International Women’s Day

Baroness Brady Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brady (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a privilege to once again address this House on the subject of International Women’s Day and celebrate the progress that we continue to make on our long march to empowerment and equality.

This year has seen the emergence into the public consciousness of some remarkable female role models for us all to look up to. Take, for example—as so eloquently put by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech—Professor Sarah Gilbert, the leading vaccinologist from Oxford University who helped to develop the vaccine that is fast-tracking the UK out of lockdown. I reflected that, while some of us were working out how to sneak into pubs in our misspent youth, Professor Gilbert was at home studying her chemistry books, and we must all be thankful that she was.

In my own industry of sport, this year’s Super Bowl headlines may have been about Tom Brady’s record seventh triumph, but the story that caught my eye was about Sarah Thomas, the first woman to officiate at a Super Bowl. This comes at a time when rewards for participants in sport are finally becoming more equal. A recent BBC study found that, of 37 sports offering prize money, only three did not offer comparable amounts to men and women in major tournaments—progress indeed, but we all need to do more.

In public service, we now have the first ever female director-general of the World Trade Organization, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, alongside Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, and Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission President. But what about in business, the heartbeat of our political economy? On 1 March, Jane Fraser became the first female head of a major US bank, Citigroup, and Rosalind Brewer became the third black woman to run a Fortune 500 company, Walgreens Boots Alliance. These are all fantastic role models, and their success must be celebrated. Without their trail-blazing efforts, it would be much harder for other women to aspire and reach their potential.

However, these remarkable exemplars should not lead to any sense of complacency or the conclusion that the job is done. There is mounting evidence that this pandemic is setting back the cause of female economic empowerment. Half of women in the UK do not have sufficient childcare to enable them to work and 70% have had to work fewer hours, according to a recent survey of 20,000 women. Lean In and McKinsey’s recently released annual Women in the Workplace report showed that as many as 2 million women were either deprioritising their careers or exiting the workplace entirely as a result of the pandemic.

Even as we celebrate the ascent of these wonderful women to the highest echelons of public and commercial life, we must make sure that this pandemic does not render them the exception rather than the rule. We must use their success to inspire but also to change policy, culture and attitudes. Many of them are the first to do what they have done, but we must make sure that they are far from the last.