International Women’s Day

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I follow on from my noble friend Lady Gale’s greetings from Wales and say to noble Lords: Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus i chi gyd. I thank the Minister for introducing the debate, which is proving to be wide-ranging and excellent.

The women who took part in the first International Women’s Day demanded better conditions at work, the rights to vote and to hold office and to be equal partners with men. Those wonderful women would view today with a mixture of disappointment and satisfaction. There has, of course, been significant advancement of women’s legal rights and entitlements, as noble Lords have pointed out. A hundred years ago, only two countries allowed women to vote, but now women lead Governments on every continent and have roles and positions in professions from which they were previously excluded. Not so long ago, violence was seen as a private matter—a “domestic”, in the language of common usage. Now two-thirds of countries recognise and punish domestic violence, and the UN system now recognises sexual violence as a weapon of war, although clearly violence remains one of the most pervasive violations of women’s rights and one of the least prosecuted crimes.

Despite the advances, however, real equality is far from a reality for most of the 3.5 billion women who make up 50 per cent of the world’s population. Some 70 per cent of illiterate adults are women, a figure that has barely changed in 20 years. Fewer than 10 per cent of countries have female heads of state. Only 19 per cent of the world’s parliamentarians are women. Girls are far less likely to be in school, and more likely to drop out of school, than boys. Every 90 minutes a women dies in pregnancy or due to childbirth-related complications, nearly all preventable. Fewer than 3 per cent of signatories to peace agreements are women. Women are the primary carers and farmers, but much of their work is not valued by economists, pundits, popular culture or government leaders. Women’s rights are fundamental human rights, and the challenge is to understand that those human rights are global. That is the reality that must dominate our thinking, whether the issue is climate change, the transition to democracy in the Arab world or advancing peace, security and justice.

As many noble Lords have said, education is fundamental to all progress. When women are educated they improve their rights in all areas, including property rights, and are more free to work outside the home, to find decent work and to earn an independent income. As a result, the life chances of whole families, communities and countries can be improved. We should recognise, too, that meeting a woman’s need for health and reproductive health services increases her chances of finishing her education, breaking out of poverty and contributing directly to growth and sustained prosperity.

Helen Clark, the head of the UNDP, speaks regularly of the multiplier effect that investing in girls and women can have. That includes reductions in population growth and mortality, increases in school participation and achievement, raised levels of women’s activity and confidence in exercising their rights. Figures consistently show that mothers who have been educated are more likely to give birth in health facilities. The reality is that every child from a mother who can read is 50 per cent more likely to survive past the age of five if the mother is educated. On that basis, in sub-Saharan Africa 1.8 million children’s lives would be saved every year if their mothers had some secondary education. In addition, educated girls are more likely to resist early marriage, have fewer and healthier children and are less likely to resign themselves to unpaid work. Girls with post-primary education are five times more likely to be knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS than illiterate women.

How much further proof is needed that education is the key to advancing women’s rights? How much more evidence is needed to demonstrate that cultural, economic and social factors must never be accepted as any justification for denying women their basic rights? When we know the realities, there can be no excuse for not being active in all the campaigns calling for change. More than 30 million more girls than boys are out of school. One of the main reasons for that, especially in rural areas, is that school fees are being charged and it is often the case that priority is given to keeping boys in school. Removing school fees and providing financial incentives for girls to attend school have proved to be very effective.

Those ruinous realities are not going to change unless there is strong and sustained support for public education, not by using aid to expand choice and competition in education through vouchers and low-fee providers, solutions that are favoured by the UK Government. As the Gender and Development Network has pointed out in relation to such policies, empowering women and achieving gender equality is a difficult and slow process that entails shifting attitudes, beliefs, traditions, norms and practices, as well as bringing changes to long-standing institutions and systems such as the market, the state and the family.