International Women’s Day
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts(1 day, 11 hours ago)
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Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, first, a warm welcome to the new Members, especially those making their maiden speeches today. I made mine in the International Women’s Day debate 15 years ago. I sometimes feel a little less optimistic about women’s and girls’ rights and freedoms than I felt then—but perhaps that is because I am 15 years older and possibly a little more cynical.
Those who were in the Chamber or following the debate we had earlier in the week on the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Bertin to the Crime and Policing Bill might think that we have had enough talk—and a graphic talk at that—about porn. The industrial scale of online pornography is an issue that has crept quietly, almost invisibly, into the lives of our children and young people, reshaping expectations, relationships and behaviour. The attitudes and behaviours of entire generations of young people have been scarred by the violent misogyny that defines today’s online pornography trade, which has—at least until now—been free to peddle violence against women for profit.
The consequences are all around us: from the normalised sexual harassment that UK Feminista and the NEU found is perpetrated against over a third of girls in schools, to the shocking crimes against women such as Gisèle Pelicot, and perpetrated by men such as Jeffrey Epstein and his friends. As Helen Rumbelow so powerfully exposed in her recent Times article:
“For Jeffrey Epstein porn videos were a training programme to be watched, used as script for his young victims, then added to in a life-porn loop”.
Porn is no longer a marginal adult product. It is a mainstream educator and the de facto sex education curriculum for millions of boys, and increasingly girls, before they have even reached adulthood. The age of first exposure to porn continues to fall. What was once hidden behind the counter of a newsagent is now available free, algorithmically promoted and almost always extreme. The material most readily accessed is not romantic or relational; it is aggressive. It frequently depicts coercion, degradation and violence against women, and it does so without consequence.
When boys learn about intimacy through content that conflates dominance with desire before they have experienced healthy relationships, it shapes their understanding of sex before it shapes their understanding of consent. When girls encounter it, it shapes what they believe is expected of them and they feel pressured to perform acts they neither want nor understand. No wonder increasing numbers are wanting to opt out of becoming women. When teachers say that playground language increasingly mirrors the scripts of pornography, we need to ask ourselves whether this is simply the cost of modernity or a failure of governance. The porn industry is among the least regulated digital industries in the world. Platforms profit from engagement, not well-being.
However, this week—fittingly, in this international women’s week—there is cause for hope that we have started to turn the tide against the pornification of society, and that this will be the week that Parliament finally stepped up to meaningfully confront the misogynistic violence perpetrated and fuelled by online pornography. The package of amendments brought forward by my noble friend Lady Bertin, and supported by the House, would respond to this evidence base of harm. According to child protection experts, viewing violent pornography is a key risk factor for men committing child sexual offences, with incest and step-incest genres found to be the most violent.
The comprehensive banning of porn that depicts incest and step-incest, and material that mimics child sexual abuse material, is essential to protecting girls and children. Some 88% of UK pornography users—that is a lot of people—say they are in favour of regulation to verify that all individuals shown in pornography are consenting adults. Women are the targets of vile physical and verbal aggression in 94% of scenes in porn content, and most of the time, the aggressors are men.
Parity between the online and offline law to ban abusive, violent and degrading content is essential to protect all women from the abusive violence that is then re-enacted in bedrooms, schools, online spaces and in the streets. If noble Lords do not know what I am talking about, they should google it, watch, and then join the campaign. My noble friend Lady Bertin’s amendments are by no means the end of what we in this Parliament need to grapple with, but they are a very good start.
NHS: Single-sex Spaces for Staff
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, until the blink of an eye ago, it would have been considered extraordinary to have a debate about whether staff changing rooms in the NHS should be mixed-sex spaces. Many have been unaware of the challenges, including legal challenges, currently taking place in our health system regarding staff single-sex spaces; we are talking about staff with regard to the Supreme Court case. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot for bringing this debate forward.
As others have said, the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 mandate employers to provide separate facilities for men and women, including changing rooms, for reasons of propriety. These rules and the Equality Act have been misinterpreted by the NHS, particularly affecting female employees, who make up approximately 76% of the NHS staff in England. The situation has been confused by the NHS Confederation guidance, which says:
“In all types of workplaces, trans and non-binary people should be supported to use the bathrooms they feel most comfortable using. At no time is it appropriate to force staff to use the toilet associated with their assigned sex at birth against their will”.
Incidentally—as language matters—sex is not assigned at birth. It is observed or registered. It is not a choice.
The guidance also tells management, senior healthcare leaders and HR directors to take a “zero-tolerance attitude” to transphobia. It is this approach which has led to NHS staff facing workplace discipline for asserting their basic rights to privacy and dignity, as well as to single-sex facilities, at work. Although in Scotland, the case of Sandie Peggy, as mentioned before, is particularly egregious: a nurse with a 30-year unblemished record was suspended by NHS Fife after complaining about having to share a changing room with a trans woman. The case continues but, with a budget black hole of £30 million and a cost to the tribunal that must run into hundreds of thousands of pounds, surely NHS Fife should now accept that NHS staff such as Nurse Peggy deserve privacy, dignity and safety, which the original regulations and the Supreme Court judgment have now clarified as it applies to workplaces.
In Darlington, nurses were forced to share the women’s changing room with a male nurse who identifies as a woman. How astonishing it was to hear that, when they raised their concerns, the Darlington nurses were told to “be educated” and to “broaden their mindset”. This focus has meant that sexual harassment in the workplace has been ignored. Managers are no longer offered training on the issues of abuse, which women have traditionally experienced in the workplace. Female staff are leaving as a result, as their concerns, including around bullying and intimidation, are no longer taken seriously.
The current guidance encourages NHS employers to uphold policies that create an intimidating, hostile and difficult environment for staff who do not wish to share single-sex spaces with members of the opposite sex. I ask the Minister to join with Sex Matters, which has written to the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, in urging it that its current guidance is unlawful and should be withdrawn as a matter of urgency.