International Women’s Day

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, not only on securing today’s debate but on introducing it so well in a wide-ranging and excellent speech. It is always a pleasure to participate in this debate because the speeches are always informative, thought provoking, entertaining and, at times, deeply moving. Many speeches have focused on how much we have yet to do and others have focused on how far we have come. I was struck by that at the weekend when I heard on the radio a clip of an interview with Barbara Castle when, as the Minister for Transport, she was seeking to introduce drink-driving laws. The interviewer said, "You are only a woman. You do not drive. What do you know about it?" Her response was characteristically robust, but that demonstrates how far we have come in the time since she sought to do that. We are in the general election run-up and many contributions have focused on the less than glorious record of the United Kingdom Parliament in women’s representation—only 19 per cent at the moment despite many years of sterling work by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and many others. I was particularly taken by the contribution of my noble friend Lady Williams and the link between the quality of governance in a nation and the number of women. If that does not give us pause for thought about how much more we need to do, I despair. It is sad that, whatever the political outcome of the general election in May, women will still be significantly underrepresented in our Parliament. That is very strange because there is no evidence that the public are unwilling to vote for female candidates; in fact the evidence is the reverse. In my party I do not come across the overt bias in selection processes that the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, came across some years ago, but not enough women are coming forward. This is something that I am very exercised about. I am trying to understand why more women are not coming forward. It is a great pity that for most of the public the only thing they ever see of the work of an MP is the weekly testosterone-fuelled spectacle of Prime Minister’s Question Time, which is very off-putting. It is a great shame that people do not get to see more of the other work of a Member of Parliament—representing their constituency, dealing with casework, being on Select Committees. These activities would feel much more worthwhile for women because, if noble Lords will forgive a sweeping generalisation, women on the whole would rather do things than be things. If what they see of an MP’s work looks like a doing job, they would like to do it. The House of Commons has reformed and its practices have changed, but at glacial speed. It is still a very family-unfriendly place and we have to work on that. A colleague recently came to me with a proposal for job-sharing for MPs. My first reaction was, "How on earth would you ever make that work?", but she sat down and explained it to me. I have to say that it is very persuasive as a way of encouraging both more women and people with young families. Noble Lords will be able to judge for themselves because she is appearing on "Woman’s Hour" next week to put this case. It is something that bears scrutiny. The role of women in business and industry was highlighted in contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Haskel and Lord Parekh, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser. A number of organisations are now working to develop the roles of women and, like many other noble Baronesses, I am involved with some of them. I am a supporter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar, which works with the surprisingly large number of women who work in transport and logistics, and I am a co-chair of Women in Public Policy along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Morris of Bolton and Lady Symons of Vernham Dean. The UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology is doing some great work in its sector. We have to be clear that this is not just a matter of fairness or equality, as important as those things are. The fact is that with an ageing population and the imminent retirement of a predominantly male workforce inside the engineering sector, the UK’s ability to train and retain specialists in emerging fields such as low-carbon technologies is an essential part of our future prosperity. At the moment, despite having quite a low number of female graduates in the engineering sector, one-sixth of those who are qualified are currently not working at all and 70 per cent are working in other sectors of the economy. That is a shocking waste of an already scarce resource. As one would expect in this debate, many noble Lords have touched on the international dimension. I was particularly taken with the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, which in a way mirrored that of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about how having women involved in these key strategic areas makes a difference to the quality of decisions made. I look forward to hearing the reply from the noble Baroness the Leader of the House. During the half-term recess, I thought it would be good for my soul to take a short break from domestic politics and went along with a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association delegation to Bangladesh. It is fascinating that Bangladesh has come up so often today. The role of women in society there is a key issue. It is a highly contradictory place; both the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition are female—although I accept my noble friend’s point that there is a sort of dynastic element to the politics there—and we met some impressive female Ministers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, pointed out, the Bangladeshi Parliament has dealt with underrepresentation of women in the directly elected part of the House by having a top-up reserve of 40 seats for women. Despite women playing a important role in Bangladeshi politics, though, life for most Bangladeshi women is very hard, particularly in terms of maternal mortality, which is one of the millennium development goals that they have not been able to meet. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, talked about microfinance. One of the highlights for me of our trip to Bangladesh was meeting Professor Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank—the delegation was not a little star-struck. With the bank’s amazing system aimed predominantly at women, it took enormous courage for him and his colleagues to overcome Bangladesh’s cultural barriers to empowering poor women, but they have done so: 97 per cent of the current 8 million borrowers in Bangladesh are women, and the bank’s community-based credit system has resulted in a loan recovery rate of 98 per cent despite the total absence of legal contract or sanction for default. Interestingly, the bank has started to try to run projects in Glasgow and the Bronx. I wish it good luck, but I fear that if it is trying to work in this country, our very inflexible benefits system will make it rather hard. The Grameen system works largely in rural areas, and has developed into a holistic approach to health, nutrition and education. At one time, Grameen was the country’s largest distributor of seeds—a by-product of its drive to improve night blindness caused by vitamin A deficiency by encouraging women to grow vegetables. We were taken out of Dhaka to look at various development projects. We also visited the research unit at the cholera hospital, where they have developed oral rehydration therapy. By teaching these techniques to around 12 million mothers, the reduction of child and infant mortality in Bangladesh has gone from 285 per 1,000 to 75 per 1,000. This shows how much can be achieved by very small measures if you involve women. I am running out of time, but I am delighted to have listened to the debate and made my contribution.