International Women’s Day

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow that wonderful maiden speech by my noble friend Lady Bousted. We have all been given a taste of her fierce intellect and education policy expertise, which will no doubt enrich this House.

As we have heard, my noble friend comes from a big family. In fact, if she had wanted to, she had enough siblings to form her own netball team and have a sub on the bench. I suspect that is one reason why she grew up to become a warrior for women and girls’ equality, and for dignity for all working people. My noble friend championed the TUC’s Unionlearn initiative, along with being an outstanding co-leader of the National Education Union. When she was TUC president, she also took responsibility for chairing the TUC General Council. As noble Lords can imagine, keeping order in a room full of union leaders, each with our own strongly held views, is no easy task—but it is perhaps excellent training for chairing a House of Lords committee in the future.

International Women’s Day originates in the struggles of working-class women and their unions. In my personal experience, not only is my noble friend Lady Bousted on the side of women but she will speak up and get stuck in, and she does so with intelligence, wit and real sisterly kindness.

Today’s trade union movement has incredible talent and expertise within its ranks: educators, engineers, coders, climate scientists and a growing number of members in new technologies and the gaming industry. Meanwhile, we have seen an extraordinary shift in the organisation of capital, with technology companies dominating the league table of the wealthiest corporations in the world. As well as wealth, big tech has enormous power to shape not only our material lives but our emotions, behaviour and politics. When Elon Musk provides a megaphone for alleged rapist and people trafficker Andrew Tate and known far-right agitator Stephen Lennon—aka Tommy Robinson—we all have an interest in how this industry is run and regulated. Let us be clear: in this country we absolutely support freedom of speech, but we draw the line at hate and incitement to violence.

I have always believed that technology has the potential to be a liberating force that can transform society. Think about the difference it would make if the estimated multibillion-dollar productivity gains were shared fairly in the form of decent universal childcare, shorter working hours or higher pensions. Imagine if the priority for developing work-based technologies was eliminating boring and dangerous tasks, and making every job safe, skilled and satisfying.

Women’s equality is not just right in principle; it matters because it is about who gets to decide on tech design, rules and priorities, and in turn how that impacts on all our daily lives. For example, one reason why we have seen race and sex discrimination baked into facial recognition technology is the very unrepresentative group who designed it. The tech bros would benefit from having more tech sisters.

Too often, technologies are designed to make working lives harder: tracking and monitoring staff oppressively, hiring and firing without a human review, and casualising employment contracts. Women, and black and ethnic-minority workers, are at the sharp end of these high-exploitation technologies in anti-union companies such as Amazon. We do not just need to change faces in the industry; we need to change systems of power.

According to a recent survey of its members working in tech, the professional trade union Prospect found that over 60% agreed that their employer’s pay system is opaque and likely unfair. Is the Minister confident that Labour’s Employment Rights Bill will tackle pay secrecy once and for all, so that women tech workers—in fact, all women workers—can win equal pay for work of equal value? When purchasing technology services, will the Government use their procurement power to lever up equality standards so that more tech apprenticeships go to young women, and so that rights to fair treatment and a union voice at work are enforced?