Women and Girls: Economic Well-being, Welfare, Safety and Opportunities

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lady Gale on providing us with the opportunity to have today’s debate, and on giving me the chance to make a brief contribution from the Opposition Back Benches. The part of the Motion to which I draw the House’s attention is the reference to “opportunities”. To get straight to the point, I want to talk about women and girls and their opportunities to study science. Perhaps I should refer to my entry in the register of interests as president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee.

I thank the Campaign for Science and Engineering, the House of Commons Library, and the Royal Society for providing far more statistics in this area than I could ever fit into the speech time available to me, but I want to refer to a few. The Higher Education Statistics Agency publishes data on student enrolment, and it shows that there are small increases in the proportion of women students in STEM subjects, but nothing dramatic. A Royal Society report in 2019 showed a 1% rise in the number of women fellows, from 9% in 2018; and 34% of researchers offered fellowship grants were women. The Royal Society also highlights that at the end of 2019 just 27% of the STEM workforce were women, although women in the workforce as a whole comprised 52%.

So there are still areas where progress needs to be made and where we may be going backwards. For example, take mathematics, a fundamental science that underpins all other areas. The latest figures produced by the Protect Pure Maths campaign, of which I am a supporter, show that the proportion of women enrolling in first degrees in maths actually fell from 39.3% to 37.7% in the space of seven years. This is not good news. The 1% of women enrolling in doctoral research in maths slipped from 29% to 28% over the same period—again not good news—and in the 2017-18 academic year 89% of maths professors were men while only 11% were female. In the chemical sciences, the retention and development of women into senior roles remains poor. The higher up the career ladder, the fewer the proportion of women. At professional level it even drops below that for physics; only 9% of chemistry professors are women, whereas the figure for physics is 10%.

There are many strategies that the science community could adopt to address the leaky pipeline. In particular we must do more to encourage women taking career breaks to keep in touch with their science, and to make it easier for them to return as soon as they want to, and not to positions clearly less senior than those they occupied before taking a maternity break, for example.

It is a well-known fact that female scientists frequently fail to get proper credit for their research. Rosalind Franklin—I agree that this example was 70 years ago—was the person whose X-ray crystallography made it possible for Watson and Crick to discover the double helix, for which they got the Nobel Prize. I am not saying that they did not deserve it, but she was not even referred to in their paper, which is a scandal. The problem remains. A new study published by Nature found that women were 13% less likely, on average, to be named as authors on scientific papers to which they had contributed. When it comes to the patents that emerged from the research, women were 58% less likely to be named as authors than men who spent a comparable time in the laboratory. In other words, at every level, women are less likely to get the credit, although they spent the same time at work as the men.

We must not forget that people can still suffer from a great deal of sexism. I remind the House of the experience of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, probably Britain’s most distinguished living astrophysicist. As the House will know, in 1967 she personally discovered pulsars, a most remarkable discovery, for which she did not get sufficient credit—she has now, but not then. She was left off the paper, other people got the Nobel Prize, and she has written in a recent book, The Sky is for Everyone, about her experience. Her supervisor at the time—the press was very interested in the discovery—was asked about the astrophysical significance of the discovery. What was Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell asked about? Her bust size, her hip size, and how many boyfriends she had had—you could not make it up; it is astonishing. I like to think things have changed since then, but there will be many people in this Chamber who are not so sure.

Thank heavens, we have more women now active in science who can inspire. Anyone who has listened to Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who has presented “The Sky at Night”, will know how inspirational they can be. My time is fast running out so, with the indulgence of the House, let me just get in a reference to some more women scientists. For example, the first Briton in space was not Tim Peake but Helen Sharman. Then there are the women scientists at Oxford who spearheaded the development of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Sarah Gilbert, who was recognised with a damehood for science in public health, and Catherine Green, who received an OBE for the same contribution. You may remember the moment at Wimbledon when the crowd discovered that Sarah Gilbert was in the royal box, all stood up and gave her a standing ovation, which she certainly deserved. I understand that Sarah is now being celebrated by the toymaker Mattel, which is making a Sarah Gilbert Barbie doll, one of six to honour women in STEM.

I must not test the patience of the House, but this week, the James Webb telescope produced the most fantastic, beautiful images of deep space. I am very pleased and heartened to tell the House that the BBC interviewed the following people about what those images mean: Sarah Kendrew from the European Space Agency, Jane Rigby from NASA, and Becky Smethurst from the University of Oxford. If only the media had been present at the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee meeting—I am coming to the end—last week when we had two brilliant young women who were chief executives of start-up companies.

In conclusion, my message is very straightforward: our country cannot afford to waste the talents of half the population. Science needs access to the full range of talent, and women and girls need science.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I remind noble Lords that five minutes is not an advisory speaking time for this debate; it is actually a limit. If we go over, the Minister will not have as much time to respond.