economic crisis on female employment and wage levels?

I think it is not so much the current economic crisis but the response to it that is the issue. In particular, the emphasis reducing the deficit through on public sector cuts has adversely affected women, not only because the public sector workforce is predominantly female, but also because women are adversely affected by measures that reduce state provision and support for part-time and flexible work. The Fawcett Society is continuing to compile and report information on this issue: http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=1236

How should the gender stereotyping prevalent in particular occupations, for example in engineering, banking, construction, and the beauty industry, be tackled?

Speaking specifically about women in non-typical careers, I think we need more visible, accessible and inspirational female role models from a wide variety of careers, and enable access to these role models for young women at all stages of their education. As professional scientists like myself have limited time available to visit schools, we need to exploit the opportunities provided by e-mentoring, websites and social networks. It is also important to ensure a wide range of women (and men) in non-stereotypical occupations are represented in the media. The BBC, as our national broadcaster, should aspire to better representation of women, particularly as “experts” on current affairs programmes; the recent incident on the Today programme where two men were commenting on a woman’s experience of breast cancer was inexcusable and provoked quite a response, more details here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/04/women-bbc-female-experts The counterpoint to that is that, from my point of view, women with expertise need media training in order to communicate well in this setting and gain confidence to do so. ScienceGrrl, a network of (predominantly) female scientists passionate about passing on their love of STEM to the next generation, is looking to contribute to both these areas—role model visibility and media representation—in 2013.

What more should be done to promote part-time work at all levels of the workplace and to ensure that both women and men have opportunities to gain senior positions within an organisation while working part time?

As a part-time scientist and mother of two small children, I think the most important thing that could be done would be to bring about equity in paternity/maternity leave arrangements. At present, the mother is entitled to two months or more of maternity leave, whereas the father only gets two weeks. After the first two months of recovering from labour, there is no reason why a woman cannot return to work and the child be cared for effectively by his or her father, or arrangements made for sharing childcare. I would like to see a transition to the Swedish system, which I first became aware of through this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/nov/18/swedish-latte-pappa-shared-childcare In Sweden, parental leave can be divided between the parents as they see fit, so it is not automatically the mother’s career that needs to “held back” or abandoned completely to care for a small child. This will help support a change I am witnessing amongst my peers and those younger, that most men want to be more involved in family life than has historically been the case. Establishing joint responsibility for parenting at the outset will mean both parents expect to combine the demands of family life with those of their career, and be prepared to negotiate for part-time opportunities based on the existing legal right to request flexible working. I think MPs should also lead from the front on this, and allow MPs to job share so that two part-time MPs can represent the same constituency. I am in full support of this petition, to this end: http://www.inclusionlondon.co.uk/sign-petition-for-job-share-for-mps

24 December 2012