International Women’s Day

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

12:36

Moved by

[Baroness Smith of Malvern]

That this House takes note of International Women’s Day and the steps being taken to promote women’s participation and leadership in science and technology in the United Kingdom and internationally.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, I first say how pleased I am to open this International Women’s Day debate on my first full day as the Minister for Women and Equalities. In doing so, I take the opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, Anneliese Dodds, for the enormously important work that she did in this portfolio.

I also wish the House a very happy—almost—International Women’s Day. The theme of International Women’s Day this year is “Accelerate Action” because, right now, the pace of change just is not fast enough. In recent years—and, I am afraid, with recent Governments—we have seen far too many women left without the safety, security and opportunity they need. That is why the Government are determined to deliver for women through our plan for change, where women are central to all of the Government’s missions: from halving violence against women and girls to kick-starting economic growth, fixing the NHS and breaking down the barriers to opportunity. Through our plan for change, we are making the changes needed to make sure women’s equality becomes a reality. It will be an ambitious agenda for a decade of national renewal, and women will be at the heart of it. This International Women’s Day, we want to celebrate the achievements that have been made towards advancing women’s equality and redouble our commitment to deliver lasting change for women.

There is much that we—and I—could say about the achievements of previous Labour Governments and our plan for change. Today, we are focusing our debate on science and technology. We may not think of this place as a bastion of gender equality—we touched on that just yesterday in an Oral Question—but percentage wise there are more women in the House of Lords, a 1,000-year-old institution, than there are women in tech in the UK, a sector not much more than 100 years old. That gives us a sense of the size of the challenge. If our current trajectory continues, the world will not achieve gender parity until 2158. In the worlds of science and technology, those numbers could be gloomier still.

Our rate of progress will not see women making up an equal share of the tech workforce in the UK for another 283 years. That is an ocean of time—283 years ago, women in the UK could not vote, own land or property if we were married, go to university or enter most professions. Fortunately, we are not willing to let the current pace of change continue. This is a mission-led Government, squarely focused on creating a new era of opportunity and economic growth and a fairer society for all, and gender equality is imperative to that. So today I want to talk about how the Government are accelerating action in the UK and internationally.

First, I will just give a reminder of why this is so important. We should care about all forms of equality in science and technology for their own sake, but we should also care because this drives the betterment of our society and the strengthening of our economy. When women and girls are equally involved in shaping science and tech, the world gets faster breakthroughs, products that work properly and better returns.

We get faster breakthroughs because experts have told us time and again that diverse teams pursue new questions in new ways, leading to better research.

We get products that work because there is a long history of technologies built without women that do not work properly for the whole population. These are set out brilliantly by Caroline Criado Perez in her book Invisible Women, which I am sure many noble Lords have read. Crash-test dummies based on male bodies do not adequately protect women in cars; life-saving drugs, mainly tested on male animals, have a question mark over how they will work for women; and when the first voice assistants were created, they found it harder to recognise female voices because they had been tested only on the all-male developer team who built them. For some of us, that might explain why our phones and speakers do not take any notice of us—or it might be for other reasons.

Finally, we get better returns because businesses and economies stand to gain hugely here. Research consistently finds that gender diversity and ethnic and cultural diversity are both good for business. Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity in their exec teams are 25% more likely to outperform their peers on profit than those in the bottom quartile. Looking at the bigger picture, if women were to start and scale businesses at the rate that men do, we would see a potential £250 billion boost to the UK economy. Without gender equality, our growth mission is stunted.

Let us turn from the why to the what: what this Government are doing to promote women’s participation and leadership in science and technology. “Participation” takes in women as citizens of the digital world as well as creators of it, so we must think about digital exclusion, which disproportionately affects women, as well as online harms that women and girls are up against. My noble friend Lady Jones, closing this debate, may well go into those topics further. With the excellent range of speakers we have today, I am sure there will be plenty for her to respond to.

For now, I will focus on three pillars of improving diversity in science and technology. Skills: how do we make sure that women and girls have the know-how to participate in these sectors and pursue careers in them? Entrepreneurship: how do we support women to start and scale science and tech companies? Industry: how do we protect the rights of women employed by firms in this sector?

On skills, the Digital Poverty Alliance has estimated that if we help everybody currently in work to get essential digital skills, we could see a £17 billion increase in yearly earnings. But if we are to get that boost to the UK economy, we cannot afford to have such a big proportion of our population missing out. Globally, women and girls are 25% less likely than men to have enough digital skills to use technology.

As with everything we discuss today, we must recognise the experiences of the whole range of women in the UK. Women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are much more likely to lack digital skills, as are women with disabilities. The good news is that STEM education is growing. In the 2022-23 academic year, there were 35% more STEM A-level entries from women and girls than in 2010.

Breaking down opportunities is one of the core missions of this Government, so here is how we are making sure that this trend continues in the right direction. Across the board, the curriculum review is considering how to modernise education and qualifications to fit with work in the 21st century. Skills England is reviewing what courses can better fill the digital skills gap. Our new levy-funded growth and skills offer, with apprenticeships at the heart, will deliver greater flexibility for learners and employers in England, aligned with our industrial strategy, creating routes into good, skilled jobs in growing industries. We promote STEM apprenticeships to girls in schools through fantastic volunteers such as STEM ambassadors and apprenticeship ambassadors.

Women’s participation in STEM has improved, but challenges remain. Women now make up 24% of the STEM workforce in the UK, surpassing 1 million for the first time. However, representation remains disproportionately low in certain fields, highlighting ongoing challenges. Higher education is playing a key role in driving change. Universities are implementing mentoring schemes, outreach programmes and gender-balanced research funding to support and retain female talent in STEM.

Early engagement is key to growing that pipeline of women into STEM. Government, employers and education providers are working together to inspire more girls to pursue STEM careers, including through the STEM ambassador programme and industry outreach initiatives. Here are just a couple of further skills programmes of which we are particularly proud. The CyberFirst Girls Competition invites girls aged 12 to 13 to crack codes and solve coding challenges, all to encourage them to pursue a career in cybersecurity. In 2024, 14,500 girls from more than 800 schools took part. On science, the CREST Awards, funded by UKRI, give young people the chance to run their own research projects aimed at solving real-world problems.

Another area where it is crucial that we build up skills is AI. The AI Opportunities Action Plan, launched by the Prime Minister in January, sets out how we will seize the enormous opportunity that AI presents to boost growth, raise living standards and transform our public services. But this opportunity must be open to all. Only 22% of those employed in AI right now are women. Women are also less likely to use AI in their day-to-day lives.

The Government will continue to back AI and data science conversion courses, allowing STEM graduates to gain an AI master’s. It is wonderful to see that 72% of students on these courses so far have been women, far higher than for comparable STEM master’s courses. With support from the DfE, DSIT will explore how to scale up extracurricular activities for girls in schools to cover AI, building on the National Cyber Security Centre’s successful work on cybersecurity skills.

The UK is also opening up opportunities for women and girls around the world. The Girls’ Education Skills Partnership is an £8 million collaboration between the UK, UNICEF and companies such as Unilever, Vodafone and Microsoft. Giving women everywhere the right skills helps them to see new avenues that are open to them, from working as a code breaker to being part of the AI revolution or founding a business of their own.

That takes us to entrepreneurship. Here, let us take a moment to share the story of just one of the brilliant female-founded science and tech companies. Nu Quantum was started by Dr Carmen Palacios-Berraquero as a spin-out from Cambridge. Quantum computing could be our most powerful tool to fight climate change, design better medicines and transform every industry. But to do that, quantum computers need to be 1,000 times more powerful than they are today. That is the challenge the team is working on. It is a team with diversity at its heart. Almost half its employees are women. It has more than 20 nationalities represented and is an LGBT-friendly workplace. Companies such as Nu Quantum are essential for women to look up to, because women are still starting science and tech businesses far less than men do.

When we look at funding challenges, it is little wonder why. Overall, female-founded businesses got just a 1.8% share of total equity investment in the first half of 2024, and that number shrinks further still when we look at the experience of women of colour. In tech, the average deal capital raised by female-founded AI companies is six times lower than that by raised all-male teams.

This Government are supporting female founders across our economy to get the finance that they need. The Women in Innovation programme, run by Innovate UK, has awarded over £11 million to female entrepreneurs since it started, and women now make up one in three successful bids to Innovate UK, up from one in seven. We also back the Invest in Women Taskforce, whose Women Backing Women Fund connects female investors with female-led companies. Specifically in science, the Future Fund invests in R&D-heavy companies in life sciences and deep tech, many of which are headed up by female founders.

As well as helping entrepreneurs find funding, we are supporting the finance sector as a whole to reckon with its role in this. Over 280 companies, including most major retail banks, have now signed up to the Investing in Women code, committing to improve access to finance for women. It is not just a piece of paper. Companies that have signed up are shown to outperform the rest of the market in giving equity to female founders.

The proportion of female-founded businesses around the world has increased steadily in recent years, but we must continue to give them the environment they need to fly, to create new role models for the next generation.

Finally, I turn to industry. We will keep working with science and tech firms to boost gender equality at all levels, particularly in senior roles. The Employment Rights Bill will be a cornerstone here. The Bill will make sure that women, no matter the workplace, are empowered, represented, protected and able to pursue meaningful careers, regardless of whether or not, for example, they plan to start a family. It expands gender pay gap reporting requirements, gives more rights to pregnant workers and new mothers and puts tougher duties on firms to prevent sexual harassment. It also introduces equality action plans, whereby large employers will have to set out what they are doing to improve gender equality. By making sure that science and tech firms foster inclusive working environments, we can make sure these are places where all kinds of people get to succeed.

I am delighted at how popular a debate this is to speak in today and that several Members of this House are about to make their maiden speeches, so I will make way now for them to share their perspectives, and look forward to my noble friend closing our debate, with invaluable insight from her joint roles as Minister with responsibility for science, innovation and tech, and for business and trade. Let me wrap up by reiterating that we do not just improve the participation of women and girls in science and technology because it feels like the right thing to do. We do it because we stand to unlock new realms of scientific advancement, technological innovation and economic growth—the key to everyone being better off—when more women and girls are at the table.

12:53

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to speak in our International Women’s Day debate and to reflect on the steps being taken to promote women’s participation and leadership, both here in the United Kingdom and internationally. I look forward to hearing the maiden speeches of the noble Baronesses, Lady Alexander of Cleveden, Lady Hunter of Auchenreoch and Lady Bousted, and the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Penybont. On behalf of the Official Opposition, I warmly welcome them all to their places and look forward to working with them. I also congratulate the Minister on her new role; I hope she enjoys it as much as I did when I did it.

At the heart of our Conservative values lies the belief in opportunity, creating a society where talent and hard work determine success, not background or sex. I am particularly proud to be a member of my party on a day such as today. As a party, we have had four female leaders, including three female Prime Ministers. We are a party that recognises the immense contribution women make to society, and I am proud to say that I have never felt or experienced that being a woman ever held me back. The acceptance I have felt throughout my career is thanks to the contribution of women throughout history who stood up for themselves and fought for women’s rights. It is thanks to them, quite literally, that we are here today. Women could not take their seats in your Lordships’ House until 1958, some 40 years after the other place. Are not we grateful that we were not around then?

My first job was working for the Salvation Army. I am proud to have worked for an organisation which has done so much for women. In 1865, when William Booth started the Salvation Army, its foundational document affirmed that women have the same rights to minister and preach as men, setting a trail that other Christian groups have chosen to follow. Today, the Salvation Army offers refuge for women and children fleeing or at risk of domestic abuse. From its inception to the present day, it has been fighting for women. General William Booth was ahead of his time—he was ahead of everybody. I am really sorry that we do not have any bishops with us today, because I had a great one-liner for them: “It’s taken you a long time to catch up.”

Like so many other noble Lords, becoming a member of your Lordships’ House was not something I ever expected in my earliest years; of course, women could not be Members when I was born. My earliest experiences of life were not that simple, and I owe a great deal to one great lady who set me on a path that has led me to a successful—I hope—and fulfilled life. I have to tell your Lordships that I was quite a handful when I was younger. I know noble Lords will say I am now, but believe me, things have only got better. I was doing something I should not have been doing, and she said to me, “You shouldn’t do that.” She took me to the Salvation Army; she took me to my technical college every day and picked me up. I did my homework, passed my exams and owe her everything to be where I am today.

When I had the honour of opening our International Women’s Day debate in your Lordships’ House in 2022, I had just returned from the 66th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women. That year, the commission was focused on achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women in the context of climate change. Working with our international partners and reflecting on our role in the international community in pressing for women’s rights was one of my proudest moments as a Minister.

The United Kingdom has come so far on women’s rights in the last 150 years, and now we have to show ourselves as a role model for women everywhere who are struggling for their rights. We are a society they look up to as a model, where women can do any job: whether that be serving in the Armed Forces; running a FTSE 100 company, as my noble friend Lady Morrissey and others in this House have done; being an MP or Member of your Lordships’ House—or even Prime Minister.

Indeed, for most of our lives we had Her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, to look up to. She was a model to us all, both here and abroad, calmly and effectively steering our country through over 70 years of tumultuous change and progress. I know Her late Majesty was an inspiration to another great lady who was so close to her and has done so much for women, and I want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to the Duchess of Edinburgh. She has been absolutely outstanding in her focus on and championing of women, women in the workplace, equality, and action against sexual violence. I am pleased to see so many strong women contributing to our debate today. Women in public life bring different perspectives and speak up for the rights of us all. I am proud to be a Member of your Lordships’ House alongside so many noble Baronesses who have committed their lives to the service of others.

However, that public service sometimes comes at great cost. Women who are elected to another place or who serve in your Lordships’ House face the most appalling abuse and threats—abuse that is so hateful, simply because they are women. We must all stand together in calling it out. We must stand together against misogyny wherever it rears its ugly head.

It is on days such as this that I am reminded of Jo Cox, the former Member for Batley and Spen in the other place. She gave her life, literally, to public service, and her life was tragically cut short while she was doing her duty as an elected politician. Her loss will be keenly felt by so many in this House and by those who had the privilege of working with her. We must continue to call out this terrible abuse.

The theme of our debate today is promoting women’s participation in science and technology. I am not denigrating teachers—please do not start me off; I am not—but I remember a young lady I spoke to who had filled in her forms to be an apprentice. She took them to her teacher and said, “Look miss, I want to do this”. The teacher put them in the bin, saying, “No, you’re going to university”. We cannot have that. I am committed to apprenticeships, and I know that the Minister is too. We want to make sure that we get the right advice and guidance to our women in particular, so that they can follow the right path. I understand that there are plans to merge Jobcentre Plus and the careers service. It would be good to know how the plans are going and whether there will be enough resource to provide educational and work advice to women.

Talent is equally distributed. Opportunity should be as well. It is our duty to ensure that every young girl who dreams of being a scientist, an engineer or a tech entrepreneur has the tools, encouragement and confidence to make that dream a reality. The late Lady Thatcher had a successful career in chemistry before turning to public service, and it is our hope that many more women can follow in her footsteps. By continuing to promote policies that empower women in STEM, we strengthen not only our workforce but our economy, our society and our global standing as a leader in science and technology. Let us mark International Women’s Day not just with words but with continued action, ensuring that the future of innovation is diverse, inclusive and driven by talent from all backgrounds. This is something that all noble Lords on all sides of the House can agree on.

13:02

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, and I thank the Minister for her comprehensive introduction to this important issue. I am very much looking forward to hearing the maiden speeches today.

While the participation of young women in certain A-level STEM subjects is increasing steadily, physics and computer sciences remain slow compared with biology, chemistry and maths. Biology and maths, by the way, are the second and third top choices for females at A-level. Some 25% of candidates in physics are female, which is a considerable improvement. Unfortunately, for computer science it remains low, at only 15%. The expressive arts are still the top female choices for A-levels. I wonder whether perhaps our education system is at fault—it is too easy when choosing A-levels to abandon the sciences and go for either arts or sciences.

I start by celebrating three extraordinary women I have had the privilege of knowing, who have made their mark over the last 100 years and were extraordinary leaders of women in STEM in their day, because we need to understand how the world has changed.

Dr Anna Bidder graduated from Cambridge in 1926 with a degree in zoology. She could not receive that degree or her PhD in 1934 from Cambridge University because she was a woman. Only after 1948 did Cambridge permit women to receive the degrees that they had qualified for. Despite that, Anna Bidder secured senior research and teaching roles from the moment she got her PhD and for the rest of her academic life, at Newnham College and the Department of Zoology, where she was teaching young men who got their degrees. Even more shockingly, it was not until 1998 that she and other female alumni from before 1948 were, believe it or not, finally allowed to receive the degrees that they had been awarded. By then, she had founded and been the first president of a college for mature women students in Cambridge, Lucy Cavendish College, which thrives today.

Dr Lucy Slater was a mathematician who worked on hypergeometric functions and was one of the very few women present at the birth of computing in the UK. Her stories, over cups of tea, about the size and slowness of EDSAC astonished my children when they were at school. She graduated in 1944, and, as a post-grad in the 1950s, developed the precursor of modern computer operating systems, later working on computer programmes for econometrics. Lucy, a friend and neighbour, was an invisible giant on whose shoulders many successive women have stood.

However, the places of excellence were sometimes not even open to women to start with. Despite exceptional female scientists applying in 1900 to join the Royal Society, it took the extraordinarily named Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 for it to become illegal not to consider women in STEM as members of the Royal Society. It was that same Act that enabled women to get their degrees—Cambridge University was not the only university that was a little slow to catch on. I say this as an alumnus of Cambridge University and a former bursar of Lucy Cavendish College, and I really support what Cambridge University does for women these days. It was not until 1943 that the Royal Society promoted two women, Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson, to be elected. Now, over 200 women have been elected as fellows, and the numbers are rising fast.

Dame Athene Donald, a fellow of the Royal Society, is a brilliant physicist and a champion for the future of girls and women in STEM. She said:

“As a young researcher I was judged on my science, but when I became a potential player in organisational strategy, that’s when I really noticed it”.


That is how hard it was for women to succeed a mere couple of decades ago. What has she done to change it? I really recommend her latest book, Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science. It does what it says on the front of the book; it really explains the problem. She tells of her granddaughter’s description of the construction corner at primary school: “Oh, we have a construction corner, but the boys play there”. Athene has determined to change that. She roots this in our cultural assumptions from birth, the toys we give to our babies and small children, and what happens to children at nursery and even at primary school.

Even worse, I am afraid that there is still a perception that some parts of STEM are too hard for girls. Katharine Birbalsingh, the head teacher at the Michaela Community School, said two years ago:

“Just from my own knowledge of these things, physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy … There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think that they would rather not do”.


She was criticised for saying that at the time; there may be some truth in what she said, but the evidence shows that it is wrong. The Institute of Physics said that the overall proportion of women studying physics at university has increased from 21% to 25% over the decade to 2021. Over the same period, the number of women professors in physics has more than doubled, from 55 to 140. To show that this is not just chance, we see that women academic staff members in physics increased by 52% and now make up 20% of academic contracts. Change is on the move. The Institute of Physics’s Project Juno provides grants to increase the representation of women among physics and astronomy undergraduates.

We need to reach girls in primary school too. I was lucky—my children went to primary school in Cambridge and, when my daughter was in the junior age group, every single class had female maths undergraduates coming to help at maths lessons. As a result, my daughter, a natural historian, went on to take chemistry and maths as part of her IB, and she uses both every day in her job.

I want to end on a practical, positive and brave note. The Mines Advisory Group, or MAG, highlights that women play a leading but overlooked role in tackling conflict and building peace. MAG has trained women—50% of them in Ukraine—and, in Angola, has the only all-women armed violence reduction team. As de-miners, they are trained in technology in one of the most dangerous roles on earth. Their skills also build relationships with farmers and local communities. De-mining means, of course, that farmers can sow crops once more. That is one of the main problems in Ukraine, where Russia has mined so many farmers’ fields.

These heroines across the world are saving lives and building for the future. No teacher says to them that there are things they cannot do. That is something we should hear—encouraging our young girls to find their love for STEM early by learning coding through Turing Tumble, as my eight year-old granddaughters do with my husband. They too might change their world for the future. The girls of today, the young women of tomorrow, are moving apace. May Athene Donald’s vision become reality.

13:11

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her masterful introduction to this important debate, but I have to say that I am angry. I am not a person prone to rage and fury, but I am angry. I am angry because this is an urgent and important question that I fear we are ignoring at our peril.

I have now worked in or around the technology sector for over 30 years, and I have seen no change in the relationship between the sector and women or in the numbers of women. In fact, I have seen a degradation, not just in culture but in the absolute numbers. It is very clear—many people have already spoken of it, and I am sure we will have many more numbers today. Only 26% of the global tech workforce are women. In leadership roles, the figure falls again, to around 15%. In the UK, there are varying numbers on this, but the last figure I saw showed that just 6% of leadership roles in the tech sector are filled by women. This matters because, as we know, software is eating the world. We know that it is not an optional to digitise; it is happening. These are the jobs of the future—the jobs that create the services of the future and the jobs that will be paid the most amount of money. It is about power, justice and fairness.

I am dismayed when I see the numbers, and I keep going back to the disconnect between what I see happening and the benefits and the bonus of employing diversity in your teams and putting it at the heart of a company strategy. I just cannot understand this disconnect. That is why I am angry.

We know that 85% of consumers care that their products come from diverse teams. We know that employees care about diverse teams. I am president of the British Chambers of Commerce, and we have seen numbers showing that upwards of 80% of future employees care about what the future workforce looks like in the companies they are in. Yet we see the numbers stalling and, worse than that, if you believe, as I do, that the sector is going to be eaten again by AI, Quantum and deep tech, the numbers fall off even more considerably.

We are in a perilous position, and it is extremely disappointing to see the enormous influence of the US technology sector being integrated into the culture of our own companies here. I cannot believe that there is a single person who looks like me, who has worked on the edges of the digital sector for so long, who did not feel like crying as they watched the inauguration and the six men who have completely and totally committed to a President who at the same time has degraded the role of women so substantially. It matters—culture matters, character matters, value of companies and leaders matter—and yet I do not see this being played out in an industry that is also so full of innovation and the wonderful history that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, so brilliantly described.

We have to take this issue seriously and make substantial change. I suggest two important areas to focus on. The first is around innovation and entrepreneurship. As the Minister has already said, and I am sure others will go into the numbers again as well but I am going to reinforce it, just 1.8% of venture capital funding goes to women. It is marginally better if you look at cofounding teams of men and women, such as I was in with my business, lastminute.com. That 1.8% is partly explained because just 9% of venture capital partners are women—if you have teams of people who do not look like us giving out money, of course it will look more risky to give it to people who might talk about products for the menopause, babies and periods. The assumption is, “Who knows if it’s going to be successful when I cannot imagine that product myself?”

So, the funnel is clear. We have to shift it across the board, putting the onus not just on the entrepreneurs but on the finance structures around them. There are changes and brilliant things happening, such as the work of Debbie Roscoe, who I am proud to call my friend and who is raising funds for Women Supporting Women. But those funds are small: they are about £200 million, when they need to be closer to £2 billion, or £20 billion if we are really going to shift the dial. We must not give up the focus on finance—it is fundamental—and, within that, on entrepreneurship.

Secondarily, we have to keep a focus on culture—it is more difficult, more existential. I had never used the words diversity, equality and inclusion, or DEI, in my life until the last two months, yet I find myself defending the very notion of equality to journalists, people I work with and companions in the sector and outside it. Again, I cannot understand the disconnect between what seems like good business practice—as the Harvard Business Review said in 2015, if you have mixed and diverse teams it will lead to a 20% increase in your profit line—and what we now face, which is a fundamental row-back in the belief and priorities of substantial programmes. Just yesterday, I heard of Google’s edict from on high, rowing back on a huge number of projects that it works with here in the UK, in charities and the civic sector, that look at diversity, equality, inclusion—AI for Good.

This is a very significant issue, so I end by imploring you to feel the peril and urgency of this moment. I want to celebrate the amazing women in this Chamber. I am looking forward to the maiden speeches. But I am angry and nervous, and we have to keep fighting.

13:17

[Baroness Alexander of Cleveden (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I rise to make my maiden speech. I refer noble Lords to my register of interests. It is an honour to participate in this debate and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and I look forward to my noble friends’ maiden speeches today. I thank noble Lords in all parts of the House for their warm welcome. I pay tribute to my sponsors, my noble friends Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and Lady Liddell of Coatdyke, and I thank the officers of the House and all the Palace of Westminster staff for their unerring kindness.

A maiden speech traditionally offers some personal insight. My early life moved between inner-city Glasgow and the isle of Iona. To reprise the ecclesiastical theme from earlier, my father was a Church of Scotland minister who worked for the Iona Community, an ecumenical organisation dedicated to social justice.

My Argyll connection cultivated one youthful STEM skill—the physics of coastal splash netting. I became an accomplished salmon poacher, which we debated this week. At school, I studied STEM subjects. I was planning to follow my maternal grandparents into the medical mission field. It was an ambition that did not survive contact with the reality of rural medical clinics in Malawi.

By the mid-1990s I was working in international consultancy, but in May 1997 I joined the Blair Government to support the late Donald Dewar to deliver devolution. And the Holyrood Parliament, as we have heard, is an outstanding example of visionary leadership overcoming entrenched occupational segregation. My noble friends Lady Harman, Lady Liddell, Lady Armstrong and Lady Curran, with many others, delivered a parliamentary Labour group equally balanced between men and women—and once the dam was broken, Holyrood could never be a boys’ club. The Benches opposite are graced by the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Davidson, who both led their party with distinction.

In 2008, after briefly leading Scottish Labour, I departed to spend more time with my children. And beyond that familiar cliché, like so many women I had totally underestimated the impact of toddlers and other caring responsibilities on my career. Today women still disproportionately exit STEM careers to manage family life.

I have spent the last 15 years in international education, including as a Scottish trade envoy and working alongside the UK’s international education champion. Wherever we visited—Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil—what most animated the Education Ministers we met were not lessons from the UK education system but how they might build effective skills systems. Hence I am delighted to see Skills England taking shape.

It is customary for a new Member to signal their areas of interest without exciting controversy. I confess to some discomfort because all those sermons that I imbibed as a child demanded that the listener engage with the dominating issue of the day, so I sought out the wisdom of the House in recent maiden speeches, all delivered BC—before Christmas. How seismic the changes are since then.

In his maiden speech, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, the former Lord Chief Justice, eloquently eulogised the rule of law—a principle now seemingly questioned by leading voices in our closest ally. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Peach, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, issued a rallying cry for the western alliance, arguably now in intensive care, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, grappled with why so many have lost hope. That was before the transatlantic leaders embraced the narratives of the far right. Like all sides of the House, I admire the Prime Minister’s masterful diplomatic stewardship, but these developments weigh heavily on my conscience, as they must for many noble Lords, as we look ahead. Populism thrives when citizens lose faith that politicians can bring about positive change in their lives, and yet this debate challenges that counsel of despair. All parents still aspire for their children to prosper.

I have the privilege to chair the body that certifies every electrician in the country. It is a vital STEM skill. There are too few women, and yet a high-quality apprenticeship is a route out of low wages, insecurity and unstable work. It is a source of pride, hope and opportunity, so my first passion in this place will be ensuring that the power and prosperity that come from secure skills are available to all. My second passion will be tackling the regional inequalities that scar our country. Earlier this week, as a House we wrestled with our own size and shape. I hope that we find equal passion for passing power out from here back to the beating heart of Britain. My final passion is international. As vice-chair of the British Council, I assure noble Lords that we are engaging with the challenges of populism, strongman politics and escalating conflict. We are rethinking our place in the world and our support for democracy and equality. These are precious principles.

We live in extraordinary times, but as a child, listening to those sermons, I learned that life’s purpose is not simply to critique the darkness but to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly. So, as one of the newbies, I will endeavour to walk humbly and, in my case, to walk more slowly along these venerable corridors. I want to close by recalling here, on the threshold of International Women’s Day, that each one of us stands on our mother’s shoulders. If we dwell on that, we will be headed in the right direction.

13:24

[Baroness Hazarika (Lab)]

My Lords—and Ladies; come on, it is International Women’s Day—it is my great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Alexander and welcome her to this House along with so many other great women, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Bousted, Lady Hunter and Lady Rafferty, who are also making their maiden speeches today. I do not want to forget the noble Lord, Lord Jones, even though he is a man. He is taking part in the International Women’s Day debate, so he is now an honorary member of the sisterhood. In the rather alarming era of the global strong man, it is heartening to see the arrival of so many strong women to this Chamber, and I look forward to them all standing up, questing for change, causing a wee bit of trouble and speaking much sense.

As a fellow Scot, I am a long-time admirer of my noble friend Lady Alexander. She played a key role in the Scottish Parliament from its creation in 1999 until 2011, and she is a woman who gets things done. Her achievements include the first social justice report, tackling homelessness, fighting the pernicious Section 28 and announcing the first Scotland-wide fund to tackle violence against women. She also helped shape a more modern and more equal Scottish Labour Party when she was an adviser to Donald Dewar, and she was instrumental in making it more inclusive of women and less of a boys’ club. It is fitting that she went on to become the party’s first female leader in Scotland and paved the way for so many others. I look forward to the rich contributions she will make to this House and wish her well.

I also warmly congratulate my noble friend Lady Smith on her new role as Minister for Women and Equalities. Podcasting and Iain Dale’s loss—he is still bereft—is very much our gain. I know that she cares deeply about these subjects and will do an excellent job for the many.

This is such an important debate. Technology has shaped so many aspects of our lives for the better, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said, we have to be honest: there are winners and losers. The winners seem to be the very rich, powerful tech bros, now some of the most important people on the planet, and women often seem to be the losers. Women and girls are often at the mercy of a savage, rapacious thirst for online pornography, which is getting ever more violent, dark and dangerous. The online world is becoming a harder place and making our tech bro friends a lot of money, but I think we are all losing out. Young women are being told to just be cool with a bit of sexual violence such as strangulation or choking during sex. Young men are being taught that what they see on their phones is normal and necessary to be a man. It is not, and it is harming them too. We are numbing a generation. I pay great tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, for her review into online pornography, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, for her important work on deepfakes. I hope the Government can work with them to make the online space a wee bit safer for women and girls.

What happens online is not abstract; it shapes what happens in real life. Violence against women and girls is at a terrifying level. It is just four years since the murder of Sarah Everard. Do we honestly think that things have changed that much? The landmark Femicide report delves into the epidemic of violence against women. The latest report, just out, has found that it is not just young women who are the victims of male violence. One in eight women killed by men in the last 15 years was over the age of 70. Can the Minister update us on what is being done to better protect older women, often ignored in the media and wider society?

I used to feel very optimistic about International Women’s Day. I used to look forward to all the celebrations, parties and gatherings, but like many women right now I feel pretty depressed about how things are going. Things are going backwards, with a rise in misogyny here and all around the world, the anti-abortion laws in America, women being erased in Afghanistan, and the effects of war on women and girls all over the world. It feels as if there is very little female representation in the room when these new global powers meet.

We have to be honest: the power structures in the world right now are once again very male, and technology is playing a huge role. So I make this plea to the Minister: we understand that technology and AI are here to stay, and that they are important to growth and the evolution of society. However, as we heard so eloquently from the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, this is a sector dominated by men, from the new global overlords who can make or break Presidents and leaders, right down to the engineers and the coders. So, yes, let us harness the power of this exciting technical revolution, but please let us not worship at the altar of the tech bros at the expense of women and girls. We must not be the sacrificial lambs at this pivotal moment.

13:30

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, and I pay tribute to all those doing their maiden speeches today. The first time I spoke in an International Women’s Day debate, which was 14 years ago, I caused a bit of a frisson around the Chamber because I announced to the House that I had never actually heard of International Women’s Day until I came to the House of Lords. I am conscious that, for a lot of women, International Women’s Day still does not feel that relevant, and I am going to try and draw that theme together with the theme of the debate.

When I saw that this year’s debate was on technology, I felt compelled to speak, having just finished chairing the Communications and Digital Select Committee and, while holding that role, spent quite a bit of time examining the tech industry. But, when I looked at the list of speakers today, I felt confident that other noble Baronesses—and, indeed, noble Lords who are joining us—who have distinguished careers in the tech and science sectors would be much better placed to talk about women leaders and innovators and to stress the importance of women having equal opportunities to succeed and having their talents properly rewarded and their achievements recognised. I pay tribute to the noble Baronesses in this House who have had distinguished careers in the tech sector. I pay particular tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox; I listened very carefully to what she had to say.

I was pleased the other week to be at a dinner with other female tech people and I was very inspired by listening to them around the room. However, today, using the time I have available, I want to pay tribute to the women who worked at the technology factory at the end of the street where I grew up. As children we knew it as Plessey but it had previously been Ericsson’s and, before that, the National Telephone Company. It had stood on the same site in Beeston Rylands throughout the 20th century, and it designed and built telecommunications and electronics. As far back as World War I, the factory manufactured wireless technologies, and even in the 1930s there were reports of robots being made on site.

My mum started work at Ericsson’s in the 1950s and, except for the years between her having me and my brother and us starting school, worked there until she was made redundant in the mid-1990s. At its height, Plessey employed about 8,000 people at the Beeston site. I do not know how many were women, but most of my mum’s friends today, all in their 80s now, worked at the factory. To name a few, alongside my mum Margaret Stowell, I highlight Iris Herbert, Brenda Stone, who sadly recently died, Shirley White, Marg Smedley, Sheila Reece, Theresa Ward and many more.

I did not really understand what my mum did in the factory, but words like “transducers” and “printed circuit boards” got mentioned a lot. For those women, equal pay meant literally that—getting the same money for doing the same job on the line as the men, or getting the same opportunity as the men to do overtime, which was vital for my mum during the years she was alone. During the 1980s the factory was developing digital technologies and thriving, but, by the late 1980s, competition from the Far East triggered its decline. Bits of it existed under different firms, but it eventually closed completely in 2008.

The demise of Plessey was a big blow for all of us who lived in Beeston Rylands, whether we worked there or not, because it was the heart of our community. That sense of loss is one felt by many of the towns that suffered from de-industrialisation, but I feel now, as I have become more interested in tech, that it is almost criminal that we lost such a massive tech firm from a provincial town. It is vital that the AI industry—or revolution, which I firmly believe AI represents—and other tech innovations create opportunities for new businesses in all parts of the country. Clearly there will be disruption, and sadly not all former industrial sites will be reversioned. Incidentally, I should add that the Plessey site is now a housing estate—a genuinely nice one. There is much more to be optimistic about if the Government can create the right conditions for inward investment and scaling of UK tech firms, including those firms led by the women entrepreneurs whom the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, spoke of.

So I pay tribute today to my mum and the Plessey women who are the technologists of the past, and I salute today’s young female innovators and tech entrepreneurs who are vital for our nation’s successful future.

13:36

[Baroness Moyo (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I begin by cautioning the Chamber that I may sound slightly Pollyanna-ish, if not naive, in the remarks that I offer today. It strikes me as curious that, each year, across the world and here in your Lordships’ Chamber, we meet to celebrate women, yet almost invariably we hear an extensive list of how women and girls continue to struggle, face harm, endure worsening inequity and economically recede. Of course, as policymakers we should not wish to see the lack of access and limited opportunities for women further entrenched, and we should be seeking and listening to lasting solutions. In this sense, clear and accurate articulation and problem identification have their part to play in achieving the best and highest policy outcomes.

However, we must also celebrate success and thus highlight some sectors where women continue to progress. In politics, the share of women in parliaments globally has increased from 24.3% in 2019 to 27.2% in 2025. In the United Kingdom, both in the other place and here in your Lordships’ House, we now have the highest proportion of female representation ever recorded, at 40% and almost 30% respectively. Dare I say it? We are in the room where it is happening. We need to do more.

Around the world, several countries have achieved even higher levels of female representation in parliaments. In what is clearly a win for women in politics globally, at least 20 countries, including from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, have a higher proportion and representation of women than the other place here in the United Kingdom. On that list are countries such as Cuba, Rwanda and the United Arab Emirates.

Meanwhile, in business and finance, the Cranfield University annual survey notes that women now make up 43% of directors on FTSE 100 boards, compared with 5.8% in 2000. The number of women CEOs in the Fortune 500 has risen more than sixfold in the past two decades to reach a paltry, but nevertheless notable, 10.4%.

Yes, even in science and technology, the narrower fields picked to be highlighted in today’s debate, we see some progress. It is sadly true that women remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and that women-led start-ups, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, mentioned, find it hard to secure venture capital for technology. Of course, there is a well-known concern that AI contains an intrinsic gender bias that continues to harm women. However, there is also good news worth stressing.

First, according to the Government’s statistics, over 29% of STEM roles are now held by women. It is crucial for long-term economic growth that women form a greater proportion of the technological workforce. It is thus encouraging to see total numbers of women in STEM roles having reached 1.3 million in 2023, according to the WISE Campaign, up from estimates of 800,000 nearly a decade ago.

Secondly, there are visible improvements showing that the gender pay gap in wages and compensation is closing, albeit slowly. According to a 2024 report by Outsource UK, the tech pay gap has improved. It was at 15.6% in 2024, compared with 17.3% in 2021.

Thirdly, in terms of leadership, there is no doubt that there are prominent women making a mark, thereby inspiring a new generation of young women and girls. Here in the UK, we have standout examples in these important trends, such as Dame Emma Walmsley, the chief executive of the global pharmaceutical company GSK, which in the run-up to the 2020 pandemic was the largest vaccine producer in the world. She is also a member of the board of directors of Microsoft, one of the magnificent seven technological companies. Dame Kate Bingham, the prominent venture capitalist specialising in health, was instrumental in the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine and was at the intersection of business and government efforts in the face of that pandemic. Here in the Chamber, the noble Baronesses, Baroness Gustafsson and Baroness Lane-Fox, count in the ranks of successful entrepreneurs in the fields of technology, which is why we must listen to them, but let us also celebrate them. Of course, there is also Hannah Fry, the Cambridge academic who has made maths fun again.

There is no doubt that significant and even unfair inequities between men and women remain and persist. However, we are policymakers—we are in the room—and if we are not the ones pushing to advance and scale progress in Britain and beyond, then who is? We need policies that can deliver more women working and leading on science and technology, together with greater pay and equity, which is why it is very interesting and helpful to participate in this debate. Clearly a lot more needs to be done, and at pace, but we must celebrate this year’s International Women’s Day by at least taking note of the progress being made in science and technology. After all, the more that we celebrate successes today, the more likely we are to have inspiring examples of success in the future.

13:42

[Baroness Hunter of Auchenreoch (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister, my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern, for introducing this debate. We were colleagues in government and I am delighted to be speaking today on a subject that matters so much to us both.

I thank those of you in this House for the warm welcome I have received. I am very grateful to the exceptional people who make this place work, from my first rather sobering moments with Garter and Lyon King of Arms, for Scotland, to the Clerk of the Parliaments and Black Rod and their excellent teams, especially, of course, the doorkeepers. As I was introduced only on Tuesday, I am afraid they will have their work cut out guiding me around for some time to come. I also thank the Prime Minister for conferring this great privilege on me.

I know it is customary to give a flavour of oneself in a maiden speech. It may surprise some people in this House that I am of Scottish stock: born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to a second generation rubber plantation manager, Mac Hunter—a garrulous man and war hero—and to Joy Ferguson, who worked in the Force 136 cypher office during the war effort, in what was then Ceylon. They instilled simple values in me: to behave oneself, work hard and look after others. I hope they would be proud of their little girl today. My rather idyllic childhood was altered dramatically by the death of my mother in a car crash, when I was 11. My father then settled with my formidable grandmother at Auchenreoch, our family home in Angus, where they raised me and from where I take my title.

I am delighted to follow a fellow Scot and friend, my noble friend Lady Alexander of Cleveden, and I congratulate her on her excellent maiden speech. I am also looking forward to the other maiden speeches from my noble friends.

In 1987, I went to work for the then unknown Tony Blair in Westminster, at the very same time as my recently ennobled friend, my noble friend Lord Wilson, did in Sedgefield. I asked our boss what he wanted from me. He replied, “Alliance building”. This has been a large part of my life in politics and beyond, in business and academia, including with Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House.

On this celebration of International Women’s Day, I trust that your Lordships will not mind if, in the brief time I have left, I concentrate on my female influences. I thank my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon, the Leader of the House, for her leadership and her warm welcome. She is in the great tradition of female leaders in this House, such as my dear and noble friends Lady Royall, Lady Ashton, Lady Amos and Lady Jay.

After my time in government, I went into industry at BP and Anglo American, both companies run by enlightened leaders. I worked on many programmes to increase the numbers of female scientists, technologists and engineers around the world. I welcome the Government’s commitment to encouraging more girls to study STEM subjects, thereby increasing the pipeline.

I am also delighted to be speaking in this debate with former political colleagues: my noble friends Lady Jones of Whitchurch and Lady Gale, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, and many other remarkable women across this House. My noble friend Lady Donaghy and I are long-standing advisory board members of the University of Birmingham Business School, where we encourage research and teaching in women’s enterprise. I have declared this in the register of Members’ interests, as well as my shareholdings in BP and Anglo American.

At the Royal Academy of Engineering, I was the founding director of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. I collaborated with the noble Baronesses, Lady Sugg and Lady Bertin, to ensure that all three party leaders—the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, Sir Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband—spoke at its launch. This year, we celebrated our second female joint winner, Fei-Fei Li, for the development of modern machine learning. Academy colleagues and I promoted participation in STEM by young people, especially girls, speaking in schools and working with the Science Museum. I look forward to learning from the many experts in this House.

I thank our Chief Whip, my noble friend Lord Kennedy, a fellow pupil of the Margaret McDonagh school of politics—as nice and firm now as he was then. I also thank my sponsor, the noble Lord, Lord Browne, my inspiring boss at BP, and then again when he was president of the Royal Academy of Engineering. I have been lucky to have him as my friend, mentor and guide—and a lifelong advocate of women in business, science and engineering. My other sponsor I have left to last. I thank my noble friend Lady Nye for being an utterly reliable friend and a constant political ally. I owe them both a lot. I look forward to building alliances with all noble Lords.

13:49

[Baroness Gale (Lab)]

My Lords and my Ladies, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lady Hunter and to congratulate her on her excellent maiden speech. I think all of us who know her would expect nothing less than such a great speech, and I thank her. I got to know my noble friend during my time as general secretary of the Welsh Labour Party. By then, she was working for the leader of the Labour Party, Tony Blair. After the general election in 1997, she became director of government relations and has been described as

“the most influential non-elected person in Downing Street”.

I can believe that.

My experience of working with my noble friend was a very good one, and I believe that I can speak for other members of the Labour Party staff in saying that we all felt the same about her—there are some in the Chamber today who worked for the Labour Party when my noble friend was in No. 10. I can think of a number of occasions when, if I had a political problem, I could ring her up and discuss it with her. I know my noble friend will recall that, occasionally, there could be some difficulties in Wales. I knew I would always have good advice from her.

Whenever the Prime Minister visited Wales, we would have many conversations on the visits—all positive, I may add—and the visits were always successful. So one thing I can say about my noble friend is that she was always approachable and cheerful, she would always have time for a chat and she was always reliable, and that made for some very good relationships. I always regarded her as a friend in No. 10, and I certainly look forward to working with her again in a new role in your Lordships’ House, to which I know she will make a great contribution.

Today’s debate focuses on how to promote women’s participation and leadership in science and technology. The International Day of Women and Girls in Science was held on 11 February this year. To mark the day, the general secretary of UNESCO said:

“On this International Day of Women and Girls in Science, let’s reiterate this fundamental message: women need science, and science needs women. Only by tapping into all sources of knowledge, all sources of talent, can we unlock the full potential of science, and rise to the challenges of our time”.


I so much agree with that view.

But if we look around, we see the same problems that women encounter if they want to succeed in many walks of life. I see it in politics and public life, where women can be held back not because they are not good enough but because the barriers placed before them are very high. I know how difficult it is and what the barriers are—I think most of us here know. There are many: they talk about the glass ceiling, the brick wall, discrimination and the leaky pipeline, which is a new one to me and which has come about for women in STEM. There is also misogyny, which is a very difficult problem, especially these days. It seems to me that there is very little difference in what women in any area of public or professional life experience, and the barriers to overcome. There has been some progress, but it is very slow.

According to data from the World Economic Forum, it will take until 2158 at the current rate of progress to reach full gender parity, as my noble friend mentioned in her opening remarks at the Dispatch Box. That is an awful long time to wait, is it not? So what action can be taken to increase the rate of progress? Where positive action has been taken, there have been some great results, for example in politics. Following the general election of 2024, 263 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons are held by female MPs. This is the highest number of women ever to sit at the same time in the House of Commons.

Now this did not happen by accident. Over the years, much campaigning has been done to highlight the need for positive action. Positive action in any field can cause big discussions, disputes and arguments. I am so aware of this in politics, especially when all-women shortlists were introduced to address the underrepresentation of women in politics. Labour was the first to use all-women shortlists in 1997, and that did increase the number of women MPs. Later, other parties used positive measures to ensure that there was a good number of women candidates. So, gradually, the numbers have increased and there are now 263 women MPs, the largest number ever. By 2024, all-women shortlists were not used by the Labour Party, as this policy had been so successful that there was not any need for it. This is one example of where action was taken and worked.

Another piece of good news that I saw in the newspapers today is that there are now, for the first time, more women doctors than men. This is women in medicine. So I feel there are some hopes for women in science and technology. I was very pleased to learn that the Government have set out policies on how to encourage women to study STEM subjects. My noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern, the Minister for Skills and now the Minister for Women and Equalities, on which I congratulate her, said that the Government continue to support the take-up of STEM subjects in girls and women in higher education. She said that such skills

“are crucial for the delivery of the government’s missions. This is why the department is building a coherent, flexible, high quality skills system to break down barriers to opportunity and drive economic growth, underpinned by a new Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy”.

I believe that that strategy may be published soon. This positive approach by government is to be welcomed and I await the outcome, which should benefit all women and girls who want to progress into a career in STEM subjects. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

13:57

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak today. There are two debates I always enjoy. One is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s debate. Well, there are no bishops here today, so we cannot go any further with that. But there has been a lot of progress on female bishops since my time first in the House.

The other debate I always enjoy is this particular one and I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness: it is indeed true that there is a dramatic number of female MPs and Peers now. When I joined, I do not need to remind noble Lords that one MP in 25 was female. It was quite a tricky time. I commend the party opposite. I do not think it has been so successful on female Prime Ministers. We have had three. I will not comment on all of them—but I will comment on the first one.

What noble Lords need to know is that Margaret Thatcher used to say, “People turn round to me and say, ‘You’re the first woman Prime Minister at No. 10’. I turn round and say, ‘I’m the first science Prime Minister at No. 10’”. Of course, she was deeply influenced by Dame Janet Vaughan and Dorothy Hodgkin, most distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society, who, for a long time, were principals of Somerville College. A colleague just now challenged me and said that Lord Salisbury was a STEM man. He took maths, but I am not sure he should really be allowed to undermine Margaret Thatcher’s claim.

While we have more women in the House, we still do not have anything like enough people who come from a science, engineering and medical background. I think it was 78 in the House of Commons at the last count, which is an improvement. The House of Lords has always been better for distinguished scientists and Fellows of the Royal Society. How thrilled we are to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, and how thrilled we are that his successor is the first female Chief Scientific Officer. In the Lords, we have the noble Baroness, Lady King, a fellow of the Royal Society, and many men. I pay tribute to my kinsman, and the kinsman of the noble Lord, Lord Hacking: Lord Julian Hunt, Fellow of the Royal Society, who is no longer with us but is a most distinguished scientist.

I am not entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, about rage and anger. I enjoy rage and anger, but I am quite celebratory today, because we have a great number of Cabinet Ministers who are women. I pay tribute to the Minister who is speaking and ask her to pass on best wishes to the delightful previous holder of her office. It is the bittersweet nature of political careers, but Anneliese Dodds is a lovely woman and was doing a very good job—and I am sure will do more.

I have been looking through the names of other extraordinary women scientists. There is Dame Ottoline Leyser, the first female head of UKRI, again a Fellow of the Royal Society and a plant scientist. We have Hayaatun Sillem, the CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering, from Oxford and UCL and a biochemist. Then there is Irene Tracey, the first female scientist vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, who is a neuroscientist and formerly head of Merton College. There is Dame Angela McLean, who has just taken over as Government Chief Scientific Adviser, and Dame June Raine, the first woman to run the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency—absolutely tremendous—and so many others. The Campaign for Science and Engineering, which does so much for us, now has a female chief executive.

I pay tribute to those women, but I share the desire that more needs to be done. I pay respect to those who have suffered so much and worked so hard in the past. We should read the biography of the first woman physician, in 1847, Dr Blackwell, and the persecution, poverty and prejudice that she faced.

In my professional life, I do a great deal to help women develop their careers in different sectors. The other day, I was in India, and I was reminded of a particularly remarkable woman who studied engineering then insisted on going to work at Tata, where they had a men-only policy. At Tata then there were no female lavatories, so she had to go home to go to the lavatory. That very remarkable woman is called Sudha Murty: she is the mother-in-law of the former Prime Minister. It is an extraordinary reminder of how recently people have led lives of sacrifice, discipline and determination.

I am sure that we need to do more to encourage STEM at an early stage. There are so many initiatives, with Teach Now bringing in science people, and with many of the policies that the Minister outlined following on, frankly, from the policies of the previous Government on how we can build that pipeline and avoid the leaky pipeline.

I want to pay tribute, finally, to the many maiden speeches. They are noble Baronesses, but a great number of them are my friends and I am absolutely delighted to see them there.

The Minister knows about the health service and education. The role of research in the National Health Service is critically important, and it is all too easily squeezed out. Dame Sally Davies, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who should be in this House, recently hosted a magnificent conference on life sciences and health innovation and what we can do together by collaborating. I commend her findings to noble Lords for further study.

14:03

[Baroness Casey of Blackstock (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, newly appointed Minister for Women and my former and very esteemed boss, for opening this debate on International Women’s Day. I also thank, in anticipation, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, who is also a good friend. Both my noble friends have a lifelong commitment to tackling men’s violence against women, for which they should be respected and thanked by the whole House.

I thoroughly enjoyed the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lady Alexander of Cleveden and Lady Hunter of—wait for it—Auchenreoch. I did it. Okay, good. I would just comment that I am very glad that I did my maiden speech a year ago, so I did not have to follow them, because I feel that the quality just went up quite significantly. I wish well the three maiden speeches to come, from the noble Baronesses, Lady Bousted and Lady Rafferty, and from a new member of the Labour sisterhood, I understand, the noble Lord, Lord Jones.

Each year in the other place, my dear friend and colleague the honourable Member for Birmingham Yardley names the women killed in the last 12 months where the principal suspect is a man. With your kind support and agreement, this year we in this House will also honour those women and their families.

I take this opportunity to read the names, collated by the Femicide Census, of the women and girls aged 14 and above, mentioned earlier by my dear friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, and the four children included in that list this year, who have allegedly been killed by men in the past 12 months: Zhe Wang; Pauline Sweeney; Carol Matthews; Ursula Uhlemann; Tiffany Render; Francis Dwyer; Ruth Baker; Kennedi Westcarr-Sabaroche; Samantha Mickleburgh; Rachel McDaid; Dora Leese; Lisa Welford; Karen O’Leary; Sonia Parker; Tarnjeet Riaz; Anita Mukhey; Bhajan Kaur; Kathryn Parton; Emma Finch; Margaret Parker; Amie Gray; Maria Nugara; Patsy Aust; Veronica Chinyanga; Delia Haxworth; Joanne Ward; Lauren Evans; Maxine Clark; Scarlett Vickers; Sophie Evans; Joanne Samak; Carol Hunt; Louise Hunt; Hannah Hunt; Jenny Sharp; Alana Odysseos; Laura Robson; Kulsuma Akter; Rebecca Simkin; Olivia Wood; Courtney Mitchell; Nina Denisova; Alberta Obinim; Stephanie Marie; Sophie Watson; Vicki Thomas; Eve McIntyre; Montserrat Martorell; Cher Maximen; Brodie MacGregor; Zanele Sibanda; Bryonie Gawith, plus her two children, Oscar Birtle, aged five years, and Aubree Birtle, aged 22 months; Davinia Graham; Barbara Nomakhosi; Christine Everett-Hickson; Juliana Prosper, plus her two children, Giselle, aged 13, and Kyle, aged 16; Rachel Simpson; an unnamed woman who died on 29 September aged 70; Mary Ward; Christine Jefferies; another unnamed woman who died on 8 October, also in her 70s; Luka Bennett-Smith; Anita Rose; Mashal Ilyas; Rhiannon Slye Whyte; Catherine Flynn; Sandie Butler; Rita Fleming; Cheryl McKenna; Carol James; Phoenix Spencer-Horn; Harshita Brella; Alana Armstrong; Margaret Cunningham; Kristine Sparane; Margaret Hanson; Karen Cummings; Astra Sirapina; Mariann Borocz; Gemma Devonish; Joanne Pearson; Teohna Grant; Heather Newton; June Henty; Leila Young; Julie Buckley; Jamelatu Tsiwah; Dianne Cleary; Claire Chick; Margaret Worby; Carmen Coulson; Rita Lambourne; Meghan Hughes; Lisa Smith; Ana Maria Murariu.

Once again, as I did this time last year, I beg the leave of the House to also remember, for personal reasons, Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry, both murdered in 2020, and, as mentioned earlier, Sarah Everard, murdered in March 2021. May they, the 95 women and four children mentioned here today, rest in peace.

14:10

[Baroness Bousted (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, on her sombre testimony of the tragic roll-call of women murdered by men. It makes me realise, yet again, that we should never forget that misogyny is an evil force with—far too often—lethal consequences for women and, as she has reminded us, children. I thank her for her testimony.

I feel greatly honoured to be in this House making my maiden speech—and on the subject of women. I was born in Bolton, the seventh of eight children in a large and loving Catholic family. My father was the headmaster of the local Catholic primary school and he had a saying: “You won’t inherit money, but you will get a good education, which will give you the means to make your way in the world”. All his eight children made their way in the world. My mother, as well as looking after her eight children, was a teacher, so perhaps it is no surprise that I became a teacher and that my professional life for the past 40 years—over 40 years now—has been in education as a teacher, an academic and, for the last 20 years, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, and the joint general secretary, with Kevin Courtney, of the National Education Union.

Unions fight for rights and dignity in the workplace, and I pay tribute to the doorkeepers and all the staff who work so diligently to support the smooth running of this place. I have a terrible sense of direction and I am finding that this House is rather a rabbit warren, but all my requests for guidance and direction have been met with nothing other than courtesy and kindness. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, my supporters in my introduction to this House, and the Leader of the House and the Whips, who have been so helpful in making us new Peers feel a little less strange and a little more competent—only a little more—day by day.

When I was 23, I read a book by Eva Figes with the title Patriarchal Attitudes. It changed my life. From that time on, I was determined to be self-reliant, to speak what I believed and thought, and to walk more confidently in the world. I stopped saying, “I’m not a feminist, but”, and started saying, “As a feminist”. That is a profound change.

There has been some implied—and some more than implied—criticism of teachers today. It is a bit too easy to criticise teachers, who work more unpaid overtime than any other profession to care for their pupils and educate them. As a teacher, I worked to inculcate in my pupils a profound sense that the sexes are equal and that no one, and in particular no girl, should have her potential constrained through attitudes, beliefs and actions designed to humiliate them.

I feel that the progress we made in the 1980s has been reversed. Perhaps we thought we had won the battle for equality. We were sadly mistaken. In 2017, the National Education Union published a report with UK Feminista, entitled “It’s Just Everywhere”. It detailed the sexist attitudes and behaviours endured by girls in school. It found that sexual harassment, sexist language and gender stereotyping are commonplace in school settings, but teachers reported feeling unsupported and ill equipped to respond. Over a third of female students reported that they had experienced some form of sexual harassment, and almost a quarter had been subject to unwanted physical touching of a sexual nature.

I believe that the sexual harassment endured by girls translates too often into subject choices at GCSE and A-level, which can have a negative effect on their future careers and earning potential. We should note that the take-up of subjects that are portals to high-wage careers in IT and science remains too deeply divided on gender lines. In 2022 only 21.4% of computer science GCSEs and 14.7% of computer science A-levels were taken by girls, a number that has halved since 2015.

In 2024 a report by King’s College, funded by the Nuffield Foundation and titled The Future of Computing Education, found that girls are more likely than boys to say they do not enjoy computer science GCSE because it does not align with their career plans, or it seems more difficult than other subjects. The report calls for the reform of GCSE provision for computing to create a qualification that covers a wider range of topics, appealing to a more diverse student population and the needs of society.

This Government will shortly be announcing the results of their curriculum review, led by Professor Becky Francis. I hope that this review will consider the current gender imbalances in computing and other science subjects that are so heavily male dominated.

I will finish with a cautionary tale. In 2016 I spoke out about the sexist school bullying that prevents girls participating fully in the classroom. The Department for Education, on hearing of my concerns, issued a tweet. I will read it now:

“Story from @ATLUnion with no evidence is why sexism still exists. We should be celebrating the achievements and talents of women and girls”.


I and many others found the implication in this tweet, that speaking out about the sexist harassment endured by girls perpetuates the problem, to be utterly bizarre.

Of course we should celebrate the achievements of women and girls, but I am clear that we must also examine the barriers faced by girls—including the prevalence of sexist bullying in the classroom—to their participation in the full range of the curriculum. Like all young people, girls deserve the right to make choices about the subjects they study based on their talents and abilities, whatever these may be and wherever these may take them in their future lives.

I will continue to further the equality of women and girls in education and in the workplace during my time in this House. The struggle for equality is not over: we are just on the nursery slopes, and we must take up the cudgels and continue the fight.

14:17

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow that wonderful maiden speech by my noble friend Lady Bousted. We have all been given a taste of her fierce intellect and education policy expertise, which will no doubt enrich this House.

As we have heard, my noble friend comes from a big family. In fact, if she had wanted to, she had enough siblings to form her own netball team and have a sub on the bench. I suspect that is one reason why she grew up to become a warrior for women and girls’ equality, and for dignity for all working people. My noble friend championed the TUC’s Unionlearn initiative, along with being an outstanding co-leader of the National Education Union. When she was TUC president, she also took responsibility for chairing the TUC General Council. As noble Lords can imagine, keeping order in a room full of union leaders, each with our own strongly held views, is no easy task—but it is perhaps excellent training for chairing a House of Lords committee in the future.

International Women’s Day originates in the struggles of working-class women and their unions. In my personal experience, not only is my noble friend Lady Bousted on the side of women but she will speak up and get stuck in, and she does so with intelligence, wit and real sisterly kindness.

Today’s trade union movement has incredible talent and expertise within its ranks: educators, engineers, coders, climate scientists and a growing number of members in new technologies and the gaming industry. Meanwhile, we have seen an extraordinary shift in the organisation of capital, with technology companies dominating the league table of the wealthiest corporations in the world. As well as wealth, big tech has enormous power to shape not only our material lives but our emotions, behaviour and politics. When Elon Musk provides a megaphone for alleged rapist and people trafficker Andrew Tate and known far-right agitator Stephen Lennon—aka Tommy Robinson—we all have an interest in how this industry is run and regulated. Let us be clear: in this country we absolutely support freedom of speech, but we draw the line at hate and incitement to violence.

I have always believed that technology has the potential to be a liberating force that can transform society. Think about the difference it would make if the estimated multibillion-dollar productivity gains were shared fairly in the form of decent universal childcare, shorter working hours or higher pensions. Imagine if the priority for developing work-based technologies was eliminating boring and dangerous tasks, and making every job safe, skilled and satisfying.

Women’s equality is not just right in principle; it matters because it is about who gets to decide on tech design, rules and priorities, and in turn how that impacts on all our daily lives. For example, one reason why we have seen race and sex discrimination baked into facial recognition technology is the very unrepresentative group who designed it. The tech bros would benefit from having more tech sisters.

Too often, technologies are designed to make working lives harder: tracking and monitoring staff oppressively, hiring and firing without a human review, and casualising employment contracts. Women, and black and ethnic-minority workers, are at the sharp end of these high-exploitation technologies in anti-union companies such as Amazon. We do not just need to change faces in the industry; we need to change systems of power.

According to a recent survey of its members working in tech, the professional trade union Prospect found that over 60% agreed that their employer’s pay system is opaque and likely unfair. Is the Minister confident that Labour’s Employment Rights Bill will tackle pay secrecy once and for all, so that women tech workers—in fact, all women workers—can win equal pay for work of equal value? When purchasing technology services, will the Government use their procurement power to lever up equality standards so that more tech apprenticeships go to young women, and so that rights to fair treatment and a union voice at work are enforced?

14:23

[Baroness Morrissey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank this House for its tradition of having an International Women’s Day debate. This year it feels especially important to keep the spotlight on the contributions so many women make if we are to continue to make progress towards gender equality around the world. I agree that it is vital that women and girls are given every opportunity to study sciences and technology if that is what they dream of, as my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott expressed so eloquently. It is clear that there are very many women who do, as we can see from today’s news that there are now more female than male doctors for the first time ever in this country.

As colleagues—noble Baronesses—have already shared, there are many examples of the amazing contributions that women have made and, I am confident, will continue to make in the fields of technology, science and medicine. As has already been pointed out, we need more women at the technology table, which may well be a virtual one these days, to help avoid bias and bring women’s perspectives to the fore as the digital revolution gathers pace.

I want to add a further point to today’s discussion: while we must continue to enable and encourage girls to study STEM subjects, we must also encourage those very many girls who want to study the humanities to pursue their interests. For a start, real progress for women and girls is surely about having more choice, and not about being channelled down a certain path. I also believe that the role of humanities is more important than ever in an AI world. As AI continues to develop rapidly and take on many of the tasks currently done by human beings, including many of those done by people now working in technology, we will need good judgment, strong ethics and high emotional intelligence to ensure that AI is a positive force. We will need the perspective that comes from studying mistakes made in history, the sensitivity found in the finest literature, the empathy gained through understanding psychology, a strong ethical compass that might be helped by a study of theology and the creativity that many arts and humanities disciplines foster.

I studied maths, further maths, physics and English at A-level, and then philosophy at university. Of all those, the philosophy has been the most useful in my long City career—yes, even in finance. Maths has of course been helpful, but in helping me manage money successfully or run a business well it has not been as critical as being able to analyse logically, challenge conventional wisdom, apply ethical judgments and have some understanding of the frailties of the human psyche, which are the enemies of successful investing. Those were all things that my philosophy degree taught me. My degree choice has also helped me to lead, largely because it showed me clearly that I do not have, and could not have, all the answers; in fact, when studying philosophy, you quickly learn that you do not really know anything at all. I was acutely aware that, as Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II put it so beautifully, leadership is often about finding ways of encouraging people to combine their talents to work together. I suggest that a history degree and a study of current affairs would also bear that out.

For decades, as has been noted, boys have dominated computer science, physics, and further maths at A-level, while girls have dominated many arts subjects, including psychology, sociology and English literature. The world, our country and many industries need both, and they do not need girls to feel that they need to emulate the boys to succeed. Women bring our own skills to the table. I always tell young women that they are not second-class men; they are first-class women. It would be ironic if, just as the world desperately needs more “soft skills”, as we say, we asked girls to become more like the boys by taking STEM subjects, and so they missed their moment, both to shine and to change the world for the better.

As others have already stressed, we now face a very significant threat. We cannot assume that we will have ongoing progress for women and girls, but we do have agency. Surely, one of our strongest arguments to convince the naysayers is that we bring additional talents and different perspectives to the table which can improve diversity of thought and business performance and help solve today’s complex problems, which perhaps require empathy and emotional intelligence. In short, women should be able to succeed as women.

Huge kudos should go to the brilliant women scientists, technologists and doctors, but let us also encourage STEAM—adding an “A” for the arts to STEM; celebrate the achievements of women in every field; press on for progress with huge determination that no one can take away from us; and look forward with hope. I wish everyone, men and women, a very happy International Women’s Day.

14:29

[Baroness Rafferty (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in academic nursing as professor of nursing policy at King’s College London.

My heartfelt thanks go to my noble friend Lady Smith, the Leader of the House, for her incredible support up to and during my introduction and her generosity throughout. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins of Tavistock, who is also my friend and a fellow nurse and academic, has been exemplary as my second supporter and introduction agency to the House throughout. My noble friend Lady Thornton—Glenys—has been so kind in shepherding me around the House and easing me into its ways.

I come to this House as a nurse and academic. Reading the brilliant biography by the late Baroness Patricia Hollis of Jennie Lee, one of my heroines, I could never have imagined speaking to you today. Like Jennie Lee, I was brought up in Fife, Kirkcaldy in fact, birthplace of Adam Smith and constituency to my other hero, Gordon Brown. Both Jennie Lee’s father and mine worked in the coalfields of Fife. It was a tough life. I remember my dad cycling to Seafield pit in all weathers, coming home for a rest and a bite to eat before going out again to his second job in a local pub. My mother trained as a nurse in the 1930s and during World War II in the Civil Nursing Reserve. She inspired me to enter nursing through her stories of nursing prisoners of war in Bridge of Earn military hospital in Perthshire. I loved delving into her textbooks, devouring the gruesome details of disease. I also became fascinated by the practices of the past, firing my imagination both for nursing and its history.

Nursing is a science as well as an art, and I have been fortunate to work in a variety of roles as a clinician, academic and policy researcher, but I did not get off to a good start. Like my noble friend Lady Levitt, I spent rather too much time outside the headmaster’s office, skipping classes and preferring the pool hall—in which I became very proficient—to homework.

Today’s debate is highly relevant to nursing. Not only was international nursing forged in the crucible of the international women’s movement at the end of the 19th century but the rationale for doing so was, in part, to combat the prejudice surrounding women’s education by setting nursing on a scientific footing.

While nursing in England has become a graduate subject since 2013, its fate remains precarious, a situation made much worse by the increasing financial frailty of the university sector. The Office for Students estimates that over 70% of our universities will be in deficit this year. UCAS data shows that nurse recruitment in the UK has fallen by 4% since its pandemic peak. In Wales, nurse recruitment has fallen by 14%, yet a recent announcement by Cardiff University stated its intention to close the school of nursing. Particularly concerning is the steady downward trend of mature applicants to nursing. These numbers just do not compute in a scenario of chronic shortage of nursing staff. A landmark study that we published from King’s College London in the Lancet in 2014 demonstrated that bachelor’s-prepared nurses have better outcomes for patients in terms of mortality rates. A further study demonstrated that senior nurses contributed more than twice the benefit to patients, compared with their more junior colleagues.

Investing in nurse education and staffing across the career span yields clinical and economic benefits, reduces hospital length of stay and facilitates return to work. I am grateful for the excellent 2016 report —of which the noble Baroness, Baroness Watkins was also an author—from the all-party parliamentary group in global health, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, which identified the triple impact of growing nursing globally. These include strengthening health systems, universal health coverage, gender equality and women’s participation in the workforce, and skilled employment opportunities.

However, the engine room of the academic workforce is not in good shape. Council of Deans of Health estimates that more than 50% of the workforce is, like me, over 50—can you believe it?—with many universities struggling to recruit. In contrast, applications to engineering are booming. Could it help to boost the standing of the profession by designating nursing as a STEM discipline? I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will agree that we cannot deliver the refreshed long-term workforce plan or the 10-year NHS plan to come unless we support nursing education to secure the students, nurse scientists and clinicians of the future. I thank my noble friend the Minister for raising this debate, and I hope that these points might assist with the planning the Government are undertaking.

14:35

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Rafferty on her wonderful maiden speech. She is as qualified to speak about women succeeding in science as I am unqualified. She has done so many pioneering things in nurse education that I must confine myself to but a few of them: the first nurse to graduate with a doctorate from Oxford University—a DPhil in modern history; in 2008, she was seconded to the Department of Health to work with the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, on the Next Stage Review of the NHS; a member of the Prime Minister’s Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery between 2009 and 2010; and a member of the Parliamentary Review of Health and Social Care in Wales, which reported in 2018. She is a past president of the Royal College of Nursing, and in 2017 was nominated as one of the 70 most influential nurses in the 70 years of the NHS. She was a member of the Times Health Commission in 2023-24, and she holds degrees and honorary degrees from a range of universities.

Closer to home for me, my noble friend was dean of the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Palliative Care at King’s College. I was a non-executive director at King’s College Hospital in the 1990s, and I was proud to chair appointment panels for the first consultant-level posts in palliative care, so I hope my noble friend Lady Rafferty does not mind if I bask in her reflected glory. Her analysis of what has happened in nurse education and training has some remarkable parallels with what has happened in teacher education and training—a subject which I know a bit about.

I thank my noble friend—Nurse Rafferty, Professor Rafferty, Dame Anne Marie Rafferty, Baroness Rafferty—for her maiden speech and in anticipation of the distinguished contribution she will make in this House.

On the subject of today’s debate, I wish all participants a happy International Women’s Day for 8 March and thank the five maiden speeches made or to be made.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brown, who has just finished her term of office as a distinguished chair of the Science and Technology Committee, recently called for the Government to review what she called the high upfront burden of current visa fees, which are higher than those in any comparable country. The noble Baroness, herself an engineer, said that the barriers faced by postgraduate students and early career researchers amounted to

“an act of national self-harm”.

Since 2022, the cost of a five-year skilled worker visa has increased by 22% to almost £12,000, and the upfront immigration health surcharge, which they also have to pay for, has risen by 66% to £1,035. Is the Minister able to tell us what steps the Government are taking to attract much-needed scientific talent to this country?

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, talked about a strong pipeline of qualified students into HE and careers in STEM areas, and said that the programme included strategies to raise girls’ participation in mathematics post-16. However, on 29 January, an announcement was made about changes to the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme, meaning that, from 1 April, there will be a reduction in the number and type of events available. Similarly, the Government are cutting the Stimulating Physics Network and computing hubs. MEI, which runs the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme, has been forced to terminate the 40 area co-ordinator contracts. I appreciate that we have taken over an education service with a history of underfunding and neglect, but is the Minister able to give more information about how the Government will mitigate the effects of these cuts?

The UK has the largest female health gap in the G20. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has stated that the upcoming 10-year health plan and the spending review 2025 are a good opportunity for the Government to deliver on their manifesto promise that never again would women’s health be neglected. For every £1 pound additional investment in obs and gynae services, it is estimated that there is an £11 return on investment. Absenteeism due to severe period pain, heavy periods, endometriosis, fibroids and ovarian cysts is estimated to cost £11 billion per year to the UK economy. As the royal college says, supporting women’s health is vital for the UK Government’s targets of economic growth and increasing the UK workforce.

The PwC Women in Work analysis said that, if sustained until 2030, continuing progress on female participation rates could contribute to a productivity uplift of 0.3% per annum, an appropriate UK GDP increase of £6.2 million a year. Can the Minister update the House on the steps the Government are taking to increase women’s participation in the workforce?

Finally, it has been an absolute privilege to take part in this debate, not just to celebrate International Women’s Day but to hear our five maiden speeches.

14:42

[Baroness Greenfield (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for drawing attention to this timely issue. I declare an interest as founder and CEO of a biotech company, Neuro-Bio Ltd, having previously been a professor of pharmacology at Oxford University. Back in 2002, I was asked by the right honourable Patricia Hewitt to prepare for the then Department of Trade and Industry a high-level report, subsequently entitled SET Fair, outlining the difficulties of recruitment and retention of women in science. Sadly, over 20 years later, I feel that many of the difficulties that we discussed then still remain.

The question of women in science and technology is not just about fairness; it is about progress. Studies consistently show that diverse teams drive innovation. Research from McKinsey finds that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 25% more likely to outperform their competitors. In science and technology, diversity translates into better problem-solving, faster discoveries, and products that serve society more effectively. From Rosalind Franklin’s work on DNA to Sarah Gilbert’s leadership in developing the Covid vaccine, history proves that, when women thrive in STEM, humanity benefits.

However, systemic challenges remain. In UK higher education, only 31% of professors are women. In the UK’s STEM workforce overall, only 29% of employers are women, and in the private sector, the number of female founders in biotech companies remains disproportionately low, hovering at around 10%. Even more disappointing, women founders such as me receive only 2% of venture capital investment, funding that is critical in commercialising one’s innovation.

One of the greatest barriers to women in STEM is bias, both conscious and unconscious. In 2012, in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, faculty members rated male applicants as more competent and hireable than corresponding female candidates. More recently, a 2023 report found that women in STEM are less likely to be promoted than their male peers. This is not an issue of merit; it is one of perception. Blind recruitment processes and structured promotion criteria should surely become the standard. Institutions that have implemented these measures report fairer hiring outcomes and more diverse leadership.

A second challenge is a career break due to parenting responsibilities. The years when scientists must publish their most ground-breaking work coincide with the time when many are starting families. The current system offers a discouraging range of options for women: delay parenthood, risk career stagnation or leave research altogether. Here we could take a lesson from forward-thinking companies in the private sector offering “on-ramping” fellowships for women returning to research after career breaks. Government funding bodies could introduce similar schemes in academia—for example, grants specifically designed to support those re-entering the field after maternity leave.

Such initiatives would ensure that women can get back to progressing their research without the undue and unfair hurdles that arise from contributing to the next generation. Meanwhile, in industry, tax incentives could encourage companies to offer more flexible career paths for women in STEM.

Then there is the lack of visibility and networking opportunities. Women, particularly in male-dominated fields such as biotech, often lack the mentorship and sponsorship that help to propel careers forward. Every major research institution should have a formal sponsorship programme where senior figures actively champion the careers of promising women scientists. We could introduce a “national women in STEM talent bank”—a centralised platform where women in science and technology can access mentorship, funding opportunities and leadership training, in the spirit of the Athena SWAN charter, but much wider and encompassing the private sector.

The root of all these challenges is early engagement. If young girls do not see themselves in STEM, they may never consider it as a viable path. Research shows that gender stereotypes about science start forming as early as primary school. Schools could partner with female scientists and engineers to provide visible role models. Critically, we must change the narrative by making the aforementioned solutions as prominent as we can. Rather than framing STEM as an uphill battle for women, we must present it as a field where women are thriving and driving the future.

International Women’s Day should be not just a moment of reflection but a call to action. We know what works: transparent hiring, structured return-to-work programmes, active sponsorship and early engagement. It is time to implement these solutions at scale. The talent is there. The ambition is there. It is now up to us—policymakers, industry leaders, educators and female scientists—to break down the barriers that remain. By doing so, we will not only achieve equality but unlock the full potential of science and technology to change the world for the better, and ensure that the UK continues in its role at the forefront of driving the technologies of tomorrow.

14:47

[Lord Jones of Penybont (Lab) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, as I rise to make my maiden speech, it is my misfortune to follow four excellent maiden speeches. I just hope that I can maintain the high standard that has been established.

Before moving to the subject matter of this debate, I thank all those who have made my first month here so easy to navigate. I thank the doorkeepers, who have been patient in guiding me around the building and through the numerous corridors that can bewilder the new Member. I thank the parliamentary staff, who have supported me through my induction, and my party colleagues and the Front-Bench team, who have been so willing to explain the rules and regulations of this noble House. I have been particularly struck by the kindness of so many who work here and the welcome that has been extended to me. At my introduction on 27 January, I was supported by my noble friends Lord Murphy and Lady Wilcox of Newport, people I have known and respected for many years. It was an honour to have them by my side.

I am grateful for the support I have received from my family. Most of them were here at my introduction, but my father was unable to attend because of illness. I know he would have been delighted to be here, as would my mother, had we not lost her some 15 years ago. I thank my children, Seren and Ruairí, who have had to put up with their father being away so much during their childhood. Now that they have grown into adults, they have been hugely supportive of everything that I have done.

Of course, I thank my wife, Lisa. During 30 years of marriage, she has been a great source of support to me, even when I was away so much when the children were younger. She has enabled me to develop a political career, and I do not think I would have done that had it not been for her steadfast love and support.

I count myself as a member of a fortunate generation compared to those who went before. My family before me consisted mainly of four generations of Welsh-speaking mining families, a legacy of which I am proud. It was the miners’ strike that brought me into politics, and I think of my family today as I stand here, having enjoyed many opportunities that were simply not available to them.

I still live in the town of Bridgend—or Penybont in Welsh, hence my title—where I was brought up. When I was 18, I went to study law at Aberystwyth University, where I am now a professor of law: a development that would have stunned my student self and those who taught me at the time.

I practised at the Bar in Swansea for 10 years. Then, in 1999, I had the honour to be elected to represent my home area in what was then called the National Assembly for Wales. In 2000, I began a term of 18 consecutive years in government in various ministerial roles, as well as serving as First Minister for nine years.

It was a privilege to be part of the 2011 referendum campaign, when the people of Wales voted overwhelmingly in favour of primary powers for their Assembly—powers we used to create legislation that I would argue is ground-breaking. Your Lordships will be relieved to know that I will not list all the Acts passed during my time as First Minister, but I will draw your attention to one: the Human Transplantation (Wales) Act, which changed the law on deemed consent, introducing a soft opt-out scheme. That has led to more organs being available not just in Wales but across the UK for transplant patients. There are literally people walking around alive today because of that legislation. It is the one piece of legislation of which I am particularly proud.

I am, as far as I am aware, the first Head of Government in the UK to have come from a comprehensive school. That is a matter of pride for me, but it must also be one of concern, because we know that the schools attended by the vast majority of pupils have not contributed as they should have to government in the UK.

Turning to the subject matter of the debate, I mentioned earlier the opportunities I had that were not available to my grandparents. This afternoon, I think of my grandmother, who died 12 years ago at the age of 98. This is a cautionary tale for those who claim that grammar schools are the pathways to opportunity by themselves. She lived at a time when opportunity for women and girls was strictly limited. She passed what was then called the scholarship, in 1925, and went to a grammar school. But the reality was that, as the daughter of a haulier in a pit, she had no option other than to leave school and get married. She lived a long and happy life, but I cannot help but think what she might have done, had she had the opportunities I was afforded. Which STEM subjects might she have studied?

It is my grandmother’s example that drives me to ensure that as much opportunity as possible is afforded to as many people as possible. Her story is one of many, and I aware that, while some progress has been made in encouraging women to take up STEM subjects, there is still work to do. Progress has been made in the natural sciences, but there is a glaring gap between men and women in maths, engineering and computer science. The difference is stark: according to the Office for National statistics, five times more men than women are employed in IT. That gap increases to a ratio of 10:1 in engineering.

I know there are schemes to encourage more young women to study these subjects. I draw your Lordships’ attention to the work of the Engineering Education Scheme Wales, originally set up to encourage young people between the ages of 16 and 18 to take up engineering-related subjects. It pairs young people with businesses that work with them on projects, giving them a taste of engineering as a career. Its work is also focused on encouraging more young women to study engineering, in order to bridge that huge imbalance in the sector.

It is clear there is more to be done. More needs to be done to remove those barriers to women entering and staying in STEM-related employment and I welcome my noble friend the Minister’s words in this debate. She outlined the steps the Government are taking to address this issue, but it still seems to me that there is a cultural bias in our society that sees engineering and IT as male jobs. The steps the Government have outlined will help to overcome this problem.

In conclusion, progress has been made, but any country that wishes to maximise its talent pool must provide help to overcome barriers that hinder that objective. If I could use an idiom from the Welsh language, which I will translate into English so as not to cause panic among those recording my words today, the situation is “da, ond nid da lle gellir gwell”, which translates into English as “good, but not so good that it cannot be improved on”, especially compared with the recent past. We have heard stories within this debate about the disadvantages and barriers that so many women experienced in past decades. We must overcome those barriers. That is the challenge for the UK and it is one that all of us in society must play a role in meeting.

14:55

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

Diolch i chi am yr araith ragorol honno—an excellent speech and a sign of things to come. Congratulations to all my noble friends. What a wonderful bunch we have now. I am so glad to be part of this group. And I am delighted to be able to add my own observations on the immense dedication of the noble Lord, Lord Jones, to public life in Wales—and he is now able to make contributions to the whole of the UK from a seat in your Lordships’ House.

Carwyn and I first met by chance when we sat next to each other in the audience of “Question Time”, which was being filmed in Cardiff in October 1998. He was a councillor in Bridgend at the time and we discussed politics as we waited for the programme to begin. Little did I think that, almost 20 years later, we would be sharing challenging discussions over the future of Welsh councils when I was the WLGA leader and he was First Minister. However, we always resolved those matters through such talks because of the openness and transparency local government found when dealing with the Welsh Government. This was in direct contrast to what my LGA colleagues in England were experiencing.

We also had similar starts in life. We both became politically active during the miners’ strike of 1984-85. In Carwyn’s autobiography, he says:

“What drove me into politics was the determination that whole communities of workers up and down the UK should never be treated that way again”.


He has put that sentiment into practice time and time again through his dedicated leadership of Wales in all of his roles, culminating in almost a decade as our First Minister.

I was sitting behind Lady Jones, or Lisa as I know her, and the children, Seren and Ruairi, when out of the blue Carwyn announced at the Welsh Labour Party conference of 2018 that he was stepping down as FM. There was an audible intake of breath from the delegates as it had been an exceptionally well-kept secret—not an easy thing to do in Wales. I could not commend more highly the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Penybont, into this House. He will make a valuable contribution in the years ahead. I am proud to call him a colleague and my friend. Croeso mawr, Carwyn.

In thinking about my contribution to this important International Women’s Day debate, as a lifelong educationalist, a former teacher and a member of the NEU, I believe strongly in the importance of women’s participation in science and technology—the STEM subjects—but I am absolutely passionate about this Government’s mission to extend STEM into STEAM with once again the inclusion of arts into the curriculum and a much greater focus than the absence of creative and artistic learning that our children and young people have had in the state sector in England. I know that this Labour Government’s mission is high standards for all and to break down barriers to opportunity, committing to ensure that art, music and drama are returned to their rightful place within the curriculum. In Wales, we have had the opportunity with a devolved education system not to be driven into the narrow focus of the English EBacc and Progress 8, which have effectively restricted creative arts subjects for the majority of young people.

In Wales, our new curriculum was published in May 2019. Expressive arts became one of the six areas of learning and included dance, drama, film and digital media, music and visual arts, linked by a common creative process and transferable skills. By contrast, in England, GCSE and A-level entries for arts courses have plummeted in the state school sector since the EBacc was introduced in 2011, yet they remain buoyant in the private sector as public schools can devise a curriculum that suits their individual school without fear of the performance tables measures and Ofsted inspections that are based on them.

It is therefore to be greatly welcomed that the Government’s current curriculum and assessment review will seek to deliver this broader curriculum. I urge my noble friend to look at how we have done this in Wales. The Budget put a welcome £2.3 billion uplift into school budgets next year, delivering on this Government’s commitment to put education back at the forefront of national life.

I turn to the focus of the debate: women’s participation and leadership. I had no idea that my noble friend Lady Rafferty was going to talk about Jennie Lee, but I am going to talk about her too. Last Tuesday, 25 February, marked 60 years since Jennie Lee, Britain’s first ever Minister for the Arts, published A Policy for the Arts—First Steps, a remarkable achievement of participation and leadership in our political life that, despite the setbacks, has endured to this day. She insisted that the arts should be central to everyday life and publicly supported that for the benefit of all. In her words:

“In any civilised community the arts … must occupy a central place. Their enjoyment should not be regarded as something remote from everyday life”.


Last week the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, delivered the inaugural Jennie Lee Lecture. In it, she said that Lee’s White Paper stated unequivocally the Wilson Government’s belief in the power of the arts to transform society and to transform lives. She also announced over £270 million of investment that will begin to fix the foundations of our arts venues, museums, libraries and heritage sector in communities across the country—the green shoots of recovery. However welcome this investment is, though, it is evident that women are still underrepresented and undervalued in the creative industry workforce. It is up to all of us, women and men alike, to challenge the status quo and push for change.

That is so reminiscent of the struggles that we faced in the political world when looking for equality of opportunity at elected level. It would be remiss of me not to take this moment to mark the incredible achievements of my noble friend Lady Gale, of Blaenrhondda, who faced enormous barriers when establishing the concept of all-women shortlists and a balanced cohort to the first Welsh Assembly. It was her strength and tenacity that pushed these changes through and made political representation in Wales change from inequality to equality. That has remained steadfast for the past 25 years.

Let us learn from this great example and, within the creative industries, demonstrate the need to amplify the voices and talents of women and recognise the incredible contributions they make. With a diversity of roles, we can create a brighter and more vibrant future for that industry—one that truly values and represents the incredible range of talent, experience and perspective that women bring to the table.

Creativity is all around us, both within ourselves and others. It influences and shapes our lives from beginning to end. The promotion of women within all spheres—scientific, technological, creative and political—makes for a better world when we see ourselves around the table. As someone once told me, if they do not give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.

15:03

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, my Ladies—or can I just say “Colleagues”?—I am very pleased to take part in this debate. It is a pleasure to follow my noble friend and, of course, all five maiden speakers, whom I have listened to with great interest. It has been an extremely interesting debate. I do not think I have ever taken part in a debate with five maiden speakers before and I think, from what we have heard, that they will enrich the House for years to come.

It is also a pleasure to take part not because I have not spoken in this equivalent debate in past years—I have done so in every year that I could—but because the official title of today’s debate is exactly the subject I have sought to raise ever since I have spoken, which is the role of women in science, and I gladly now do so again.

I start with a simple question: who was the first British person in space? I have been asking this question of people I meet in casual conversation in the run-up to this debate for a reason, and the answer I get is “Tim Peake”. People may remember Tim Peake floating through the International Space Station a decade ago, being chased by somebody dressed up as a gorilla. That is all fine and there is nothing wrong with it, except that it is wrong. The first British person in space was Helen Sharman, who on 18 May 1991, then aged 27, became the first British astronaut to travel into space as part of Project Juno. She was chosen from 13,000 applicants.

I start with this example because still, in 2025, women’s scientific achievements are too often not sufficiently recognised. Women have been overlooked, underrepresented or even erased from history. Take, for example, Ada Lovelace: for years she was ignored and unknown. Her work with Charles Babbage’s analytical engine in the 19th century had been forgotten, yet it was she who realised that the potential of the device extended far beyond mere number-crunching and hence is now considered by many as the world’s first computer programmer. The programming language Ada is named after her and her image is on our passports.

I am grateful to all the scientific societies that have sent me briefings for today’s debate. I cannot deal with all the information I have but would like to mention that the Institute of Physics, the Society of Chemical Industry, the Council for the Mathematical Sciences, the Physiological Society, the Society for Radiological Protection and even the Mines Advisory Group have provided me with some very helpful briefing. I also thank the House of Lords Library for its very helpful brief, which means that I, for one, do not have to belabour the House with the pertinent statistics that your Lordships will find the Library has provided.

I should declare an interest as the president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. It is Parliament’s oldest all-party group, founded in 1939 to utilise the experience of boffins—a term of endearment in those days—for the war effort. The first report that it issued was on the nutritional value of brown bread. I mention this because the Nutrition Society has written to me to say that shortly after that a group of people—all men—got together and founded that society, but its position has now been transformed. I am told that 75% of its members are now women and it has identified seven significant women in the field of worldwide importance, so there has been some progress. The Society for Radiological Protection wrote to me to say that having a visible female leader supported by women in key leadership roles has been

“instrumental in encouraging more women to be active”

and its own council is now 50:50, so that is also some progress.

Having more women involved in mathematics in the UK brings a wide range of benefits, including different perspectives in problem-solving, increased innovation in research and tackling potential biases in algorithms, which is particularly important in the field of AI. However, the Council for the Mathematical Sciences says that there is chronic underrepresentation of women at every level of mathematics education. Women account for under 40% of A-level students, 37% of graduates, 21% of PhDs, and only 12% of professors. This is a familiar pattern across the sciences. As a matter of fact, the Science and Technology Committee, of which I am a member, had a special session on maths on Tuesday this week.

Take physics: Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize, and she won it for two separate subjects—the only person ever to do so. The Institute of Physics says that there is a significant and well-known problem with girls being underrepresented. Too many girls miss out on physics because they think the subject is not for them. They hear outdated stereotypes about the subject from family members and teachers. In her evidence to Parliament, the distinguished Professor Athene Donald of Cambridge, already mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, emphasised:

“Stereotyped behaviour directed towards a child will tend to lead to that child developing those stereotypical responses. A parent or teacher who says ‘girls can’t do maths’ will be providing a message that children internalise … These actions are not neutral; the implicit expectations will be imbibed and are likely to be material to decisions a child makes about what is ‘appropriate’ for them to … do in later years”.


The IOP reports some improvements. That the proportion of women studying physics has increased has also been mentioned. The Society of Chemical Industry says that gender balance in science is “improving”, but that women continue to be underrepresented in graduate jobs—a very similar pattern to mathematics. The Physiological Society has provided a helpful brief covering a wide range of subjects that I cannot mention.

So what can we do? First, we must encourage young girls to explore STEM without fear or hesitation. Although my time is technically up, I must say that I am a grandparent and I have been watching a lot of “Peppa Pig” recently. Mummy Pig is, in fact, pregnant. I think this is important because there is something to be said for getting in touch with programme makers of this kind to help ensure that, in the development of their storylines, young people—or pigs—are given every possible encouragement to do whatever they like. This idea that somehow it is not for them can be ruled out. We must invent an environment that supports women in science.

Finally—I really have run out of time—I invite everybody to the Attlee Suite next Tuesday, where the STEM for Britain event is being held. Early-career researchers from all the major subjects are coming to the House, and they will bring their research work. It is very competitive. These are the crème de la crème of the new generation, and it would benefit everyone in this Chamber if noble Lords just walked along in order to encourage them. Seven out of the last 10 winners of the top medal have been women, so I hope there is some progress to be made.

15:11

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, it is an absolute privilege to take part in this debate to mark International Women’s Day. I congratulate all those who gave their maiden speech today. In particular, I look forward to working with the noble Baroness, Lady Alexander, and the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Penybont, to further devolution. Llongyfarchiadau, a dwi’n edrych ymlaen i gydweithio—I look forward to working with you both.

As a Welsh woman, I feel compelled to begin by reflecting on a key historical contribution of Welsh women internationally. Five years after the First World War, a group of courageous women in Wales embarked on a campaign for peace that would become a symbol of hope and unity. The Welsh women’s peace petition, which began its journey in 1923, was the brainchild of a group of determined women. This petition spanned seven miles in length. It was signed by 390,296 Welsh women and carried across the Atlantic to the United States in an oak chest by four remarkable women: Annie Hughes-Griffiths, Mary Ellis, Elined Prys and Gladys Thomas. Among those signatories was my great-great-grandmother, who was from Neath Port Talbot. It is remarkable to think that, in 2023, 100 years after it was first signed, this petition returned to Wales and was digitised for the world to see at the National Library of Wales. I look forward to visiting an upcoming exhibition about the petition at Storiel in Bangor.

This campaign and the women who initiated it highlighted the long history of Welsh women engaging in global causes. It is fitting, therefore, that we reflect on their example as we discuss the role of women in the world today. As we mark this International Women’s Day, we must consider the current state of global affairs. Just last week, while the defence budget received a significant increase, we learned that the international aid budget is set to be reduced by £6 billion a year. This is a troubling shift—one that disproportionately affects women and girls around the world.

We must carefully consider the impact these cuts will have on some of the most pressing challenges that women face globally, including in sexual and reproductive health and rights. When we discuss the rights of women and girls, particularly their sexual and reproductive health, we cannot ignore the role that STEM has played in improving women’s lives. Innovations in these fields have allowed for advances that not only benefit women’s health but provide greater autonomy, allowing women to make informed choices about their reproductive health.

The development of contraceptive methods, fertility treatments and safe childbirth procedures has given women more control over their reproductive choices and their futures. In addition to medical breakthroughs, the role of technology cannot be overstated. Telemedicine, for example, allows women in rural areas to access reproductive health services remotely. Mobile apps help women track menstrual cycles, fertility windows and pregnancy progress, further empowering them to make informed decisions. I must emphasise that the health data that women share on these apps must be protected by tech companies and not sold on, as I share the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, about the anti-abortion laws in the USA. Tech companies must not be allowed to weaponise fertility tracking apps to vilify women getting abortions. Data science has also played a crucial role in predicting and controlling the spread of STIs and in shaping public health policies that guide sexual and reproductive health education.

Despite these remarkable advancements, significant challenges remain in many low-income and rural areas across the globe. Access to sexual and reproductive health services is still limited. Cultural stigmas continue to hinder open discussions, and gender disparities in STEM fields restrict the contributions of women in reproductive health research and innovation. To overcome these barriers, we must invest in STEM education for young girls and women, ensuring that their voices and perspectives are represented in the research and innovations that shape reproductive health policies. STEM has already transformed sexual and reproductive health, making it safer, more effective and more accessible. It has given women greater autonomy and allowed for the development of life-saving medications. We must continue to harness this power of STEM to alleviate poverty and contribute to economic and social development globally.

As we see the cuts to the UK’s overseas development assistance budget, I urge His Majesty’s Government to recognise that investing in sexual and reproductive health and rights is not only morally imperative but highly cost effective. Research in these areas has the potential to yield substantial returns—£100 for every pound invested. Will His Majesty’s Government consider ring-fencing sexual and reproductive health and rights funding within the aid budget? Women and girls across the globe deserve the chance to thrive, and it is our responsibility to make sure that they have the tools and support they need to do so.

15:17

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I congratulate the Ministers on making it possible and pay tribute to my noble friends who have given their maiden speeches today and really have, as somebody said earlier, raised the bar. It has been a real pleasure to hear so much about their history and what has brought them into the House of Lords.

I want to pay tribute to three remarkable groups of women who I believe play a vital role in promoting women’s participation in science. The first and most important group has to be those women who teach STEM subjects in primary and secondary schools. I will go on and pay tribute to the women who lead our medical research charities, then I will close by talking a little about the patient advocates, almost entirely women, who have campaigned tirelessly for funding and a focus on scientific research of interest to women.

We have heard a lot about Welsh women in this debate, so it is a pleasure for me to build on that and talk about my mother, who was a science teacher. She also came from Neath, and she grew up in a very strong, close, working-class community there. She had real issues trying to get the funding she needed to get to university so that she could go on and become a teacher and teach her beloved science in some of the toughest schools in the UK. She inspired me and my sisters to go into science-related careers. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Rafferty, I would definitely classify my sister, who became a specialist nurse, as a scientist. The research that she supported was really quite incredible.

I pay tribute to those women who have been teachers in those difficult classrooms and in wonderful educational settings, who have been role models and encouraged girls to go into science, do science A-levels then go on to university or apprenticeships to take their careers further. We know that role models are really important here, and still today we see a situation where, at tops, 40% of STEM subject teachers are women. So there is much more to do but, if we get that level up, I believe that we will spark the interest of young girls to become the scientists of tomorrow.

Inspired by my mother, I went on to study science at university after a dalliance with student politics during the miners’ strike—yes, tick, that fits the list. But my career took me into the medical research charity sector. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, emphasised, we have to think about the financials and the funding. It is important to note today that the medical research charities in this country contribute about £1.7 billion to medical research; they fund about 60% of the UK’s public investment in cancer and cardiovascular research, and they are led by women in many cases.

Around 40% of the members of the Association of Medical Research Charities, including the AMRC itself, are led by women. Those are really important funding bodies for science. Notable leaders include Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation; Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK; and Claire Rowney, my successor at Breast Cancer Now. These charities engage in really practical activities to support women in their science, in programmes involving funding, recruiting and helping women to return to science after they have taken time out to have a family.

We know that it is a vital part of what medical research charities do, but they can do what they do only because of the incredible support they get from so many patient advocates. I pay tribute to the role of patient advocates. One of our own number, who is sadly no longer with us, Tessa Jowell, campaigned in her last weeks of life to improve the focus of research on brain cancer. I have seen thousands of women at first hand campaigning to raise funds to establish a breast cancer research centre that has now become the best in the world.

We know that women want to work in areas of science focused on areas of concern to women themselves. By enhancing the resources made available for those areas, I believe we will also encourage the greater participation of women in science.

15:23

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and congratulate her on being made Minister for Women and Equalities in addition to her other activities. I know that she will be fantastic on this issue. I also congratulate my colleagues on their maiden speeches today—in particular my two good friends, my noble friends Lady Alexander and Lady Hunter. It is not that the others are not my friends, but I have known those two for a lifetime. They are my friends and they know all my bad points; they all have good points, but they have known me too long.

I declare an interest relevant to today’s debate, in that I am a founder and member of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security and an activist in Global Women Asia, which I helped to found, and which, among other things, represents women engineers who work in AI and other areas. It has now been going for about three years.

Turning to International Women’s Day, I congratulate everyone on this great day and I hope we will have more speakers next year from around the House, celebrating the initiatives that enhance women’s participation and leadership in science and technology, both in the United Kingdom and around the world. This occasion is not only a celebration of achievement but a reminder of the critical role women play in securing peace and shaping the future, especially as we transition into the AI age.

For centuries, women have been the bedrock of peaceful communities, acting as mediators, caregivers and advocates of justice and inclusion. Their involvement in peace processes has been shown to result in more durable and sustainable peace. In conflict zones across the globe, women are increasingly taking on roles traditionally reserved for men. They are clearing landmines, neutralising unexploded bombs and destroying weapons. Women are instrumental in helping communities recover and rebuild following the devastation of war. Their roles as peacebuilders, decision-makers, wage-earners and caregivers demonstrate that when women lead, peace is more resilient.

At the same time, we are witnessing a transformation in technology. Digital and AI innovations are reshaping every aspect of our lives: from the way we communicate to how Governments serve their citizens. Yet, as these systems grow ever more influential, there is a danger that they might perpetuate biases if not designed with care. It is imperative, therefore, that women are not merely participants but the engineers and architects of this digital revolution. Their insights, honed through diverse lived experiences, are essential in ensuring that technology systems are fair and serve all citizens equally.

Consider the pioneering work of Dr Joy Buolamwini at MIT Media Lab, whose research on algorithmic bias has exposed how technology can inadvertently reinforce gender and racial prejudices. Similarly, the work of Kate Crawford in critically assessing the societal impacts of machine learning has challenged us to rethink our ethical frameworks. Here in the United Kingdom, leaders such as Dame Wendy Hall have been at the forefront of promoting inclusivity in computer science, laying a strong foundation for a digital future that reflects our shared values.

The statistics underscore the urgency of our mission. Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, as analysed by the Government, shows that while men dominate most STEM subjects in higher education, women lead in natural sciences, psychology, medicine, dentistry and allied medical subjects. Yet women are less likely than men to start an apprenticeship in STEM fields. Engineering UK analysis of Department for Education data reveals that women account for just 17% of engineering and technology-related apprenticeship starts in England. We must put more pressure on schools to tell more pupils about STEM, and have more visits to schools from people from these backgrounds, through Speakers for Schools and other organisations, including the education organisation in this House. This is vital. That 17% figure compares to 52% across all subjects. UNESCO’s figures for 2016-18 indicate that women represented 28% of engineering, manufacturing and construction graduates and 30% of ICT graduates, compared with 57% in natural sciences, mathematics and statistics. Furthermore, STEM Women highlights how the lack of representation of women in STEM higher education impacts the workforce, and it calls for more initiatives to encourage women to study STEM, transition into the workforce and emerge as future leaders.

The rapid progression of technology offers a unique opportunity to level the playing field. Digital platforms and AI can dismantle traditional barriers, broadening access to education, employment and civic engagement. In every community, from conflict zones to urban centres, women have shown exceptional resilience and an innate ability to foster dialogue and empathy. Their participation in building the digital future not only enhances innovation but ensures that the systems they create are both equitable and compassionate.

In conclusion, promoting women’s leadership in science and technology is not merely an issue of equality; it is essential for peace, justice and prosperity. As we stand on the threshold of the AI age, we must commit to a future where both men and women co-design the digital world. The House must champion policies that foster gender equality in every sphere of innovation, ensuring that the benefits of technological progress are shared by all.

15:30

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this International Women’s Day debate, and I welcome the Minister to her new role. I should perhaps declare an interest, since I contributed several chapters to the two-volume series The Honourable Ladies, short biographies of all the women MPs up to 1996, which she edited with Iain Dale.

This is my fourth International Women’s Day speech in your Lordships’ House. In previous ones, I have uncovered buried, silenced voices of women from the past, and I was terribly tempted to do that this time. For women in science, there are myriad possibilities: from Aganice, an Egyptian princess during the Middle Kingdom who worked on astronomy and natural history, through to the 17th-century scientific illustrators Giovanna Garzoni and Maria Sibylla Merian—particular favourites of mine, both of whom, atypically for their time and centuries hence, treated insects as independent actors and agents rather than stiff, dead subjects to be pinned for the human gaze. It is possible to draw a direct line of ecological thinking by women from them to Suzanne Simard, the discoverer of what has been dubbed the “world-wide wood” of interrelationships between various species in woodland environments.

However, I could not focus on history today, not in the world of 2025. Instead, my speech will be, if I may humbly say so, a companion to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox of Soho. The official theme of this International Women’s Day is “Accelerate Action”, but, rather than that, we need, as the noble Baroness said, to feel the perilous nature of the moment. To put it in one verb, I would say our theme should be “Resist”, for what we are seeing is a dual and interconnected attack on women and on science by the leaders of the world’s most powerful state, the United States of America, which was, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, responsible for 32% of global science and research funding in 2021.

It is not like we were not warned, for the destructive ideology of the Trump Administration was constructed in plain sight, in the form of Project 2050. I give a local woman’s voice—from the US National Women’s Law Center—to explain what is now being implemented in Washington. She says that this project

“seeks to impose a hierarchical, gendered, patriarchal vision of society … focused on enforcing a vision of the family that relies on fixed and narrowly defined gender roles, and in undermining protections that enable women and LGBTQIA+ people to thrive outside of a male-dominated heterosexual family. It also seeks to reinforce racial hierarchy”.

We have to note that this is a world envisaged without democracy. If noble Members have not read The Sovereign Individual, I would urge them to. It was republished in 2020 with a preface from Peter Thiel, co-founder of the tech company Palantir, a name I recognise particularly from my time in the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme due to its pervasive presence across our military. The book claims that the “information revolution” will bring about the “death of politics”, for which might be read the death of human rights, the rule of law and what so many women and men have fought for over decades and centuries.

That attack on women and girls, a desire to restrict their human potential, is all too evidently part of a broader attack on science. I note an article in the journal Nature today stating the US National Institutes of Health has begun mass terminations of research grants that fund active scientific projects. The aim is to cancel grants in any way related to gender identity, diversity, equity and inclusion in the scientific workforce, environmental justice and climate change. Those ongoing projects are all to be cancelled.

I finish with some questions to the Minister. Of course, sitting in this Chamber we have limited influence on what happens in the United States—perhaps no real influence at all as it increasingly aligns itself with Russia rather than its traditional allies. However, this Government have a responsibility for what happens here in the UK.

I note that on Bluesky today there was an advert from a French university seeking applicants for a “safe place for science programme” that was explicitly directed towards US researchers. Will the Government work with UK institutions to similarly provide a refuge for researchers now based in the US?

Companies such as Google, Amazon and Meta, and firms with tentacles right through the UK Government such as KPMG and Deloitte, are all withdrawing, cancelling or reversing what are known as diversity, equality and inclusion programmes. Will the Government ensure that wherever they operate in the UK, particularly but not solely in the UK Government, British values and laws on diversity and inclusion will be upheld here on our soil?

To pick up on a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, the slashing of budgets has had a huge impact on global efforts against polio, HIV, malaria and particularly tuberculosis. Are the British Government going to try to pick up the slack? I note that, with TB, there is great concern about antimicrobial resistance.

I want to finish by being a little positive. Final plans are now being made for 32 co-ordinated “stand up for science” rallies across the US and affiliated walkouts and protests around the globe, put together on the initiative of five early-career researchers. Will the Minister join me in supporting that call to stand up for science and agree that UK institutions, such as the Royal Society, should be doing just that?

15:37

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I spoke in this debate last year about the gender pensions gap. It is still there, but I am going to speak more broadly this year, following the theme—quite clearly set out—of how to promote women’s participation and leadership in science and technology.

Before moving on, I need first to congratulate my noble friends Lady Alexander of Cleveden, Lady Hunter of Auchenreoch, Lady Bousted, Lady Rafferty and Lord Jones of Penybont on their excellent and germane maiden speeches. They will all clearly be major assets to the House. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Smith of Malvern on her appointment as Minister for Women and Equalities.

I welcome this debate. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to be here and to listen to what has been said. It is also a pleasure to contribute, despite the ever-present inevitability of mansplaining. I congratulate my noble friends Lord Jones and Lord Stansgate on their skill in avoiding that danger, but the only certain way to escape falling into the trap is simply to listen to the experience of women, particularly women with lived experience of success in science and technology. We have heard about that with great pleasure in this House today.

I also asked my older daughter. Not only is she a great friend and companion; not only is she a mother of a brilliant grandchild but I am immensely proud that she is an engineer. I have to emphasise that the credit is all hers that she is a professor in the engineering department at the University of Cambridge. I asked her what key point she would like to see raised in this debate. She mentioned in essence—I paraphrase—family-friendly policies that enable her to participate fully and deliver the work in which she is involved undertaking research, with that support both social and in employment. The specific issue she mentioned was support through maternity, through periods when, inevitably, women have children. Support for people in their careers through periods of maternity is obviously important to the individuals concerned and their families but it is also important to all of us, because it avoids the loss of the tremendous talent that is available, which we have to exploit—that is not quite the right word—or employ to the full.

In summarising the challenges and future directions, we have to understand that, despite the undoubted progress that there has been, women in STEM still face barriers, including unconscious bias, workplace discrimination and lack of representation in leadership positions. We have to foster sustainable change: efforts must go beyond entry-level recruitment and focus on career retention, leadership and policy reforms, not least addressing the issues that arise with maternity. We must recognise that women’s participation and leadership in science, technology, engineering and mathematics are vital for innovation, economic growth and social progress. The Government have made it clear that their number one goal is growth, and mobilising the full talent of women and girls is a crucial element in achieving that aim.

15:42

[Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to take part in today’s International Women’s Day debate. I congratulate all the noble Lords who made their maiden speeches.

Artificial intelligence represents one of the greatest opportunities for growth and advancement since the industrial revolution. We should rightly be very excited about its potential. It is reshaping the world as we know it: powering our industries, aiding our scientific discoveries, and redefining how we live and work. However, as noble Baronesses have highlighted today, the people shaping AI do not reflect the diversity of those it serves. As of 2024, women are significantly underrepresented in the UK AI workforce, making up only 21% of its employees. The Alan Turing Institute warned:

“This is not only a fundamental issue of economic equality, but also about how the world is designed and for whom.”


Multiple studies have raised concerns that, without a diverse set of voices shaping the AI models we build, we risk creating an inbuilt bias. AI systems trained on biased data can replicate and amplify discrimination.

I am concerned that a recent Answer from the Department for Education said that, in 2023-24, just under 18% of STEM apprenticeship starts were by women. We must encourage girls from an early age to take up STEM subjects in school so that not only can we improve the diversity of those in AI but the UK will have the skills and talent necessary for an AI future.

It is incumbent on us to ensure that the social biases that are currently being inflamed and entrenched by misogynistic influencers do not become embedded in the systems that look to be so intrinsic to our future. We have the responsibility to do everything in our power to help remove the obstacles faced by our next generation of young women to allow them to flourish and reach their full potential. Sadly, I fear that they are now facing greater barriers than ever before, due to the increasing prevalence and acceptance of misogyny in our society.

The poison of misogyny undermines our values and fuels harassment, discrimination and violence. The agenda is aided by algorithms that are pushing content to young boys at an alarming rate. A UCL study set up sample accounts on TikTok representing typologies of teenage boys with varying interests. It found that, while the content initially suggested to the boys was in line with their stated interests, it increasingly focused on anger and blame directed at women. After five days, the TikTok algorithm was presenting four times as many videos recommending misogynistic content on sexual harassment, and discrediting and objectifying women.

The study found that social media algorithms that amplified extreme misogynistic content were normalising harmful ideologies for young people. This is having hugely damaging repercussions on real-life social interactions. A University of York study found that 76% of secondary school teachers and, even more shockingly, 60% of primary school teachers were strongly concerned about the influence of online misogyny on their pupils. The study highlighted shocking examples of secondary school pupils espousing the views that women should not be in leadership roles and that they were too big for their boots. When teachers questioned where they got these ideas, they informed them that they liked to watch Andrew Tate.

Even more disturbingly, teachers in primary schools cited examples of where girls as young as primary age were told that women should not have careers and that they belonged in the kitchen. One informed his teacher that it is

“ok to hurt women because Andrew Tate does it”.

I am sure that many noble Lords will agree that, unless we tackle this appalling rise in misogyny in schools, these attitudes present a very real threat to the progress of young girls, who should not have to run the gauntlet of this abuse, especially during their formative years. If we do not take action, we risk creating a future where discrimination is automated and prejudice is coded into the very systems that are supposed to aid our advancement, not hinder it. We must not allow our future to be shaped by those who seek to do us harm.

We owe it to the next generation of young women—who may be aspiring scientists, doctors or engineers—to stamp out this vile form of abuse and give them every opportunity to flourish. In doing so, we are not only helping them but safeguarding the future of our society. The future of AI must be built by all of us, for all of us. Let us ensure that women are at the heart of this progress.

15:47

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege and pleasure to participate in this debate. As is almost customary—it happens year after year—the debate has an overwhelmingly large number of female speakers; at a rough count, they are at least 24 out of 33. It goes to show how women continue to fight for their share of equality and that men are perfectly happy to allow them to do so.

I will ask three questions. First, what do we want to discuss in the name of STEM subjects? Secondly, why are we worried about fewer women going into STEM subjects, and why should it be a matter of concern to us, except because of some notion of abstract justice? Thirdly, assuming that it is a matter of concern to us, can we do something about it? Is it not a natural phenomenon, as the former president of Harvard University said, which got him into trouble?

I will address these three questions, in that order, very quickly. It is very well known that 30% of girls in higher education take STEM subjects, as opposed to 75% who go on to do study health, education and others. It is obvious. We need to be careful not to overgeneralise or homogenise girls. If you look at STEM subjects, girls tend to take more interest in algebra and chemistry than in physics and higher mathematics. There is a trend. That trend is global, it is not limited to one particular country. It appears in different forms. In some subjects it is more pronounced than in others. There is a global trend of girls not going for STEM subjects.

That leads me to my second question. If so, why should we worry about it? I can imagine lots of areas that girls do not go into. We do not regard that as a matter of serious concern. Why is this a matter of serious concern? First of all, there is a pool of talent which is being wasted, and, secondly, a pool of distinctive talent—not just intelligence and imagination, but imagination tuned in in a particular way, and seeing problems in a certain way. This is what women bring to the study of the natural sciences. If they are studying physics—or biology, or whatever—they bring to the subject a certain perception of what human needs are.

One example is what kind of car one should have. I read an article—I shall not rehearse it here—about car design. It did not occur to men to design a seat that would allow women to relax. It would simply not occur to men, not because they do not want to but because it is not a natural part of their daily experience. Whereas, when you put women in the driving seat and they design things, they begin to explore these requirements. So in that sense it is not only that we are wasting a pool of talent, we are wasting a pool of distinctive talent and imagination, which is not otherwise available.

If that is so, the next question is, “Can we do something about it?”. As I said earlier, some people seem to think that if a phenomenon has gone on for a long time, there must be a natural basis—a basis in human nature or some other form of nature—and that it cannot just be spontaneous. I tend to disagree. It is not a natural but a cultural phenomenon. It is not that girls accidentally choose not to go for STEM subjects. There is a cultural pressure—but a cultural pressure of what kind? That requires an elaborate analysis. There is a cultural pressure of two kinds: pressure from outside society, which channels their expectations, hopes and ambitions in a certain direction, and pressure from within those girls, who have internalised those beliefs and who, therefore, tend to move in that direction.

So you have a situation where the pervasive culture says that there are difficult subjects—such as physics or higher mathematics—and these will be too strenuous for girls to get in to and we should give them some rest. It was these expectations—shaped by our culture over a period of centuries—that shaped these girls’ minds and got them to move in a certain direction. If you want to tackle them, we can certainly tackle them with more scholarships and more this or more that. But the greater concentration has to be on undermining this pervasive culture.

How do you counter a culture which shapes expectations and gets women not to go in certain directions? It is a long story but, to undermine that culture, there are several factors we need to take into account. When girls are growing up, from the age of two or three—or whatever—do they associate themselves with science and higher mathematics, or is it seen simply as a male phenomenon? Similarly, if you have mentorships and scholarships, more and more girls can be attracted to them. In short, can one create an environment in which a space is carved out where girls can flourish?

15:54

[Lord Loomba (CB)]

My Lords, we commemorate International Women’s Day at a time when commitments to development aid and to diversity, equality, and inclusion programmes face unprecedented strain. Supporting education for women and girls, particularly in STEM subjects, remains a vital lifeline for millions who are disproportionately affected by poverty, gender-based barriers, and systemic discrimination, which restrict their ability to harness their talents for a better future.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for tabling this Motion and for its focus. This year’s International Women’s Day theme

“For ALL women and girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment”,


is particularly pertinent as we examine the participation and leadership of women in science and technology.

Women remain underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics worldwide. UNESCO reports that women make up only 35% of STEM graduates—a figure that has shown little progress over the past decade. In sub-Saharan Africa, socioeconomic barriers, institutional biases and cultural norms further hinder women’s participation in STEM.

Taking Mozambique as an example, the gender gap in STEM presents a significant challenge. Although gender equality in education has seen some improvement, women remain underrepresented in STEM disciplines. This disparity is not merely statistical but indicative of deeper systemic challenges that limit opportunities for women and girls.

The 2024 UNESCO report, Women’s Participation in Higher Education in Southern Africa, highlights these challenges. Across nine southern African countries, including Mozambique, women hold only a fraction of leadership roles in higher education institutions. In Mozambique, women occupy just 24% of senior academic positions, and in Zambia the figure is slightly higher, at 28%.

The barriers extend beyond education into professional STEM careers. Women in Mozambique and the region face obstacles such as limited mentorship opportunities, gender biases in hiring and promotion, and a lack of supportive networks. These challenges contribute to the broader issue of gender disparity in STEM fields.

Addressing these gaps requires co-ordinated efforts at multiple levels. Educational institutions must actively implement policies that encourage women’s participation in STEM, including scholarships, mentorship programmes, and a learning environment that challenges gender stereotypes from early education through to higher education.

International support has played a crucial role in empowering women and girls in STEM. The United Kingdom has been a long-standing supporter of educational initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa, including Mozambique, through its overseas development aid programmes. However, recent reductions in aid funding raise serious concerns about the continuity of these essential efforts.

In this light, I ask the Minister, first, what programmes focused on education for women and girls that are supported by British overseas development aid have been or will be disrupted by the recent reduction in funding? Secondly, how do the Government plan to fulfil their commitment to support education for women and girls in Mozambique and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in STEM subjects, amid these funding challenges? We must reaffirm our commitment to gender equality in STEM, not only as a matter of social justice but as a catalyst for innovation and economic growth. By empowering women and girls in science and technology, we unlock a wealth of talent and perspectives that are essential for addressing the complex challenges of our time.

16:00

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, whose courageous and determined work in support of widows worldwide is known to many of us in this House. I am delighted to hear him speak up again here today. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Smith on her appointment as Equalities Minister and on her excellent speech opening this debate. At the same time, I hope it will be appropriate for me to pay tribute to Anneliese Dodds MP for her dignified and principled conduct last week. I hope that she will remain a very active member of the other place and join us in campaigning in the months ahead.

I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches, including my fellow ex-First Minister, my noble friend Lord Jones, whose introduction to the House is very welcome. I am so pleased to welcome in particular two Scots: my noble friend Lady Alexander, who—let me get this right—is the second former Labour Minister in the devolved Government in Scotland who was not a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons to have entered your Lordships’ House. I have long argued that those who served only in Holyrood—or in the Senedd, for that matter—should be welcome in this House, and I am delighted that she has now joined me here. She will make a fantastic contribution.

I was delighted to hear the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Hunter. We have been friends for a very long time, and her contribution to the modernisation of this country in the election and the running of the first four years of the 1997 new Labour Government is not widely enough celebrated and recognised. She was a pivotal individual at that time. I remember many illuminating moments, not least, perhaps, on the day when the then leader of the Opposition was about to try to persuade me to persuade the Scottish Labour Party to support a referendum on devolution before the new Government legislated, when the then Anji Hunter presented me with a glass of wine, at 10.30 am, to prepare me for the meeting and try to make sure that I was calm enough to hear the news that I was about to hear. She is a very welcome addition to your Lordships’ House, and today’s speech showed that her contributions will be outstanding.

As a former maths teacher, I have enjoyed the theme of today’s debate. I have been very lucky to be inspired and mentored by many women throughout my life, including, perhaps in a similar way to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, by Mrs Craig, who was my first primary school teacher. She came to seek me out on the day I left primary school to tell me that if I could learn when to keep my mouth shut and be a little more disciplined, I could do absolutely anything I wanted to. To this day, I credit her with much of the incredible moments I have been able to enjoy in my life and career.

Almost all of my entries on the register have a link to today’s topic, including the McConnell International Foundation, which currently sponsors 200 girls in rural Malawi to go to secondary school. These girls live in rural villages, where no one from their family has finished secondary school before. Last year, one of the girls went to university—the first from her village ever to do so. Of the 200, in a country where very high numbers of girls become pregnant in their teenage years or are forced into early child marriage, only one girl became pregnant last year, and she hopes to go back to school after the baby is born. The potential for education to transform those lives is shown in all my interactions with them. Girls’ education transforms not just the lives of the individual girls but communities and families, going far beyond the individuals who personally benefit.

Many Members of your Lordships’ House have today commented on the international aspect of International Women’s Day. In Afghanistan, incredibly in 2025, girls and women are being held back from going to school and into higher education and from many other basic liberties. There is also the persecution in Iran—as we heard in the Statement earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Hanson—the cynical, planned rape of women and girls in Sudan and elsewhere as part of violent conflict around our world, and the casual acceptance and encouragement of violence throughout our supposedly progressive, developed world since the Covid pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of girls are not returning to school to complete the educational opportunities that would give them a fairer chance in life. Throughout the world today, women’s and girls’ rights are going in reverse. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, we should be angry about that and certainly not complacent or complicit in it.

While I absolutely endorse the Government’s decision to increase defence spending, I believe, as I said last week, that it is short-sighted and counterproductive to reduce overseas development assistance to its lowest level since Harold Wilson was Prime Minister to fund it. There will be fewer girls finishing school, fewer health programmes giving young girls choices in their early adult years, fewer women entrepreneurs and more conflict, violence and famine as a result.

Will there be an impact study on women and girls before these cuts are implemented? Will programmes on sexual health, girls’ education and conflict prevention, particularly the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, be protected?

16:06

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, has made it almost impossible to start a debate by saying “My Lords” any more. We will obviously have to change our conventions.

It is a great privilege to take part in this debate. We have heard a brilliant and insightful set of maiden speeches today. I particularly valued the weight of the Welsh and Scottish representation here. It is not always present in the force that it should be. I declare an interest as chair of Queen Mary University, which, relevant to this debate, has a very distinguished biomedical engineer at the helm of our School of Engineering and Materials Science, Professor Hazel Screen. I envy the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for having an engineer daughter to consult with on his speech today. I also thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her introduction today and for moving the Motion. I congratulate her on her new appointment. I do wonder how many hours in the day there are, as I know the weight of her current post.

I was chair of the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee, whose 2018 findings revealed a deeply troubling picture. Globally, over three-quarters of AI and data science professionals were male. In the UK, women’s representation was even lower at just 20%. Seven years later, despite numerous initiatives, the needle has barely moved. I am not surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, is angry—we all should be. This is not just about fairness, crucial though that may be. This is not to undervalue the importance of the humanities and the arts. As we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey, and others, it is about the quality and safety of the AI systems being developed.

As the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, said, when teams lack diversity, the technology they create reflects those limitations. We are in danger of building tomorrow’s world with yesterday’s biases. The implications are profound—from facial recognition systems that fail to properly identify women and ethnic minorities to recruitment algorithms that perpetuate gender bias or medical diagnostic systems trained predominantly on male data, as well as the proliferation of deepfake pornography, misogyny, threats of violence and trolling online, as illustrated by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hazarika, Lady O’Grady and Lady Owen.

The wider picture of STEM is equally concerning. As we have heard, women comprise only 29% of the UK’s tech workforce. In engineering and technology apprenticeships, women account for just 17% of starts. Only 8.5% of active spin-outs had all-female founding teams, and just 16% had mixed founding teams. At leadership level, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said, women make up a mere 6% of STEM leaders. These statistics represent not just inequality but a massive waste of talent at a time when these skills are crucial to our economic future and medical research, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, pointed out.

The digital divide compounds these challenges. Women are 40% less likely than men to adopt technologies and there is a striking gap of 21 percentage points between junior men and women in adopting AI tools at work. This creates a vicious cycle—underrepresentation leads to technology designed without women’s input, which in turn makes technology less accessible to women, as the Minister said.

We have seen some laudable initiatives. The previous Government’s investment in AI and data science conversion degrees with scholarships for underrepresented groups was welcome. Organisations such as WISE, the Tech Talent Charter, which sadly closed down last year, and Women in AI have done valuable work. The Tech She Can charter, with more than 170 companies committed to increasing women in technology roles, shows industry recognition of the problem.

We must ask why, despite all these efforts, progress is so slow. The education pipeline remains a critical challenge and, although we have seen some improvement, with an almost 30% increase in girls starting STEM A-levels between 2009 and 2020, this has not translated into proportional workforce representation. Something is clearly going wrong in the transition from education to career and in career progression thereafter.

The persistence of the leaky pipeline in STEM education and careers, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, remains deeply concerning. While we see encouraging numbers of young women taking STEM A-levels and entering undergraduate programmes, the sharp decline at postgraduate level and into academic careers suggests systemic issues beyond mere time lag effects. I was very interested to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, said about the culture in schools.

It is particularly striking that many capable female students report never having considered advanced STEM careers, not because of active discouragement but because they simply had not envisioned themselves in these roles. I was very interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield, set out a number of really interesting suggestions for action in this area. I would suggest another few areas where government action could make a real difference.

First, we need a comprehensive review of the effectiveness of current initiatives. While individual programmes show promise, they often operate in silos. We need a coherent national strategy that co-ordinates efforts across education, industry and government. This should include early intervention in schools, support through higher education and workplace initiatives.

Secondly, we should consider mandatory reporting on gender diversity in STEM roles for larger companies, similar to gender pay gap reporting. What gets measured gets managed. This would provide crucial data to inform policy and hold organisations accountable. Companies should report not just on overall numbers but on recruitment, retention and progression.

Thirdly, we need targeted support for critical transition points, particularly in returning to STEM careers after career breaks. What happened to the pilot returners programme in the Midlands and the north of England, known as STEM ReCharge? This should include expanded training opportunities, flexible working arrangements and structured return-to-work programmes.

Fourthly, we must address the persistent barriers in workplace culture. This means tackling unconscious bias, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, ensuring fair promotion processes and creating inclusive environments. The Government should lead by example in their own STEM workforce and require diversity initiatives as part of public procurement, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady.

Fifthly, we need specific focus on emerging technologies. With AI and quantum computing shaping our future, we cannot afford to repeat past patterns of exclusion. This means ensuring women’s participation in this field from the ground up.

More fundamentally, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, and many others in this debate, we need to address the cultural barriers that persist in STEM fields. We should celebrate the prominent women in STEM, as we were asked to by the noble Baronesses, Lady Moyo and Lady Bottomley, but the very fact that we can name all these individuals—as role models who show what is possible—and their very exceptionalism, highlights the systemic problem we must address. That surely is self-evident.

This underscores the critical importance of visible role models and intentional mentorship. We need to move beyond passive representation to active engagement, ensuring that young women not only see themselves succeeding in STEM fields but are actively encouraged to see themselves in these roles. It is not just about technical skills; it is about creating an environment where girls see themselves as natural problem-solvers and innovators. Too often, this fundamental confidence-building is missing from young girls’ experiences, creating invisible barriers long before career choices come into play.

Time is short, but I want to mention the international dimension, which was raised particularly by the noble Lords, Lord Loomba and Lord McConnell. Our leadership in science and technology gives us both the opportunity and the responsibility to set global standards for inclusion. In this context, the announced cuts to the UK aid budget cast a huge and unwanted shadow over STEM development globally, particularly for women and girls. Are the Government still committed to the international women and girls strategy of 2023-30, launched only two years ago on International Women’s Day? It set important goals. Given the Government’s commitment to STEM education and gender equality, will efforts be made to protect these areas from the worst impacts of these cuts?

Looking ahead in the UK, we see that the stakes could not be higher. AI and other emerging technologies will reshape our society. If women remain underrepresented in the development of such technologies, we risk embedding gender bias into the architecture of our digital future. This is not just about equality; it is about ensuring that our technological development serves our entire society and not just half of it.

16:19

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, it is a huge privilege to speak in this debate today, and to have listened to so many exceptional speeches that have highlighted the extraordinary achievements of women and, sadly, the oppression that too many still face. I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, on finding another way to fill what little she had left of her free time.

We have heard five excellent maiden speeches. The noble Baroness, Lady Alexander of Clevedon, talked about her pioneering work in the Scottish Parliament, and in listening to her I felt that Malawi’s loss was Holyrood’s gain. The noble Baroness, Lady Hunter of Auchenreoch, talked about alliance building. I felt that the tone of her remarks was welcome and very much the way that we all aim to work across all sides of this House.

Of the five, the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, is the only one who I had the pleasure of knowing in a previous life—my previous life, but hers too. I recognise the way that she talked about herself in terms of self-reliance and walking with more confidence. She is warmly welcome here. There is lots of work to be done in the areas that both she and I are interested in.

The noble Baroness, Lady Rafferty, talked about being inspired by her mother. For the first time in several years, I have managed to resist talking about my mother in this speech, but, in listening to the noble Baroness, I felt that she will inspire many here. I am not sure there is a pool table anywhere in the House, though others might know, but there is plenty of homework.

I want to note other women on my Benches who have been influential. Quite rightly, the noble Baronesses who I mentioned talked about their political careers, and on these Benches my noble friends Lady Jenkin of Kennington and Lady May were influential in their work on Women2Win, which has changed the shape of our party.

Last, but definitely not least, was the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Penybont. It was a privilege to listen to the humanity that he expressed in talking about the Act that he chose to highlight to the House today, which was literally, in his words, life-saving.

It is a double privilege to be standing here today, because I am taking the place of my noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford, who is unable to be here. Like many of us, she had a strong woman in her life—again, her mother—who paved the way for her to do a science degree. Her mother was a pioneer, going to University College Cork in the 1960s to study medicine alongside a small number of women, including several nuns. Apparently she was so talented that she was given full marks in an exam that she did not actually sit because she was busy having her son at the time.

As we have heard today in the speeches of many noble Lords and noble Baronesses, women have had to fight and campaign for the right to contribute economically in general, and in science and technology in particular, including for the stepping stones along the way of education, reproductive rights, childcare, health education and of course the right to vote. As we have heard, progress for women has not gone in a straight line, and in some cases it has gone backwards.

International Women’s Day itself, 8 March, has seen major demonstrations calling for change, such as in Tehran in 1979, where women protested in their thousands against the mandatory wearing of the hijab. International Women’s Day in 2012 saw the opening of the first women’s internet café in Kabul. I wonder if it is still there—sadly, I think we can guess the answer.

Thinking about those stepping stones, the noble Baroness, Lady Hazarika, talked rightly about the importance of online safety. There is so much more to be done in all areas of gender-based violence. She mentioned the plight of older women, and it was striking that in the humbling and troubling list read out by the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, two of the ladies over 70 had no name. Such women are not traditionally recognised as victims.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, talked about the sexual harassment of children in classrooms, which of course happens in this country and internationally. My noble friend Lady Owen of Alderley Edge talked powerfully about the changing shape of misogyny online and how that impacts behaviour offline. Rightly, the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith of Llanfaes and Lady Bennett, and the noble Lords, Lords McConnell and Lord Loomba, expressed their concerns about the impact of aid cuts, particularly on girls’ education. Of course, education has been a crucial way for women to gain their economic independence, exercise their rights and fulfil their potential. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, painted a vivid picture of the 200 girls in Malawi and the change that education can make to their lives.

Turning to the technology sector itself, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, rightly said that this is an issue of power, justice and fairness, sentiments that were echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Greenfield. My noble friend Lady Stowell gave us the strong sense of the community of women in the Beeston Plessey factory and how that became the heart of the local town.

Just to bring a little ray of hope, in the spirit of my noble friend Lady Moyo, there is, as many noble Lords have said, fantastic work in diversity going on around the country, including from the other Professor Sue Black—not the noble Baroness in your Lordships’ House—at Durham University. She is best known, perhaps, for her work on Bletchley Park but also with Tech Up Women, ensuring that we have more diversity in AI in particular.

We have heard about remarkable women from the global north. I would just like to mention a few who stand out from the global south, including Dr Asima Chatterjee from India, whose groundbreaking work in organic chemistry led to treatments for epilepsy and malaria, Dr Segenet Kelemu of Ethiopia, who transformed agricultural science, and, in Latin America, Dr Adriana Ocampo of Colombia, who has led NASA’s New Frontiers Program.

Looking forward, it feels like we are at a particularly perilous time in our history, as we look at some of the geopolitical shifts that are taking place. The conversation about the need for more defence expenditure and more investment in AI to drive the defence systems of the future has been dialled up, perhaps unimaginably, when compared to just a few weeks or months ago. As others have observed, much technological talent has been focused on consumer innovations in social media, food delivery apps and other services that can thrive only in a stable and peaceful world. It feels inevitable that more investment needs to, and will, go into critical areas of innovation, particularly in relation to defence and, within this, AI.

Defence in particular remains an area with low representation of women—where women’s voices, insights and skills are vitally needed, exactly as my noble friend Lady Morrissey and the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said, to create the strong ethical framework and organisational culture that this sector needs, perhaps almost more than any other. We need women to be part of the solution and not just the voices left behind as men suffer the ultimate price of warfare. We must not lose sight of the absolute imperative to protect our values of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, without which opportunities for women will evaporate.

As we close this debate, we remember the brave women all around the world fighting for their freedom, their right to go to school and their right to develop their talents and potential. We celebrate the extraordinary achievements of women in science and technology, without whom so many advances would not have been made. Many in this House have been role models to and champions of younger women. So, on this International Women’s Day, I particularly wish that our daughters and granddaughters, in the widest sense, seize the opportunities that life presents them. In the words of the late, great Maya Angelou,

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better”.

16:30

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish a very happy International Women’s Day—nearly—to all noble Lords. We have had an absolutely fabulous debate. I congratulate my noble friend on her new ministerial appointment, and I thank her for setting out the size of the challenge before us, the progress made so far to accelerate action, and where we want to get to.

I thank all noble Lords for their wisdom in this debate—some have of course made their maiden speeches today. First, I thank my noble friend Lady Alexander of Clevedon, whose leadership in Scotland and work in the education sector will add another strong voice championing women in higher education. I thank my noble friend Lady Bousted, who brings her expertise from a world I hail from too—the trade unions, given her role as the joint general secretary of the National Education Union—to help us analyse how to improve the lives of working women. It is wonderful to have another strong voice from Wales in this House, and I thank my noble friend Lord Jones of Penybont for becoming an honorary member of the sisterhood, and for the perspective he brings from his political experience as First Minister of Wales.

It was an honour to hear from my noble friend Lady Rafferty, whose extensive experience in the nursing world—as the president of the Royal College of Nursing, for example—can help us continue to focus on the experience of women working in health and, I hope, improve it. Finally, I thank my noble friend Lady Hunter of Auchenreoch—I will pronounce that right eventually—whose political experience is very welcome, as is her continued support for women in business through her role as a senior adviser at Edelman and her other business roles.

One of the many things that the civil rights activist Marian Wright Edelman gave the world is the words:

“You can’t be what you can’t see”.


She meant that it is hard for people to imagine themselves in fields where they do not see people who look or sound like them. So let me begin by paying tribute to some pioneering British women in science and technology. They are not always the ones whose names are attached to the Nobel Prize, and they are not always the ones whose pictures are hanging on the walls in hallowed spaces. They are often the ones whose legacies go unrecorded, but without whose essential work we would not have achieved half the scientific and technological progress we have.

Without Mary Somerville, the 19th-century queen of science, we may not have discovered the planet Neptune. Without Karen Spärck Jones’s work in computational linguistics, we would not have the tech that underpins search engines. In her words,

“Computing is too important to be left to men”.


Without Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell, we would not have uncovered the existence of radio pulsars, a by-product of exploding stars that allows us to test some of the most fundamental ideas of physics.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton, Lady Greenfield and Lady Bottomley, reminded us that women have had to overcome sexism and obstruction in some of our many respected academic institutions. Often, that continues today. Thankfully, at the same time, girls have many new role models to look up to. Some of them are paving the way for more people to enter these fields.

I am grateful, for example, to my noble friend Lord Stansgate for reminding us that Helen Sharman was the first UK astronaut. Anne-Marie Imafidon passed her A-level in computing at just 11 years old, and now runs Stemettes, an organisation which gets more women and non-binary people into STEM. Sheridan Ash and Claire Thorne founded Tech She Can to improve the pipeline of women in technological roles. So far, their work has reached 130,000 children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and my noble friends Lady Alexander and Lord Jones also reminded us that role models can often be nearer and closer to home, since we stand on our mothers’ and our grandmothers’ shoulders. We often reflect on what they could have been and what they could have achieved with the right support. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, reminded us, we have come a long way here in the House of Lords since 1958. My noble friend Lady Hunter reminds us of the excellent women leaders that we have had in this House, including our outstanding current Leader, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.

We have other outstanding scientific leaders here. For example, in co-founding Darktrace, the noble Baroness, Lady Gustafsson, built one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe, achieving unicorn status in just four years. One of the noble Baronesses we heard from earlier, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, was hugely influential in starting the dotcom boom and has dedicated much of her career to digital and social inclusion. She also now co-chairs an advisory board set up by DSIT to steer our new digital centre of government. I thank her for bringing her expertise to bear here.

My noble friend Lady Gale reminds us of the fight we had to increase the number of women MPs and the success that we can see in the latest intake. As she quite rightly says, this happened not by accident but through very hard and determined work by a number of women.

Like all of us, my own journey shapes how I see these issues. I started my career as a trade union official, representing many low-paid women in the public sector and campaigning for better rights at work—rights that I am pleased to see protected further in the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill. In the nearly 20 years I have been a Labour Peer, I have seen the political environment around me grow more collegiate and more equal. When this Government came into power in July, I was thrilled to be appointed as a Minister for both DSIT and DBT. I can now officially call myself a woman in STEM.

My dual role means that I get to see all the facets that shape women’s participation in science and technology up close, from the subjects girls are encouraged to pick at school, to the investment gap when female entrepreneurs seek funding, to the faces you see around a boardroom table or behind goggles in a lab. What surprised me most when I took office was the mismatch between the talent our science and tech sectors need and how few girls ever see that career as an option. On the one hand, you have top firms struggling to fill vacancies; on the other, many of the girls I meet in schools do not know about the opportunities in these fields or why they should care. Yet these are exciting, creative, well-paid jobs. Globally, tech salaries are more than two-thirds higher than the average. That is a message we must keep shouting about, as it shows girls that people like them work in these worlds because there are opportunities there. To flip Marian Edelman’s words: if you can see it, you can be it.

As my noble friend Lady Smith made clear, we have a long way to go, but we are making progress. Women are progressing in the percentage of STEM sectors that we encourage them to be in. This point was reinforced by the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo. There have been 35% more STEM A-level entries by women and girls since 2010; there are STEM ambassadors in 80% of state schools, 48% of whom are women; and women apprenticeship starts have increased by 7.5% on the previous year. So we are making progress, but of course we have further to go. As my noble friend Lady Bousted pointed out, and I share her hope, the curriculum review will address the unacceptable gender gap in, for example, girls taking GCSE computer science. So I hope that we will address those issues fairly quickly.

Of course, I also take the point made by my noble friend Lady Wilcox, that it is not just about science and technology; we also need the insights and judgments that a grounding in the arts and humanities can bring. I absolutely agree that STEM needs to be redefined as STEAM.

So many noble Lords raised the issue about diversity and the challenges that we face. The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said that she was angry that we need to shout about this issue again, and I absolutely understand why she feels that why. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, echoed those concerns in her call to resist, in terms of the attacks on women’s rights across the pond. It is such a short-sighted approach in so many ways. As my noble friend Lord Parekh and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones—he is my noble friend—made clear, that attitude means that we are missing out on a distinctive pool of talent, which we could all use and utilise. It is a blind policy in many ways.

I have to make it absolutely clear that in the UK, increasing diversity across all sectors, including science and tech, continues to be a priority for this Government. It is a priority reflected in legislation and which we will continue to uphold. Firms with over 250 employees have had to report on their gender pay gap every year since 2017. As part of the equality Bill being introduced later this year, they will have to report on pay gaps for ethnicity and disability too. Under the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill, companies will also have to publish equality action plans to show what they are doing to improve gender equality. So I can assure my noble friends Lady O’Grady and Lord Davies that the Government are committed to delivering on diversity and on equal pay for work of equal value, as well as to giving women the tools to challenge any secrecy where that occurs. Family-friendly policies are, of course, at the heart of our Employment Rights Bill. We will continue to hold companies in every sector up to a high standard here, and support them as they reap the rewards that we know that greater diversity will bring.

Diversity is vital in its own right, but—as the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, and other noble Lords have pointed out—women also have to be at the table when technology is designed, or we risk inbuilt biases and distorted algorithms. Those are issues that the AI Security Institute and the implementation of the Online Safety Act are determined to address. The noble Baroness illustrated why that is such a challenge and so important to us.

My noble friend Lady Rafferty also made the important point that bias and stereotypes continue to blight recruitment and enhancement in the nursing profession. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Donaghy for highlighting the need to improve women’s health, which is important in its own right, of course, but it also ensures that women are fit, healthy and able to participate fully in the workforce. I reassure her that we are overhauling our policies on women’s healthcare. For example, we are committing an extra £57 million to the Start for Life services for new and expectant mothers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raised the important issue of the challenge of sexual and reproductive health. She is right that technology and AI applications can play a hugely important role in transforming women’s health in those areas. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Morgan for highlighting the huge contribution that medical research charities play in improving health outcomes, particularly those for and mainly run by women. Those will continue to be important priorities for this Government.

When we think about women’s participation in this world, we must look at two angles. First, we must look at women as shapers of science and technology, making discoveries, founding start-ups and working in industry—a point made by many noble Lords. We must also look at women as users of technology, because there are plenty of issues that disproportionately affect women here. Women around the world are more likely to be excluded from digital life. Where they are included, the online world can be weaponised by abusers to make women and girls feel unsafe. If women do not feel safe online, or do not have the devices, connections or skills to get there in the first place, they are fundamentally left out of the conversation.

My noble friend Lady Hazarika reminded us that women are often the losers as sexual abuse and misogyny become rife on online sites. I can assure her that we are moving at pace to implement the Online Safety Act, but also to identify what more needs to be done. Like her, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, for her groundbreaking report on pornography, which we will now take steps to implement. I remind the House that we are committed to halving violence against women and girls in a decade and moving at pace to achieve that ambition.

I am also very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey—I would say “my noble friend”—whose very moving testimony to the 95 women and four children murdered by men pulled us all up short and was a very stark reminder of the challenges we still face in tackling violence against women. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Goudie for reminding us of the important role women play globally as peacekeepers and helping to rebuild shattered communities. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for raising the continued global challenge of women’s participation in education and STEM initiatives.

My noble friend Lord McConnell quite rightly raised concerns about women’s rights going into reverse globally. These are challenging times. However, I remind noble Lords that, for example, we are funding UNICEF’s Girls’ Education and Skills Partnership, the Strengthening Higher Education for Female Empowerment programme and the AI for Development Diversity programme in the global South: so a number of these initiatives are continuing.

It has been a privilege to hear from so many in this House today, including many who are themselves role models for women and girls in science and technology. We must continue to give women and girls the tools and skills to make sure that they are not locked out of the digital world. We must continue to make sure that there is a world where they feel safe and we must continue to give women in the UK and around the world more paths to found their own firms, to get into research labs and to reach senior levels in businesses, because we cannot move forward when half the world is held back. Societal progress and growth depend on all of this.

So, I am grateful to noble Lords for all the contributions that have been made this afternoon. I am sorry if I have not managed to pick up every point, but noble Lords will have seen that I have been scribbling madly. All points were extremely well made and I think we have had an excellent debate today. I thank all noble Lords for that.

Motion agreed.