Women: Representation and Empowerment

Lord Cashman Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always an honour and a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, when he eloquently, once again, gives a voice to the voiceless and an image to those who otherwise would remain invisible. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Mone, on her excellent maiden speech, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester on hers. Interestingly, we share something in common. The noble Baroness, Lady Mone, was born in the east end of Glasgow and I was born in the East End of London, where my first job was working in a shop at the age of seven, standing on a beer crate so that I could see the customers on the other side. Unlike the noble Baroness, I did not work my way up in the business field. Of course, the right reverend Prelate also worked in and saw the beauty of the East End and its amazing people. I congratulate them both on their maiden speeches, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, on once again securing this debate and opening it with her usual brilliance and commitment to equality. It is always wonderful to see the noble Baroness at the Dispatch Box defending equality across the board, brooking no prejudice.

Today, I want to widen the debate slightly further. For me, the national is international and the international is national. Therefore, in the context of today’s debate, I want to refer to the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2015. It has many echoes for us here in the United Kingdom and represents the barriers to representation and the empowerment of women. Its main findings with regard to the gender gap between men and women internationally are:

“Despite an additional quarter of a billion women entering the global workforce since 2006, wage inequality persists, with women only now earning what men did a decade ago … The global gender gap across health, education, economic opportunity and politics has closed by only 4% in the past 10 years … Is education failing women?”.

I would say that it is. The report continues:

“The gap has widened in 22% of surveyed countries since 2006 and, while more women”—

as we have heard from the Minister—

“than men are enrolling at university in 97 countries, women make up the majority of skilled workers in only 68 countries and the majority of leaders in only four”.

Political empowerment is the fourth pillar measured by the index and it is the widest. Worldwide, only 23% of the gender gap has been closed. Although this area has seen the most improvement—up by 9% from 14% in 2006—sadly only two countries have reached parity in Parliament and only four have reached parity on ministerial roles. I turn to the United Kingdom. The figures set out in the Library document are interesting indeed. We have heard that now 29% of MPs are women—the highest proportion, but nowhere near the 50% parity that we need to achieve. In local government, 32% of local authority councillors are women, which again is not enough.

So we are doing well but it is clear that we need to do more. Central to empowerment and greater representation is education and tackling the issues that prevent or dissuade women, in particular raising levels of aspiration and addressing the key issues of lifelong learning and key role models. This applies especially across different age groups and different educational levels. Not all of us reached where we are today by following the same educational route. It is about reinforcing the ability, talent and aspiration that are common and unique to us all, as well as a sense of purpose and duty.

Yet despite some progress, far too many women are trapped in low-paid work or are not in employment at all. Often by virtue of birth—to whom they are born and where they are born—they are actively dissuaded from breaking out of the stereotype imposed on them. I look at my own mother who, because she was a woman, had to follow her mother, who had been an office cleaner. If my mother had had daughters instead of sons, they would have gone into factories like her and her sisters, or into office cleaning. I watched my mother do all-night office cleaning, then early-morning cleaning. She would come home to get her children off to school, rest, do the housework, and then go off to more office cleaning. I would look at her rounded and hunched shoulders as the result of years of carrying heavy shopping. Never once was it thought, because of where she was born and to whom she was born, that she could have had a different life.

I therefore want to pay tribute to the trade union movement which was pivotal in championing the rights and empowerment of women, and is still doing so today. Each day as I walk through St Stephen’s Hall I look at the statue of the first Viscount Falkland, and I see a physical reminder of the fight for women’s universal suffrage: the repaired sword and the broken spur where in 1909 Margery Humes chained herself in the fight for votes for women—for universal suffrage.

Women are also empowered when they feel safe. Much vital work is being done in this regard by the Safe Gigs for Women campaign. It sounds like a joke but it is not. It seeks to make venues and festivals safe for women, which others so often take for granted. The HeForShe campaign is today being rolled out internationally by Barclays, which brings men into the campaign for equality, remembering that only together can we all advance. As the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, said, we must recognise that there are still barriers to women achieving. They are based on a multiplicity of discrimination, with each ground of discrimination compounding the other: discrimination on the grounds of race, ethnicity, religion, belief, age, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity. Trans women face almost insurmountable barriers and discrimination across the spectrum. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, also pointed out that women living with HIV must never be forgotten.

The situation internationally, as I said earlier, affects us here, too. Women refugees are the mothers of refugees and are driven almost insane by the need to protect their families. I see them crammed into boats or their faces pressed against razor-wire fences in the western Balkans. I see them queueing for food, water and medicine. I look at the human race and what we have become, and I hang my head in shame. We must never barter away the rights of another in order to protect our own, because as soon as we do, we diminish our own rights and gain nothing. We can look up and say that we have done well for women and girls in our society and in some other parts of the world, but we cannot yet hold our heads high when we see civilisation behaving in such a self-obsessed and protectionist way. So much has proudly been done, but there is so much more to do.