International Women’s Day

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Since so much of what the commission does bears on the topics of today’s debate, I feel multiply interested, in every sense of the word. I am very grateful to the Minister for instituting this debate and for its length, which enables us to say a little bit more. Like many other noble Lords, I admired the right reverend prelate’s maiden speech; it reminded us of how deep some of these issues go.

International Women’s Day is always a time to reflect on the rights of women, proclaimed, of course, in the 18th century—as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, reminded us—but secured only very gradually across many decades in many different countries, in many different legislatures and by the action of many different people. We should remember in all this that the rights of women are not to be contrasted with the rights of men; they are rights that today, as earlier, are claimed and defended in the name of our common humanity. They are affirmed in some of the great documents of the modern world: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950.

Earlier today at Question Time, there was reference to the question of whether the United Kingdom might withdraw from the European convention. I will just observe that the irritation that people express is often directed at the court, not at the convention. If we had a British Bill of human rights, I am pretty convinced that it would contain the same rights that are in the European convention, but of course we might lose touch with some of the necessary jurisprudence for interpreting those rights if we made such a shift.

However, we must all admit, and there have been many illustrations of this point, that the extension of rights to women is a very long-fought battle. It is a battle in which many countries have entered reservations, sometimes in order to afford additional protection to women—in matters such as night work, pregnancy or military service—but sometimes to differentiate the rights of men and women in areas such as family law, inheritance or succession. Hence the complexity of the process by which the United Nations has gradually inched the issue of women’s rights forward.

Despite continuing disputes about some of these reservations, though, the most remarkable thing is the progress that has been made in recognising the rights of women and girls, not merely—and proudly—in this country but across virtually every country in the world. There are, of course, still horrifying cases in which the rights of women are systematically ignored, where legislation does not restrict forced marriage or domestic violence, genital mutilation or—unmentioned so far but as serious as any of these—forced child-bearing. The deepened recognition and protection of women’s rights is one of the most profound social transformations of the past century, and it is to be greatly welcomed.

It is very easy to miss the profundity and scope of that transformation if one concentrates only on the human rights declarations and conventions. Human rights documents, in the nature of the case, set out certain aspirations. They seem lofty and abstract. The realisation of women’s rights is another matter, for rights are indeed no more than rhetoric if we do not secure the counterpart obligations. This fundamental point about rights was made with great elegance and accuracy by Clement Attlee, speaking in Scarborough in 1951. He asked,

“what kind of society do you want? We know the kind of society we want. We want a society of free men and women—free from poverty, free from fear, able to develop to the full their faculties in co-operation with their fellows, everyone giving and having the opportunity to give service to the community, everyone regarding his own private interest in the light of the interest of others, and of the community; a society bound together by rights and obligations, rights bringing obligations, obligations fulfilled bringing rights; a society free from gross inequalities and yet not regimented nor uniform”.

That statement has stood the test of 70 years very well. The phrase,

“rights bringing obligations, obligations fulfilled bringing rights”,

gives us a sense of what women’s rights are really about. I do not mean that we should focus once again on obligations or duties at the expense of rights, but we should acknowledge the indispensable interdependence of rights and obligations. Rights without duties are indeed mere rhetoric. Women’s rights are not going to be realised by proclamation—although proclamation has its point and there is a time for it—but rather by respect for and fulfilment of the corresponding obligations. These obligations are rather too often identified with securing legislation in each jurisdiction that enforces respect for the obligations necessary to secure and observe others’ rights. However, we now know that it requires more than legislation, legislation by itself is not enough to secure respect for rights. There is a tendency to imagine that in the case of human rights, all obligations lie with states. That is patently mistaken. Often, obligations lie with individuals and with the institutions of civil society, and the role of states and of legislation in particular is to back up and secure the performance of obligations, when that is the right way to secure respect for rights.

This point was clearly recognised in the 2011 report that has been referred to repeatedly today: Women on Boards. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, noted that quotas risk leading to tokenism, but that substantial change could be achieved by companies focusing on the robust, commercial reasons for seeking diversity on boards. Why do you need someone who will clone your own views and experience? That is the very person you do not need. Diversity nearly always has good effects.

I finish by asking the Minister two questions. First, how well is the public service progressing in taking steps to encourage the appointment of a reasonable proportion of women to senior posts, and to the boards to which it makes appointments? Secondly, our progress in securing and supporting women’s rights is monitored under CEDAW, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination on All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The seventh periodic review of UK performance under CEDAW is now under way, and the UK Government will be discussing its progress in Geneva in July. Will the Minister undertake to secure a debate on progress, or lack of it, on these issues in your Lordships’ House?