International Women’s Day

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords, during our debate a year ago to mark International Women’s Day, we were reminded most powerfully by my noble friend Lady Verma that,

“even as we reflect on the hope of our history we must also face squarely the reality of our present, a reality still marked by unfairness and hardship for too many women in this country and across the world”.

We were also eloquently reminded by her that,

“women’s strength, skills and wisdom are humankind’s most untapped resource”.—[Official Report, 3/3/11; col. 1243.]

One year on, we must step up our efforts to tap that resource to the full.

The wealth of modern Britain, permitting increased investment in our public services, has enabled women to make huge advances. In education, the gender gap has swung decisively in their favour. Last year, 61.9 per cent of girls achieved five A* to C grade GCSEs or their equivalents, including English and mathematics, compared with 54.6 per cent of boys. At A-level, girls had higher average point scores than boys. Of course major gender issues remain in education, notably the lack of young women studying sciences, mathematics and engineering. As every shred of evidence shows, this is not due to any lack of ability.

When we look across a sample of countries at varying levels of economic development, as the World Bank has done in the Gender Equality and Development section of its latest World Development Report, we find that outdated social attitudes towards so-called men’s and women’s jobs persist in rich countries with large service economies—economies in which it makes no sense to think in such terms. Nowhere have attitudes changed more markedly recently than in the leadership of the Conservative Party. There is much work for that modernised leadership to do, as the issues identified in the World Bank’s report and other issues raised in this debate so clearly show.

I turn to the part of the country which is closest to my heart, Northern Ireland, and the impressive role that women are already playing in its economy, as well as the precious potential that remains to be unlocked there. As the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency has recently noted, women’s employment rates remain—as they always have been—high in Northern Ireland and the female employment rate has actually increased by two percentage points during the past year, in contrast to a slight fall here. Prospects for the future are in many respects extremely encouraging. In higher education, 80 per cent of first-year undergraduates in medicine, dentistry and subjects allied to them are women, as are over half of first-degree graduates in physical and mathematical sciences. Alas, some outdated stereotypes still persist. The subjects with the lowest proportion of women are computer science, architecture and engineering. The progress made in the Province so far needs to be taken considerably further.

Women are central to the fundamental change that the Northern Ireland economy needs: its rebalancing to end its excessive reliance on the public sector and to raise up fresh sources of wealth in thriving businesses. Progress towards a rebalanced economy is one of the principal objectives of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Success in this important endeavour will transform the Province’s economic fortunes. Above all, a renewed spirit of enterprise is required.

Entrepreneurship is deeply entrenched by history in Northern Ireland, but for too long has been at a low ebb. Its revival today is being powerfully assisted by women. Programmes backed firmly by the Northern Ireland Executive such as Women into Work, established in 2008, are pointing the way to a better future. In its initial phase, its target for the number of women it could help either to get back onto the career ladder or to start their own businesses was exceeded by more than 200 per cent. Targets were raised; again, they were exceeded. The strength and success of this programme is becoming ever clearer as the number of women interested in starting their own small businesses increases. Already, the proportion is up by 15 per cent. Successful young women entrepreneurs in Northern Ireland have at their disposal the advice and support of Northern Ireland’s Women in Business network, whose chief executive Roseann Kelly has attracted much praise. The network’s main focus is on the self-employed and women in senior managerial positions throughout the Province, on whom so much depends.

The Northern Ireland Executive’s Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment has as its Minister one of the Province’s leading women politicians, my good friend Arlene Foster. She has the task of delivering many of the key changes needed in the economy, and under her leadership the department has women at the heart of its agenda. The Executive’s gender equality strategy sets out a vision for a future Northern Ireland in which men and women are equally respected and valued as individuals in all our multiple identities, sharing equality of opportunity, rights and responsibilities in all aspects of our lives. All friends of Northern Ireland will be united in hoping that the Executive achieve that goal.