Women: Representation and Empowerment

Lord Loomba Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Loomba (LD)]

My Lords, I start by congratulating the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester, the first female Bishop in this House, and the noble Baroness, Lady Mone, on their brilliant and interesting speeches. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, for securing this important debate to assess the progress made since the petition of 1866 to increase women’s representation and empowerment.

It is common knowledge that progress has been slow, as for almost 100 years we did not see any female political leaders anywhere, including the United Kingdom. It was in 1960 that Sri Lanka elected the first female prime minister of its Government. Even today, although the Lord Speaker, Leader of the House, and Leader of the Opposition are all women, we still do not have gender parity in either House. Only 25% of Members of this House are women and less than one-third of Members in the other place are. We have some remarkable women in this House and in the other place, showing what can be achieved. However, it is a sorry state of affairs that, although women make up nearly half of the population, they are underrepresented where decisions that affect their lives and the lives of their families are made. This underrepresentation leads to bad policies and bad law that take years to unravel and right the wrong.

Statistics for the UK show that, in some areas, gender parity has moved very little or even stalled completely. We are a long way from anything near equality in many areas. Although trends show that more women than ever are participating in education, research shows that this does not directly translate into higher-paid work or leadership roles. Women are held back at every stage of their lives by outdated mindsets, entrenched and biased attitudes and, sometimes, the sheer practicalities of combining work and family life.

Since the United Nations was formed in 1947, it has made huge efforts to increase the representation of women in politics and all walks of life, and to empower them. Progress has been slow, in spite of the fact that it has championed International Women’s Day every year and established the millennium development goals at the turn of the 21st century, which has been declared by the UN as the century of women and girls. Fifteen years later, with the millennium development goals not fully achieved, one of the gifts in our hands, to make even more of a difference and to move things at a greater speed, is the sustainable development goals. These have been drafted to build on the success of the millennium development goals, while ensuring that no one is left behind. But who do we mean when we say that no one should be left behind? Surely, when we look at how gender parity has stalled, we must be thinking of women and girls who are being held back in so many areas of their lives, unable to contribute in any meaningful way to their immediate communities and wider society.

I declare an interest as a long-standing advocate of gender parity as founder and chairman of the Loomba Foundation, which is fighting a hard battle to achieve gender parity and empowerment for women and girls—including widows—around the world. I am convinced that empowering women and increasing their representation, both politically and economically, will benefit the world in a big way. There will be less conflict, less violence and less discrimination against women and girls. Women and girls will become more capable of fending for themselves and participate on equal terms with their male counterparts.

In conclusion, I have no doubt that, through the sustainable development goals and the recent UN Women’s HeForShe campaign, which calls on all men to participate to help women, we can see the potential for huge progress to increase the representation and empowerment of women and girls, including widows, in the United Kingdom and around the world by 2030.