Plight of 100,000 jobless women takes political centre stage

A SUMMIT to tackle the chronic level of unemployment among women is to be staged in Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond has announced.

But the initiative was branded a “talking shop” by jobless support groups who say a recent youth unemployment summit designed to tackle the problem in Dundee had little impact.

There are now more than 100,000 jobless women in Scotland and despite a fall in overall unemployment in last week’s official figures, the number of women out of work grew by 5,000.

Mr Salmond said during a speech to the STUC in Inverness yesterday that the summit, to be held in the next few weeks, will bring public, private and voluntary sectors together to help more women into work.

“This is critically important not just for Scotland’s economy but for families up and down the country, which is why together with the STUC, who first proposed this approach,” he said.

“We have already begun work with the STUC on a number of issues, including how to attract more women into manufacturing, and we had detailed discussions on women’s employment at our bi-annual meeting with the STUC general council in February.

“We cannot and should not allow a position where the talents and abilities of the majority of the population are under-utilised. We should not tolerate it as a country and cannot afford it as a society.”

For women, the jobless total increased from 77,000 between December 2009 and February 2010 to 106,000 in the same period to February this year. The figure for men dropped from 132,000 to 114,000 at the same time. Grahame Smith, STUC general secretary said: “The STUC is seriously concerned about the rapid increase in women’s unemployment in Scotland.”

But Sarah Glynn of the Scottish Unemployed Workers Network, said: “I don’t think that anything was achieved by the youth unemployment summit in Dundee which he was basing it on.

“There was definitely quite a lot of talking shops and the idea that all the parties are going to work together, when to us what the Conservative coalition government is doing is destroying all the jobs – it’s like asking an arsonist to put out a fire.”

Last night opposition parites blamed the SNP Government for soaring unemployment levels among women, citing the “disproportionate” cuts in council budgets that affect greater numbers of women.

Labour finance spokesman Ken Macintosh said he welcomed efforts to “bring a focus” to rising levels of unemployment among women.

But he added: “It would be worth Alex Salmond remembering it was his decision to target nearly 90 per cent of the cuts to local government and that has had a disproportionate impact on female workers. High areas of female employment, such as teaching, nursing and the care sector, have been hit hard and that is part of the reason why we now have more than 100,000 women out of work.”