Baroness Scott of Bybrook
That this House takes note of International Women’s Day and steps to support the education of women and girls in the United Kingdom and worldwide.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to open this year’s International Women’s Day debate, but before I proceed further I am sure noble Lords will join me in offering our deepest condolences to the family of the late noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd, who was a great stalwart—the first female Speaker of the House of Commons and a noble friend of this House. It is only fitting that we acknowledge and pay tribute to the amazing legacy that Lady Boothroyd leaves behind. I am also very much looking forward to hearing my noble friend Lady Lampard’s maiden speech today. I welcome her to this House and look forward to working with her in future.
We recently marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. It is important to reaffirm the UK’s continued support for the people and Government of Ukraine. I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to meet the Ukrainian community in London a number of times and have been so inspired by the strength and resilience of the woman and children so sadly displaced by this atrocious war. I send our thoughts and prayers to them today and say that we are with them in their struggle. As part of our £220 million package of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and longer-term development programming, we have worked to prioritise the protection and inclusion of the most vulnerable and hard-to-reach, including women and girls.
I am pleased that the UK continues to demonstrate leadership and commitment to championing the hard-won rights of women and girls as set out in the FCDO’s new International Women and Girls Strategy 2023 to 2030 announced on 8 March. This strategy sets out how we will use the full weight of our diplomatic and development offer to put women and girls, in all their diversity, at the heart of everything we do. The strategy sets out five new principles. They are: we will stand up and speak out for women’s and girls’ rights and freedoms on the global stage and in our bilateral relationships; we will embolden and amplify the work and voices of diverse grass-roots women’s organisations and movements; we will target investment towards the key life stages for all women and girls to secure the greatest life-long and intergenerational impact; we will act for and with all women and girls impacted by crises and shocks; and we will strengthen systems—political, economic and social—that play a critical role in protecting and empowering all women and girls. The FCDO will channel activity into three priority areas: educating girls; empowering women and girls; and championing their health and rights and ending gender-based violence against women and girls.
The 67th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women is well under way in New York. This is the biggest event of the global calendar on women’s rights and gender equality. The priority theme for 2023 is innovation and technological change and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. The digital age holds exciting opportunities for the advancement of gender equality around the world, but we must ensure that no one gets left behind, that women and girls are supported to participate meaningfully and that technology-facilitated gender-based violence is responded to and prevented. I am delighted that the UK is co-hosting a side event on this important subject at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. I am also very pleased that my noble friend Lord Ahmad is leading our delegation to CSW this year. His programme includes side events to discuss issues in detail and bilaterals with partners, both within the UN system and from other countries. We welcome the opportunity to engage with global partners on this important agenda and value our engagement with civil society as part of the process.
Throughout the world, International Women’s Day is celebrated in numerous ways. There are events in local and regional communities and debates across countries, much like the ones taking place in your Lordships’ House, and it is an honour to be just one part of these celebrations. Equally, it is important to acknowledge that these celebrations take place against a backdrop of a growing cost of living crisis, which is disproportionately impacting on women. The Government understand that people are worried about the cost of living challenges ahead. That is why decisive action has been taken to support households across the UK, with a package of measures to help ease the burden while remaining fiscally responsible.
This year’s International Women’s Day global theme is “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”. A key facet of that is education, which is one of the key pathways towards achieving gender equality and remains a global priority. This Government have put education at the heart of their agenda, and I am pleased to support their efforts in this area. I am also pleased to have the opportunity to highlight the progress that this Government have made in the UK and around the world more widely to advance gender equality.
Girls’ education is a top international development priority, and the UK is committed to standing up for the right of every girl everywhere to access 12 years of quality education. From 2015 to 2020 the UK supported 8.1 million girls to gain a decent education. The UK committed to tackling the global education crisis through the Girls’ Education Action Plan 2021 and through two G7-endorsed global objectives: to get 40 million more girls in school and 20 million more girls reading by the age of 10 by 2026.
Here in the UK the Prime Minister, in his first speech of 2023, set out his ambition of ensuring that all school pupils in England study some form of maths to the age of 18. That reflects his mission to ensure that more children leave school with the right skills in numeracy and literacy.
We are helping our children and young people achieve their potential and recover from the impact of the pandemic. That is why we have made available almost £5 billion for education recovery, with many programmes—including the recovery premium, the National Tutoring Programme and the 16-to-19 tuition fund—focused on helping the most disadvantaged.
As society grows its digital economy, it is critical that we position women to be successful within that economy. This Government have made significant progress in increasing the number of girls studying STEM subjects, and we are keen to do more to get women into STEM careers to meet the demands of today’s workforce. Girls represented 44% of all STEM A-level entries in 2021. The proportion of women entering full-time undergraduate courses taking STEM subjects increased from 33.6% to 41.4% between 2011 and 2020.
However, in 2020 women made up only 29.4% of the STEM workforce in the UK and, worryingly, many of those women leave the workforce because they take time out for caring reasons and find it difficult to return. This Government are clear that the careers of talented women should not be held back because they take time out of work to care for loved ones. That is why, on International Day of Women and Girls in Science, 11 February, we launched a new pilot to support parents and carers back into STEM roles. The STEM ReCharge pilot builds on insight from the 25 returner programmes that the Government have funded across the private and public sectors.
That brings me on to the topic of women’s economic empowerment. As part of our international women and girls strategy, we are using our influence to encourage the international community and our multilateral partners to scale up their focus and activities on women’s economic empowerment. The UK has successfully included gender provisions in all our free trade agreements newly negotiated since leaving the EU. Our FTAs with Australia and New Zealand contain dedicated trade and gender equality chapters. They complement important provisions secured across the agreements—for example, on non-discrimination in the workplace, promoting women’s access to digital trade and supporting women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises. Our She Trades Commonwealth initiative has helped more than 3,500 women-led businesses since 2018, including in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, creating over 6,000 jobs.
Domestically, the government-backed task force on women-led high-growth enterprise was established to support women entrepreneurs, tackle investing barriers, challenge outdated gender stereotypes and increase the number of women-led high-growth businesses. This measure is driven by the Government’s ambition to increase the number of female entrepreneurs by half by 2030, equivalent to 600,000 new entrepreneurs. I am proud that such initiatives and others, such as flexible working and parental leave, will help achieve a considerable decline in the gender pay gap, which over the last decade has fallen from 19.6% to 14.9%, with the percentage of women in employment going up from 66.5% to 72.3%.
This Government’s commitment to improving the cost, choice and availability of childcare for working parents is central to this, especially as we know that unpaid care work, especially when it comes to childcare, is disproportionately done by women. We have spent over £3.5 billion in each of the past three years on our early education entitlements to support families with the cost of childcare. We know the sector is facing economic challenges, similar to the challenges faced across the economy, so we have already announced additional funding of £160 million in 2022-23, £180 million in 2023-24 and £170 million in 2024-25.
In addition to the action that we have taken to increase women’s economic participation, it is imperative that every woman is able to live without fear of harassment or violence, in the workplace as much as anywhere else. The Government are supporting the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill, introduced by the honourable Member for Bath. That Bill will strengthen protections for employees against workplace harassment, and I am delighted to say that it passed Report and Third Reading in the Commons on 3 February.
Online safety and digital access are key to achieving gender equality in today’s workforce. The ground-breaking Online Safety Bill delivers the Government’s manifesto commitment to making the UK the safest place in the world to be online. This new legislation will tackle criminal activity online, protect children from harmful and inappropriate content, particularly given the rise in misogyny, and promote greater transparency and accountability for platforms.
Gender-based violence threatens the lives and well-being of girls and women and girls in all their diversity around the world, and prevents them accessing opportunities such as education, healthcare and employment, which are fundamental to their freedom and development, education, healthcare and jobs. I am proud that the UK is recognised internationally for the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, committing £60 million to prevent and respond to conflict-related sexual violence since 2012. In November last year the UK hosted the PSVI international conference in London with over 1,000 delegates, including survivors, civil society, multilateral partners and representatives from at least 57 countries.
We also launched a new political declaration and secured endorsements from 53 countries and 40 national commitments; and published a new PSVI strategy, backed up by £12.5 million of new funding, outlining the Government’s approach to preventing and responding to the appalling crimes of conflict-related sexual violence. Domestically, though, we are still reeling from the abhorrent crimes committed by David Carrick. It is only right that he now faces at least 30 years behind bars.
The Tackling Violence against Women and Girls strategy, published in 2021, is helping to target perpetrators better and support victims and survivors of gender-based violence. It was followed in March 2022 by the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, which commits to investing over £230 million of cross-government funding into tackling these crimes.
Improving women’s health outcomes and reducing disparities is a key priority for this Government and an important driver for economic growth. The first government-led Women’s Health Strategy for England marks a reset in the way in which the Government are looking at women’s health. For generations, women have lived with a health and care system that is mostly designed by men, for men. The strategy sets out our 10-year ambition for boosting the health and well-being of women and girls, and for improving how the health and care system listens to all women.
The appointment of Dame Lesley Regan, the first Women’s Health Ambassador, underlines this Government’s commitment to putting women at the heart of health services. Implementation of the strategy will ensure, among other things, better support for women experiencing menopausal symptoms, leading to better diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as endometriosis, which affects one in 10 women. It will, helpfully, also remove additional barriers to fertility services facing female same-sex couples.
As I said in my opening remarks, I am proud to participate in today’s debate surrounded by so many champions for gender equality. I am proud of the work that this Government are doing to support women in all their diversities, in all areas of their lives, but I recognise that there is much more to do. I beg to move.