International Women’s Day

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, and I thank the Minister for her comprehensive introduction to this important issue. I am very much looking forward to hearing the maiden speeches today.

While the participation of young women in certain A-level STEM subjects is increasing steadily, physics and computer sciences remain slow compared with biology, chemistry and maths. Biology and maths, by the way, are the second and third top choices for females at A-level. Some 25% of candidates in physics are female, which is a considerable improvement. Unfortunately, for computer science it remains low, at only 15%. The expressive arts are still the top female choices for A-levels. I wonder whether perhaps our education system is at fault—it is too easy when choosing A-levels to abandon the sciences and go for either arts or sciences.

I start by celebrating three extraordinary women I have had the privilege of knowing, who have made their mark over the last 100 years and were extraordinary leaders of women in STEM in their day, because we need to understand how the world has changed.

Dr Anna Bidder graduated from Cambridge in 1926 with a degree in zoology. She could not receive that degree or her PhD in 1934 from Cambridge University because she was a woman. Only after 1948 did Cambridge permit women to receive the degrees that they had qualified for. Despite that, Anna Bidder secured senior research and teaching roles from the moment she got her PhD and for the rest of her academic life, at Newnham College and the Department of Zoology, where she was teaching young men who got their degrees. Even more shockingly, it was not until 1998 that she and other female alumni from before 1948 were, believe it or not, finally allowed to receive the degrees that they had been awarded. By then, she had founded and been the first president of a college for mature women students in Cambridge, Lucy Cavendish College, which thrives today.

Dr Lucy Slater was a mathematician who worked on hypergeometric functions and was one of the very few women present at the birth of computing in the UK. Her stories, over cups of tea, about the size and slowness of EDSAC astonished my children when they were at school. She graduated in 1944, and, as a post-grad in the 1950s, developed the precursor of modern computer operating systems, later working on computer programmes for econometrics. Lucy, a friend and neighbour, was an invisible giant on whose shoulders many successive women have stood.

However, the places of excellence were sometimes not even open to women to start with. Despite exceptional female scientists applying in 1900 to join the Royal Society, it took the extraordinarily named Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 for it to become illegal not to consider women in STEM as members of the Royal Society. It was that same Act that enabled women to get their degrees—Cambridge University was not the only university that was a little slow to catch on. I say this as an alumnus of Cambridge University and a former bursar of Lucy Cavendish College, and I really support what Cambridge University does for women these days. It was not until 1943 that the Royal Society promoted two women, Kathleen Lonsdale and Marjory Stephenson, to be elected. Now, over 200 women have been elected as fellows, and the numbers are rising fast.

Dame Athene Donald, a fellow of the Royal Society, is a brilliant physicist and a champion for the future of girls and women in STEM. She said:

“As a young researcher I was judged on my science, but when I became a potential player in organisational strategy, that’s when I really noticed it”.


That is how hard it was for women to succeed a mere couple of decades ago. What has she done to change it? I really recommend her latest book, Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science. It does what it says on the front of the book; it really explains the problem. She tells of her granddaughter’s description of the construction corner at primary school: “Oh, we have a construction corner, but the boys play there”. Athene has determined to change that. She roots this in our cultural assumptions from birth, the toys we give to our babies and small children, and what happens to children at nursery and even at primary school.

Even worse, I am afraid that there is still a perception that some parts of STEM are too hard for girls. Katharine Birbalsingh, the head teacher at the Michaela Community School, said two years ago:

“Just from my own knowledge of these things, physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy … There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think that they would rather not do”.


She was criticised for saying that at the time; there may be some truth in what she said, but the evidence shows that it is wrong. The Institute of Physics said that the overall proportion of women studying physics at university has increased from 21% to 25% over the decade to 2021. Over the same period, the number of women professors in physics has more than doubled, from 55 to 140. To show that this is not just chance, we see that women academic staff members in physics increased by 52% and now make up 20% of academic contracts. Change is on the move. The Institute of Physics’s Project Juno provides grants to increase the representation of women among physics and astronomy undergraduates.

We need to reach girls in primary school too. I was lucky—my children went to primary school in Cambridge and, when my daughter was in the junior age group, every single class had female maths undergraduates coming to help at maths lessons. As a result, my daughter, a natural historian, went on to take chemistry and maths as part of her IB, and she uses both every day in her job.

I want to end on a practical, positive and brave note. The Mines Advisory Group, or MAG, highlights that women play a leading but overlooked role in tackling conflict and building peace. MAG has trained women—50% of them in Ukraine—and, in Angola, has the only all-women armed violence reduction team. As de-miners, they are trained in technology in one of the most dangerous roles on earth. Their skills also build relationships with farmers and local communities. De-mining means, of course, that farmers can sow crops once more. That is one of the main problems in Ukraine, where Russia has mined so many farmers’ fields.

These heroines across the world are saving lives and building for the future. No teacher says to them that there are things they cannot do. That is something we should hear—encouraging our young girls to find their love for STEM early by learning coding through Turing Tumble, as my eight year-old granddaughters do with my husband. They too might change their world for the future. The girls of today, the young women of tomorrow, are moving apace. May Athene Donald’s vision become reality.