International Women’s Day

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to contribute to this important debate to mark International Women’s Day. In this debate I—another girl from the Rhondda—am able to pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Gale of Blaen- rhondda, who has personally moved the equality agenda forward against great opposition in our party in Wales. Her plans for all-women shortlists for parliamentary selections and for the Welsh Assembly twinning arrangements were nothing less than revolutionary.

My noble friend Lady Gale clearly saw and experienced that our elected politicians did not reflect the make-up of our communities. A woman was elected to Parliament in a by-election in the Cynon Valley in 1984, and no other woman was elected in Wales until the introduction of all-women shortlists in 1997. Diolch yn fawr—I thank my noble friend Lady Gale for the incredible changes she pushed through to ensure that women like me were able to take part in politics in our country. Our party politics has been changed ineradicably. We are grateful for her persistence and her belief that women were equally capable of becoming MPs and AMs in Wales.

In my own area, local government, in Wales only 28% of local government elected members are women—a far lower figure than in England and Scotland. Things are changing, but not quickly enough. In 2016, I was immensely proud to become the first woman leader of Newport City Council in its 180-year history, and the following year I broke another mould, becoming the first woman leader of the Welsh Local Government Association. During my leadership, I have continued to play an active role in mentoring and diversity programmes designed to promote women’s active participation in politics at both local and national level.

We need greater diversity in local government but also in our national Governments. We need more women and younger women sitting in our Chambers and around our Cabinet tables. Diversity—of backgrounds and life experience—helps to balance opinions and make better decisions, which lead to better outcomes.

Many women are passionate volunteers, community activists and powerful community leaders, helping to inspire and sustain our communities through one of the most challenging periods of public service in decades. But achieving balance is not just a women’s issue, as many noble Lords have already espoused. It is everyone’s issue, and I am confident that many political colleagues across local and national government share that same ambition and commitment.

In my area of south-east Wales we are working towards developing a workforce for a digital economy, with a focus on doubling the digitally skilled workforce in the Cardiff capital region, and future-proofing our workforce by focusing on high-level digital specialist-specific skills, such as artificial intelligence, building information modelling, fintech and voice recognition security. However, within the region, only 13% of employers utilise apprenticeships, and just 1.5% of year 11 schoolchildren went directly into apprenticeships last year. So we need to extend the range of higher-level apprenticeships and introduce degree-level apprenticeships as an alternative, and cost-effective, route to higher education. We also need a particular emphasis on attracting young women into higher-level apprenticeships.

Research shows that across the UK, women currently make up 47% of employees in the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—with a quarter of the jobs in mathematical sciences and 13% in engineering positions. However, the lack of female role models in STEM is a key reason why girls do not pursue a career in the sector. Just 42% of girls said that they would consider a STEM-related career, but this rose to 60% if they had confidence that men and women were equally employed in those professions. This is something we can and must address. Governments have the responsibility for education, but we also have an interest as major employers too. Through our councils we should recruit diverse, ambitious and talented people into STEM fields, including accountancy, architecture, civil engineering and ICT, as teachers and lab technicians, and in waste management and our various regulatory and enforcement roles, such as environmental health and food safety.

Female representation is not a “nice to have” option; it is an economic imperative. Evidence shows that equity and productivity in business can be increased by around 10% by having females in leadership positions, as they are better able to understand and empathise with consumption patterns. If girls and women are not involved in and leading STEM, their ideas and experiences cannot influence the innovations that help to shape and transform our society. The rapid pace of change is constantly challenging and disrupting the status quo; we have no excuse and no better opportunity to reset the gender divide and ensure greater balance. Innovation means that there is no such thing as “business as usual”, and traditional structural barriers are being swept away.

Role models and mentors can play a major part in this by encouraging young people to see beyond the binary of “jobs for girls and jobs for boys”. We need to have more initiatives to promote careers, and they need to include a stronger focus on girls. Our innovators and leaders of tomorrow are sitting in the classrooms, colleges and universities of today. This is our chance to make sure that no woman or girl is left behind. As former First Lady Michelle Obama so aptly said,

“no country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.”