International Women’s Day

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a privilege and pleasure to participate in this debate. As is almost customary—it happens year after year—the debate has an overwhelmingly large number of female speakers; at a rough count, they are at least 24 out of 33. It goes to show how women continue to fight for their share of equality and that men are perfectly happy to allow them to do so.

I will ask three questions. First, what do we want to discuss in the name of STEM subjects? Secondly, why are we worried about fewer women going into STEM subjects, and why should it be a matter of concern to us, except because of some notion of abstract justice? Thirdly, assuming that it is a matter of concern to us, can we do something about it? Is it not a natural phenomenon, as the former president of Harvard University said, which got him into trouble?

I will address these three questions, in that order, very quickly. It is very well known that 30% of girls in higher education take STEM subjects, as opposed to 75% who go on to do study health, education and others. It is obvious. We need to be careful not to overgeneralise or homogenise girls. If you look at STEM subjects, girls tend to take more interest in algebra and chemistry than in physics and higher mathematics. There is a trend. That trend is global, it is not limited to one particular country. It appears in different forms. In some subjects it is more pronounced than in others. There is a global trend of girls not going for STEM subjects.

That leads me to my second question. If so, why should we worry about it? I can imagine lots of areas that girls do not go into. We do not regard that as a matter of serious concern. Why is this a matter of serious concern? First of all, there is a pool of talent which is being wasted, and, secondly, a pool of distinctive talent—not just intelligence and imagination, but imagination tuned in in a particular way, and seeing problems in a certain way. This is what women bring to the study of the natural sciences. If they are studying physics—or biology, or whatever—they bring to the subject a certain perception of what human needs are.

One example is what kind of car one should have. I read an article—I shall not rehearse it here—about car design. It did not occur to men to design a seat that would allow women to relax. It would simply not occur to men, not because they do not want to but because it is not a natural part of their daily experience. Whereas, when you put women in the driving seat and they design things, they begin to explore these requirements. So in that sense it is not only that we are wasting a pool of talent, we are wasting a pool of distinctive talent and imagination, which is not otherwise available.

If that is so, the next question is, “Can we do something about it?”. As I said earlier, some people seem to think that if a phenomenon has gone on for a long time, there must be a natural basis—a basis in human nature or some other form of nature—and that it cannot just be spontaneous. I tend to disagree. It is not a natural but a cultural phenomenon. It is not that girls accidentally choose not to go for STEM subjects. There is a cultural pressure—but a cultural pressure of what kind? That requires an elaborate analysis. There is a cultural pressure of two kinds: pressure from outside society, which channels their expectations, hopes and ambitions in a certain direction, and pressure from within those girls, who have internalised those beliefs and who, therefore, tend to move in that direction.

So you have a situation where the pervasive culture says that there are difficult subjects—such as physics or higher mathematics—and these will be too strenuous for girls to get in to and we should give them some rest. It was these expectations—shaped by our culture over a period of centuries—that shaped these girls’ minds and got them to move in a certain direction. If you want to tackle them, we can certainly tackle them with more scholarships and more this or more that. But the greater concentration has to be on undermining this pervasive culture.

How do you counter a culture which shapes expectations and gets women not to go in certain directions? It is a long story but, to undermine that culture, there are several factors we need to take into account. When girls are growing up, from the age of two or three—or whatever—do they associate themselves with science and higher mathematics, or is it seen simply as a male phenomenon? Similarly, if you have mentorships and scholarships, more and more girls can be attracted to them. In short, can one create an environment in which a space is carved out where girls can flourish?