As I know from personal experience, women make a real and significant contribution to enterprise and business.
My mother started her own business in the early 1960s when she was 20 years old. When the bank refused to provide the funding to support her new ventures, my great aunt put her house up as collateral to secure the loan.
For the last decade and a half, I have written three bestselling textbooks on enterprise and small business with Professor Sara Carter of Strathclyde University, one of the leading female entrepreneurship academics in the the World.
Through the Wales Fast Growth 50, I have had the honour of meeting some truly inspirational female owner-managers who are making a real difference in their industry including Anna Bastek of Wolfestone, Rachel Bedgood of Complete Background Services, Donna Turner-Kot of the n-ergy group and, of course, the irrepressible Hayley Parsons, the founder of GoCompare.
I am also currently working with Liz Brookes at Grapevine Events where her expertise and experience in events management are the key to developing some fantastic new concepts to promote Welsh businesses.
Given this, I would have hoped that politicians and policymakers across the UK would have, on International Women’s Day, been avidly reading the report from PWC on how women can revitalise economies around the World.
It noted that the UK could grow significantly if the level of female employment here matched those of other countries such as Sweden. In fact, the Women in Work Index - which combines key indicators of female economic empowerment into a single comparable index for 33 countries - shows that the UK has much to do to ensure that women play a major role in today’s economy.
To be fair, the data released suggests the UK is making progress by rising to a ranking of 18th position from 21st in 2014. However, this improvement is not down to any specific policy interventions but is due to a significant reduction in the female unemployment rate due to the stronger economic growth in recent years.
In fact, whilst the UK is slightly above the average, it still lags behind other major competitors in areas such as the share of women in full-time employment and the gender wage gap (which remains at 18.3% as shown below).
For example, if the level of female employment could be increased from 68% to 73% (i.e. the level in Sweden) then the benefit to the UK could be around 9% of GDP (or £170 billion).
In addition, women’s average salary in the UK remains 18.3% behind men’s and closing the gender pay gap would result in an £80 billion boost to overall female earnings in the UK. This would equate to an average pay rise of £5,500 for every working woman.
So what policy lessons are there from the Nordic countries in boosting levels of female participation in employment?
First of all, it is clear that shared parental leave, which was introduced over forty years ago, has had a major effect. For example, parents in Sweden are currently entitled to share 480 days of paid parental leave when a child is born or adopted.
In addition, there is significant state support for childcare which means that the cost of returning to work for mothers is significantly lower e.g. public childcare of up to 15 hours per week is free for children between three and six years old. Whereas childcare-related costs account for a third of household income in the UK, it is only around 5-10% in the Nordic countries.
The result is that Nordic countries have one of the highest female participation rates in the labour force because of a policy approach that balances higher taxes against higher economic participation by females and an approach that looks to put both work and family at the heart of economic policy.
But this shouldn’t only be about government alone. Businesses should also ensure that all employees of whatever gender are fairly remunerated by ensuring fair pay and promotion opportunities are available to all. In addition, the talent of female employees can be fully leveraged by promoting flexible working options and ensuring that women are given every opportunity to undertake roles that are suited to their skills and experience.
However, it would be truly transformational if politicians took the first step in closing the gap in gender inequality for the benefit of the economy.
Certainly, the UK Government would do well to consider how developing policies to boost the number of women in the workforce over the next few years can also have as much, if not more, of an impact as any other measures that he will introduce.
Indeed, if the UK economy is to continue to grow in what are still fiscally challenging times, we need everyone regardless of gender to make a significant contribution to wealth creation.