International Women’s Day

Debate between Baroness Deech and Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Deech (CB) [V]]

My Lords, we have heard many complaints this week about the effect of the pandemic on women’s potential. The men who have made the relevant decisions are likely to have non-working wives and nannies, and have been oblivious to the reality. However, there is also much to celebrate. There has been a surprising coming to the fore of women’s skills in science and leadership, previously unseen but present. History may look back on this pandemic era as one that was a turning point for women.

If Captain Tom deserved a knighthood for his support for the NHS then Professor Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford vaccine pioneer, should be beatified. She took up her post in 1994, looking at the genetics of malaria, and became a professor at the Jenner Institute, researched flu, then Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and now Covid. Her team is two-thirds female and she, a mother of triplets, is now working to understand the barriers to promotion to senior levels that women face at Oxford. I also congratulate Dr Jenny Harries, and Kate Bingham, who was responsible for the great vaccine procurement.

Then there is Özlem Türeci, co-founder of BioNTech, which produced the Pfizer vaccine. Women make up 54% of her total workforce and 45% of top management. She is reported as thinking that being a gender-balanced team has been critical to developing the vaccine so quickly. The WHO chief scientist is a woman, Soumya Swaminathan, and the senior vice-president at Pfizer is Kathrin Jansen, who also worked on an HPV vaccine. Time does not permit me to mention many others who have taken the lead, despite the fact that Covid restrictions have impinged on women’s research and publication time. Happily in this past year more women have applied to take science, technology, engineering and maths courses. The number applying to higher education for health-related courses rose by 27%, mostly women, and it is the same for nursing.

Mostly, but not in every case, countries led by women have handled Covid better than those led by men: Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, PM Jakobsdóttir in Iceland, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen and Prime Minister Marin of Finland. Of course, this is not universal: we have the walking disaster of Ursula von der Leyen, and vaccine has been Mrs Merkel’s nemesis. However, the typical female approach of caution, care for the elderly, empathy, appreciation of schooling and risk aversion have certainly proved winners for some. Those women are in countries that expect women to be independent and to have careers, which has to be contrasted with the default position in this country, especially in family law, that once a woman has found a partner she is exempt for ever more from supporting herself.

In the future we need to highlight how well women scientists have done and that the career is compatible with family life. We need to concentrate on how diseases may affect women differently from men, a topic explored in Criado Perez’s book Invisible Women. We need affordable—ideally free—childcare to be at the top of the list. We must give women free rein, which historically they have been given only when there is a war and they are needed or can work at home. Covid is a war and women have won it.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, has withdrawn, so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly.