Better Nation

This week’s Motion of the Week is a two-parter and is a case of the good and the bad, the do-ers vs the talkers.

First up is Sarah Boyack, celebrating the excellent Remade in Edinburgh project:

Motion S4M-01967: Sarah Boyack, Lothian, Scottish Labour, Date Lodged: 07/02/2012
Remade in Edinburgh
That the Parliament welcomes the work of the Remade in Edinburgh project; understands that the project provides weekly drop-in sessions that give people new skills to repair and reuse items such as clothes and computers; further notes that the project promotes a zero-waste agenda as an alternative to a culture of disposable items by diverting household items from landfill; supports the project’s wider plan to create a reuse and repair centre in central Edinburgh, which, it understands, would house a series of social enterprises to repair and reuse a range of household items; notes that a similar project in Brixton was gifted disused garage space by the local authority; urges the City of Edinburgh Council to provide similar support to create local jobs and training opportunities in reuse and repair, and wishes the project well in continuing to expand its offering to the people of Edinburgh.

Supported by: Jackie Baillie, Neil Findlay, John Pentland, Anne McTaggart, Patricia Ferguson, Iain Gray, Mike MacKenzie, Sandra White, Margaret Burgess, James Kelly, Colin Beattie, Neil Bibby, Hugh Henry, Jamie Hepburn, David Torrance, Elaine Murray

A group of people have come together to form a project that combines recycling and sustainability with job creation and boosting Edinburgh’s economy. A faultless motion focussed on a faultless effort.

We are moving away from the concept of buying products that are built to last. If a mobile phone goes beyond your two year contract then you are considered lucky and if you haven’t upgraded your TV to blue-ray, HD, built-in-freeview then you’re behind the curve. Inflating that GDP up to the supposedly sustainable 2-3% seems like a fools errand to me when we can just keep a hold of the assets that still have a value to them rather than continue the accelerating trend of buy, briefly use, throw out.

So good on Remade; proactive positivity.

And then we have the talkers…

Motion S4M-01975: Neil Findlay, Lothian, Scottish Labour, Date Lodged: 07/02/2012
West Lothian College Stakeholders’ Meeting
That the Parliament congratulates West Lothian College on hosting what it considers a successful meeting of 70 or so concerned stakeholders, including students, staff, management, trade unions, business leaders and some locally elected representatives, at the college on 6 February 2012; commends West Lothian Trades Council for prompting the meeting; shares the concerns of West Lothian Trades Council, in particular its concern at funding cuts across the further education sector; considers that it was the unanimous feeling of the attendees that West Lothian College should be allowed to stand as a region on its own, and notes the concerns expressed that changes to college structures and delivery models within the regionalisation process will be a hollow process should West Lothian College, and indeed, other colleges, have their capability and capacity reduced as a consequence of significant decreases in their funding.

Supported by: Mary Fee, Drew Smith, Jackie Baillie, Anne McTaggart, Hugh Henry, Patricia Ferguson

What Neil seems to be saying here is – ‘Hooray, we had a meeting!’. Well bully for you son.

Don’t get me wrong, I get that college funding is important and I get that training people is the next best thing to employing them in many situations but an entire parliamentary motion just because 70 people sat down and had a chat? I think MSPs should be patting themselves on the back for a little more than that.

Emma Ritch works for Close the Gap, and is interested in gender and the labour market, economics, public policy, and politics. (Twitter: @emmaritch)

(Image by Lars Plougmann)

The issue of women in the boardroom, one of the threads of the never-ending public conversation about women, work, and income, has come to the fore of late. Placed firmly on the agenda by the Davies report, it is the topic of a flurry of conferences, meetings, seminars and salons, scheduled to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8. It is also, along with women’s entrepreneurship, one of the topics at the Northern Future Forum in Stockholm, at which David Cameron has provoked some disquiet by appearing to suggest that he would not rule out quotas for women in the boardroom, should the UK business community not be able to increase women’s representation “by other means”.

Downing Street has subsequently walked this back, but Mr Cameron may be overtaken by events. The European Commission has a review planned next month, which will look at the impact of voluntary approaches to appointing more women into non-executive directorships, including under its own ‘Women on the Board Pledge for Europe’. It has declared its intent to impose quotas if it finds that progress has stalled or reversed, and the European Parliament has signalled its own receptiveness to this in the form of a non-binding resolution on Women and Business Leadership.

Women do have something to bring to the boardroom. Catalyst, pre-eminent researchers of women and business, has found a clear link between board-level gender diversity and a company’s financial performance. Examples abound of companies, like Nike, who have parlayed the knowledge of female executives into profitable new markets and products targeted at women mindful of the fact that women now make 80 per cent of consumer purchases in the developed world.

The foregrounding of the issue of women in the executive suite, though, does rest on the idea that it is possible to dismantle the oak-panelled ceiling without considering what happens underneath it. Many of the business representatives responding to Mr Cameron’s muted endorsement for quotas have spoken of the boardroom as the apogee of a ‘meritocracy’. Although the dearth of women around the table is not because women lack talent, ambition, or knowledge, the business spokespeople are right in that the boardroom reflects, and also inspires, what happens outside its doors. Focusing on access to non-executive and executive directorships runs the risk of removing the work experience of the most senior woman from its context.

Women have different working lives to men, principally because our domestic lives are so different. The pay gap exists, in part, because of the additional responsibility we bear for childcare and other reproductive labour. It also reflects the fact that we find ourselves clustered into different types of work, chiefly those that pay the least, and that discrimination lingers on in pay systems long after legislation was enacted to remove it.

The roots of the attitudes that shape our working lives are deep. From an early age, children have perceptions about what types of work, and what types of attributes align with being male and female. These attitudes can be traced through to those of the university admissions staff member, the manager dividing the bonus pot, the executive recruiter. Some of this reductive thinking even finds its way into the programmes that attempt to challenge sexism in the City. Women are deficient, some of the narratives go, and must cast aside self-deprecation and push themselves forward, be more self-confident, become tougher negotiators. Even the supposed compliments are laden with stereotypes: women would not have allowed the banking crisis, because they are so risk-averse.

Catalyst have found evidence that companies with a larger proportion of female board members tend to see increases in the number of women serving as senior executives, or in promoted posts. It seems that appointing women as non-executive directors sends a signal to a company’s workforce that it rewards women’s aspirations. Most people, regardless of gender, will not end up serving as a director of a FTSE 100 company, but this is one of the reasons why we should care who does.

The leaders of our corporations shape society in a way that is becoming more transparent in our current economic circumstances, but it is not only the most senior women who have their aspirations stifled, and their talents underutilised and undervalued. Among other things, and against a backdrop of redundancies and punitive welfare reform, we need to work out how to fund a sustainable childcare system, create enough part-time roles to meet demand, and encourage a more even division of domestic labour. Enabling women to take part in the economic life of the nation means turning our collective will to resolving a number of wicked problems; gender parity in the boardroom is only one piece of the jigsaw.

Things have changed a little since the last Holyrood budget. The SNP have a majority of seats so don’t need to negotiate which has sucked out a lot of the drama of building coalitions with the other parties, usually Tories and the Greens, has gone – this bill will pass. Which is a shame, because I thought that was one of the best bits of Holyrood and was a higher plane of politics than we usually get. Oh well.

Still, to be fair to John Swinney he has been trying to get cross party support and has been aided in this by the additional hundred million or so of Barnett consequentials, two thirds of which is so far unallocated, which has given him a bit of elbow room.

It’s less likely to be huge amounts of largesse and more that some areas will be cut less far – colleges being the current high profile example all the opposition parties are concentrating on. They’d had their funding cut some seventy million (while universities had their funding increased by around twice that) so it’s unlikely that we’ll see that entirely reversed but I’d imagine the cut to student support and some of the teaching grant cuts reversed.

Other than that? Bit more speculative. Some specific local government programs might get a bit as there’s some elections coming up. Housing’s already had some and might get some more, which would be good.

Given nobody has, AFAIK, submitted any amendments this time round what would you change? Comments please and remember – your fantasy budget amendment has to balance.

(Angus Loughran isn’t dead)