International Women’s Day

Baroness Nye Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nye]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, for her introduction to this debate. I also congratulate her friend, Julie, who I think will give the Co-op a run for its money.

As has been said, International Women’s Day gives us an opportunity to reflect on progress made and to call for change. To reflect on progress made, it is perhaps best to begin here in Parliament and in government. There are now 20 countries in which a woman is head of state or government or both, which is a small but upward trend, but fewer than one in five parliamentarians in the world are women. As someone has already said, at the current rate of progress a child born today will draw her pension before she has any chance of being equally represented in the parliament of her country.

In an IPU survey of women in parliaments in 190 countries, the UK has fallen from last year to joint 57th with Pakistan, even though the largest ever number of women candidates were elected in 2010, albeit only a 4% increase since 2000. There are currently only 22 women out of 122 government Ministers, four of whom are full Cabinet members. A third of those are actually in this House, and believe it or not I would like to see more of you here, albeit while we are still unelected.

The Minister mentioned the Prime Minister’s pledge to have a third of ministerial positions occupied by women by 2015, but sadly it looks as though that is not going to be met. It seems a distant time ago when there were eight Labour women around the Cabinet table. Sadly, this has not been the year when there might have been the possibility of change on the Bishops’ Benches. However, after the wonderful maiden speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry, I hope we will not be waiting too long.

With selections happening now for parliamentary constituencies, we must all work even harder to improve the momentum for political parties to improve the numbers of women represented in Parliament. Women in parliaments everywhere can make a difference. Two weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day, parliamentarians from all parties joined the One Billion Rising campaign, which had organised a coalition of women around the world to sing and dance to stop violence against women. The theme of International Women’s Day this year is “A promise is a promise: time for action to end violence against women”.

Worldwide, 50% of sexual assaults are committed against girls under the age of 16. Over 600 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not yet considered a crime. Up to 70% of women in the world report having experienced physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lifetime, and over 60 million girls are child brides before they are 18. The One Billion Rising campaign in the UK ran workshops to find out what would make the biggest difference in addressing domestic violence. The overwhelming majority thought that a change in attitude had to start with education to prevent it happening in the first place and that sex and relationship education should be statutory in all schools. I would include free schools and academies in that as well. They are not alone. Most of the agencies that work in this field, including the PSHE Association, have also been campaigning for this.

I know that the Government have conducted a review of PSHE, and I hope the Minister will assure us that they have taken note of these informed voices and will indicate when the outcome of that review will be published. We need to move away from sex education that focuses exclusively on the reproductive aspects of adolescent sexuality and recognise that sexually active and sexually abstinent young people need information in order to be able to make informed choices. Currently, parents can withdraw their children from sex education up to the age of 19, even though the legal age of consent is 16. Horses and stable doors come to mind.

Schools have a vital role to play in helping young people develop healthy attitudes and behaviour, especially when figures show just how routine sexual bullying and harassment are in schools. One in three 16 to 18 year-old girls say they have been groped or have experienced unwanted touching. One in three teenage girls have experienced sexual violence from their boyfriends. We need specialist staff who are committed, experienced, mature and comfortable with this obviously sensitive issue. A recent survey by Brook showed that more than a quarter of secondary school pupils received no sex and relationship education and over a quarter of those who did reported that the teacher was unable to teach it well, so a greater emphasis on PSHE education in initial teacher training and in qualification programmes for head teachers is also needed.

Access to technology has changed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, has said. Mobile porn has replaced internet porn. Young people need help to distinguish between healthy relationships and unhealthy ones, especially as many have no example to follow at home. Research shows that boys have a higher tolerance of sexual violence than girls and need to be challenged at an early age about what is acceptable behaviour. However, new technologies and new ways of communication can play a helpful role. Thanks to a Twitter storm at the weekend, Amazon was forced to withdraw from its website T-shirts with slogans promoting rape and violence. “Keep calm and knife her” was one of the nicer ones that I can repeat. The company involved claimed that the slogans had been automatically generated using a scripted computer process, but no T-shirts denigrating men were on sale. So now we know that computers are also misogynist.

We need to give our children the knowledge and belief that they can make informed choices and the confidence to say no. If financial education can be made statutory in our schools, which I support, then surely a healthy relationship is just as important as a healthy bank balance.

On International Women’s Day, let us celebrate acts of courage and determination by women everywhere who have played a role in the history of their countries and their communities.