International Women’s Day: Progress on Global Gender Equality — House of Lords, 2018-03-08
Topic: Civil Rights
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we have had another great debate today. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on getting us off to a brilliant start. As usual, a range of challenges and celebrations characterised this International Women’s Day debate I want to mention two internal parliamentary things that we need to celebrate and which have not been mentioned so far. That, of course, is that we have our first woman Black Rod in 600 years here in our own House. We can also celebrate the fact that the chairman of the Press Gallery and the chairman of the Lobby are both women. They are Kate McCann and Emily Ashton. They issued a press release today—I shall not read it all out, but its headline reads: "Top female lobby journalists say ‘we need to show it’s not an all-boys’ club’ on International Women’s Day" Well, hear, hear to that and congratulations to them Like the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, I shall not try to cover everything that has been said today, but there are a couple of things which I think are worth mentioning. I certainly support my noble friend Lord Young in his remarks about Malala and his saying that her addressing both Houses of Parliament would be a great thing to do. I do not think that it is the Government’s job to organise that; it is Parliament’s. I invite the Minister to support us in that ambition, but I would exonerate her from having to deliver it. We need to talk to the two Speakers and others to help us to do it I enjoyed in particular the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, about Albania, about which I did not know very much and have not thought very much. It was absolutely fascinating. I also enjoyed the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, about "Who would have thought?"—and quite right, too. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, was also quite right: our gains are fragile, and we have to fight to protect all of them all the way through. My noble friend Lady Donaghy’s appraisal was, as usual, devastating and quite correct. I enjoyed enormously the "Oscars speech" of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning—she was quite right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, was quite right to ask the question about CEDAW. However, the coalition Government abolished the Women’s National Commission, which was the main organisation that collected the views of British women to take to CEDAW. The noble Baroness is right—so what are we going to do about that? The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, was quite right and has my support in bringing forward the gender recognition Bill. As she said, it will be an important moment for a group which is small but has a very hard time. I have always thought that part of our job in the House of Lords is to champion those people and groups who may be quite small in number but who have the most difficult time and are discriminated against The noble Baroness, Lady Burt, was right to remind us that the World Economic Forum finds that the UK has a gender gap of 33% overall and is ranked 15th out of 144 countries. Against all the indices about economic empowerment and opportunity, we could probably say, "C-plus. Could do better"—that is the sort of grading that we are approaching; I think that most people would agree with that. One needs to ask why we do not do as well as we should on all those economic indices and I want to suggest something we might consider. I say this in tribute to the Women’s Budget Group of feminist economists, and it is about how we measure economic activity. We can see quite plainly the way in which GDP is measured: it takes into account the value produced through wage labour but not through unpaid domestic care work carried out predominantly by women in the home, even though all are essential to a well-functioning economy. Indeed, proponents of feminist economics argue that, in terms of methodology and focus, modern economics is too centred around men, with women’s contribution to the economy routinely ignored From a political perspective, feminist economics is an economics that focuses on what is needed to produce a gender-equal society. It argues that because modern economics is built around the idea of the "economic man", it is ideologically weighted towards normalising men’s lives and consequently ignores the experience of women. This is important: we cannot expect models based on economic man to understand or even notice gender inequalities, let alone create policies to alleviate them. Would the Minister raise this issue with her right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and with the Prime Minister, and perhaps suggest that the Treasury take account of it in its economic policies This is important, because while there has been progress on some aspects of gender equality, women still experience structural inequality throughout their lives. For example, independent research carried out before Christmas revealed that women have borne 86% of the impact of austerity, largely through lost services and changes to the tax and benefits system. Were we measuring things differently, we would come to a different conclusion about that This morning I was privileged to attend an International Women’s Day conference organised by Unity Trust Bank and the Employee Ownership Association. We were addressing the empowerment of women across the world through employee ownership, social enterprise, co-operatives and profit-for-purpose businesses. By the way, women are eight times more likely to be the chair in a co-operative than in a FTSE 100 company. A recent British Council report that looked at social enterprise and women’s empowerment across the world found that 75% of women who start a social enterprise say that it had given them an increased sense of self-worth, while 64% reported enhanced self-confidence Such empowered women—social entrepreneurs—provide crucial role models for the next generation, so I congratulate the FCO and DfID on the support they have been giving to the British Council in the social enterprise programme, and I hope that will continue We have all been going to lots of celebrations of International Women’s Day. Yesterday I attended the launch of What Women Want 2.0. I remember—as I am sure will other noble Lords—the 1996 What Women Want survey, which was linked to the Beijing United Nations women’s conference. I took part in it. It had a great impact: 10,000 women took part in the survey. The same thing has happened again, and with social media it has generated a huge digital discourse. Fascinatingly, the results mirror almost exactly what women were asking for in 1996, which must make us pause to wonder why there is so much unfinished business: equal rights, equal pay, respect, a child and carer-friendly working world, an end to the culture of pornography and rape, more women in politics, more women running big organisations and companies, and a peaceful safe world for our children and the ones we love. It is very much the same as 1996, but the difference now is that this new wave of feminists—and in 1996 it was still unfashionable to call yourself a feminist—are not only saying that this is what women want but also that this is what women believe they deserve. I took great encouragement from the large and diverse group—hundreds of women—who came to Parliament yesterday As the health spokesperson, I finish by raising an issue about women’s health. It is to do with women and mental health. In 2003 we had an excellent women and mental health strategy. It was archived in 2011 by the coalition Government, which is a great shame. This is important: poor mental health among women has increased, with one in five experiencing common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, compared to one in eight among men. Young women are the group most at risk, experiencing alarmingly high rates of self-harm, eating disorders and PTSD. Women’s mental health is closely linked to their experiences of violence and abuse, which should not be surprising, and many women struggle to get the support they need from the mental health services. Agenda, a women’s organisation supporting women and girls at risk of abuse, poverty, poor mental health and homelessness, found that women and girls are regularly and repeatedly restrained in mental health settings, despite the risk of re-traumatising women who have already experienced violence and abuse Can the Minister tell us—if not now, perhaps she could ask her noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy to do so later—what steps are being taken to respond to women’s mental health needs and tackle the rise in mental ill-health among women? Is it not time for the new women’s mental health strategy that we need?