International Women’s Day: Progress on Global Gender Equality

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for giving us the opportunity for this debate today. I express my gratitude to her, to women in general and to some particular women too. I start, rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, with an expression of gratitude to my mother. Had she been alive, she would have been 113 this week. She bore three sons within three years, went 12 years more and then, without any planning, I turned up in the middle of the war. My father was away; she had three young teenage boys and she was working as a weaver. We had very little money and a very poor background; we were born into a society where there was very limited public education at the time. There was no health service: it was six years before the National Health Service came into being. There were many slums around us, and generally life was quite different to what we have come to experience latterly.

I was born into a world where we worried about the quality of our leadership. It was a world that was led by men: Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. The Chinese were preparing for a revolution led by men. We were all at war fighting each other. With male domination, what do men do best? They cannot resist fighting each other for power. There were few women around in political leadership anywhere in the world. There were a few in the Commons and none in the Lords: there were no life peerages then, only hereditaries, who were all male. I have been here for 20 years, and I look back and see the changes that have taken place not only in my lifetime, but in the 20 years since I have been in the Lords. There have been dramatic changes, particularly in the advancement of women and their opportunities here. I have served solely as a Back-Bencher, but I have served primarily under women leaders on both sides of the House. It is a remarkable tribute to the progress that we have made.

We have some great individual women here. On our side, we have already mentioned the late departed Muriel Turner, who used to sit where my noble friend Lady Donaghy is now. She was always there. Noble Lords will all recall with great affection two others who are missing today: my noble friend Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, who is unwell, and my noble friend Lady Gould, who, without any doubt, would have been speaking today. She did so much in the Labour Party for women and has done so much in this House since she came in. I am sure we would all like to send our regards to them and best wishes for their recovery from ill health.

My background is in the trade union movement which, again, is very much a male domain. I was the general secretary in a civil service trade union, which had 60% women members and only 40% men, but it was primarily run by men: the leadership, the executive council and all the important positions were, in the main, held by men. In trying to effect changes, we consulted the noble Baroness, Lady Fritchie, a Cross-Bencher who is not in her place today. She played a very important role in public appointments, trying to get gender balance in this country. She helped our union to try to get changes that would advance the interests of women. We did it mainly by a quota system. That was not particularly popular in certain quarters, and it is still not particularly popular in some areas where people say, “No, we will do it solely on the basis of our talent; we do not want any places reserved”. The situation was reflected in the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, who told us how quotas have been working in Albania and how they were the only way women there could advance. I believe the problem is the class system. In particular, quotas are strongly opposed by middle-class women, but the working-class sees them as an opportunity, so they should not be ruled out. Our use in the Labour Party of women-only appointment lists is a form of quota system that has produced wonderful results; it should be looked at by other parties. There are parties that have not yet been able to produce a female leader. I hope it will not be long before we have a female leader of the Labour Party. We should look at our structures to ensure that women can continue to rise to the highest places in our organisation.

In business, again, big changes are needed; some changes have been effected. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Abersoch, who has worked very hard by using the second system that is available and open to us: targets. He has gone for a 25% target for women on the boards of FTSE companies, and a good deal of progress has been made there. So we have quotas and targets.

I also like the concept of mentoring, which was mentioned earlier. I am speaking today primarily because I now have, through the good offices of the Royal College of Psychiatry, a woman doctor working with me. She has spent the last six months with me, working on mental health. She has taken me into new areas that I needed to explore that are good for me and my development, and she has taken me back to some of the issues I looked at when I worked on equality with women. She said, “You should speak in this debate this coming Thursday and persuade some of your male colleagues to speak as well”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, said earlier, women will not achieve these changes alone; they need to get men on board with them, to persuade men of a sympathetic mind to stand up with them, and then you will find that you have a majority. Through a majority, we can effect the changes we need.

We still need changes in the NHS: 77% of its employees are women, but the majority of senior leadership posts fall to men. We look at the BBC—we all know what is happening there. Women are a major factor in the BBC, but are not holding as many of the posts as they should. The Armed Forces are the next area in the eyes of the British public. We listened to debates recently about whether the Armed Forces should permit part-time working. God Almighty! We are still debating issues like that—we need to change it.

I will also mention the Queen, who is outstanding. Think of the three monarchs of this country who you believe have made the greatest contribution. To my mind, it is the two Elizabeths and Victoria. When I think about the males, I recall all of them for the worst of reasons. Therefore, there is an argument to be made about the way in which the hereditary system can also produce important changes.

There is still a lot of work to be done. Primarily, we see changes taking place that we are not keeping abreast of. New international companies and communications organisations are being run primarily by men who are not accountable; women are just not on the scene. We had a change at the United Nations, but why did we not have a woman in charge of the United Nations for the first time ever? This is the kind of issue on which women—all of us—should press for change to increase the movement towards greater equality.

The areas in which women have the greatest influence on our lives at the moment are culture and religion. It is difficult to talk about these subjects here, but they have a massive influence on everyone’s lives, particularly with regard to women and equality. We look at where the religions started and who led them; who sustained them, in the main? Take the Church of England and the battle it has had over women bishops. But in many respects, it is women who keep the Church of England going and who do the hard work. That applies in so many other religions. We need changes within the religions and opportunities for greater equality, one way or another. We all need to work together for that—men and women together. Alone we will do nothing, but together we can achieve much.