International Women’s Day

Baroness Hazarika Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hazarika (Lab)]

My Lords—and Ladies; come on, it is International Women’s Day—it is my great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Alexander and welcome her to this House along with so many other great women, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Bousted, Lady Hunter and Lady Rafferty, who are also making their maiden speeches today. I do not want to forget the noble Lord, Lord Jones, even though he is a man. He is taking part in the International Women’s Day debate, so he is now an honorary member of the sisterhood. In the rather alarming era of the global strong man, it is heartening to see the arrival of so many strong women to this Chamber, and I look forward to them all standing up, questing for change, causing a wee bit of trouble and speaking much sense.

As a fellow Scot, I am a long-time admirer of my noble friend Lady Alexander. She played a key role in the Scottish Parliament from its creation in 1999 until 2011, and she is a woman who gets things done. Her achievements include the first social justice report, tackling homelessness, fighting the pernicious Section 28 and announcing the first Scotland-wide fund to tackle violence against women. She also helped shape a more modern and more equal Scottish Labour Party when she was an adviser to Donald Dewar, and she was instrumental in making it more inclusive of women and less of a boys’ club. It is fitting that she went on to become the party’s first female leader in Scotland and paved the way for so many others. I look forward to the rich contributions she will make to this House and wish her well.

I also warmly congratulate my noble friend Lady Smith on her new role as Minister for Women and Equalities. Podcasting and Iain Dale’s loss—he is still bereft—is very much our gain. I know that she cares deeply about these subjects and will do an excellent job for the many.

This is such an important debate. Technology has shaped so many aspects of our lives for the better, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said, we have to be honest: there are winners and losers. The winners seem to be the very rich, powerful tech bros, now some of the most important people on the planet, and women often seem to be the losers. Women and girls are often at the mercy of a savage, rapacious thirst for online pornography, which is getting ever more violent, dark and dangerous. The online world is becoming a harder place and making our tech bro friends a lot of money, but I think we are all losing out. Young women are being told to just be cool with a bit of sexual violence such as strangulation or choking during sex. Young men are being taught that what they see on their phones is normal and necessary to be a man. It is not, and it is harming them too. We are numbing a generation. I pay great tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, for her review into online pornography, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Owen, for her important work on deepfakes. I hope the Government can work with them to make the online space a wee bit safer for women and girls.

What happens online is not abstract; it shapes what happens in real life. Violence against women and girls is at a terrifying level. It is just four years since the murder of Sarah Everard. Do we honestly think that things have changed that much? The landmark Femicide report delves into the epidemic of violence against women. The latest report, just out, has found that it is not just young women who are the victims of male violence. One in eight women killed by men in the last 15 years was over the age of 70. Can the Minister update us on what is being done to better protect older women, often ignored in the media and wider society?

I used to feel very optimistic about International Women’s Day. I used to look forward to all the celebrations, parties and gatherings, but like many women right now I feel pretty depressed about how things are going. Things are going backwards, with a rise in misogyny here and all around the world, the anti-abortion laws in America, women being erased in Afghanistan, and the effects of war on women and girls all over the world. It feels as if there is very little female representation in the room when these new global powers meet.

We have to be honest: the power structures in the world right now are once again very male, and technology is playing a huge role. So I make this plea to the Minister: we understand that technology and AI are here to stay, and that they are important to growth and the evolution of society. However, as we heard so eloquently from the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, this is a sector dominated by men, from the new global overlords who can make or break Presidents and leaders, right down to the engineers and the coders. So, yes, let us harness the power of this exciting technical revolution, but please let us not worship at the altar of the tech bros at the expense of women and girls. We must not be the sacrificial lambs at this pivotal moment.