International Women’s Day

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

It is absolutely wonderful to be back in the House today—if I am a bit bleary, it is because I have just got off the all-night redeye and have had only a couple of hours’ sleep—and it was wonderful to be present at the annual conference of the Commission on the Status of Women, along with Members in all parts of the House, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), and to see much joy among so many thousands of women. This was the first time the commission had met in person for four years. There was a particularly moving moment yesterday when a very informal lunch was attended by a handful of British parliamentarians from both Houses, a Canadian senator, two young Mexican Members of Parliament, three Afghan women’s rights champions, and two Ukrainian MPs. Madam Deputy Speaker, the sisterhood is strong.

There is so much that I want to say that I thought I would try to keep myself ordered by giving the House an A to Z, so here it is: some of it happy, and some of it sad.

A is for Afghanistan, with 4 million girls not at school, women not allowed to work, and women subjected to public floggings, rape and torture. It is gender apartheid at its worst. As the Afghan women said to me yesterday, if an Afghan girl cannot go to school and an Afghan woman cannot leave her home, why can the Taliban send their daughters not just out of their homes but out of their country to go to school in other countries? What they ask of the UK Government is that we and our allies impose travel bans on the Taliban, and do more to sanction their assets.

B is for a network of paths in Chelmsford called the “Bunny Walks”. It used to be overcrowded, overgrown, dark and dangerous—a no-go zone for women—but, thanks to the Government’s safer streets fund, it now has lights and CCTV, the undergrowth has been cut back, and it is being enjoyed by women and men and, indeed, people of all ages. I would encourage colleagues, if they have dangerous parts of their constituency, to look at the safer streets funding, because it makes a huge difference.

C is for contraception. Some 257 million women want access to contraception, but cannot get it. If a woman cannot control her own body, she has no control over the rest of her life. Women’s rights to sexual health and reproductive services are being pushed back across the world. Yesterday I visited the United Nations Population Fund, which does amazing work to prevent maternal mortality and to ensure that women have access to contraception. That vital organisation would like to pass its thanks to the UK Government for our leadership in the support that we give it.

D is for domestic abuse, the most hideous of crimes. But there is really good news from Essex, where reports of domestic abuse are down 8% this year. I thank Essex police, under the leadership of our police, fire and crime commissioner, Roger Hirst, for the huge focus they have put on tackling domestic abuse.

E is for education. A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live beyond the age of five, 50% more likely to be immunised, and twice as likely to attend school as the child of a mother who cannot. I thank the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for prioritising girls’ education in the women and girls strategy yesterday.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Going back to Afghanistan, is it not very short-sighted of the Taliban not to educate girls, considering that an educated mother educates her children, and an educated child then contributes to a very productive society?

[Vicky Ford]

This is exactly the point. Educating girls creates benefits for the girls themselves and for the whole society—not just greater economic growth, through women being able to go out and work and create their own incomes, but societal benefits such as the health benefits I have just mentioned.

F is for freedom. Last month I met a survivor of domestic abuse who had just escaped from her violent partner with her three children. As a Member of Parliament, I said to her, “Is there anything more that we could do for you?” She looked me in the eye and said, “No, Vicky —I’ve got everything. I’m free!”, with her arms in the air. May we have more of those free women.

G is for girls. They are our future, but we should not think that the experiences they face today are the same as the experiences we had growing up. Adolescent girls are disproportionately negatively affected by online harassment. We need to listen to them, understand their experiences and let them inform us, especially as we seek to make laws and policies that affect them.

H is for the hijab and headscarves, and for the brave women of Iran who are prepared to risk their own lives because they believe in the right to choose whether they should have to wear one.

I is for impunity. Women as young as four and as old as their 80s have been raped by Russian soldiers in Ukraine—barbaric sexual violence committed by order of military commanders. We must hold the perpetrators to account, take them to court and break the cycle of impunity on conflict-related sexual violence.

J is for Julia Jeapes, my association chairman. None of us would be here without the volunteers in our parties.

K is for Kaja Kallas, the Prime Minister of Estonia. We need more strong women leaders in this world. K is also for Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, where the rains have just failed for the fifth season and more than 20 million people, mostly women and children, are living in extreme food insecurity.

L is for levelling up, which is not just a north-south issue. In Mid Essex from 1 April women will have access to IVF on the NHS for the first time. I thank Health Ministers for ending the postcode lottery of health funding.

M is for marriage; child marriage sometimes sounds as if it could be a romantic and beautiful thing, but it is so far from that. A child entering into marriage often faces rape and a life of slavery. I say thank you and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham), and the noble Baroness Sugg in the other place on the work that they have done pulling through the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, to make sure that no person under the age of 18 can get married in this country.

N is for numeracy. I am a mathematician; there are not many mathematicians in this place and certainly not many women mathematicians. We must end the stigma that suggests that girls do not do maths. I am celebrating the fact that year after year we see more and more girls doing maths A-levels; we should encourage them to continue to do more.

O is for online safety. There are some excellent measures in the Online Safety Bill to protect women; the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls gave the UK a shout-out for our legislation in a meeting yesterday, particularly the measures to prevent deepfake porn videos.

P is for pornography. We need to do much more to tackle the online pornography that our children are coming across and watching; often they just stumble across violent pornography, as a result of which, girls are increasingly being subjected to violent sex. I hope the Government will look favourably on the amendments that the noble Lord Bethell will be tabling to the Online Safety Bill in the other place.

Q is for queens. I miss our late Queen deeply. As the Foreign Office Minister at the time, I had the honour of meeting foreign leaders as they came to sign the condolence books, and the deep grief amongst women leaders was huge. The late Queen wrapped her own arm around women leaders across the world, and I wish our new Queen all the best as she prepares for her coronation.

R is for rape. The rate of prosecution for rape is on its way up, but it is still too low and the Government must keep focusing on it. S is for the abhorrent Stephen Bear, a violent, abusive, misogynistic man who has just been sent to jail for revenge pornography—and long may he stay there. So much praise must go to the brave Georgina Harrison, who was determined to see him stand trial for what he has done.

T is for thank you. The late Madeleine Albright said there was a “special place in hell” for a woman who does not support other women, but I think there is a special place in heaven for men who put their own heads above the parapet to defend women’s rights. I thank the Father of the House in particular for being here today.

U is for Ukraine and the women of Ukraine. Despite the rapes, despite the 6,000 children who have been abducted, despite the deaths of children, partners, sons and grandparents, the women of Ukraine continue to stand firm and brave and fight for their freedom. Their fight for freedom is the world’s fight for freedom and we will stand with them, not only on International Women’s Day, but every day for as long as this takes.

V is for violence in politics. Online violence makes women MPs silence our voices and puts women off standing. Too many women in the UK face real threats to their safety. We must stop the hate speech and make it clear that violence will not be tolerated in our politics.

W is for wonderful. We often complain about all the challenges women have, but we often forget to say that being a woman is wonderful and I would not have it any other way. X and Y are chromosomes and Zs are for sleep, so I thank hon. Members for listening and not falling asleep.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak again in a debate on International Women’s Day. #EmbraceEquity is this year’s hashtag. Although we are approaching equality of resources and opportunities, equity recognises that each person has different circumstances and that we may need to allocate different resources and opportunities to reach an equal outcome.

I thought I would use this debate to highlight the work to promote tech and STEM careers to women and girls, which is one of the themes of International Women’s Day 2023. We keep returning to careers in STEM because we are still not maximising the potential of women in these industries. Even if there is equality in provision and training, it is not being accessed equally, so we need to examine why.

I have several interests, chiefly through the all-party parliamentary group on women and work, which I co-chair with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who has just left the Chamber. As the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) said, we work together across the House in many ways. My interest also comes from my work on university technical colleges, an education model that offers transformational opportunities to young people. Finally, like many others, I have an interest as a mother and grandmother. [Interruption.] Yes, I have three grandchildren.

I have been a strong supporter of UTCs since they were introduced, and I was instrumental in encouraging the establishment of my local UTC in Portsmouth. Every young person interested in a STEM career should have the same chance to have the education that a UTC provides—this should include coding in every school’s core curriculum—but most UTCs are now oversubscribed, and there are sometimes 10 applicants for every place. I am backing the Portsmouth UTC to launch another UTC in the Solent region, as it will help many of my young constituents to access an amazing route into STEM careers.

Last week, I visited the London Design and Engineering UTC, where girls make up 36% of the intake, which is fairly typical of most UTCs. Fifty-one per cent. of UTC teachers are women. I hope the proportion of girls attending UTCs quickly increases to nearer 50%, and 50% of applicants for next year are female, so there is some progress at last.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

Those figures are really interesting and obviously a great empirical example, but does my hon. Friend have any thoughts on how we may have achieved 50% of the teachers being female but only a third of the students being female? What is the difference between those two numbers?

[Mrs Drummond]

Interestingly, I think 65% of secondary schools have women as teachers, so the proportion is slightly less. I have met female UTC teachers, and they are all highly skilled scientists and mathematicians, as is my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby). It is a shame because we are sort of putting them in here and not into the community, where they could be teaching the next generation.

A third of female UTC graduates go on to STEM destinations. Some 70% of girls go into higher education, compared with 55% of boys. Twenty-four per cent. of girls go on to apprenticeships, mostly at level 4 or higher, against just 4% nationally in other schools. The fact that only a third go on to STEM destinations should raise alarms. This year, the APPG on women and work published our report on the cost of being a woman at work. We had a lot of input from the tech industries, including some shocking statistics about women in tech. In 2017, PwC discovered that only 3% of women say that tech would be their first choice, which is shockingly low considering the good salaries and prestige that come with the industry. The five most valuable brands are tech companies—Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta—yet 78% of students could not name a woman working in technology, which is probably not surprising given that only 26% of the tech workforce are women.

The tech industry has produced awe-inspiring, life-improving inventions, but it has also contributed to growing online misogyny and gadget misuse, including spy cameras and stalking. Surely having more women working in the industry would help lead to tech being better adapted for women and to more work to combat the negative aspects for women.

[Vicky Ford]

I am sure my hon. Friend will be interested to know that the theme of this year’s Commission on the Status of Women meeting at the UN was “Women and the impact of technology.” I know she wished to be there herself, but the key issue of trying to make sure technology works for women was the highlight of the global conversation. The point about needing to have more women in the tech sector, working on developing new technologies, was repeatedly reiterated. What she says is spot on.

[Mrs Drummond]

There is also the impact on education in more remote countries, or even in Afghanistan. We would hope that people could access education through tech. If we can get more women working in tech, education could be provided which perhaps even the Taliban would agree with.

[Chloe Smith]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with her time. I agree with her point on Afghanistan, on which I heard some particularly powerful anecdotes from the Street Child charity only last night. Does her APPG, and the other groups with which she is working, have broader thoughts on the future of work? Is there an avenue to have a wider debate about women’s interests in that, not that I believe there is any such thing as a woman’s interest in a ghettoised form? I wonder what her thoughts are on that.

[Mrs Drummond]

I set up the all-party group in 2015 with that sole purpose of changing policy on the barriers to women in work. Each year, we have produced a report, and I will pass on some copies to my right hon. Friend, because we cover the whole gamut of women in the workplace. This year, we have been focusing on tech, which is why today’s debate is so important.

We need to change the way we use the internet, and having more women at the top will help because we need to be more inclusive. As we have said, that will help in education around the world, too. Careers advice must push tech as an option. Tech companies must link in with schools and provide mentoring. It will take time, commitment and long-term investment, but it will make a massive difference to our productivity. There are mentoring programmes for women already in the tech industry and they are proving successful. Cornell University has estimated that that could lead to a 15% to 38% increase in promotion and retention rates for women. As I have said, there are very few women at the top of tech companies.

It is good to have a day when we can focus on how far women have got in so many areas. We have also heard some harrowing speeches today. It is great that we can encompass every single aspect of what it is like to be a woman. Tech must reduce its barriers to women using it effectively and entering it as a career, and then we can really embrace equity.