International Women’s Day

My Lords, I agree with many others today that the most effective way to raise the status of women is to invest in the education of girls. One hundred years ago, a Ghanaian educationist said that, ""if you educate a woman, you educate a whole family"." Since visiting a woman’s project in India in the 1980s, I have also been a firm convert to "smart economics", which is the idea that women in business can be a catalyst to the whole community. That was in coastal Orissa, one of the poorest states, where CARE had adapted a nutrition programme so that mothers could benefit from a loan scheme and start small businesses. Since then, I have been a strong supporter of microcredit and have been generally convinced, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, and the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, that women look after money better than men. Studies of the Grameen Bank projects in Bangladesh show that the poorest women, as has been said, have the highest repayment rates. It is a well known fact that women do most of the work and are paid the least for it. Some find alternatives and the share of women in paid employment outside agriculture has continued to increase, but nearly two-thirds of employed women have vulnerable jobs. Low pay and poor conditions such as overcrowding characterise women’s work in industry and gender inequality frequently leads to discrimination. Young women from poor, rural households start at a disadvantage, which is why the aim of millennium development goal 2 is to increase the enrolment of girls in education and why eliminating gender disparity in schools is so important. Removing school fees, recruiting more local teachers and building schools in remoter areas have helped to reduce this. DfID has set targets in the secondary education of girls, but progress needs to be measured by completion rather than only enrolment rates. Women’s political representation—MDG 3—is slowly growing. We have heard from my noble friend Lady Coussins. More women have entered leadership positions worldwide, while the number of women speakers in Parliaments has remained high. We have also heard a lot about Rwanda’s lower Chamber. However, I do not want to sound too enthusiastic about Rwanda. In spite of their new Commonwealth membership, the Government are still repressive and intolerant of criticism. Community courts are struggling with sexual violence and ongoing genocide cases involving rape, many of which end without respect for privacy for women or a proper judicial process. Finally, I would like briefly to highlight women’s achievements in the Arab world, which are not always fully recognised, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Nicholson and Lady Williams, both mentioned. Women in Kuwait, for example, only gained the right to stand for election in 2005. Four women were elected to Kuwait’s Parliament for the first time in May last year. Saudi Arabia has never had a woman in its Consultative Council, but it now has a woman Cabinet Minister. Here I declare an interest. My wife Caroline has been working on the Middle East for many years, and I know from her that many Saudi women are becoming much more active in civil society, business, and promoting social reform. The wife of the Prophet Mohammed, Khadija, was a businesswoman, and there are many in the Arab world who see her successful career as the true pattern of behaviour for Muslim women. As a recent ILO report states: ""Empowering women is one of the most pressing challenges these regions have to face, and the main route to reaching this successfully is by giving women the chance of a decent job"." I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and I hope that the Government will pursue millennium development goals 2, 3 and 5 on maternal mortality, which was also mentioned, with renewed vigour.