International Women’s Day

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]]

My Lords, if women are to flourish in society, it is essential that they should play a full part in politics. That is as true in our country as in the developing world. Here I pay tribute to—I still think of her as my noble friend—the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, who has worked tirelessly to get more women into Westminster. She has succeeded: the 2019 general election returned a record number of women, 220, to Parliament. However, that still amounts to only 34% of MPs and, sadly, some excellent women MPs decided to leave politics at that election. There is no mistaking that discrimination, both in Westminster and without, was one of the reasons.

Allegations of sexism within Parliament are being addressed, not least in the Valuing Everyone programme. Things have certainly improved since the first female MP to sit in the Chamber, Lady Astor, took her seat in 1919. Sir Winston Churchill is said to have described her arrival as being “as embarrassing as if she had burst into my bathroom when I had nothing with which to defend myself, not even a sponge”. Lady Astor retaliated that he was not handsome enough to have worries of that kind.

However, it is now much harder for women politicians to brush off some of the attacks to which they are regularly subjected. That is the result of technology, both a blessing and a curse. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, when an MP, was told that her days were numbered. Antoinette Sandbach, when an MP, faced such threats that the police advised her no longer to hold open surgeries in her constituency. These were only extreme examples of a common problem. Can the Minister assure me that more will be done to stop female politicians being subjected to such anonymous online threats? It is not impossible to do away with anonymity online; it just takes the will. I believe that doing so would encourage more women not just into politics but into public life generally.

The more women there are in politics, the more policies will take account of their needs—and the Covid pandemic has highlighted that they indeed have special needs. Others have pointed out that women have carried more of the burden of coping with childcare and home-schooling than have men. That generalisation does not give due credit to the many households where there is genuine sharing of care. My older son, for instance, is married to a hospital doctor. We are immensely proud of her hard work during the pandemic, but it was her working-from-home husband who had to become home teacher.

Nevertheless, there is overwhelming evidence that women around the world have shouldered most of the childcare during Covid. The recent TUC survey, for instance, showed that many women, unable to get furlough, have been forced to use their annual leave in order to cope. They now face the lengthy school holidays that lie ahead without any paid leave to take to look after their children. Germany have decreed an extra 10 weeks of paid leave for parents and 20 weeks for single parents. Italy has a similar scheme. I ask the Minister, how will the UK help working women through this impending crisis? Without extra help during the school holidays, many women may be forced to relinquish their jobs.