International Women’s Day

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, I want to use my few moments to share with you some initial thoughts on the theme of respecting women in 2013. I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, for initiating the debate and especially for her moving story of the redoubtable Julie of Beeston. The people of Beeston are dying to support her. I also warmly welcome the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry to our House, particularly his support for women bishops. He has his work cut out.

A glance around our world on International Women’s Day will show us that one in three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. According to UN Women, up to 70% of women in some countries face physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime. In addition, some 140 million girls have suffered female genital mutilation, and millions will be subjected to forced marriage and trafficking, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh. We live in a world that most definitely does not respect women.

However, there is hope. Michelle Bachelet, the executive director of UN Women, pointed out this week that over the past few months, men, women and young people have taken to the world’s streets with signs aloft bearing the legend, “Where is the justice for women?”. They have declared solidarity with the Pakistani teenager, Malala Yousafzai, who is recovering in Birmingham, having been shot at point-blank range by the Taliban for defending the right of women to be educated. The demonstrators pledge justice for all raped women, including in the terrible cases in India and South Africa, as well for as the countless abused women who never make the headlines. The One Billion Rising campaign is truly a global fightback, as my noble friend Lady Nye has said, demanding renewed respect for women, with marches in Afghanistan, human chains in Bangladesh, dancing and singing events in Egypt, events in 126 cities in Germany this year, actions in the workplace through protest, and dance and the arts across the world, from Somalia to Australia.

War and sexual violence were ably debated yesterday in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Wakefield, and we must remember that poverty is a close relative of violence against women. It is crucial for the Government to remain true to the achievement of the millennium development goals in this respect, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said. Will the Minister report to us on progress towards the anti-poverty targets in those goals?

While we support campaigns and call for international targets to be achieved and aid budgets to be protected, we can of course apply even more pressure to implementing UK law where it exists to protect girls and women. I am thinking of the law already on the statute book, the intention of which is to protect little girls in this country at our state schools from the lifetime horror of female genital mutilation. The campaigning work on FGM of my noble friend Lady Rendell is rightly to be acknowledged, as is the work of the present and previous Governments on this issue. I welcome the Government’s announcement this week of £35 million towards the eradication of FGM. It is a national disgrace that some 24,000 girls living in Britain—some put the figure far higher—are under threat of being taken out of the UK to be tortured in this barbaric procedure. Why, we must ask, after 30 years of law on this issue, have there been no prosecutions? I would like to hear from the Minister what the Government are doing to encourage prosecutions. I am not claiming that the issue of FGM is anything but complex and multifaceted, but surely bringing prosecutions must at least be part of the mix of solutions to this shameful practice.

Also close to home, our attention in the political arena has been drawn to how we respect pregnant women in this country. The Autumn Statement heralded a cut of £180 a year from pregnant mothers who take maternity leave and care for their babies. It is just over 20 years—with a little help from a European directive that I was closely involved in—since UK mothers finally began to see an upward trend in their maternity rights. We call on the Government to ensure that, 20 years on, new mothers will not see those rights and that maternity pay diminish.

Those of us who received briefings this week from the national charities Maternity Action and the Refugee Council on their recent report When Maternity Doesn’t Matter were disturbed to learn of the impact of the dispersal policies of the UK Border Agency on pregnant refugee and asylum-seeking women. What response are the Government making to this very important report, especially to its recommendation that no pregnant woman should be dispersed in this country after 34 weeks’ gestation, or sooner than six weeks postnatally?

On the subject of respecting women, I recommend last month’s moving speech by Enda Kenny, the Taoiseach of Ireland, on how the Irish Government would have to own up to the wrong that was done to so many hundreds of Irish girls and women put away in the infamous Magdalene laundries in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. It is a speech well worth reading.

In conclusion, I quote from the recently published history of stoicism, Philosophic Pride by Christopher Brooke. I declare an interest: he is my son-in-law— no mother-in-law jokes, please. He refers to Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18th century feminist, already mentioned by my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve. I did not realise this, but Mary Wollstonecraft was favourably oriented to stoicism and she said:

“Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers—in a word, better citizens. We should then love them with true affection, because we should learn to respect ourselves”.

Some 221 years on, I say amen to that.