International Women’s Day

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Hendon, on securing this debate. When a similar debate took place about six or eight months ago, there were 12 speakers and only one of them a man: that was me, and I felt extremely uncomfortable. Today, we have 26 speakers and five of them are men, so we have certainly made some progress, but it also goes to show how far we have to go before there can be a genuine balance of representation along gender lines. The eighth of March marks International Women’s Day. When we celebrate it, it is worth bearing in mind that it was initiated by the socialist movement, especially by the Socialist Party of the United States. That may surprise your Lordships, but it did exist in those days, and it took the initiative in sponsoring women’s day. The day used to be 28 February and was transferred to 8 March in 1913. Next year, I am told, we mark the global centenary year of International Women’s Day, when I am sure that we will conduct this debate even more vigorously than we have today. During the past 100-odd years, much has been achieved and the position of women has changed considerably for the better. There is greater appreciation of women’s rights; there is greater recognition of their needs; and there is increasing education of women at all levels. There is also greater awareness of, and resistance to, domestic and sexual violence, and to many other practices such as dowry, female genital mutilation, honour killing and female foeticide that obtain in many parts of the world. However, in spite of those improvements, we still have a long way to go, in developing countries as well as in the West. As the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, said, it is worth remembering why changes have taken place in some developing countries and not in others. Three factors in particular have played a very important part. One is education. It is striking that development in women’s education is closely correlated with the human development index. One could contrast, for example, Sri Lanka, with 92 per cent female literacy, and Myanmar, with 32 per cent female literacy. In the country that I come from, India, one could contrast Kerala, with female literacy of 97 per cent and a very high human development index, with a state up in the north, Bihar, where female literacy is 38 per cent and the human development index is extremely low. Education therefore plays an extremely important part. The second factor which has played a very important part is democracy, which gives women a sense of dignity and power, and a determination to take control of their own affairs. Democratic countries have by and large done much better than non-democratic countries where the human development index is concerned. The third factor has to do with active civil society associations. When they take up women’s causes and give support to women with problems, the literacy rate among women tends to be high, and many of the social practices which hold them back tend to be contested and fought. I turn to Britain, which in some senses is the centre of our debate. We have made considerable progress under Labour during the past few years. In 1992, female representation in the Commons was 9 per cent. It began to go up in 1997 and, today, it is 19.5 per cent. Female representation in the Cabinet was 7 per cent; today, it is 17 per cent. On boards of public bodies, it was 25 per cent when Labour came to power; it is 33 per cent today. In senior grades of the Civil Service, it was 12 per cent in 1997; it is 29 per cent today. Among officers of the Royal Air Force, it was 8 per cent in 1997; it is 15.3 per cent today. Among university professors, the profession to which I belong, it used to be 8 per cent; today, it is 18 per cent. It is obvious that things have improved considerably, but there is still a long way to go. In the private sector, the picture is rather depressing. Just 11 per cent of FTSE 100 companies have women as directors; 22 per cent have no women directors. Of the banks, partly responsible for our chaos, only 8 per cent have female directors. If we had more, perhaps that chaos could have been avoided a long time ago. We can learn much from Norway. In 1984, 83 per cent of companies there had women on their boards; today, it is 100 per cent. Five factors are responsible for things moving faster in Norway and Scandinavian countries, all of which we need to bear in mind in our struggle in our own country. First, government pressure is very important. Secondly, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has a very important role to play. Thirdly, freedom of information is important in finding out how certain companies behave and how they promote. Fourthly, private and public pressure is necessary to change the organisational culture of those companies. And, finally and most importantly, where equality is equated with uniformity women make less progress because their differences are not taken into account. Therefore, we need to define equality in such a way that differences are fully taken into account and fully reflected in the policies and practices of the organisations involved.