International Women’s Day

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab) [V]]

Can I, too, associate myself with all the thoughts expressed for Sarah Everard and all those mentioned?

International Women’s Day and this debate are a chance for us both to celebrate those who came before us and to commit to fight for a better future for the women to come. In celebrating those who came before us, can I start by putting on record my appreciation for the fantastic inspiring women of the Statue for Lady Rhondda group, led by the feisty campaigner Julie Nicholas, who are fundraising for a statue of Lady Rhondda in Newport as one of the next statues in the Monumental Welsh Women campaign? Newport East’s Lady Rhondda, a suffragette who campaigned for women to take their seats in the other place, has been described as the

“greatest global businesswoman of her era.”

She was the editor of Time and Tide magazine, which campaigned for gender equality, and she even survived the sinking of the Lusitania. Any one of these achievements would have secured her place in history, but she did it all. It is fitting that we celebrate her in this way, as you cannot be what you cannot see.

I would like to take a moment to thank all those dedicated women on the frontline as key workers in my constituency during the pandemic, as women are twice as likely as men to be key workers in Wales. I also want to put on record my thanks to Judith Paget and Sarah Aitken at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board; Jane Mudd, Newport City Council leader; Pam Kelly, Gwent’s chief constable; and all those carrying the enormous responsibility in their leadership roles in this unprecedented year.

I want to highlight research by the Welsh gender equality charity Chwarae Teg in its third “State of the Nation” report, which monitored the impact of women’s experiences, and thank it for the focus this brings on ensuring that we are not complacent. The effect of sector shutdowns, business closures and unemployment is falling disproportionately on women. Young women in particular are more likely to lose their jobs in retail and hospitality. Women are more likely to be furloughed, and 70,000 pregnant women and new mothers have been discriminated against in Government schemes. Women of colour, too, have been excluded from support schemes and have been hit particularly hard in their employment.

We know that women are more likely to carry out caring responsibilities and home-schooling, and as Chwarae Teg points out, now is not the time for the Government to be suspending gender pay reporting. If we do not know the scale of the problem, we cannot address it. In the words of the Women and Equalities Committee,

“this should have been a time for more—not less—transparency.”

The Government should review the impact of their policies on woman, and the recovery from covid must be an equal recovery. We have also seen the worrying rise in domestic abuse, and I want to thank Welsh Labour Government Ministers for our partnership working and for the focus they have put on tackling this issue by giving the violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence sector in Wales extra funding this year.

Lady Rhondda wrote that the suffragette movement gave women

“hope of freedom and power and opportunity.”

It is vital, as we rebuild after this pandemic, that we progress from where we were so that every woman has the freedom and power and opportunity to live their life however they wish.