My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on initiating this debate, and particularly congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry on his great maiden speech. We look forward to more speeches from him as time goes on. My maiden speech was referred to in this debate. I have to say, it happened not just to me but to the noble Baronesses, Lady Uddin and Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer. We all made our maiden speeches about family-friendly working hours at 10 o’clock at night. Indeed, my children were in the gallery in their pyjamas watching me at the time.
We have had some brilliant speeches today. I am particularly drawn to the comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Heyhoe-Flint, in her remarks about barriers to women in sports and clubs, being stuck in the car park, and so on. It reminded me of an experience I had about 30 years ago when I decided to throw my hat in the ring for selection for a by-election in Bradford, which is where I am from. I turned up to one of the selection meetings at a working men’s club. I was the only woman who was being seen. All the men walked in to take part in the meeting, but I was not allowed to walk in—I had to be signed in by the secretary of the club, because women were not allowed to be members. I am happy to say that I doubt whether that goes on in working men’s clubs these days.
International Women’s Day is a day for celebration, there is no doubt of that, and I am sure that noble Lords and the Minister will all be joining women across the world in singing “One Woman”, the International Women’s Day song which will be launched tomorrow. It is a musical celebration of women world wide, featuring more than 20 artists from across the world. Unlike the Minister, when the first International Women’s Day was launched by the United Nations in 1975, I was at the London School of Economics and the women’s group there had a party to celebrate it. However, I do not remember much about it.
As the Minister said, thousands of events will take place not only tomorrow but throughout the month of March to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women. As has already been mentioned by noble Lords, the theme which has been declared by the United Nations for 2013 is, “A promise is a promise: time for action to end violence against women”. In 2012 the theme was, “Empower rural women: end hunger and poverty”. In fact, every year since 1975 there has been a different theme. Parliaments and countries can choose their own theme for International Women’s Day, of course. In 2012, the European Parliament used a theme around equal pay for work of equal value. We can be proud of the 400 events in the United Kingdom. As my noble friend said, the United Nations website indicates that the UK is the most active country in the world in terms of celebrating International Women’s Day. It could be that other countries have not bothered to send in what activities are taking place, and certainly I am in favour of a few flowers being presented.
We can be proud of the role played by the UK on the international stage, and particularly of our role in the creation of UN Women, the United Nations entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women. When it was founded, the United Nations took an historic step in accelerating the organisation’s goals on gender equality and the empowerment of women. I am particularly proud that during the time I was in Government with Harriet Harman and as part of the equalities team, we were key to the promotion and establishment of UN Women. In fact, on one occasion I had a tiny part to play. I was sent to an international women’s event and my job was to lobby some of the leading women from around the world to persuade them to persuade the United Nations to cough up the money to establish UN Women. That lobby included Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia. I have to say that she was one of the most impressive people that I have ever met in my life—and of course she was completely solid on the objectives we had in mind. I also congratulate the Government on the fact that they have continued to support and fund UN Women; indeed, according to the annual report which I read recently, they have increased their contribution.
It is certainly true that the United Nations has made significant progress over many decades in advancing gender equality through landmark agreements such as the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women—CEDAW—which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. It is also true to say
that the United Kingdom is represented at all these bodies by cross-party groups of women. It is to the credit of this country that whichever Government are in power, they have undertaken to take representative groups of women to all of these events. I know that many of my noble friends have taken part in them over the years, particularly my noble friend Lady Gould.
In the Labour Party we are proud of the historic role we have played in supporting gender equality over the years. That support goes right back to the days of supporting the family allowance being paid to women. Moreover, Votes for Women was part of our original platform when we were founded as a party. We have supported all the equality legislation since the Second World War: the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Equal Pay Act 1970, maternity rights and domestic violence legislation, the Equality Acts 2006 and 2010; and support for women at work and parents with children. As my noble friends Lady Nye and Lady Pitkeathley mentioned, we have the best record of any UK political party in terms of women’s representation with more women MPs than all the other political parties put together. We have near-equal representation of women and men in the devolved bodies, and many women representing their local communities on councils up and down the country.
I have absolutely no doubt that the two Ministers seated opposite me are totally committed to the representation of women in their parties and that, along with their colleagues, they have worked and endeavoured over the years to try to increase the representation of women. Indeed, I know they have done that because I have spoken about this to women in other political parties over many years. But the fact remains that if our political parties are left to their own devices in their selection processes—I include my own in this—predominantly, they are going to select men. That is why the Labour Party went down the road of all-women shortlists, and that is why in our target of 80 seats for the next general election—this is set out in a document that we published last week or the week before—half of the selections will be made from all-women shortlists. That is because we are determined that we should have a Parliament that represents the electorate and is at least 50% women. However, we cannot do that on our own. We need the other political parties to take positive action. I do not enjoy the fact that we force our constituency Labour parties to pick women candidates, but the reality is just as I have said: if left to their own devices, all but the most progressive will select men as their candidates, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Do we really believe that women are any less capable than men as politicians? I will just point to the fact that our all-women shortlist system has delivered a more representative and stronger Parliamentary Labour Party with a new generation of talented women MPs. I mention Rachel Reeves, Gloria De Piero, Stella Creasy, Bridget Phillipson and Luciana Berger. All of them were selected on all-women shortlists and I would dare anybody to suggest that they are second-class candidates or second-class representatives of their communities; of course they are not. It shows that positive action works. The challenge I would like to pose to the other
political parties is that they have to take action if we are going to hit the target of 50% women in our Parliament.
I should like to raise two other matters because although this is a time for celebration, there are a couple of things that we need to look at. The first concerns older women—and I include myself in the group. We are a generation of active older women who have led very different lives from those of our mothers. We are the first generation, if you like, who have been doing it all. We have had jobs and we have brought up families. Some 71% of women aged between 45 and 64—I am towards the upper end of that group—think that employers offer too few opportunities to older women when recruiting staff. In 1983, only 13% of older women thought that. We live longer and we are in better health than our mothers were at our age. However, this group is losing out the most from the Government’s pension changes because they will have to continue working longer than they expected. This generation is angry about being regarded as “past it”, being overlooked for responsibility and promotion, and being prioritised for redundancy. Some of us are very annoyed that the wisdom and experience of older women are not valued in the same way as they are for older men. That is exemplified by the portrayal of older women on television, as we all know.
These women—I include myself—are holding families and communities together, a point made by the right reverend Prelate. We pick up the pieces. We look after the grandchildren because childcare costs are going up. We care for our elderly relatives as social care services are shredded. We are the ones being stretched in every direction. It is time that public policy caught up with this generation of older women. In the Labour Party we have launched the Commission on Older Women, chaired by Harriet Harman MP, to investigate the policy implications for women in their fifties and sixties and what they are facing, and to look for longer-term policy solutions. The commission will focus on older women in the workplace, older women and their caring responsibilities, and older women in public life. All I can say is: watch this space, because I think that the commission is going to produce some interesting results.
I turn now to the earlier end of women’s lives and the position of younger mothers. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said that the Government have helped women, are positive about them, and are doing a great deal for them. In some senses they are, but I think we need to look at the objective evidence because some of it points in the opposite direction, particularly for young mothers. David Cameron promised to lead the most family-friendly Government ever, but since this coalition Government came to power, new mums have been among the hardest hit by the coalition’s tax and benefit changes. From April this year, the Government will restrict maternity pay to a 1% annual increase and by 2015, in real terms, this cut in maternity pay will effectively be a £180 “mummy tax” on working women, on top of the additional cuts being faced by new mums. Nationally, up to 1.2 million people, including previous children and dads alongside mums, will be affected by the mummy tax each year. We estimate—this is from the House of Commons Library so is almost
certainly true—that 210,000 new mums will be hardest hit by this cap. That is why the Labour Party is launching a campaign for this International Women’s Day and for Mothering Sunday called “mums not millionaires”. At the same time as the Government are cutting taxes for people earning over £1 million, the figures compiled by the House of Commons Library confirm that the lowest-paid new mums will lose £1,300 during pregnancy and the baby’s first year, and a further £422 from cuts to child benefit over the same period. This is not a women-friendly agenda. As we celebrate this day, we should be looking at the facts and figures and not just the words and exhortations.
In conclusion, I join with everyone in the House in this celebration of women, their achievements and the progress they have made. However, as my noble friends Lady Massey and Lady Crawley said, this is a long road that we tread. As the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, my noble friend Lord Mitchell and the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, this is a very tough road indeed for millions of women across the world. We should not forget that it was through political activity—sometimes militant political activity—that women won the vote and have made possible the progress that we celebrate today.
I make no apology for the political nature of my speech. If women do not push hard in every area, we will not make progress. Progress may sometimes be noisy and many millions of women have had to be very brave over the centuries. On International Women’s Day, we should remember with gratitude all those women to whom we owe so much.
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