Campaigners fear London Summit will shun women’s issues

Speaking at a seminar at Number 11 Downing Street on 4 March ahead of International Women’s Day on 8 March, Harriet Harman said that women would be affected differently from men by the current recession.

She published new research showing that women were far more worried by the recession than men and she urged women to make their voices heard in the run-up to the London Summit.

Eight out of 10 women were concerned about the impact of the downturn on family life, and more than a third reported that the downturn had already reduced the quality of their family life, according to Ipsos-MORI research.

• Harriet Harman, the UK’s Minister for Women

'We want women's voices to be heard in the run up to the London Summit through a big discussion about women and the global economic downturn,' Ms Harman said. 'The G20 London Summit is going to be so important. This summit is going to be different from other summits because we are going to feed in about the issues of concern to women and well as men.'

However several of the invited guests at the summit doubted that the male-dominated London Summit would tackle the 'micro' issues that matter far more to mothers and carers than banks and interest rates.

• Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society

Katherine Rake, Director of the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality between women and men, said she was 'not confident at all' that the Summit would address the issues that affect women most.

'This is a man-made recession quite literally – the people making decisions at the top of the banks, the regulators and even the MPs who have looked at this have been almost exclusively white men. When the Summit happens it will be practically all men and I’m not sure that they are going to take these issues seriously.

'In order to make this change happen and to make sure we come out of this recession healthily we have got to look at our decision makers. We have a crisis among decision makers and we are not sharing governments between women and men as we should. Governments must fast track women into senior decision making roles.'

• Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet

Justine Roberts, co-founder of Mumsnet, the parents' website that is featuring a thread on the impact of the recession on women, doubted the Summit would deal with women's issues. 'It would be lovely if the London Summit addressed these issues but I suspect they won’t and they will be looking at other things like banks and interest rates.'

• Ros Altmann, economist

Ros Altmann, an economist and leading expert of pensions issues, said it was vital women's voices were heard at the summit 'I don't think women's voices were heard enough over the last few years during the events that led up to the crisis that we are now facing. I think had there more of a female influence at the top of the banking system and at the top of the policymaking decisions around economics and finance, maybe some of this excessive risk taking would have been moderated.'

• Tessa Jowell, Minister for the Olympics

But Tessa Jowell, the Minister for the Olympics, said the purpose of events such as the seminar at No 11 Downing Street was to ensure that those views got through. 'We as ministers are here to make sure that we listen and we learn and then take the fruits of the discussion and make sure they are actually part of the core discussion of the G20 in a month's time,' she said.