Ms Angela Smith:

We have supported nearly 4,000 women in recent years. Our ambition is to get women into work, back to work and maybe into further training to get them to where they want to be. We find more and more of what we call the women who are left behind. We see women aged 40-plus, between 45 and 50, whose confidence is low. We are trying to support them to build their confidence in order that they can go for interviews. We also find that women who get the interviews face an unconscious bias. They are being treated differently and questioned differently when they go for interviews. They find it increasingly difficult to get jobs. Sometimes they might be interviewed by younger HR people who may see them as a threat. We are not sure about this as this is all anecdotal. We may recommend that businesses introduce mentoring and sponsorship programmes for women at all stages of their careers and business policies and procedures for recruitment to mitigate against that unconscious bias. It is very real; it is there.