International Women’s Day

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Friday 8th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, with the example of her council and its excellent practice for abuse victims. It sounds an interesting project. I am a vice-president of the LGA, and I hope that that good practice will be disseminated throughout local government.

This year’s themes are investing in women and inspiring inclusion. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, for her introductory speech, but it seems to me that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey—I welcome her and her wonderful maiden speech—embodies those themes, particularly from her work as the first Victims’ Commissioner. I thank her for reading the names of the women who were murdered last year. It is a tough ask, but she is also right to say that men should not be bystanders; we need more men to speak out. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, spoke of the “tough love” of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. Sometimes we in the Lords need to hear that tough love, and I think we will find her contribution very welcome.

My noble friend Lady Northover—I am pleased to see that she is still in her place—reminded us that much of caring in our society is still done by women. In coalition, we introduced equal parental leave, but it has not worked, and I wonder why. Much of this debate has focused on a combination of data, lived experience and examples, some of which can be defined by organisations, but a lot of it is about the culture of our society.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Addington, who expanded on that when he talked about using sport as a mechanism to encourage support for some of the harder-to-reach young girls in our society. I must say, my daughter gave up rugby at 10; once it moved past touch-tackle, “No, thank you”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, spoke powerfully about the pressure on LGBT communities and the challenge faced by the community in Uganda. She was fairly delicate in her description of the new laws in Uganda. You can now be sentenced to death for “extreme homosexuality”, under a law passed last year. That is extraordinary. Are we making representations to the Ugandan Government to reconsider this?

My noble friend Lord Oates spoke movingly about his mother and her passion for the eradication of polio, perhaps helped by her purple hair. It is evident to me and our Benches that my noble friend has inherited from her his passion for the solution of clean water to reduce tropical diseases, including endemic parasites, which are so manageable with that investment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, gave us some wonderful examples of those in the past who stood for women’s suffrage and women, past and present, in the trade union movement. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, reminded us of the importance of women in the miners’ strike, holding their communities together as well as protesting.

The noble Baroness, Lady Moyo, reminded us that the number of FTSE 100 companies with women directors is still low, but finally beginning to rise. These Benches were pleased to ask those companies to note that record in their annual reports and accounts and therefore be held to account. She and the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, also talked about exclusion from financial products. They are right; remedying that is absolutely fundamental. That was built on by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, when he reminded us of the poverty of the pensions gap, principally because of women’s roles in our society as carers. Here we come back to culture and how we can change things.

I move on to international matters. Two or three noble Lords spoke about women in war. I am minded to remember my friend Kira Rudyk, who, as a senior MP in the Ukrainian Parliament, has spent the time since Russia invaded Ukraine travelling the world to talk about what is happening, as many other women MPs have. Kira was bombed out of her house just before Christmas. On Twitter, she just said that it was difficult—“I am hurt a bit but it’s not too bad”. I saw her about a week later; it transpired that she had 12 deep cuts from glass right the way down her back. She none the less continued with her international schedule because, for her, the war is the most important thing. She said to me, “Many more have died. I was lucky with those minor wounds”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, movingly read out the names of journalists and photographers who have died this last year. It is shocking to hear about stoning to death. That punishment for women has been going on for millennia. It should not be happening today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, outlined the importance of women modelling behaviour. She mentioned in particular the role of commissioners and others. That is vital because, until we have understood that that role is for us, it is sometimes hard to believe that it is possible.

The noble Baroness, Lady Amos, illustrated the health gap between men and women and the fact that women are unrepresented not just in clinical trials but in many other elements of the healthcare sector. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark spoke of the need for a new deal for carers. He is absolutely right. What plans are there to ensure that carers get the support they need? I link that back to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, about recognising carers in the pensions they get. They may get some credit when they are unable to work, but they need more than that.

I want to end on girls and women in STEM, building on the excellent speech made by the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate. I particularly want to thank Women into Science and Engineering—WISE—for its briefing and support. Just before I start on where we are now, I will highlight just a few of the trailblazers of the past. Ada Lovelace is known for being the daughter of Lord Byron, but her extraordinary abilities in mathematics meant that she was the first person to see that Charles Babbage’s analytical engine had applications way beyond calculation.

In 1890, Philippa Fawcett, the daughter of Millicent Fawcett and niece of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was the first woman ever to obtain the top score in the Cambridge mathematical Tripos, but, because she was a woman, she was not granted the title of Senior Wrangler. Indeed, her results were not read out at the same time, but she was described as “Above the Senior Wrangler”. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an outstanding astrophysicist, discovered the Crab Nebula, and Professor Dorothy Hodgkin is still the only woman from the UK to win a Nobel Prize in the sciences. That was in 1964. That is not a problem for the Nobel Prize committee; it speaks volumes to what is happening in science and engineering in our country today.

I knew Dr Anna Bidder, who founded Lucy Cavendish College, well. She was an outstanding zoologist. As with her predecessors, 100 years ago, Cambridge University refused to award her either her undergraduate degree or her PhD. She taught at Newnham College and the university’s zoology department all her working life. When Lucy Cavendish gained its royal charter in 1997, Anna, aged 94, said that this was a centenary of refusing to grant women degrees and 50 years since it decided to finally grant them—but it did not backdate them. She was finally awarded an honorary fellowship by the university that year. On the same day, 70 years late, she finally got her undergraduate and her PhD degree.

So, we follow on the shoulders of these important women. Professor Dame Athene Donald, who is the master of Churchill College, has written an excellent book on the current barriers called Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science. She talked about one of the Nobel Prize winners in Germany whose boss, when she told him she had just won a Nobel Prize, said, “Oh, we must have a party at the institute. I’m too busy to go and get the champagne. Would you do that?”

I raise this because statistics still show us that, despite the improvement in qualifications at school and university in STEM, that is not yet true for physics and the “really hard” sciences. At schools, A-level results at STEM are now at 40%, but physics and maths are still much lower. Even at primary school, Dame Athene Donald talks about gendering happening early on. When my daughter was at my local primary school, Cambridge University sent out maths students to work with the girls at junior level, and many of them were then inspired and loved maths when they got to secondary school.

This government have introduced T-levels. I ask the Minister: how are we going to encourage girls to do some of the more technical T-levels? While it is 50:50, the vast majority of courses that the girls do are to do with childcare.

We must not stereotype. We often do, unfortunately. Athene Donald took issue with Katharine Birbalsingh, who said in 2022:

“Girls do not choose physics A-level because they dislike ‘hard maths’”.


Athene Donald said that it is not a case of campaigning for more girls to do physics; it is a case of making sure that they are not discouraged by remarks such as this, because the girls of today are our scientists and engineers of tomorrow, and our economy needs them.