Girls’ Unemployment – Do Politicians Care?

In a recent interview with journalist Mary Riddell, Labour’s shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said the UK schools system is failing white British boys. He also suggested that immigration from the EU accession states has particularly damaged them.

Hunt admitted that Labour under Tony Blair “did not focus on vocational education and the FE [further education] sector to the degree that (it) should have done” adding “from 1997 to 2007, there was a failure to recognise the significance of technical education.”

He told Mary Riddell “What we can do in the education sphere is to [show] that there is a growing issue of white British boys not getting the education they want.” When she asked whether he “sees them as the cohort most failed by a migrant influx”. He replied “None of this is to say there isn’t more work to do with black Afro-Caribbean boys and in urban areas. But we do know … there is a strand of low-attaining, not necessarily poor, boys in suburban coastal districts – …..– who are not being challenged or served effectively enough by the education system. It doesn’t matter that these are white boys. It’s not about the colour of their skin. It is a grouping that we know we have an issue with.”

What is remarkable about this – apart from the belated recognition that New Labour did a disservice to Britain’s children by neglecting technological education – is Hunt’s indifference to the needs of girls. The lives and job prospects of working class girls, in particular, have been damaged as much as, or more than, those of boys – and girls’ long term financial prospects are far worse. In addition, these young girls experience discrimination, prejudice and sexist bullying and harassment in schools and places of training and work, which by and large do not afflict white boys.

Tristram Hunt ignores evidence that women and girls are being hardest hit by current economic policies. He fails to mention that women’s traditional public-sector sources of employment are being slashed, while wages in the private sector are driven down by low-paid immigrant labour and government failure to enforce the minimum wage – especially in the care sector, where many jobs are now only advertised abroad.

Hunt makes no reference to last November’s report by Prof John Perkins, chief scientific adviser to the Department for Business, which revealed that less than 10% of Britain’s engineers are women – the lowest figure of all European countries. Prof Perkins stressed that more must be done to encourage British schoolgirls to take qualifications that will lead to engineering jobs. Vince Cable, the UK Business Secretary, warned that many companies had a “psychological barrier” against women becoming engineers, saying: “Half of all state schools don’t have a single girl doing physics. We are only tapping half the population”. He said this would be an “enormous problem for years to come”.

Hunt recognises disillusionment in unemployed young men. He would do well to note recent research by the Princes Trust, based on 2,161 interviews, which reveals that one in three young women – twice as many as their male counterparts – have thought about committing suicide, while almost as many have self-harmed. The Trust found that 54% of women aged 16 to 25 have experienced feelings of self-loathing, with one in six having been prescribed anti-depressants. They are also significantly more likely to suffer panic attacks and feelings of inferiority than men their age. Almost one in five young women have faced mental health problems as a direct result of being unemployed, while one in four believe they have “no talent”. They are also more likely to feel unhappy with their employment prospects. In almost every area, young women were more likely to suffer issues with their wellbeing than men. Around 30% of the girls questioned said they were unhappy with their mental health and were significantly more likely to feel like a failure if they asked for help.

The Trust’s chief executive Martina Milburn said: “Unemployment is driving young people to despair, with many facing significant mental health problems – particularly young women.”

The response from both government and Labour has been deafening silence. Labour’s only declared large scale plans for job expansion involve a proposed housebuilding programme with apprenticeship schemes, which, unless there are radical changes in policy, will largely benefit unemployed British boys and young men. Any vacancies are likely to be filled by male workers from abroad.

This being the case, we might have hoped for a Labour strategy to retrain British girls and women in non-traditional skills – committing a future Labour government to ensure that at least 50% of new apprenticeships are reserved for females and supporting them in countering sexism and harassment in training schemes and the workplace. However, there’s no evidence of this.

Given the care crisis which faces the nation, and the fact that thousands of older women workers lose jobs or work-hours because of caring responsibilities, we might have hoped for Labour to invest in high quality care facilities for elders and those with dementia – and re-instate decent qualifications and training for basic nursing and care staff – thus creating jobs and allowing older carers to remain in work. Again, nothing like this seems to be under consideration. Instead, unscrupulous agencies recruit poorly trained foreign staff with little English as cheap labour to work with vulnerable elders.

Recent governments have cynically abandoned working class and non-academic girls to training for non-existent or low paid beauty and child care jobs rather than helping them acquire better paid skills and trades. Even the highly-respected nursing apprenticeship, the SEN Qualification – a lifeline for unqualified female school-leavers – was taken from them in the drive to graduate professionalism.

In respect of British girls and women, Ed Miliband has yet to show that a government under his control would be significantly different from its predecessors.