Women: Developing Countries

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

My Lords, I am delighted to participate in this important and far-reaching debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for introducing it so ably, and for the wonderful work that his foundation does for women.

Honestly, where does one start? I will start with a topical event which I sponsored this week in this building. Along with a number of other noble Baronesses, who I thank for their interest, I was filmed this week for a project called What I See—a global initiative that explores the similarities and differences of women’s experiences, perception and self-expression. It reminds us how fascinating, strong and extraordinarily original women are, but also that their voice and perspectives are too often missing from public discourse, including in this country. I welcome the What I See project, and all other efforts like it, that give women an opportunity to express themselves without bias, judgment or agenda. It will also, I hope, give encouragement to women and girls who lack self-confidence and self-esteem, and I look forward to supporting the project as it develops and goes live online in March 2014.

Before I travel across to the developing world, I will briefly mention domestic violence. I am sure that other noble Lords will expand on this particular challenge to women both in this country and, of course, throughout much of the rest of the world. We had a very constructive debate on this earlier in the year and I was privileged to participate in it. I only reiterate that domestic violence is a hidden scourge. We all know someone, however unlikely, who suffers from it. I was struck by a recent people’s panel blog on the Guardian website and the more than 400 responses to the four women who had described their struggles with domestic violence. If nothing else, people are now far more aware of the issue and discussing it openly in a way they would not have done previously.

To put this debate in context, two-thirds of the world’s poor are women, as the noble Lord said, but they have the least say about what needs to be done to tackle poverty. So where should we start in the developing world—in Afghanistan, as the noble Lord said, with the problems that women and children will face when our troops leave next year; in the DRC, known as the rape capital of the world and the worst place on earth to be a woman; or in Saudi Arabia, where women cannot drive and have no right to vote? I was struck by a photograph I saw yesterday of a conference about women without a single woman present. As Bill Gates put it, when asked whether he thought Saudi Arabia could become one of the top 10 tech nations in the world:

“Well, if you’re not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you’re not going to get too close to the Top 10”.

Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, and others, I will travel to Burma next month with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. I therefore turn my remarks to that area of policy, which is so crucial for women and girls in the developing world. I start by thanking the Secretary of State for her commitment to women and girls in development and to the UK Government’s support for family planning in particular.

Healthy women and girls ensure social and economic development for families, communities and states. Having women at the forefront of building strong economies can happen only if women are able to control their own fertility and destiny. We are all too well aware that the world’s population is growing rapidly. I remind the House that in 1927 it was 2 billion, in 1975 4 billion, in 1999 6 billion, in 2011 7 billion, and it is projected to reach 9.2 billion in 2050, with ever increasing demands for food, clean water, schools, housing, et cetera. This makes little sense when there are many millions of women with an unmet need for family planning, and 30% of 287,000 maternal deaths could be averted with the provision of family planning services alone.

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to DfID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UNFPA for last year’s family planning summit and the commitments made at that summit. The UK Government are committed to providing an additional 24 million girls and women in the world’s poorest countries with family planning services between now and 2020, which will prevent the deaths of 42,000 girls and women, for whom an unintended pregnancy carries the risk of fatal consequences.

Earlier this month, ahead of the G8 and G20 summits, we had a global summit of parliamentarians entitled—not very snappily, I fear—We Need a Decade of Family Planning: the Vital Factor for Global Development and Women’s Reproductive Health and Rights. I am really pleased to note that the G8 leaders’ communiqué refers to maternal health and identifies that more action is required to deliver on promises in some areas. I also welcome the reference to preventing sexual violence in conflict adopted by the G8 Foreign Ministers, and pay particular tribute to the Foreign Secretary’s leadership in this area.

The High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development released an important report entitled A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development, setting out the universal agenda to eradicate extreme poverty from the face of the earth by 2030 and to deliver on the promise of sustainable development. I draw the House’s attention in particular to goal 4, which makes explicit reference to decreasing maternal mortality and ensuring universal sexual and reproductive health and rights.

To quote briefly from the report:

“Women continue to die unnecessarily in childbirth. The World Health Organization estimates that every minute and a half, a woman dies from complications of pregnancy or childbirth. Women living in poverty, in rural areas, and adolescents are especially at risk. Timely access to well-equipped facilities and skilled birth attendants will drastically reduce this risk. Universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is an essential component of a healthy society. There are still 222 million women in the world who want to prevent pregnancy but are not using effective, modern methods of contraception. This results in 80 million unplanned pregnancies, 30 million unplanned births and 20 million unsafe abortions every year. About 340 million people a year are infected by sexually-transmitted disease. Every $1 spent on modern contraception would save $1.40 in maternal and newborn health care. But access to SRHR, especially by adolescents, is low. The quality of such services is generally poor. The public health case is clear—ensuring these rights benefits not only individuals, but broader communities”.

Empowering women to make their own choices about pregnancy and birth spacing is critical and essential to reducing gender inequality and poverty.

A woman’s ability to control her own fertility is something that we take completely for granted in this country. When I became sexually active—please do not show this debate to my mother—all I did was go along to the Marie Stopes clinic and it was all available; those of us who are in the post-pill generation sometimes take for granted how incredibly lucky we are. A woman’s ability to control her own fertility is an effective way of positively influencing all other parts of her life and the lives of her family. Fulfilling women’s rights to contraception can play a key role in extending birth intervals, which in turn promotes maternal and child survival.

Women around the world are calling for sexual and reproductive health rights to become a reality, and we need to help deliver reproductive health for all those women by ensuring that reproductive health is front and centre of the agenda for the post-2015 framework and our Government’s priorities, to close the gap in unmet need for family planning, to eliminate unsafe abortion and to ensure universal access to reproductive health services. We need to ensure that all pledges made at last year’s family planning summit are realised and for national Governments to remove unnecessary barriers that prevent access to reproductive healthcare, choices and information.

Let us return to this country with a plug for my honourable friend Bill Cash’s Private Member’s Bill, which is to be read a second time in another place on 13 September. The Bill is,

“to promote gender equality in the provision by the Government of development assistance and humanitarian assistance to countries outside the United Kingdom”.

I, for one, hope that it makes some progress through Parliament.

I will end where the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, started, with the perennial problem of women in Parliament. As he pointed out, across the world the average percentage of women in Parliament is 20% and we are not doing much better here. As co-chair of Women2Win, which campaigns to get more Conservative women into Parliament, I fear that the experience of Julia Gillard in Australia may well provide another excuse, another reason, why women will not want to put themselves forward or to start the journey towards a parliamentary career. But the point is that every woman and every girl in Australia now knows what we in this country already know—that a woman can make it to the top.

I appeal to any woman who may stumble across this debate: if you think you have the guts, the determination and, most of all, the resilience to sustain you in a political career, come and find me or any of my colleagues around the Chamber and talk to us. We all want you to succeed. As Julia Gillard said in her final press conference yesterday:

“it will be easier for the next woman and the woman after that and the woman after that”.