International Women’s Day

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, as always it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, whom I knew when she was just dancing, all those years ago when I was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. What a wonderful person she has now become in areas other than the ballet.

This is a splendid debate in which many of us enjoy participating as year follows year. Like the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, I will begin with the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. At the time I was in the Cabinet: I think I was the ninth woman in a British Cabinet. My noble friend Lady Chalker went to Beijing as our representative. I worked closely with her; she had been the Secretary of State for International Development. We talked hugely about health, education and literacy, and their importance not only in the UK but around the world. It was of course the first UN event at which intergovernmental organisations and activists agreed a comprehensive plan to strive towards global gender equality. The Beijing Declaration was widely recognised as a substantive, pioneering, progressive plan for advancing women’s rights, covering 12 key areas, including women in power and decision-making, women and the economy and violence against women.

How far we have come in 25 years. In 1995, women held fewer than 10% of the seats in the House of Commons. Now—after a record 220 were elected in the last general election—women hold 34% of the seats. Let me pay a wholesome tribute to my noble friend Lady Jenkin, who has been a force in this area. I told her that she should become a Member of Parliament in her own right. She would not take my advice, but she has been a force-multiplier by encouraging so many others to come forward.

Internationally, the proportion of female parliamentarians has risen from 11% to 24% or 25%. In 1995, seven UN member states still denied women equal voting rights. Since Saudi Arabia changed its electoral rules in 2015, gendered voting has ended in all countries. In his magnificent maiden speech, my noble friend Lord Ranger reminded us of parts of the world where there is still a great deal of disparity and all is not fine. If one message came forth from the Beijing conference, it was that human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.

Now we have moved forward not only to rights but to a sense of empowerment and fulfilment for women. In 1995, there had never been a female chair or chief executive of a FTSE 100 company. Now women hold 32.4% of FTSE 100 board roles, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, was saying, according to the latest Hampton-Alexander Review. This is extraordinary. In 2000, I became a board member of AkzoNobel and every board meeting started with, “Gentlemen and Lady”, because women were an endangered species. There has been a transformation in opportunities for women.

With many challenges remaining, it is essential that we work to close the many other aspects of the gender gap. The noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Gale, talked about some of the disadvantaged women—carers and volunteers and those on very low incomes. It is so easy in this debate to move between talking about elite FTSE 100 chief executive board members and then remember the work that so many women in society do with few rights, little remuneration and often far too little credit. I want to get that balance right.

While female parliamentary representation has more than doubled since 1995, three countries still have no women in their unicameral or lower chamber and 26 have fewer than 10%, including Japan, Qatar and our fellow Commonwealth realm of Belize. There are also regional discrepancies, with the Americas and Europe above 30% and MENA and the Pacific below 20%. There are other areas of the gender gap, many of which have been mentioned, including education, the pay gap, reproductive and health rights, sexual harassment, maternal health, gender-based violence, child marriage and the danger of populist movements actually undermining the progress that has been developed in promoting female rights. The Institute of Development Studies has recently written about that.

I want to reinforce the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, about the huge success of the 2011 review of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, followed by the Hampton-Alexander Review. I pay great credit to Denise Wilson, who I am pleased to tell noble Lords is a graduate of the University of Hull—about which more in a moment. She is the chief executive of this great programme, working closely with Cranfield University which, each year, identifies the number of boards with one woman or no women so that a massive programme of naming and shaming can develop. A vast amount of research has been done. McKinsey and all the professional services firms, including Lloyds Bank and a great number of companies, have given serious evidence. Unlike other countries that we sometimes compare ourselves with, the programme now consists of 350 companies, with about 23,000 people are under consideration. As we know, there has been massive progress on the non-executive side, but we are still slower on the executive development of women. This is all about role models, unconscious prejudice, childcare and expectations. We have the toolbox, but we now have to develop the people.

McKinsey described the effect of people leaving during their early corporate careers as the “broken rung” of the corporate ladder. Women are the majority of graduates and account for 48% of entry-level hires, but only 38% of first-level managers. I am sure that they should all become data scientists and tech experts, as we have been rightly reminded.

Leaping on to higher education, when I became Chancellor of the University of Hull in 2006, only 12% of vice-chancellors were women. This is very interesting. It is often because they do not peacock enough. Men talk about their work all the time, but women diligently slave through. All credit to the Athena SWAN programme. I would appreciate the Minister telling us what more is being done to develop and modernise it. We appointed our first female vice-chancellor, Professor Susan Lea, in 2017. By 2019, just under 30% of vice-chancellors are women.

My last small comment is that there is a danger of us regarding the feminist debate in terms of elitism and the success of women with a certain interest and background. We should have regard to intersectional feminism—the overplay of race, religion, orientation and social class—to be sure that we are not developing a form of feminism that is somewhat self-serving. We need to make sure that we are looking after the interests of women and girls everywhere, including those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.