A roundtable panel of prominent women discuss what the PM's adviser for female voters should say to her boss
Listen to the full discussion here
See Guardian readers' responses here
It is the first post of its kind: a female policy adviser whose remit is both specialised and broad – to counsel the prime minister on how his policies will affect women. Laura Trott, currently chief of staff to the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, has been appointed to ensure that government plans appeal to female voters.
Her appointment follows concern about a fall in support for the coalition among women, and criticism of David Cameron, his cabinet and his advisers. Slashed benefits, job cuts, and a reduction in core public services "risk pushing progress on women's equality back a generation", according to the equality campaigning group the Fawcett Society.
Wednesday's announcement that female unemployment is now at a 25-year high, with twice as many women as men having lost their jobs in the final quarter of 2011, reinforces that argument. The perception has been exacerbated by a scattering of symbolic, high-profile slip-ups, such as Cameron's "Calm down, dear" advice to the Labour MP Angela Eagle in the Commons, and Kenneth Clarke's contorted attempts to explain why he believed some rapes were more serious than others.
When she takes up her new role in the spring, Trott will be able to examine policy ideas as they are formulated, measuring how proposals will impact on women and suggesting amendments. In an effort to bring some clarity to the discussion on how Trott should use her influence, the Guardian brought together at the paper's offices a group of women from across the cultural, social and political divides.
"You can't open a paper or turn on television without either hearing the government launching a new idea they say is woman-friendly or the papers castigating certain businesses or organisations for a lack of women, whether it be older women in the BBC or women in the boardroom," said Jackie Long, social affairs editor for Channel 4 News. "The time is now to grab hold of these issues. The big question, though, is how serious the government is in doing that."
Far from assuaging concerns about the plight of women under Cameron's government, Trott's appointment was the source of anxiety and scepticism.
Admitting that she "couldn't help be cynical about it", Pragna Patel from the anti-violence campaign group Southall Black Sisters said there were already women in the government whose role it is to ensure policies do not disadvantage one gender over the other – including Theresa May, the home secretary, and equalities minister Lynne Featherstone.
"Are they not doing their job properly? Are they incompetent in carrying out equality impact assessment on every piece of government legislation that takes place? Or," she added, "is the government not listening to them?"
Patel asked a question that sparked a buzz of agreement around the table: why does the government need a specialist women's adviser when it already makes consultations on every proposal it draws up? What does the appointment imply about the advice already given to policy advisers by organisations – including her own group – that the cuts will have a disproportionate impact on women?
"The government has not listened," she said. "I can't help feeling this is another gimmick: a cynical ploy to get women's votes because the government is suddenly wobbling over the fact that women are disproportionately affected by the huge and swingeing cuts – public sector spending cuts, cuts in legal aid, Sure Start schemes, charities working with vulnerable children [and] the mentally ill. It is a vacuous attempt to detract attention from the glaring reality of these measures."
Her comments seemed to stir the rest of the group, particularly Mehj Ahmed, 17, from the British Youth Council. "How is this one female adviser going to represent all the women of the UK, let alone just the youth?" she asked. "We have pensioners, mothers, single mothers, people working in public and private sectors … I don't understand how David Cameron feels he can hire just one female adviser and feel that it is OK to represent the entire female nation in Britain today."
Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, saw the appointment as evidence of a wider malaise in British society.
"It strikes me as a rather hopeless and rather cynical move," she said. "To have an adviser to represent 50% of the population is pathetic. It represents inequality in general: the self-replication of a governing group ... It's not to do with women and men, but the nature of the governing class and our educational system, which is incredibly unfair."
What was the one policy or issue that each member of the panel would nominated as their most urgent concern? They were unanimous: without hesitation, everyone cited women's employment as their chief concern.
Lady Williams, the Liberal Democrat peer, said: "You can't embark on a policy of cutting benefits unless you have got the alternative of getting work. But there are no jobs out there in a lot of cases. I would like to see a Keynesian policy of job creation."
Williams urged the government to "breach the male/female division, which ensures that women are all pushed in service jobs rather than technical jobs".
Long said: "The rhetoric surrounding benefits is all about worklessness and workshy: 'We will … drag those people who don't want to work back to work.' But women are saying: 'We want to work, we don't want to be on benefits – but where's the narrative? What is your response to that?'
"Those women who are losing, or on the verge of losing, their jobs – they're saying: 'What can you tell me that will make me know this isn't endless?' "
Patel saw child benefit as a particularly important issue for a lot of women – who, she said, "even if they live in nuclear family set-ups with two parents, are often are not in control of finances".
Long was also concerned about some cuts to benefits, which, she said, "do disproportionately hit women, particularly lone mothers". But she acknowledged it was hard for a government that has decided to make drastic cuts to public spending to protect women.
"What can you do when you're making wide-scale cuts to the public sector as part of an economic package and women are disproportionately represented in that sector?" she asked. "Two choices: go ahead and say you are making cuts to public sector jobs, no matter who's in them. Or you can take a different approach to austerity and not cut so highly – but then you have to find the money somewhere else."
Patel said the lack of dialogue about where public spending should be withdrawn was a key part of the problem. "I think there has to be more democratic discussion about … who should sustain more cuts and who shouldn't," she said. "For me, the vulnerable have to be protected. It's a sign of a civilised, democratic society."
She drew attention to the number of charity closures across Britain. Freedom of information requests by the anti-cuts campaign group False Economy last year revealed that more than 2,000 charities have been forced to close or sack staff as local authority funding is slashed or withdrawn.
"I want to see [funding ring-fenced for] organisations and charities supporting women who have gone through violence … Surveys have shown that half of women's shelters are closed or facing closure," Patel said. Every time a charity closes, a wellspring of help and hope for women dries up - often for ever, Patel said. "What you're losing by destroying this aspect of civil society is expertise come out of years of painful struggle. If it's lost, it's not easy to recreate."
Following closely on from cuts in benefits and public spending is, for Patel, the issue of access to justice. "The legal aid bill will restrict so many vulnerable sectors of society that the state will be implicated in very many human rights violations of basic human freedoms."
Pointing to how Britain's high childcare costs are forcing women out of employment – or making it impossible for them to return to it after time away – Long set off a chorus of agreement when she said: "For women, the fundamental issue [is] childcare … If we can make it more affordable, the benefits in women returning to work would be enormous.
"We have one of the most expensive childcare systems in the world," she added. "If the government were to offer one thing to women, I think it would be reviewing the whole issue of childcare and how that would enable women to work – as long as we could find more jobs."
Yes, agreed Williams – "our old friend childcare". But she added: "Let's not kid ourselves. We can't get away from the fact that, whether we like it or not, the banking crisis left us with a huge hole. Immediately after the last general election we were teetering on the very edge of being pushed into default, of where Greece is … The government went for bigger cuts [and] most of the public voted for the Conservatives … so they presumably preferred the idea of cuts to taxation rises."
Long had no intention, she said, of playing "fantasy politics", even in the confines of a roundtable. But childcare was not just a vital issue to address, she believed – it was also a symptom of a wider problem.
"This is about not being listened to by government," she said, adding quickly that it was not just the Conservatives who weren't listening to women.
"[There is] a remoteness and an inability to speak to [women's] problems – but there is nothing coming from Labour that would make women feel any more likely to get into work," she said. "Labour have their own internal dilemma about their attitude to cuts: how far, how fast. In terms of how this problem is fixed, it's terribly difficult."
Ahmed was angry that although politicians cited their concern for young people when on the podium or behind the microphone, they did not, she said, engage with the younger generation and ask them what they want or need. The rise in university tuition fees proved that. "The tuition fees [issue] has angered every young person. [The Lib Dems] said they would lower the fees … We had these protests but no one listened to us. We're the future of the UK and are we being listened to?"
Ahmed added that the government's investment in apprenticeships further disadvantaged young women. "If we look carefully [at vocational courses], it's only technical training that is being invested in, and it's giving young men more of an advantage than women [because] women want to take the more caring role," she said.
This bought the conversation around to why the state is better at caring for vulnerable members of society, and whether private businesses could be doing more. What about introducing quotas of female staff?
Curtis was in favour: "Without quotas, the ruling class always replicates itself." Long had reservations. "I know lots of women who feel very unhappy with mandatory quotas because the arguments come back to the comment: 'You're only here because you're a woman.' That can be problematic."
Patel agreed that quotas could breed "tokenism and 'mediocracy' " but, she said, "quotas are necessary because the cultural change won't happen otherwise – because there are too many vested interests in keeping things that way. [But] it's just one component. You can't take it in isolation."
Williams spoke up for quotas as a partial solution to her wider critique of the "clubbishness" of British culture. "Female quotas compel people to look at what women can contribute," she said. "The problem in a lot of cases is that men, particularly in boardrooms, think they have nothing to contribute. They discover very quickly that women do have a lot to contribute. You don't get that if you don't drive it.
"At the end of the day, the government can't or won't fix it. It has to be wider than that."
What infuriates Patel is that the issue of gender equality should already be at the heart of policymaking in government. "We have equality legislation in this country," she said. "There are equality impact assessements in every policy change that's bought about. It's built into [the process but] they have become tick-box exercises instead of looking meaningfully at what it means to say that a certain policy change will impact disproportionally or adversely on a certain group of people. We have the tools to do it."There was one last question for the roundtable. Were the panel optimistic about what the future holds for women?
The answers managed to be both bleak and heartening: the women were indeed hopeful, but not because of the government.
"I'm optimistic," Patel said, adding: "But the sea comes in very slowly."
Long was only optimistic "because I'm permanently optimistic. But," she warned, "I think times are very hard – for men and for women."
Ahmed was hopeful that her generation's anger would forge positive change. "I'm optimistic in that the youth are the future. And if we're listened to and talked to, not just talked about – and if our education is helped, and we've got more opportunities – we will have a better future: not just for women but for men too."
Patel said: "I'm optimistic because what I see happening is a reawakening of groups who feel they ought to have a stake in society.
"We're seeing protests, campaigns, consciousness-raising. Women are calling themselves feminists again; young women are waking up to what the suffrage movement was about … I'm optimistic because I think things can change through those kinds of perpetual protests and struggle.
"The riots in the summer have provoked a rethinking of society that could make things change," she added. "We have been standing still or going backwards in the last decade or so. Things have changed much more slowly than I anticipated than when I was younger – but they are changing."
She had one shining reason to remain positive. "One has to be optimistic," she said, "to bring change."