International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2022-03-10
Topic: Civil Rights
Kirsten Frances Oswald (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I am grateful for that, Madam Deputy Speaker. We will see how we get on It does sometimes feel a wee bit like groundhog day in these debates, because women still have to strain every sinew and despite that, not so much changes. But there are bright spots, as the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) put it well, and I want to acknowledge and celebrate them as well Nobody here will be anything other than deeply concerned about the women and girls in Ukraine as they walk away from what were their perfectly normal lives in this unimaginably terrible situation, leaving everything that they have known behind them—and, as an aside, for goodness’ sake let us waive the visas and let these women in. All of us will have seen the footage of the women who had gone into hospital to give birth, but instead were being carried out, heavily pregnant and injured, on stretchers. They were under fire at the very time in their lives when they were at their most vulnerable. It is almost too much to comprehend. We will probably, and hopefully, never know what it is to walk in those women’s shoes, but we absolutely stand with them in the face of this wickedness There are so many shocking tales from Ukraine, no doubt familiar to women and girls in war zones across the world, as the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) set out so clearly. I also saw footage of a whole bunch of pushchairs and prams parked up outside a railway station in Poland by mums who must have known that the mums who were fleeing Ukraine with their wee ones would need them. I thought that that was amazing and it was a chink of light in the darkness there I know that the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is "breaking the bias", which is a welcome focus. At home and further afield, the lens through which everything is seen, including the decisions that affect our lives across the world, is still a male one. That applies whether we look at work, at health—we have talked about the recovery from covid—or at politics. Too often that bias, those barriers, or that ingrained misogyny remain I was very pleased to see Baroness Helena Kennedy’s report on misogyny and criminal justice in Scotland. It is a welcome step forward. As the report highlights, not all men are misogynists, but all women experience misogyny. I am heartened, too, by the continued laser focus on this by our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and her gender-balanced Cabinet. The Scottish Parliament continues to become more diverse, slowly but surely changing—to be honest it has been far too slow—to reflect the Scotland that we know, and we are the better for that, because we need our representation to reflect all of us. Making sure that we actively support marginalised communities in all of that is important Regardless of that, politics might not always be a comfortable space to inhabit. I take the point of the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) that we should enjoy it as much as we can, but there is often a nasty undercurrent—online in particular—which is wearing. None the less, we do need women in politics. A woman’s place is in politics. A woman’s place is in decision making. We can see that, where that is true, there are better ways to do things. In Scotland, for instance, we have seen world-leading legislation to provide free period products; legislation developed directly with women’s organisations that acknowledges domestic abuse as much more than just physical violence; and a determination to incorporate into Scots law the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women We also have a fantastic women’s health plan in Scotland, which is so important. The focus on the menopause, which, for far too long, has not been spoken about, is profoundly helpful. I have been very pleased to hear a number of hon. Members mention the menopause today I really welcome that focus on women’s health. I am a woman with polycystic ovary syndrome, and I am not alone in that: 10% of women worldwide experience either PCOS or endometriosis, yet less than 3% of UK research funding goes into researching women-specific conditions—that is women-specific conditions as a whole, not the condition that I am referring to. PCOS is little understood. Basically, there is a black hole where research should be. If Members want to know how it might impact on the menopause or on becoming an older woman, they can forget it. The information does not exist, but I have no doubt that, if that condition affected men, the research would have been done. Moreover, if men experienced the levels of sexual violence that women do, we would not have seen the disgraceful pantomime of Raith Rovers and Clyde football clubs transferring, retransferring, and then trying to untransfer a man who had been ruled in a civil case to be a rapist. I must say that I felt that Raith Rovers’ International Women’s Day tweet, waxing lyrical about forging women’s equality together, was somewhat bold, or just extremely offensive, given the circumstances I have seen some people—men, actually—ask why that had never seemed to be a problem before. "Why now?", they ask, suggesting, and some actually saying, that those of us who are unhappy about it are jumping on a bandwagon. I will tell them why: we are ground down by this kind of thing day in, day out, and thank goodness we have made enough progress over the past few years that women feel able to say "Enough." I take my hat off to the incredibly brave woman who found herself at the heart of that situation, and these strong, principled female players, coaches and teams who were not willing to stand for it any longer. To the men who stood up with them, I say thank you. We all need to stand up if we want to break that bias at every level, but it is not easy, and that sorry episode should never have happened I will close by reflecting on the difference that individual women make, going about their lives but improving the lives of others as they do so. We all know those women. They are all around us—our families, our friends—and they are absolutely worth celebrating in this debate. They are women such as my three East Renfrewshire councillor colleagues Angela Convery, Annette Ireland and Caroline Bamforth, who work tirelessly day in, day out to improve the lives of others. They are women such as the three young East Renfrewshire women named in the YWCA Scotland "30 under 30" list, Marissa Roxburgh, Elise Kelly and Kira Hendry. They are women such as Rena McGuire, Ashley McIlvenney, Annmarie Strain and Oonagh McKinnon, who work tirelessly to deliver transformational change in our community—I am sure hon. Members will wish them all well; they are up against one another for a community award, but they probably all deserve to win I could go on adding the names of amazing women in my community; I could stand here all day and do that, and I am confident that all hon. Members here could do the same for their constituencies. There are also women such as Carolyn, Nix, Tracey, Katie and Freya, who support me as I support constituents. These women, and women the world over going about their business, stepping up, stepping forward, making things better for others and for those coming after them—they are the women who inspire me daily. Let us all try to be more like these women. Let us always stretch a hand out to others as we continue to push forward, and maybe then we will see real and sustained equality.