Good afternoon and many thanks to Eve for that kind introduction. As ever, I am delighted to be able to speak at the CWO conference and really encouraged to see such a strong turn out of Conservative women.
I am sure you will all agree that Pauline Lucas is doing a fantastic job as Chairman of the CWO and this, her first conference, is a tremendous success and I am sure there will be many more to follow.
I'm also pleased to be able to take this first public opportunity to welcome Pauline to her new role and to say how much I appreciate the contribution she and others are making on your behalf to our work on developing policy on women's issues.
When Pauline very kindly invited me to speak to the conference today to be honest I found it difficult to decide what topic to choose. Not because I didn't have anything to say but because there is so much to say on issues that matter to women. There are so many vital developments in my policy area of women and equality that I really couldn't settle on where to focus.
Then I considered the title of today's conference: the Circle of Life.
Every woman's life is really a circle, not always perfect but certainly always turning. The different roles we all play through the course of our lifetime form this circle - the roles of friend, mother, daughter, carer, employee, sister.
In each of these roles the common factor is a relationship. Women are good at relationships - we work hard to keep bonds alive with old friends and colleagues and we strive to keep our families together. It often seems that women are the cement that holds families and hence society together and this is true in every community.
You may remember a campaign in the Sunday Times a few years ago to send cows to Africa. It was a great idea - send a cow to a poor family and they can drink or sell its milk and use its manure to make their land more fertile. The charity, Send A Cow, is a real success story and has helped thousands of families in Africa. But one thing struck me when I read about this charity - they always give the cow to a woman. Why? Send a Cow said: "we find that if the profit from the milk goes to the woman, it will end up back with the family. With the men, we couldn't be quite so certain". It is this sense of community, of responsibility, that unites women the world over and it is really the theme of this whole conference.
These women in Africa, nurturing their living, breathing, (and mooing) gifts and sharing the results with their families and communities, are the same as all of you gathered here today, to talk about how we can do more to help our own communities.
You know my opposite number Harriet Harman never misses an opportunity to have a go at us for not having enough women MPs or for being in her words a late arrival on the women's scene.
How dare she.
There are many women in this room who have been fighting long and hard on women's issues and whose record of commitment to women's issues bears comparison with anyone - certainly with Harriet Harman whose approach is not so much one of choice for women as you do as I say.
By the way, you may have missed Harriet's claim in PMQs one week when she was standing in for Gordon Brown that if she ever became Prime Minister there wouldn't be enough airports to cater for the men leaving the country. I've got news for you Harriet - the women and children would be leaving too!
But enough of my opponent and back to the real issue of women and their role in our communities and our society. It is this sense of community spirit that makes it important for women's voices to be heard at every level. I'm passionate about making it possible for women to get more involved in their communities. Whether that's through helping out as a volunteer or becoming a school governor, or going down the political route, and standing as a councillor and perhaps a Member of Parliament. Whatever route we take, we all have something to offer.
As women, we're good at communication. And that in my view is what makes us ideal politicians. Politics is all about reaching out to others, empathising with their situation and trying to find a way to help. And those are skills that women naturally have.
But another skill we have is modesty which cannot always be helpful in politics...
It's often been said that if you show a man and a woman a job description with ten requirements, the woman will find two things she can't do and therefore not apply, while the man will find two he can do and merrily send off his application.
Confidence in your abilities is vital in every role we take on and as women we need to recognise that our natural talents are incredibly valuable. And that is particularly relevant in the workplace.
Women fortify their workplace communities as much as any other and the female contribution to working life is unique. Various research has found that women are often less focused on the financial rewards of a job (perhaps to our own disadvantage) and instead look for and encourage a culture of team work, loyalty and commitment. I believe that these are all vital contributions to any business or workplace and therefore we should reward and encourage them.
The other issue is that our economy needs women to work. We need their education, their training and their experience and so creating a working environment that works with women not against them is vital to tap their valuable contribution.
So how can we make business and women mesh together? We've announced a number of policies that are specifically aimed at helping women at work.
Firstly, our 'fair play on equal pay' proposals. In this day and age it is an absolute travesty that women are still paid on average 17.2 % less than men. Our party is 100% committed to addressing this divide and David Cameron and I announced our plan to tackle this fundamental inequality last year.
In September I launched a campaign on Facebook to raise awareness and to gather cross-party support for a Private Member's Bill that Baroness Trish Morris is going to introduce to the House of Lords in December. Ending the inequality in women's pay should be something that crosses party political lines. So far the support has been fantastic - almost 500 people have joined the group and over the coming weeks we'll be doing more to raise awareness of the campaign. You can join it too - just look for Theresa May for Equal Pay.
A key feature of our equal pay proposals is to extend the right to request flexible working to all parents with children under the age of 18. Given that since the return of Lord Mandelson the government have gone distinctly lukewarm on their commitment to extend it to all parents with children under 16, our policy is even more important than before and, unlike the government, I think it is something that can help businesses and families through the economic down turn.
It's important to remember that flexible work does not necessarily mean part time work, or part time commitment. It covers a whole range of options from home working and job sharing to hot desking and flexible hours. Furthermore, studies have shown than flexible work policies often improve productivity levels as staff feel valued and have more loyalty to their employer.
Flexible working allows companies to be more agile in response to their customers' needs. In this 24 hour economy having longer operating hours can be a real selling point. Flexible employment arrangements enable companies to be more adaptable to the market, reducing hours when needs be but crucially not laying off staff so they have the corporate knowledge and capacity to recover when the market does. At the same time, flexible work policies enable companies to attract and retain the best people - something that will become more and more relevant in this difficult climate.
I also refute the claim that flexible working is necessarily a cost to business. Many businesses are offering better work policies, with minimum fuss and form filling. Small businesses particularly are already flexible and often ahead of the curve in terms of thinking creatively about staffing issues. Talking to an employee who wants to work longer on Tuesdays and Wednesdays so they can have Friday afternoons off does not have to be a great administrative burden.
And there are some real savings to be made as well: at BT, 80% of the staff work flexibly and as a result the company has saved £500 million on property costs. They've seen improved productivity - up 20%, a marked decline in absenteeism and 97% of mothers now return to work after maternity leave. These figures are not to be sneezed at.
And many people now want to work unusual working patterns to fit in with their caring, childcare or other responsibilities. The fact is that more women than ever before are working and more men than ever before want to take on a more active role in fatherhood. The traditional model of a man at work all day, coming home to a tidy house, dinner on the table and children in bed is a thing of the past for many families. More often than not, the mother is working too and there's a scramble to manage all the joys and trials that parenting brings.
Many women want to work, most need to work and many companies need flexible workers. A smarter workplace, that offers a range of options that benefit both employer and employee, is the future. Countless companies across the country are already reaping the benefits of longer staff retention, more women returners, savings in running costs and increased productivity.
Business works best when doing what makes business sense. That's why so many companies are already doing more to attract and retain women - offering better maternity packages, flexible working packages, home working, enhanced training and much more.
Our policies are designed to compliment the direction that business is already taking - to help them to offer more choice.
Another key policy that we hope will change the working culture to benefit women, in fact both parents, is flexible parental leave which I announced with George Osborne at our spring conference this year in March. Under these plans, parents will have 52 weeks of leave on the birth of a child which they will be able to divide between them as they see fit. So if fathers want to take more of a role they can, if mothers feel the need to return to work earlier they can. If both parents want some time at home together at the birth of their child, helping each other out in those first few weeks then they can. What matters is that they have the choice.
What all of these policies are trying to do is encourage a culture in which the onus of parenthood is not only carried by women. I believe that if men were able to take on more of a central role then employers will not shy away from hiring women.
Obviously women will have to carry more of the responsibility in the first few weeks and months but really after that there is no reason why parents cannot divide the care between them. I really feel that a lot of men, not all I grant you, would like to be able to take more paternity leave but existing legislation and culture makes it difficult for them to do so without being unduly penalised. At the same time, women feel that having a child puts a cap on their career prospects.
So although we are using legislation to encourage a change this isn't really about regulation. It's about nurturing choice, and creating an environment which lends itself to change organically. Not pushing people down a road that doesn't suit them.
This is at the heart of our approach to women. Choice, responsibility and opportunity.
We want to support women in every role they play, down which ever path their circle of life takes them. Help for vulnerable women, support for working women, and choice for families. And above all raising the aspirations of every woman. Not one of us should feel that we can't or shouldn't about anything.
The opportunity for every one of us is there - to be business leaders, to be politicians, to be mothers, teachers, engineers, fighter pilots.
The path we want own circle of life to follow is ours for the choosing. We just need to rise to the challenge and seize it.