Public policy and the world of work must change dramatically to catch up with the revolution in family life, argued Jenny Watson, Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission, opening a Smith Institute and Fabian Society lecture series on 'Reinvigorating Community'.

Thank you to the Smith Institute and the Fabian Society for the opportunity to reflect on families and communities.

I want to use this speech today to set out an urgent challenge that must be addressed – by the next Prime Minister, by Britain's companies and institutions and by the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights.

The case I wish to make today is that we are living through a social revolution, which has impacts that are difficult to recognise. Put simply, society has not caught up with the reality of modern life. And that failure to catch up has profound social consequences: for our familes and for our communities. And, until we get to grips with the profound changes that have taken place over the last decades it will remain an unfinished revolution, with potentially devasting consequences as we face the weakening of social links and concerns about community cohesion, increasing anti-social behaviour, rising levels of mental ill health amongst children and adolescents, and greater stress for adults, caused in part by long hours and work intensification and pressure.

We can look around for evidence of the revolution:

Women now make up nearly half of the workforce, fathers are keen to take a more active role in looking after their kids and as the population ages a growing number of working adults are also caring for older relatives – and with more women in particular facing the double whammy of caring for both children and older relatives. In the days when there was a male breadwinner and a stay at home wife, our current model of work could just about work – for some. But we're launching ICM research today that shows 68% of people believe that model of male breadwinner and female homemaker is a thing of the past – and it never was much of a choice for many poorer families where both parents worked.

This social revolution is being increasingly driven this century by the globalising world and the pressure that it creates: a pressure that often forces us to choose between work – that ever important deadline - and our families. We feel the pressure of these individual choices that we have to make in order to cope – to manage the way we use our time. And perhaps because we experience the unfinished social revolution in terms of these individual choices, we don't see the broad theme, the sweep of change: that in fact this is what life is like for most of us. Of course that's always easiest to see with hindsight. But it is imperative that we recognise it now for what it is.

But there is a better way. By creating an environment where more support is available for families of all kinds and individuals: for men at home and women at work, by designing services around our needs, we can use our time more effectively to contribute more both in the workplace and away from it – and in turn we can build stronger communities.

If our leaders do not implement the policies and take the decisions to meet the profound changes in our society it will create a pressure – already evident – that will have a lasting and damaging effect on our social health and our economic wealth as individuals and as a nation.

Today I am going to set out a five point plan to ensure we can complete the revolution – and ensure that how we design society reflects the way we live.

But firstly, I want to analyse the problem.

We know that life is changing at a rapid pace. And our globalising world is a driving force for that change. From the expectation of 24/7 services to fierce international competition from emerging economies and our towns and cities transforming with changes from migration, mobility within the UK, and the impact of greater car use, longer commuting over a relatively short period of time. This change has enormous social consequences – many of which are difficult to anticipate unless you have experienced them yourself.

It is a scale of change similar to that which Britain experienced during the industrial revolution. Industrialisation changed almost everything about Britain. It separated work from home life, something that had a profound impact on women's lives. Working time came to be organised more rigidly. It brought mobility and the growth of urban centres – and tremendous scientific advances. Underpinned by slavery it created enormous wealth for a few and it also created terrible misery – in workhouses and the creation of a new poor as well as for those ripped from their families and treated inhumanely for the sake of profit.

And in many senses that scale of change is what we are seeing today. The causes may be different – but its effects are no less profound.

Changes in the workplace for example. The working population looks different particularly for women. Far more of us with dependent children are in the workforce now including half of mothers with children under five. Two fifths of professional jobs are held by women compared to 1 in 10 thirty years ago. The full time pay gap has narrowed from 29% in the 1970s to 17% today. But it is still unacceptably high. There are more women going into education than ever before and they expect to be able to use their skills.

Technological changes play their part: we now compete with, are employed by, or depend upon for our own company's sales and survival, companies on the other side of the world. The organisation of work, however, preserved as a fixed working day since the industrial revolution remains far too long. As competition gets fiercer and the pace of change gets faster work becomes more intense and many of us are left struggling to cope. And that is particularly felt by those whose jobs are most at risk from this change.

For many of us technology and globalisation doesn't bring the benefits that it could: it brings increased pressure. We don't have the time to create new bonds in our changed communities. We suffer from an inability to deliver our caring responsibilities. We struggle to serve both our employers and our families. People in this situation have no means of keeping all the balls in the air. They can't see where their place is any longer and for them, life can feel as if it is out of control. All of this creates unsustainable pressure. And that pressure is felt by Britain's families and our communities. The choices we make are felt individually, personally. But they have an impact on the nation as a whole.

And it can seem sometimes that governments – of all kinds – are slow to respond to the social revolution. For example men want to spend more time with their families. 8 out of ten fathers would be happy to stay at home and look after their child. And by the end of the life of this Parliament that chance for some will be a reality when transferable maternity leave becomes law. A mother in work when she has her child will be able to transfer the second six months of her maternity leave to the child's father for him to receive statutory maternity pay. We know from our own work that many fathers want to make that choice.

Our institutions are changing too. Though change is slow in many areas – only one in four MPs are women - political parties now accept that under representation of women is laughable. Police services see that treating domestic violence as a serious crime is the right thing to do also want to provide better and more sensitive services to women who have been raped – and try to increase the pitiful 5% conviction rate for this crime. Childcare services are actively seeking to engage and involve fathers now recognising the benefits for children of strong relationships with both parents whatever the family circumstances. Health services worry about the low take up rate for primary care from men – who are half as likely to visit a GP than women – and use their imagination to provide those services in a new way at football grounds or at work. And this particular government has made progress: for exmaple on childcare, pension reform to benefit women, the first steps in making work more flexible for parents and carers.

But in some cases we are very slow to recognise the big challenges we face. Our ageing population, for example, presents profound challenges and sex equality is central to it. Just think about carers for a moment. By 2010 we will need 10 million carers. Women have a 50:50 chance of becoming a carer by the age of 59. Most carers of working age are women – often women who miss out on the chance to go back to work after having children. An increasing number of women who have chosen not to have children will find themselves becoming carers in any case – when mum breaks her hip or dad has a stroke. But few of us think about whether there are services that can offer help and support until it is too late. Our ICM polling shows that most of us are concerned about who will look after us when we are older. And invariably the services are not there and it is expected that relatives will pick up the pieces. And most of the older generation of course are women disproportionately reliant on public services because of their income in retirement and therefore disproportionately poorly served. We no longer live round the corner from our families and this distance compounds the problem. The loosening of community ties – all driven by the huge changes we are seeing – makes things even worse.

The Treasury is recognising this challenge as a part of the Comprehensive Spending Review. But our own polling with the Disability Rights Commission mirrors that of the Local Government Association in suggesting just how far away public services are from peoples desire to be helped to stay in their own home without relying on relatives for assistance. Almost 3 out of 4 people (74%) want to see more resources invested to enable disabled people to live independently in their own homes.

And today we are releasing the results of new research from ICM that provides compelling evidence – if any were needed – of the need to complete this social revolution.

It tells us that eight out of ten people believe that it is difficult for parents to balance work and family life and a shocking 96% of people believe that it is hard for carers to do the same. And even more worrying both men and women feel overwhelmingly that things are going to get worse. If we look ahead 10 years, 7 in 10 of us think it will be harder for parents to find this balance then, rising to 8 out of ten for carers. And this is felt more strongly by those on lower incomes. This represents significant justification for urgent change. Politicians need to enagage with these personal fears, symptomatic of the pace of change in the social revolution, if politics is to have relevance to people.

But there is good news too, strong foundations on which to build. Families make us happy: all kinds of families. Of course another impact of this social revolution is that fundamentally, families are changing. We have to challenge the notion of what family is. They are made up of step children, step parents and grandparents. Parents may be married, co-habiting or in a civil partnership – and the number of civil partnerships registered in the first year of their existence indicate how strong our desire for commitment is today. There are more extended families – particularly in Britain's Black and Asian communities where the thought of outsourcing care for an older relative is unthinkable, but which can put great pressure on existing relationships. As extended families become more common it's not surprising that almost a quarter of mothers with dependent children also care for an older relative. And many of us increasingly treat both distant relatives and close friends as if they were as close as parents or sibilings, something which has always been the case in Britain's Caribbean and African communities.

Whatever the size and shape of these families, we know they give us sustenance in a fast changing world. Or rather, they could if they were not under siege. Under siege because of pressure at work; because of the struggle to manage caring responsibilities; because we are living longer; and because public services often do not meet the way we live.

So, we are living on thin ice. The ice could fracture any minute – and Britain's families will simply fall through. We cannot go on living as we do. We need Britain's politicians, companies and public institutions to change – and change fast. Half the working population – more women than men – would like to work flexible hours spending more time on activities that are an antidote to this pressure. And our new research tell us that two thirds of us believe that the world of work should change to suit the needs of families rather than the other way around. And If politicians were in any doubt about how people feel about their role in this our research today also shows that two thirds of us say that our political parties risk making themselves unelectable if they don't directly support parents and carers more.

And there is more good news. Families are about building close bonds with others and it is those close bonds that will help us build strong communities. Having time to spend with partners, children, wider family, makes us strong enough to survive the challenges the world throws at us. Having time to spend with a neighbour starts to build community bonds, gives us confidence to tackle neighbourhood problems together. Talking to other parents at the school gate, or making new friends at work builds relationships that sustain us across our communities, not only with people like us, whoever we are. Having time to volunteer, do community work, campaign for better local transport, help with reading at a local school for example – is what improves, builds and sustains communities.

These things make us happier because they are fundamental needs: to have emotional security, be part of a community and exercise some kind of autonomy in our lives. And if we are happier we have, collectively, better mental health and better well being. This connectedness delivers less prejudice safer environments and happier individuals. Government can't deliver this of course but they can create the climate that makes it possible to deliver this for ourselves. Giving us the ability to have greater choice in the way we use our time is a key part of that.

Researchers have found that the very word community has come to have a greater association with women and older people – who historically had more time in the past because they were excluded from the labour market. But communities do not suffer because women have abdicated their responsibilities but because we fail to recognise and value this activity and we fail to allow this commitment to continue alongside participation at work.

The failure to value time spent outside work creates a particular frustration for women. Because time has come to equal commitment at work those – often women – who spend more time at home are judged as uncommitted to work. That perception of lack of commitment is what closes so many doors to women – and some men too – who could achieve so much more at work while still giving time to their families and communities. Who could be more creative and competent at work if they were mentally fresher through time spent doing something different. Although women bear the brunt of this frustration we should remember that the way the working day has been organised has never delivered a good life for many men either. Of course it delivers time for those who invest their capital – but not for those who only have labour to bring to the equation.

So what is the way forward, because turning the clock back is not an option. Do we want to return to a time when women were denied an education – or if they had one – were prevented from using it because they have children? Where families can't aspire to provide as much as they can for their children – including buying a home and having a holiday? Do we want to return to a time where there were no restrictions on working hours?

So, if the clock is not to be turned back – how do we move forward?

When I started I said that the urgency in our situation comes from a combination of the unfinished social revolution and the increased pressure from globalisation. These have the potential to combine to create an increasingly atomised world where we think we can only tackle these problems alone, endeavouring to manage the unmanageable and leading to stress, conflict and fear. The best antidote is connectedness through sustainable relationships with families and with communities. So – if we choose the latter – we have to change and I want to set out five areas where I think change is necessary.

The first change we need to make is to provide better support for families – families of all kinds. That ranges from continuing to invest in childcare provision– and finding ways to help those who use members of their family to care for their children– to fresh thinking about how we want to enable older and disabled people to lead independent lives.

The second is to enable men and women to to make their own choices about family life – who works, who cares for the children. And this will only happen when we close the pay gap between men and women. Otherwise – when a baby comes along – there are few choices. It is almost inevitable that if one parent is to reduce their hours it will be mum who goes to work part-time - and continues to pay a bigger pay penalty for life – 38% at last count. And a father continues to be forced away from his family, working long hours with often a long commute as well. Little wonder that our polling shows the pressure of spending enough time with family is felt most by fathers with young children. And for women, later in life that pay penalty continues further into old age – with lower retirement income and little choice about services available to her to support her independence because she will not have the income to buy in help.

Both changes are key planks of our Gender Agenda, which we are developing as part of our legacy for the future – for politicians, as well as for the Commission for Equality and Human Rights - and they require us to radically rethink the way we structure work.

Support for families must extend to enabling people to share their time between work, home and the community. This means enabling people not just to be economically active and build strong relationships with children, spending time with parents and others their communities but also to be able to use their skills to the full and train to develop new ones so they can earn to their full potential. To do so we need to transform the workplace to deliver much greater flexibility for all. Extending the right to request flexible working for everyone is just the starting point: we also need to use technology to deliver a new way of working with flexibility about where work is done as well as when.

Women represent a huge reservoir of talent that is underused by employers and the economy. Nowhere is that untapped potential more apparent than in Britain's Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities. We know that these groups of women are increasingly well qualified, ambitious and with aspirations to both have a career and build families. But for them there are barriers in addition to those faced by other women. There are few senior role models and rigid working hours that make it difficult for women with both children and other relatives to care for. That's after they have they have overcome careers advice telling them not to think about a degree to train as a doctor, but instead say "girls like you get married and stop work – so go to an FE college instead" That's a direct quote – from Tower Hamlets careers advice in 2005. And it is shocking.

Unless we make these two changes – to the world of work and to the support available for families - the pay gap will persist, women's talent will continue to be wasted and men's choices will continue to be limited.

Narrowing the income gap is only possible if women can take on work that pays a salary level commensurate with their level of skill or qualification – rather than penalising them for their need to work flexibly and sending the message to all young women that their investment in education will be penalised for having children.

The third change we must make to complete the social revolution is to modernise our public services and ensure they are designed to meet modern needs; and there is much to do. Legislation comes into force in April that will require public bodies to take account of the different needs of men and women and tailoring services to fit. We know, for example, that women are more likely to want to return to education and either update their skills or learn new ones once their children are older. And this is particularly the case with Bangladeshi and Pakistani women. So, why do we have a skills structure that suggests training is something you do only when you are young? That is particularly short-sighted in a world where it's clear we will all work until we are 70 and may have more than one change of career over our lifetime – something that has often been the case for women. Yet currently women working part-time or flexible hours often do not benefit from work related training – something that will have to be rectified if employers are to play a fuller role in its provision as the Leitch report suggests. At the other end of the spectrum we should see more schools treating learning needs differently and being more imaginative about the way courses are delivered, allowing boys and young men in particular to get the best from their education. Of course, there are countless examples of where public services need to change but, whether it is care services, education, transport or health a step change is needed. And of course we will need to see continued action to modernise the pay structures of our public services to ensure that the many thousands of women who deliver them see their skills fairly rewarded in their pay packets.

My fourth point is that we must have communities that are safe for us all – our streets, our public institutions and our homes. We need to continue to develop a policing system that treats domestic violence seriously, that prosecutes it and that tackles the reasons it happens in the first place. I congratulate the Mayor of London for the work he has done to publicise the fact that domestic violence accounts for one quarter of London's recorded crime and one third of London's reported murders, and for his work and that of the Metropolitan Police in ensuring this crime is treated seriously. The government has set up 64 specialist domestic violence courts. In these pilot courts guilty pleas have risen from 21% to 61%. Fewer victims withdraw their statements, and when that has happened there have been successful prosecutions in half the cases. Women should also have the confidence to come forward and report assaults and rape: that means moving forward as the government has suggested to ensure that juries understand the impact of this dreadful crime on women, understand why it may not be immediately reported, understand why women may not want to relive over and over again the telling of their experience to a room of total strangers. We need safe communities too for older people, for disabled people: to ensure that men and women are not compelled by lack of alternatives to stay in institutions where they are abused, where they are separated from a partner of many years, or where they cannot even acknowledge that they have a partner, a sadly common experience for older lesbians and gay men; where women with learning difficulties don't face sexual assault or abuse from staff in long-stay hospitals that should have been closed years ago, where their rights are not protected, where people's humanity is overlooked simply because they are old or disabled. We need far greater support for independent living as part of a strategy to guarantee this safety and autonomy, to protect people's human rights.

Finally we need to create a future where women and men share power. Perhaps this will be a key indication that we have finally managed the social revolution effectively. Providing better support for families will enable choices to be made that allow career progression for more women in our companies and institutions and more choices for men about spending time away from work. Delivering flexibility at work will mean that more women can achieve the position that befits their talents – and that more people can have a life. Both flexibility and support for families will tackle the gross imbalances that currently exist. We will also certainly benefit from decisions made that better reflect the experiences of a broader range of the population.

That's a five point plan to complete our social revolution. Of course, society will continue to change but unless we take the necessary steps to ensure that way we design our society to address the reality of life then the pressure I spoke about will become unbearable and shatter families and communities bringing hardship to an increasing number of us.

But the future can be different. Time is central to my argument. And in giving us time to spend on caring for our loved ones and public services that deliver for us in supporting the value we place on care, we will build better and healthier relationships. The benefit of families and relationships that function well will not only be felt by employers but in neighbourhoods and in our communities, understanding the value of what binds us rather than having to battle for our narrow self interest.

And all of this provides the platform to cope better with a society and a future that continues to change at a dramatic pace. It will enable us to contribute at work, building the economic capacity to invest in the services and support that we need to complete the social revolution. And it will also mean that we have the confidence to meet the challenges of globalisation, seeing them as a benefit for our familes and our communities.

Jenny Watson is Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission (www.eoc.org.uk). This lecture was given on 8th February 2007 to the Smith Institute and Fabian Society. The event was kindly hosted by Clifford Chance. The Smith Institute, Fabian Society and Political Quarterly are co-hosting a lecture series on Reinvigorating Community.