Women With Balls The Spectator

Young, female entrepreneurship is on the rise. Two years ago, 17,500 businesses were founded by women aged 16-25, which is 22 times greater than in 2018. Now, 20 per cent of all businesses across the UK are all-female-led. Yet, when it comes to investment, women consistently underperform their male counterparts. Why? And should more be done to support female entrepreneurs? 

To shine a light on some of these issues is Anneliese Dodds MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, and Chair of the Labour Party, Jo Overton, the Managing Director for Customer Propositions and Strategy for Business Commercial Banking at Lloyds Banking Group, and Eccie Newton, the co-founder, of Karma Cans, an office lunch delivery company, and Karma Kitchen, that provides commercial kitchen spaces to food businesses.

This podcast is kindly sponsored by Lloyds Banking Group. 

Laura Farris comes from something of a political dynasty, both her father and uncle were MPs. The former even represented the same Newbury seat that she currently holds. She studied PPE at Oxford before working as a researcher for Hilary Clinton but she eschewed a political career to work firstly as a journalist and then as a barrister. In 2019 she became MP for Newbury and she now works across both the Home Office and Ministry of Justice. 

On the podcast, Laura tells Katy what she learnt from Hilary Clinton, the things she hopes to achieve by the next election and why Jonathan Sumption has a point about the ECHR. 

Anne Jenkin was born in Essex to quite the political family, three of her grandparents were in the House of Lords, and two of them in the Commons as well. Her career in Westminster began in the 1970s and in 2005 she co-founded Women2Win with future Prime Minister Theresa May to encourage more women to get into politics and stand as Conservative candidates. She was made a life peer in 2011 for services to charity and politics. 

When it comes to retirement, working out how much you will need to set aside can seem like a monumental task. The average person has between 8 to 10 jobs over their lifetime. People are living longer – with the median retirement age at 65 and life expectancy at 80. What should people think about when planning for their pension? And what challenges do people face? Women are the most likely to suffer from pension inequality, with single women being the poorest of all pensioners.

Almost a fifth of private sector employees do not do any pension saving, and a third of people expect to retire with only a state pension. To shine a light on some of the pension inequalities, Katy Balls is joined by Wendy Chamberlain, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Work and Pensions, Jackie Leiper, CEO of Embark Group and MD of Pensions at Scottish Widows, both part of Lloyds Banking Group, and Lauren Wilkinson, from the Pensions Policy Institute, and co-author of the Underpensioned report.

This podcast is kindly sponsored by Lloyds Banking Group.

Thangam Debbonaire was born in Peterborough to an Indian father and English mother. She has been an MP since 2015 but before Parliament spent over 25 years working to end domestic violence. She served under Jeremy Corbyn as Shadow Minister for Arts and Heritage and has served in Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet since his leadership as the Shadow Culture Secretary. Thangam is no stranger to a lively debate at the dispatch box and despite a busy life as an MP, still finds time for music, playing cello in Parliament as part of the string quartet, The Statutory Instruments.

Justine Greening was born in Rotherham, the daughter of a steel worker and first in her family to go to university. Campaigning for the Conservatives, she won back a Tory stronghold from Labour in the 2005 general election becoming MP for Putney. She began politics in opposition, but became a Cabinet Secretary in David Cameron’s government, and remained there for Theresa May’s premiership as Education Secretary. Now having left Parliament, Justine is never far from politics – she founded the Social Mobility Pledge and now even runs her own podcast.