Women: Representation and Empowerment

Baroness Gale Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gale (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a great debate this evening in celebration of International Women’s Day. I thank the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for bringing this debate before us today. As others have said, it is like an annual event when we can take an audit of where we are as regards women’s equality.

It has been so good to have our two excellent maiden speeches, which made me think back to the case of Viscountess Rhondda. She inherited her title from her father, Viscount Rhondda; as she was the only child she was given special permission to inherit her title. She wanted to take her seat in the House of Lords but was denied the opportunity following a famous test case before the House of Lords Committee of Privileges in 1922.

Viscountess Rhondda was a suffragette, a feminist, a magazine owner, a successful businesswoman and the first and only female president of the Institute of Directors, but still was not allowed to take a seat in the Lords because she was a woman.

[Baroness Barker]

And a Liberal.

[Baroness Gale]

Maybe she was, but if you know her full story you will know that she went to the right in the end.

Some 32 years later, on 4 November 1958, history was made when Baroness Elliot of Harwood became the first woman Peer to speak in the House of Lords, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester mentioned in her maiden speech. I raise this because in her maiden speech Baroness Elliott said she was very conscious that,

“except for Her Majesty’s gracious Opening of Parliament, probably this is the first occasion in 900 years that the voice of a woman has been heard in the deliberations of this House”.—[Official Report, 4/11/1958; col. 161.]

So how appropriate it is that tonight, 58 years after the first woman Peer to speak in your Lordships’ house, we have witnessed another historic event, as this is the first time that we have heard a woman’s voice speaking from the Bishops’ Bench. I congratulate the right reverend Prelate on making history tonight by making her maiden speech. It is a privilege to have been here and participated in such a great occasion, and to have listened to what she had to say. We are looking forward to many more contributions from her.

Our other maiden speech today from the noble Baroness, Lady Mone, was very interesting. She spoke of her experience in building up her own business from the start—I believe that she was 15 or even 10 years of age when she started her first business—and making it such a success. I believe that she is a great role model who shows what a determined woman can achieve, and I look forward to hearing further contributions from the noble Baroness. I think that she is very much like Viscountess Rhondda, who was a very successful businesswoman when very few women at that time were in the business world. They have something in common there.

While we celebrate International Women’s Day, the United Nations has designated the theme for 2016 as Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality. That is a great theme to have, and so appropriate at a time when much more action is required to bring about equality for women. Can this be achieved, I wonder? Can we have “Planet 50-50 by 2030”? I believe that we can if the will and determination are there.

If we look around our elected institutions, we see that women are in a minority. In the House of Commons there are now 191 women MPs, the highest number ever. I am proud to say that 99 of them are Labour women—it is true that in 1997 we had 101 women, but we had a lot more MPs then than we do at the moment—making up 43% of the Labour group. There are 68 Conservative women MPs, a big increase as far as Conservative women are concerned, and I know that the noble Baronesses, Lady Jenkin and Lady Morris, have played a big part in making sure that that happened. There are also 20 Scottish Nationalist Party women MPs.

At the last election there were 1,033 women candidates, the largest number ever, making up 26% of all candidates. It shows that there is no shortage of women wanting to stand for Parliament if in 2015 1,033 women wanted to become MPs. Considering that women have been able to stand for Parliament since 1918, though, that is not really a very good story. On one day in May last year, 459 men were elected to the House of Commons. That is nine more than the 450 women ever elected since 1918, so it has taken 97 years to get 450 women MPs. Only 39 women have ever been in the Cabinet, and only one woman has ever been Prime Minister. Again, I pay tribute to the Conservative Party for electing the first and only woman leader so far, who of course became Prime Minister.

But if we look at the new institutions, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, we can see that women have fared much better. In 2003 Wales became a world leader as the first democratically elected institution to have 50% women. People have said today that that has not been achieved, but it has been achieved in Wales. Not long after that, because of a by-election, there were 31 women and 29 men. So we are making progress in the new institutions. My party fielded an equal number of men and women at the first elections in 1999. That made a huge difference but it was not easy. It is never easy when you try to make a breakthrough for women. There was a very hard battle in my party but we achieved it. Despite that, we see that in political and public life generally women are in a minority. We know that women in the workplace earn less than men. The pay gap is taking a long time to close, despite the fact that we have had an Equal Pay Act since 1970.

How can there be equality when, as many noble Lords have mentioned, the level of domestic abuse is so high? In its 2014 report, the Office for National Statistics estimated that in England and Wales 1.4 million women suffer domestic abuse and two women are killed every week by a current or former partner. Approximately 85,000 women are raped each year. This is a very high level of violence against women. There are laws to protect women and many police forces deal with domestic abuse in a much better way than previously owing to better understanding and training. In many cases, the law now brings perpetrators to justice. That is all to the good, but how to change the culture of a society that allows such violence is yet to be resolved.

Is progress being made for women and how can this be achieved by 2030? Can the UN Pledge for Parity be achieved? Should we have more laws that would change the culture? The Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002 allowed all-women shortlists for political parties that wished to use them, and that has helped to deal with the underrepresentation of women.

We see very few women at the top table in the business world. In recent years this has been recognised and much more effort has been made to get more women on boards. My noble friend Lord Davies of Abersoch has produced his report on behalf of the Government on gender diversity in boardrooms. It shows that there has been an increase, with the percentage of women now standing at 26.1%. He made a number of recommendations to improve gender balance by 2020. So intervention can work in line with the recommendations of my noble friend Lord Davies.

Time is getting on and I am getting some looks. I am grateful for the hint and will come to a close. I end by asking whether the Minister will agree to join me in taking the Pledge for Parity in order to achieve the UN objective of Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality. Perhaps we could start in your Lordships’ House. We could work together to make this a gender-balanced House and a more women-friendly place by asking the party leaders to ensure that there was a 50:50 gender split on all new lists of Peers. We could certainly have a discussion about that and see whether each party leader would commit to it.

Another thing that we could do would be to ensure that all legislation was written in non-sexist language rather than, as at present, always being in the male gender. There are many things that we could do and we could make a start in our own House. If we work together on that and accept the challenge from the United Nations, I believe that it can be done. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the invitation that I am handing her tonight.