Global Gender Equality

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for securing this debate and introducing it in such a positive way. It was a pleasure to attend the Women Deliver global conference a week ago as a parliamentary delegate of the European parliamentary forum for sexual and reproductive rights. I declare an interest as vice-chair of the APPG on Population, Development and Reproductive Health.

Our aim as a forum is to remove restrictions on access to contraceptives and to improve policy on maternal health, child rights, access to education, vaccinations, addressing sexual violence and child marriage, as the Minister outlined. More than 8,000 delegates from 145 countries came together in Vancouver in a strong, positive spirit of pushing forward on the enormous progress that has been made over the past decade and reflecting on how we take that forward. It was a great pleasure to see the Minister there addressing the parliamentary forum and pledging ongoing support and commitment to women’s reproductive and health rights. I know her announcements were very welcome.

It was also wonderful to hear the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opening the conference and underlining Canada’s commitment to addressing sexism, misogyny and equality for women. Those were his words. He is a Liberal Prime Minister who has a gender-balanced Cabinet and has put women’s rights globally at the centre of his policies. He announced a $1.4 billion increase in spending on women’s health globally each year. He said he is a proud feminist walking the walk. We could do with him here.

The Women Deliver conference this year focused on power and how it can drive or hinder progress and change. We know that at the heart of gender equality lies the right to power over oneself and one’s future. There were calls for structural change and a more power-balanced and equal world. At the heart of global movements for progress lies the power of many and the power of change.

It is now accepted that the empowerment of girls and women benefits everyone. Education for girls benefits whole communities and societies. It can transform lives, change the world and power real, sustainable progress. From the #MeToo movement, to young people campaigning for greater equality from those in power, to mainstream gender equality, we have seen incredible shifts in progress. There were so many younger, inspirational women there, which was very exciting. They are working on the ground at the coalface of some of the projects around the world. They have higher expectations. They are not simply grateful for or satisfied with the progress that has been made. They want more. They want women’s rights to become universal rights.

We have heard that there is a backlash in some countries, particularly in America, to restrict women’s reproductive rights and their right to have control over their own bodies. There was a strong sense that we must face them down and redouble our efforts and energies to ensure that the tides of regressive politics do not prevail. How many of us have heard the phrase in connection with women’s rights, “It’s gone too far”, even from some quarters in our own country? I have heard it a lot. Really? What does it mean? The director of the UNFPA has asked how it is possible, in this day and age, that 800 women die in childbirth every day. Why should we tolerate laws to resist women’s rights in the face of these appalling statistics? We cannot point to any laws that take away rights from men in these countries, so why should we tolerate it for women?

The Listening Tour was a very good initiative undertaken by the organisers of the Women Deliver conference. It reached an unprecedented level of engagement, with over 1,300 surveys completed by over 75 international organisations and hundreds of individuals. One key theme—it is one that I heard constantly—was that sexual and reproductive health and rights are now under threat and that the global political climate becoming ever more precarious is having a troubling and chilling effect on women’s rights. Although some recent gains have been made, sexual and reproductive health and rights, including the right to safe abortion, are under threat in many places.

We heard from an MP from El Salvador, where abortion is illegal, that 17 young women are currently in prison because they had either a termination or, as some of them claim, a miscarriage. In March this year, El Salvador’s Supreme Court commuted the 30-year sentences of three women imprisoned for abortion convictions, lessening their punishment to time served and ordering them to be released immediately. The three women had spent 10 years in prison on aggravated homicide charges for allegedly having abortions. They claimed that they had had miscarriages. The court found that the women were victims of social and economic circumstances and ruled that the original sentences were unreasonable. These women did not become pregnant on their own, but it is the women who suffer in these poor and disadvantaged circumstances. It really is shocking and disgraceful.

Many delegates also found that pervasive inequalities and a lack of access to data and technology are stalling progress. Damaging gender norms are perpetuating harmful practices such as FGM, as has been mentioned, child marriage and other forms of violence against girls and women. Often male-dominated parliaments will rail against those things but do little to encourage or actively promote women’s involvement in their respective legislatures. Some Prime Ministers and Presidents of various countries who were present at the conference were challenged about why they were not doing more to get women into their parliaments. I think that Justin Trudeau challenged a couple of Presidents, saying, “If we can do it, why can’t you?”

We already know that, as a result of both biological and gender-related differences, there can be a significant impact on health depending on whether you are a man or a woman. The World Health Organization, which had a very strong presence at the conference, has stated very clearly:

“The health of women and girls is of particular concern because, in many societies, they are disadvantaged by discrimination rooted in sociocultural factors”.


I heard from a young woman in a session that I was involved in on menstruation. She said that she faced extraordinary disadvantage and discrimination once she started menstruating. No sanitary products are available or affordable and, as a result, many girls are forced to drop out of school each month, and then eventually they drop out of education altogether. That is before the stigma they face in some countries from their own family, like the girl I have just mentioned, who was from Nepal. She told me that she had to stay in an outhouse while she was menstruating and was not allowed to look at her father.

Some of the sociocultural factors that prevent women and girls benefiting from quality health services and attaining the best possible level of health include inequality, ridiculous stigmas and taboos, and power relationships between men and women. As I mentioned, there was a sense of a new generation who have a far greater understanding and are better informed about what is going on in the world. They want more information and more connectivity, a drive to achieve greater equality and human rights, and an acknowledgement that women’s rights are human rights. There were calls for more empowerment and representation of women and minority and LGBT+ communities. There was a very strong feeling that women’s rights are not an add-on; they must be mainstreamed and embedded.

Perhaps one of the most important issues to come out of this conference, which I think everyone signed up to, is that men and boys are key to achieving gender equality. With one notable exception, the Members on the list of speakers today are all women. More men are needed globally to sign up to this. It is so important. We know that we need men to step up and work alongside the majority of women tackling this agenda. Gender equality is not a women’s issue; it is a societal issue and everyone must be involved if we are to reach a more equal world.

As the Minister has already mentioned, there has been such alarm about what has been going on in some of the larger donor countries. Will she provide a commitment that there will be no rolling back on women’s reproductive rights? I would also like to ask a domestic question—we need to lead by example—about last week’s statistics showing that more than 1,000 women had travelled to the United Kingdom from Northern Ireland for an abortion because it is illegal there. Despite an NHS abortion being free for Northern Irish women, their having to travel outside Northern Ireland to get access to safe healthcare when they are a part of our United Kingdom is not a position that an equal society should be advocating or tolerating. How can we justify a two-tier system for our own female population?