International Women’s Day: Progress on Global Gender Equality

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)]

My Lords, in this centenary year, when we celebrate the fact that some women in the UK got the right to vote in 1918, I would like to widen the lens to consider briefly the international scene as it is now—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, has referred to part of that already—and then I shall focus on one country in particular, Albania. This is not just because I visited it last month in the February Recess as a member of the UK’s IPU group, but because Albania provides an example of the challenges that must be overcome when seeking to achieve gender equality and the progress that can be made by determined efforts both within country and with the assistance of the UK and with UN Women.

The report published this month by the IPU Secretary-General shows that,

“progress made in women’s political involvement is slowing. With the exception of some countries that have made a headway because of political will, this has been, overall, a disappointing year”.

It is vital that women are part of decision-making institutions such as Parliament. It is fundamental, not just for gender equality but for democracy and the legitimacy of the process.

Last year we saw some positive developments in women’s participation in elections worldwide. A record number of women contested elections and more seats were won by women than in previous years, but this was largely due to measures such as electoral quotas for women. Whatever our views on gender quota systems, we cannot ignore the impact that they have. In the 20 countries where quotas were used, women won over 30% of the seats, while in the 16 countries where they were not used, they only won 17%. The trailblazers in the Americas were Argentina, Chile and Ecuador—all countries that have developed progressive legislation to promote women’s political leadership.

Elections across the Asia-Pacific region generally reflected the fact that gender norms continue to work against women’s entry into politics as societies lay stronger emphasis on women’s role in the unpaid, domestic sphere. New Zealand was the standout success where they elected the highest ever proportion of women MPs at 39% and Jacinda Ardern as their Prime Minister. Her pregnancy has given rise to a national debate on women’s ability to balance political leadership and motherhood.

Europe was the region making the greatest gains in the number of women MPs. The most prominent increase was in France, where President Macron’s party fielded gender-balanced lists.

Let me turn to Albania. Historically, it has had low numbers of women in elected office but it made significant progress last year. The proportion of women elected jumped from 18% to 28%. Why was this? It was because they benefited from a gender quota and from public fora organised by UN Women which enabled them to raise awareness of the importance of women playing a role in public life.

Our UK parliamentarians’ visit to Albania was timely. There is a significant focus on the western Balkans this year by the UK and the EU. We will host the EU western Balkans summit in London in May and I believe we hold our own summit on the western Balkans later in the summer. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in Munich last month:

“We have a long-standing and enduring commitment to the security, stability and prosperity of the region and this will never change”.


We are working with Governments from all six western Balkan countries to improve the rule of law, promote economic governance and attack the difficult issue of corruption across the region.

Albania is a middle-income democracy—a member of NATO, an EU candidate member state and a member of the Human Rights Council. It is a country that has emerged from the isolation of the Enver Hoxha years and is seeking a pathway to a secure Euro-Atlantic future. Our delegation was given a very warm welcome. I would like to put on record my thanks to the President, Prime Minister, Mayor of Tirana and all the MPs who gave so much of their time to have discussions with us. It was a pleasure to meet the All-Party Alliance of Women MPs to discuss the steps being taken to press for progress on gender equality.

In 2008, Albania passed a law on gender equality which, among other measures, established a minimum 30% quota for women and stipulated that one of the first three names on the political parties’ candidates list must be that of a female candidate. But it is not just a matter of numbers. It is vital that those who are elected are able to take up their places in safety and play their full part in politics.

The women MPs whom we met believed that the application of the gender quota has opened up many more opportunities for women and had some effect on countering prejudicial political attitudes generally. They believed that people are more convinced that women politicians are more stable, more responsible and more professional.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

Hear, hear.

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

Hear, hear, indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton says. I agree, and I am sure noble Lords would agree too.

In recent years, the Government of Albania have embarked on reforms to improve legal policy and institutional gender equality mechanisms—we use a rather convoluted vocabulary in these circumstances. The new national strategy has provided a strong gender equality vision in Albania. However, as will sound familiar, the financial and human resources to ensure proper implementation are currently insufficient.

Domestic violence prevention, protection, prosecution and referral mechanisms are weak. But they are a Government priority and they are improving for the first time. UN Women makes the point that women in Albania continue to face daunting challenges. Violence against women is common, with almost 60% of Albanian women aged 15 to 49 having experienced domestic violence. Forced and early marriage is still a problem in some, mainly rural, areas of the country. There is much more to do, but it is important to recognise that real progress has been made and for the UK to be a firm and constant ally in that progress.

The formidably able members of the Alliance of Women MPs are ready to meet these challenges, and I wish them well. Next week, when I am in New York at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, I will attend the Albania side event on the participation of women in politics in the western Balkans and hope to learn more.

After half a century of my life working to achieve gender equality, one big hope remains. I hope that one day we will no longer even have to try to defend the principle that equality for one half of the human race with the other half is, quite simply, right in itself. I always am the eternal optimist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had another great debate today. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, on getting us off to a brilliant start. As usual, a range of challenges and celebrations characterised this International Women’s Day debate.

I want to mention two internal parliamentary things that we need to celebrate and which have not been mentioned so far. That, of course, is that we have our first woman Black Rod in 600 years here in our own House. We can also celebrate the fact that the chairman of the Press Gallery and the chairman of the Lobby are both women. They are Kate McCann and Emily Ashton. They issued a press release today—I shall not read it all out, but its headline reads:

“Top female lobby journalists say ‘we need to show it’s not an all-boys’ club’ on International Women’s Day”.


Well, hear, hear to that and congratulations to them.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, I shall not try to cover everything that has been said today, but there are a couple of things which I think are worth mentioning. I certainly support my noble friend Lord Young in his remarks about Malala and his saying that her addressing both Houses of Parliament would be a great thing to do. I do not think that it is the Government’s job to organise that; it is Parliament’s. I invite the Minister to support us in that ambition, but I would exonerate her from having to deliver it. We need to talk to the two Speakers and others to help us to do it.

I enjoyed in particular the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, about Albania, about which I did not know very much and have not thought very much. It was absolutely fascinating. I also enjoyed the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, about “Who would have thought?”—and quite right, too. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, was also quite right: our gains are fragile, and we have to fight to protect all of them all the way through. My noble friend Lady Donaghy’s appraisal was, as usual, devastating and quite correct. I enjoyed enormously the “Oscars speech” of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning—she was quite right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, was quite right to ask the question about CEDAW. However, the coalition Government abolished the Women’s National Commission, which was the main organisation that collected the views of British women to take to CEDAW. The noble Baroness is right—so what are we going to do about that? The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, was quite right and has my support in bringing forward the gender recognition Bill. As she said, it will be an important moment for a group which is small but has a very hard time. I have always thought that part of our job in the House of Lords is to champion those people and groups who may be quite small in number but who have the most difficult time and are discriminated against.

The noble Baroness, Lady Burt, was right to remind us that the World Economic Forum finds that the UK has a gender gap of 33% overall and is ranked 15th out of 144 countries. Against all the indices about economic empowerment and opportunity, we could probably say, “C-plus. Could do better”—that is the sort of grading that we are approaching; I think that most people would agree with that. One needs to ask why we do not do as well as we should on all those economic indices and I want to suggest something we might consider. I say this in tribute to the Women’s Budget Group of feminist economists, and it is about how we measure economic activity. We can see quite plainly the way in which GDP is measured: it takes into account the value produced through wage labour but not through unpaid domestic care work carried out predominantly by women in the home, even though all are essential to a well-functioning economy. Indeed, proponents of feminist economics argue that, in terms of methodology and focus, modern economics is too centred around men, with women’s contribution to the economy routinely ignored.

From a political perspective, feminist economics is an economics that focuses on what is needed to produce a gender-equal society. It argues that because modern economics is built around the idea of the “economic man”, it is ideologically weighted towards normalising men’s lives and consequently ignores the experience of women. This is important: we cannot expect models based on economic man to understand or even notice gender inequalities, let alone create policies to alleviate them. Would the Minister raise this issue with her right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and with the Prime Minister, and perhaps suggest that the Treasury take account of it in its economic policies?

This is important, because while there has been progress on some aspects of gender equality, women still experience structural inequality throughout their lives. For example, independent research carried out before Christmas revealed that women have borne 86% of the impact of austerity, largely through lost services and changes to the tax and benefits system. Were we measuring things differently, we would come to a different conclusion about that.

This morning I was privileged to attend an International Women’s Day conference organised by Unity Trust Bank and the Employee Ownership Association. We were addressing the empowerment of women across the world through employee ownership, social enterprise, co-operatives and profit-for-purpose businesses. By the way, women are eight times more likely to be the chair in a co-operative than in a FTSE 100 company. A recent British Council report that looked at social enterprise and women’s empowerment across the world found that 75% of women who start a social enterprise say that it had given them an increased sense of self-worth, while 64% reported enhanced self-confidence.

Such empowered women—social entrepreneurs—provide crucial role models for the next generation, so I congratulate the FCO and DfID on the support they have been giving to the British Council in the social enterprise programme, and I hope that will continue.

We have all been going to lots of celebrations of International Women’s Day. Yesterday I attended the launch of What Women Want 2.0. I remember—as I am sure will other noble Lords—the 1996 What Women Want survey, which was linked to the Beijing United Nations women’s conference. I took part in it. It had a great impact: 10,000 women took part in the survey. The same thing has happened again, and with social media it has generated a huge digital discourse. Fascinatingly, the results mirror almost exactly what women were asking for in 1996, which must make us pause to wonder why there is so much unfinished business: equal rights, equal pay, respect, a child and carer-friendly working world, an end to the culture of pornography and rape, more women in politics, more women running big organisations and companies, and a peaceful safe world for our children and the ones we love. It is very much the same as 1996, but the difference now is that this new wave of feminists—and in 1996 it was still unfashionable to call yourself a feminist—are not only saying that this is what women want but also that this is what women believe they deserve. I took great encouragement from the large and diverse group—hundreds of women—who came to Parliament yesterday.

As the health spokesperson, I finish by raising an issue about women’s health. It is to do with women and mental health. In 2003 we had an excellent women and mental health strategy. It was archived in 2011 by the coalition Government, which is a great shame. This is important: poor mental health among women has increased, with one in five experiencing common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, compared to one in eight among men. Young women are the group most at risk, experiencing alarmingly high rates of self-harm, eating disorders and PTSD. Women’s mental health is closely linked to their experiences of violence and abuse, which should not be surprising, and many women struggle to get the support they need from the mental health services. Agenda, a women’s organisation supporting women and girls at risk of abuse, poverty, poor mental health and homelessness, found that women and girls are regularly and repeatedly restrained in mental health settings, despite the risk of re-traumatising women who have already experienced violence and abuse.

Can the Minister tell us—if not now, perhaps she could ask her noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy to do so later—what steps are being taken to respond to women’s mental health needs and tackle the rise in mental ill-health among women? Is it not time for the new women’s mental health strategy that we need?