argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Mary MacLeod (Conservative, Centre-right): I could not have put it better myself. I absolutely agree that the statistics show that progress has been made, and hopefully that will inspire more women to go and get the start-up loans required, which is really important We also have some great role models. If we look across the country, we see women such as J. K. Rowling, who came up with the idea for Harry Potter in 1990—it just popped into her head on a crowded train to Manchester. Michelle Mone left school at age 15 without a single qualification, and she had the idea for Ultimo lingerie when she wore a particularly uncomfortable bra and thought that she could produce something better. Linda Bennett, of L.K. Bennett, worked as a shop-floor assistant in north London branches of Whistles and Joseph before going on to establish her own massively successful fashion line Specsavers co-founder Dame Mary Perkins is the UK’s first female billionaire. She was born and raised in a Bristol council house before studying optometry at Cardiff university. Friends Sophie Cornish and Holly Tucker established the retail site notonthehighstreet.com in 2006. It has since turned over £100 million in trade. Rita Sharma is the UK’s richest Asian female entrepreneur. She dropped law after one term at Sussex university to begin Worldwide Journeys, a travel agency that now has a net worth of £7 million Business Dragon and the founder of Weststar Holidays, Deborah Meaden, began her first company, a glass and ceramics business, aged just 19. Hilary Devey was continually refused support by bankers she approached about her proposed venture for the freight network Pall-Ex. It now has a combined turnover approaching £100 million. We have great examples out there, with the likes of Jo Malone and The White Company. There are so many female entrepreneurs who have made a real difference.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Mary MacLeod (Conservative, Centre-right): I completely agree. Only recently the Exchequer Secretary visited Chiswick to meet female entrepreneurs and women who were thinking about setting up a business, and they said exactly the same. They needed something more flexible and perhaps part time, but something they could establish for themselves in that way In my west London constituency, in Chiswick, Brentford, Isleworth and Hounslow, one of the most well-known female entrepreneurs is Cath Kidston, who opened her first shop in 1993 and now has 59 stores in the UK and 54 across Spain, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. She started making wash bags and aprons because she had over-ordered fabric Another entrepreneur from Hounslow is Shavata Singh, who is now famous for doing the eyebrows of the stars. Almost every department store now has a Shavata concession doing eyebrows—if you ever need them done, Mr Deputy Speaker. She has now established her flagship store in Knightsbridge and is doing amazing work. Angela Lyons-Redman, of My Plumber, is based in Brentford and Chiswick. She left her job as a solicitor because she thought she could offer a better, faster service in the plumbing world—initially working from her bedroom, with a plumber on a motorbike—and now employs 38 people and several apprentices. She is doing a great job with that company Lorraine Angliss created Annie’s, a lovely, quirky and comfy restaurant in Chiswick and Barnes, and now has a sister restaurant in Richmond, and they are much loved by locals. Julia Quilliam set up a property business in Brentford, an independent family-run estate agent. Anila Vaghela, of Anila’s Sauces, which is also based in Hounslow, makes curry sauces. She set up the business in her 50s after being made redundant. She has won many Great Taste awards, and her sauces are all about love and harmony I have a range of other examples of great local female entrepreneurs, such as Charlotte who set up Badger & Earl, Maggie who set up Maggie & Rose, Anette who set up Chateau Dessert, Esther Gibbs who set up LondonMummy.com, Sarah who set up Sprinkled Magic, and Martha Keith. They have all made their mark by setting up their own business Martha Keith has an interesting story. When I entered this place, I wanted to encourage more women to set up businesses. I feel that in many sectors we just need to encourage more women. I attended a Commonwealth meeting of female parliamentarians in Edinburgh. We were a group of 15 women all standing together, and we all said that we got into Parliament because someone had tapped us on the shoulder and said, "Why don’t you do it? You’d be great." It strikes me that we need to encourage women constantly. We know that they have the ability and the skills, but we need to encourage them to take that step.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Other
Caroline Alice Spelman (Conservative, Centre-right): Through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, may I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to have this debate in the Chamber of the House of Commons? When I went with my right hon. and hon. Friends to ask for it, the Committee listening to our petition was entirely made up of hon. Gentlemen, so we particularly appreciate the courtesy they have afforded us in allowing this debate to take place in the Chamber. Last year, the debate I had secured was held in Westminster Hall, and that was noticed by people outside Parliament.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Other
Caroline Alice Spelman (Conservative, Centre-right): Indeed. My hon. Friend nudges me to make, for the record, an observation about the choreography in the Chamber. I believe that nine women on the Government Benches and three women on the Opposition Benches are going to speak—from time to time, an hon. Gentleman has entered the Chamber, and we are very grateful to those who have intervened—which is incredibly important. I never know whether we should refer to this, but I want to record that a lady is sitting in the chair of the Serjeant at Arms. All that is incredibly important to the outside world, but there are not enough of us in the Chamber for a debate of this importance about more than half the population.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Other
Cheryl Elise Kendall Gillan (Conservative, Centre-right): When I was reading through some of the debates from the 1992 to 1997 Parliament, I noticed that in one such debate—I will talk about it if I catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker—nine or 10 men spoke or intervened. I regret that there are not more Members in the Chamber for this debate, particularly those who are not of the fairer sex.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Caroline Alice Spelman (Conservative, Centre-right): I hope that today’s Hansard will be read, and that more hon. Gentlemen will be in the Chamber in subsequent debates on international women’s day. We sought this debate to mark that day, of which this year’s theme is entitled, "Make it happen". It is important for us in Parliament to mark the day, and in doing so we are standing with women all around the world who will mark it in their own forums and in their own way The year 2015 is an auspicious one for international women’s rights, because it is precisely 20 years since the Beijing declaration and platform for action, on which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) led the UK delegation. That occasion really moved forward the world’s understanding, with an agenda for women’s empowerment which particularly focused on health care, education and violence against women 2015 is an auspicious year for a debate on international women’s day because the millennium development goals come to fruition and the post-2015 framework that will follow them is in the throes of being decided. It is important to ensure that the concerns of women are at the heart of that debate because, as is often said, globally, poverty has a woman’s face. In 2015 the World Bank will also announce its social safeguards, including gender equality throughout its work Let me mention the important work of the United Nations Women organisation, which was established in 2010, and its head and executive director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. It works on several key areas: leadership and political participation, as well as ending violence against women. I wish to focus on its work on economic empowerment, and what it is doing to make that happen. It is important to increase gender equality, reduce poverty and encourage growth, but empowering women to work and empowering women economically is necessary to break down the disadvantage they suffer from. When more women work, economies grow. If women’s paid employment rates were raised to the same level as men’s, the United States’ gross domestic product would be an estimated 9% higher, that of the eurozone would climb by 13%, and Japan’s would be boosted by 16%. Therefore, in 15 major developing economies, per capita income would rise by 14%. That is the evidence produced by UN Women.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Mixed Topics
Jeremy John Elton Lefroy (Conservative, Centre-right): The first director of UN Women was Michelle Bachelet, now President of Chile for the second time. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one great thing that could be done to advance this cause would be for the next Secretary-General of the United Nations to be its first female head?
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Mary MacLeod (Conservative, Centre-right): I attended the UN Commission on the Status of Women during both the last two years, but last year I was disturbed by the lack of media coverage in the UK during the event and afterwards. Does my right hon. Friend have any thoughts on how we could raise the profile of the commission and what it discusses, given that it is so important for women around the world?
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Caroline Alice Spelman (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank you for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), who has done outstanding work on the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament, leading to the report "Improving Parliament". I hope it will be taken up and that the changes it calls for will be made Let me deal briefly with economic empowerment in the United Kingdom, without repeating what others have said. I want to take up a theme about FTSE 100 companies. It is true that significant progress has been made in ensuring that every single FTSE 100 company now has a female on the board, yet still only 6.9% of their directors are female. I throw out a challenge to a female figure in the City—Fiona Woolf, for example—to invite all the chief executives from the FTSE 100 companies to come and present their female board members and two mentees from their own organisations whom they seek to promote to senior leadership roles. There are examples of good practice. Antony Jenkins, the chief executive officer at Barclays, set a target of 26% of senior leadership positions being held by women, and Barclays is on track to meet it. There are other such examples The Government have taken important action to empower women in our country economically, looking at issues such as the pay gap, recruitment, retention and promotion. I agree with the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) that we should work together across the House to deal with anomalies such as women, particularly older women, being seriously left behind on wage differentials. We should take action on a cross-party basis There are still many areas for improvement. Research produced by Cambridge university’s Murray Edwards college, entitled "Women Today, Women Tomorrow", clearly showed that the most difficult challenge its respondents faced in their careers was still the non-supportive culture of their workplaces The workplace of Parliament is a difficult workplace for women. I call on you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as well as the Front Benchers, to take forward the recommendations in "Improving Parliament", particularly that calling for the creation of a new Select Committee on equalities to consider departmental policies and programmes and scrutinise Government performance on equality. It is significant that the House’s own workplace equality network, principally a staff network, strongly supports the call for such a Select Committee to be created—the conditions in which women work affect our staff just as much as female Members of Parliament Let me finish with the simple observation that we need more women in this place—and, in the spirit of this year’s theme, we need to make it happen.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Mary MacLeod (Conservative, Centre-right): Just to emphasise the right hon. Lady’s point, last year in my constituency in West Middlesex hospital there were 50 cases of FGM. They were noted only because those women happened to be giving birth. I think this is far more widespread than we can imagine.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Cheryl Elise Kendall Gillan (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and I pay tribute to her. She was first elected to this House in 1984, and I think it was in 1985 that she had the opportunity in the private Members’ Bill ballot to introduce legislation. Having been in that position myself, I know how inundated with suggestions Members are when they strike it lucky in the ballot, but she chose the banning of female circumcision. It is a tribute to her and her work that it became law in 1985. I think it was amended in 2003. Like her, I cannot believe that we have not had a single successful prosecution to date in the UK. I hope that is something that those listening to this debate outwith this Chamber will take on board, and make sure that this absolutely abhorrent practice is stamped out in the UK, if not in the whole world.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Margot Cathleen James (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government’s recent announcements and the placing of responsibilities on the health service and schools for reporting suspicions of FGM should help to bring about a prosecution, and hopefully many more prosecutions in the future?
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Jessica Lee (Conservative, Centre-right): I am all for that. As a child, I was never happier than when I was playing with Lego. [Interruption.] No, I do not still play with Lego. I focus entirely on my work As I was saying, more women are taking managerial and other senior roles in companies in my constituency. In many households, they are the main breadwinners. I grew up near my constituency, and I need look no further than my own family for strong female role models. My mother was our main breadwinner. She was a paediatric nurse in the NHS for more than 40 years. Looking back, I have no idea how she managed to run a household, to bring up three children, some of whom were more trouble than others—I was no trouble at all, of course—and to work full time for very long hours, doing night shifts at Queen’s medical centre in Nottingham My interest in current affairs was sparked by my maternal grandmother. I remember clearly being shown the newspapers by her as a child. We were not a political family—there was no party politics—but she used to show me the international pages, saying, "You need to learn about the world around you. You need to know about current affairs, and what is happening all over the globe." She also said, "Politics is not just for the boys at school, you know." That is what sparked my interest in politics, and I am happy to have the chance to mention my grandmother in the House today We need to encourage women to enter public service and all the professions. I must say that, although I might not have succeeded for many other reasons, it never occurred to me that because I was a woman I could not, would not or should not go into politics. That never even crossed my mind. My basic motivation—I think that the same applies to many women in the House—was to get things done. We may disagree across the House about exactly how we are to achieve that, but surely we all agree that we go into politics to get things done When I talk to young women in my constituency, particularly sixth-formers, I tell them that although the 30 minutes of theatre that is Prime Minister’s Question Time has its place and its tradition in the House, it is during the week that the valuable cross-party work is done, in Select Committees and all-party parliamentary groups—and, of course, there is the Backbench Business Committee. The list goes on and on. Those rewarding projects, involving cross-party work and themes on which people are united, are extremely satisfying, and that is often the way in which things get done.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Other
Mary MacLeod (Conservative, Centre-right): I always felt that I could do anything in life. That was partly due to my mother—I have that in common with my hon. Friend—but there was also the example of people such as Baroness Thatcher, who was Prime Minister when we were growing up. She was an incredible woman, and she showed us that anyone could achieve anything.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Jessica Lee (Conservative, Centre-right): I entirely agree. One of my earliest memories of watching current affairs programmes is of watching programmes about the miners’ strike and, before that, the Falklands war. I remember asking at home, "Who is this person?", and being amazed and impressed that we had a woman Prime Minister As for the message that we should convey, it is true that we need longevity in the House, but I think it a great idea to tell women who may be thinking about becoming Members of Parliament but do not want to be in the House of Commons for ever, that that is fabulous too. We need to support the choices that women make, or want to make, so that they can achieve the goals that they want to achieve, while juggling all their other responsibilities.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Jessica Lee (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. There has been progress. This is not a party political speech, and we have made huge steps in this Parliament towards having more women in the workplace and closing that gap, and taking more women out of tax entirely. A high proportion of the millions of people who are now out of tax are women. These things are important in giving women choices about their lives and they help them to make decisions for themselves and their family Today is international women’s day and others have spoken with far more insight and experience than I have about the issues on the international agenda. For my part, in the course of this Parliament I have had the opportunity, through the Conservative party, to go to Kenya and work with women politicians there, to deliver training on democracy and modern social media campaigning skills for elections, although I am sure I learned far more from them than they ever learned from me. That group of motivated, intelligent, dedicated women politicians was extremely formidable and capable. I felt very united with women in another part of the world who felt the same way: they wanted to get on and get things done. That is the key to being passionate about public service I am looking forward to celebrating international women’s day and I feel that my service as an MP has enriched me in celebrating it. I believe I have more knowledge and am far better informed, motivated and committed to fighting the corner for women across the globe as we celebrate this very important day.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Robert Alexander Stewart (Conservative, Centre-right): One of the reasons I came to listen to the debate today was that I want to applaud women. In my experience—I am talking about my military experience—they are not just equal; they are sometimes at a higher level. Women are fantastic at running operations rooms, for example. They are better than men at doing that. Also, I often used to choose a woman, rather than a man, to run a negotiation or a mediation. On international women’s day, we should not only applaud women for being equal but emphasise the fact that they can be much better than men at doing some things.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Other
Cheryl Elise Kendall Gillan (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister is making good progress in her wind-up. It really brought it home to me when I said to my researcher that I did this back in 1995 and she said, "Oh, I was four then."
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Maria Frances Lewis Miller (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have supported and contributed to today’s wide-ranging debate. I particularly thank the Leader of the House, who earlier gave his personal support for the idea of establishing a women and equalities Select Committee, and Mr Speaker, for agreeing to consider the need to put women front and centre in this place through the portraiture that is on display. Those are practical changes, but the improved scrutiny can make a real difference. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for its support and its understanding of the importance of holding today’s debate in this Chamber. As the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said, it is our responsibility through debates such as this to shift culture, forge alliances and achieve policy changes. This debate, in some small way, will have contributed to the objectives she set, particularly in highlighting the issues that still need to be addressed. The debate has also demonstrated that women are here at the table participating, not observing, and determining the future of our country.
International Women’s Day — House of Commons, 2015-03-05
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Rarely have I found it as difficult to sit in this Chair and say nothing as it has been this afternoon. I have achieved that, but I think I can preserve my impartiality while congratulating all those who have taken part in an excellent and essential debate—it is essential that it should take place in this Chamber Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered International Women’s Day.