Women: Equality and Advancement

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on the subject of this debate and indeed on her speech. I followed with interest the discussions and debates that took place earlier this year at the Commission on the Status of Women. I am impressed indeed by its strong outcome. I would like to congratulate the noble Baroness as a delegate to it.

I suspect and imagine that there were some serious and frank discussions that took place at the time. Indeed, I have heard some accounts from the NGOs that were present. The document that resulted, for example, makes specific references to uphold women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights; there was an agreement to eliminate harmful practices, including child marriage and female genital mutilation, which, significantly, would in future not be referred to as “cutting”. There were also explicit references made to a woman’s right to access abortion services and for the development of sex education programmes for young women. And there was strong language around violence against women and girls. The document called for the elimination and prevention of violence and for the prosecution of perpetrators.

The Vatican was present at this convention and would certainly have much preferred that our fight against HIV/AIDS was done on the basis of abstention and not the use of condoms, but I am happy to say that its view did not prevail. The document also called on Governments to address discriminatory social practices, laws and beliefs that undermine gender equality. Efforts to weaken calls for increased funding were successfully resisted.

Françoise Girard, president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, said:

“By committing and investing in efforts to promote gender equality, governments can unleash the power of half the world’s population to build a more peaceful, just, and sustainable planet”.

She went on to say:

“Agreement to a standalone goal on gender equality was not a foregone conclusion here, given the small, but very vocal conservative opposition to women’s rights. It’s a major step forward to have the commission agree to it”.

Shannon Kowalski, director of advocacy and policy, added:

“The commitments made by governments at the UN are an important victory for women and girls. We have achieved what we came to do, against great odds and the determined attempts by the Holy See and a few conservative countries to once again turn back the clock on women’s rights”.

We should be proud as a country that this Government—and indeed my own Government—have been leading the world in the fight against FGM and violence against women. I would like to congratulate the Government on the two summits that have taken place in the last month or so—today’s and the one about violence in conflict. Both of those are very, very important.

I think that it is a great shame, but expected, that any mention of sexual orientation was removed from the final text of these considerations, as was an acknowledgement of the diversity of families. I hope that the UK Government will continue to push for these issues at the CSW in future.

The Commission affirmed that gender equality, the empowerment of women, their enjoyment of their human rights and the eradication of poverty are essential to economic and social development, and reiterated the importance of women in the progress to deliver the millennium development goals, as the noble Baroness and other noble Lords said in this debate.

I want to turn to our domestic performance, because the subject of this debate is not just international policy but our national equality policies and what impact they have. What of the UK? What progress are we making and in which areas?

I looked at the Fawcett Society’s global gender gap report from last year. Unsurprisingly, as a privileged, developed western democracy and a rich country, we scored overall rather well: 18th out of 136 countries, although we have dropped from ninth in 2006. Where we fall down is in some of the gender gap indexes to do with matters such as economic participation, childcare and political empowerment. Those seem to be the areas which have to be addressed by the UK Government.

Out of the 136 countries, we rank 70th for the gap between men and women on the professional index. This reflects the lack of women in top jobs across the piece. We are 49th in terms of wages equality between men and women. On childcare, we are 90th. We know the reason for that and that the matters are linked—the level of women’s economic participation and the availability and cost of childcare in the UK. My honourable friend Lucy Powell today issued a notice about the cost of childcare as we head into the summer holidays. It is worth looking at that as an example of the situation that we face in the UK. The cost of holiday childcare has increased by 16% since 2010—that is an extra £100 per child for an ordinary family. The cost of private, voluntary and independent holiday provision has gone up four times faster than wages, and is greater than that in places such as London. It is a great shame that more help is not available for women and families with their childcare. Childcare help with tax credits has been reduced, with some families losing £1,500 per year of help.

I turn to political empowerment. We rank 59th for women in ministerial positions—that was last year, so the position may have changed slightly—and 54th for women in Parliament, 23% of our MPs being women. Sixteen per cent of those are Conservative women and 14% are Liberal Democrat women. Despite what the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, said, it is a fact that 13 out 85 policy tsars appointed since 2010 are women. Less than a third of those appointed to sit on departmental boards in Whitehall are women; fewer than one in five ambassadors appointed since 2010 are women; and only around a quarter of the Permanent Secretaries are women. When David Cameron reshuffled his Cabinet last week, he increased the number of women in it from three to five. In 2011, the number of women in the Cabinet was five, so there has been no improvement in real terms. If one includes the women who can attend Cabinet, the figure increases from five to eight.

It seems to me that the Prime Minister contributed to hitting two out of the three equality indicators all on his own last week with his reshuffle. I put it to noble Lords: what would you say to the boss who appointed a woman to do a job that a man had been doing but paid her significantly less and downgraded the seniority of the position? Let us think about it for a moment, and transfer that action to Marks & Spencer or to some of the companies that the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, mentioned, or indeed to a new head of the United Nations. It is less than impressive and a slight on someone who does not deserve it and has acted only with dignity and grace throughout, but it tells us something about the mindset of the Prime Minister and his Government.

I wonder what the Minister thinks the UK’s ratings will be in these matters next year. Will the burden of childcare costs be lifted? Will the Government bring more pressure to bear on companies in relation to the lack of women at senior levels? Will they bring forward more transparency? Will we find more women Permanent Secretaries or ambassadors? And, although it is a bit late to do this, will the Conservative Party select more women in the safe seats? Indeed, will the Liberal Democrats do the same? Then we will be able to increase the number of women in our Parliament.