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The Women Kingmakers

Published 25 November 2009
Event 2 December 2009

Next year’s General Election will be won and lost not on the issues of MPs expenses or the recession but on women’s equality in the workplace.

Jackie O’Reilly, professor of comparative employment at the University of Brighton, will use her inaugural speech to explain why the female vote will be more crucial than ever.

The Conservatives learned just how important it was at the last election in 2005, she said, when it lost probably because it failed to keep tabs with what women were doing and needing. She said the Conservatives put forward policies supporting women to stay at home when the majority of women were out working, earning to help put children through school, to pay mortgages or to finance holidays.

Conversely, Labour’s recent political dominance has been largely due, she said, to their policies which have helped women in the workplace including the minimum wage.

With 70 per cent of women now out at work and an increasing number of them mothers, achieving greater equality for women in the workplace will be a major campaign issue for all parties chasing the female vote.

David Cameron, she said, appeared to be learning the lesson – he wants to increase the number of woman MPs from the current figure of eight per cent. Labour is way ahead with 27 per cent (Lib-Dems have 14 per cent). And, she said, Cameron was being careful not to criticise the NHS which employs large numbers of women.

In her lecture “The Trouble with Women”, Professor O’Reilly will speak on future policy reform, why women were still being offered different employment contracts and equality in the workplace.

The lecture is at the university’s Mithras House in Lewes Road, Brighton, at 6.30pm on December 2. To book a seat, email events@brighton.ac.uk

EDITOR’S NOTES: Jackie O’Reilly is Professor of Comparative Employment Relations and Human Resource Management at the University of Brighton Business School. She has worked as a researcher at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB), the European University Institute Florence, Sciences Politiques Paris; she has taught at London University, the Singapore School of Management, UMIST and Sussex University. Some of her book publications include ‘Regulating Working Time Transitions in Europe’, ‘Part-time Prospects’, ‘The International Handbook on Labour Market Policy and Evaluation’ and ‘Banking on Flexibility’. She has just received a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to work on her current book for Oxford University Press ‘Challenging the Gender Contract: Changing Work and Welfare in Europe’.