International Women’s Day

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow that inspiring speech.

Yesterday, Labour Women made a short film for International Women’s Day. One of the things we were asked to do was to complete the sentence, “I want to live in a world where”. I said I wanted to live in a world where violence against women was eradicated and where rape was no longer used as a weapon of war. However, I wanted to go on to say that I also wanted the statistic that every week two women are murdered by their partner or ex-partner to be eradicated. That figure remains stubbornly the same, and no amount of awareness raising, improving of police handling of complaints and passing of laws, such as Clare’s law, appears to make a dent in it.

As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), those two women per week are not statistics but real people—colleagues, friends, mothers, sisters and daughters. Leading up to their deaths, there is usually a catalogue of assaults—not reported—with partners pleading that they will change, and a repeat of the cycle of violence.

Imagine the trauma of being a child growing up in that situation, seeing the two most significant adults in their life fighting; going to bed at night wondering whether the night will be broken by yet another argument; worrying all the time; and, sadly, in many cases, thinking that all this is normal because it is all that they have experienced, living in a state of permanent high anxiety.

The fallout from domestic abuse is wide, yet the figure of two deaths per week sticks stubbornly. I was pleased to hear our honorary sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), talk about that issue earlier. We need to do something about the funding of women’s refuges. Too many women are turned away, and it is still not a statutory and, therefore, a funded duty of councils to provide domestic abuse services.

As this debate is about International Women’s Day, I want to talk about the plight of women around the world. In any conflict, women often have fewer resources to protect themselves. With children, they frequently make up the majority of displaced and refugee populations. War tactics, such as sexual violence, specifically target women.

However, women are almost completely missing from peace negotiations following conflict. The international community has recognised that women’s contribution is vital to achieving and sustaining peace. In 2000, the UN Security Council passed the historic resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. It calls for women to participate in peacebuilding, to be better protected from human rights violations, and to have access to justice and services to eliminate discrimination. Yet, almost 17 years on, more than half of peace agreements make no mention of women. We face new threats, including climate shocks, global health pandemics and violent extremism directly targeting women’s rights. Now, more than ever, we need the women, peace and security agenda.

I want to finish with these words:

“When you have warfare things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war…there is a good deal of warfare for which men take a great deal of glorification which has involved more practical sacrifice on women than it has on any man.”

Those are not the words of our sisters from Nigeria, Iran, Sri Lanka or anywhere else around the world; they are the words of Emmeline Pankhurst in 1913. Yet they still ring true and have relevance to the international community of women today.

This week, it was my pleasure to be able to vote on the design of a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst to be erected in Manchester, as a welcome relief from the many statues of men in our city. In the borough of Rochdale, we recently erected a statue of Gracie Fields, and Bury in Greater Manchester is working on a statue to commemorate the wonderful and much missed Victoria Wood, so I go back to where I started: I want to live in a world where it is no longer unusual to put up a statue of a prominent woman—not just in Greater Manchester, but the world over.