Women: Developing Countries

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Loomba on bringing this topic before the House. I am sad that so few people are here, because from my point of view this is a far more important subject than how many injuries there will be at Wimbledon today.

While I was ruminating early this morning about how I would begin my speech, I decided to glance at my e-mails first. You know how it is: you cannot quite get down to composing, so you think: “I will do my e-mails first”. There was a message from a Kevin Rudd. Did other noble Lords receive one? It was quite extraordinary. I do not know why I was singled out for this honour, and it caught my eye. I know some Australian MPs, so that is probably the reason. After pledging to stop the “negative personal politics” of recent years, he said:

“I want to acknowledge the achievements of my predecessor, Julia Gillard. She is a woman of extraordinary intelligence, of great strength and energy. She has achieved much under the difficult circumstances of minority government”.

I have it here. If noble Lords would like a copy, I can send it to them. Yes, it was the new Prime Minister of Australia trying to wipe out a year of insults and abuse that have been hurled at a woman Prime Minister by Members of Parliament in a developed country—one of our own. What example is that to male politicians all over the world, particularly in developing countries: that it is okay to be macho, abusive and insulting to women? Australia is not alone. I still could not settle and found another e-mail, asking me to support an Early Day Motion, which of course I cannot, to call yet again for the banning of topless girls on page 3 of the Sun.

We are ashamed of the violence against women in this country and the way in which so many are portrayed as sex objects. We are appalled by the number of girls who will be taken abroad during the summer holidays to undergo female genital mutilation, and by the number of women who are still silent victims of domestic violence and rape, but all these things have their roots in the general attitude to women that still persists in this and other countries, despite the huge progress that we have made.

Female Members of this House have had free healthcare and every educational opportunity, although I never learnt to make chicken soup. However, apart from that, I had lots of opportunities. I hope that most of us have used those gifts to be useful to our communities and country. In this place, at least, the vast majority of us are free from sexual harassment and denigration, even though we are sorely underrepresented. However, we must always use every opportunity to remind men in this country and abroad that having healthy women and girls will ensure social and economic development for families, communities and, ultimately, whole countries. In other words, it will make them richer and their wallets will be fatter. We must convince them of this—the figures are there. Having women help build strong economies can happen only if they receive maternal healthcare, for all the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, and are able to control their fertility and destiny.

Countries in the Middle East and north Africa in particular need reminding of this as the so-called Arab spring evolves. Two decades of advances in women’s health and reproductive rights are coming under threat in some areas by conservative religious forces. This was highlighted this week at a UNFPA conference in Cairo, where the executive director Babatunde—I am sorry, I will use his Christian name, as he knows that I cannot pronounce his surname—called for better access to healthcare, particularly family planning, as a way to resolve region-wide economic problems.

I also need to remind the House that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, pointed out, world population is growing rapidly, causing more and more shortages of food, water and infrastructure, which makes little sense when 222 million women in the world want family planning but cannot access it. I was a family planning doctor and ran women’s health services in a health authority before entering Parliament. I know that it is a funny old title and perhaps not as prestigious as being a brain surgeon. My children used to call me “bare foot doc”. My husband, being a man, was, of course, “high tech doc”. However, I was passionate about my craft and had plenty of work to do among many sorts and conditions of women from many different ethnic groups. I felt then, as I feel now, that the single most important thing we can offer women is control over their fertility.

I am no fan of the coalition Government, as I think most people know. However, like the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, I am a fan of their superb international development policy. Their explicit commitment to women, and support for family planning in particular, is such that I dream about it at night. The apotheosis has happened at last. I applaud the Gates foundation and the UNFPA for the FP summit held in Westminster last year, which was followed up by the pre-G8 conference that the all-party group and the European parliamentary forum hosted here in Westminster. We were pleased to see that the leaders’ communiqué from the G8 referred, I think for the first time ever, to maternal health—Hoorah! We are getting places, even if they could not bring themselves to utter the words “family planning”, but we will forgive them that.

I have one more body to congratulate, which again was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin. One of the goals of the panel looking at the post-2015 MDG agenda makes explicit reference to maternal health and universal sexual and reproductive rights. This really is good news and it has come from this Government, I am very happy to say. However, there is a “but”. I hope that the Minister can update us on whether the pledges made at last year’s conference funded by the Gates foundation and UNFPA have been realised and what progress has been made in getting family planning to the millions of women who need it.

There is one aspect of women’s health that is probably the most disturbing of all, and that is the plight of women in conflict. They are driven from their homes, starved and raped and often have no access to healthcare even though they are entitled to it, as we heard from my noble friend Lady Hamwee. If they become pregnant as a result of rape in conflict, there is still confusion about whether abortion services are accessible and whether access is sometimes prevented because of pooled funding, including funding from countries such as the USA, which will not allow abortion services in its aid agenda. We still need to push on this and to keep on mentioning it, as it is still not clear whether those services are there.

This month, the Select Committee on International Development published a report on ending violence against women. It highlights, yet again, the way in which any nation treats its women holds the key to its economic and social development. I quote the chairman, my right honourable friend Sir Malcolm Bruce, who said:

“When you treat women as chattels—when you mutilate them, abuse them, force them to marry early, lock them out of school or stop them entering the work force—you fail to function as a society”.

He put it as bluntly as that. The All-Party Group on Population Development has produced a brilliant report called, A Childhood Lost, on early marriage, and I urge noble Lords to read it. Despite the best efforts of the UK Government in the international community, that remains the lot of millions of our sisters around the world and we must never forget them.