International Women’s Day

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am so conscious that Sarah Everard could have been my daughter or, indeed, any of our daughters. To be subject in that way to random male violence is a terrible thing. I recommend to everyone Kate McCann’s short and extremely punchy description of what it is like to be a woman walking home at night.

As Ecclesiastes would doubtless have said if he had been taking part in this debate, “Let us now praise famous women, and our mothers that begot us.” I shall start with Margaret Cavendish—born Lucas, my many times great-aunt—who hammered hard on the doors of the Royal Society and was repelled by the men. When Westminster Abbey celebrated the women who were buried there, her name was left out, but she has the last word: she has been in print ever since she died. There are not many who can say that over 400 years. I also celebrate Olympe de Gouges. To write as she did to Robespierre, with the obvious consequences, is something one should shout out in praise of, as one should for women in Iran today who are doing much the same to the ayatollahs.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, I wish to remember the members of the strike and union committees of 1888 matchgirls’ strike, and I will name them all: Eliza Martin, Louisa Beck, Julia Gambleton, Jane Wakeling, Jane Staines, Eliza Price, Mary Naulls, Kate Sclater, Ellen Johnson, Sarah Chapman, Mary Driscoll, Alice Francis and Mary Cummings. I must also mention Annie Besant, a fellow theosophist of my grandmother, who very much supported them and made their victory possible.

Let us all play our part in the cause of equality of women. It has been a long struggle where each grain of progress matters, so today in this cause I make a plea and have a suggestion. My plea is: Stonewall, please climb out of the hole of misogyny and bullying that you have dug for yourself. The needs of trans people, which are pressing, are not best served by adding to the disadvantages of women. Join the conversation. Let us find a way through that works for all of us.

My suggestion is: it is a large impediment to equality that we impose penalties for the time out that women take to have children. In the pandemic, working part-time from home seems to have become common. Many organisations that I speak to expect this to remain a strong feature in future. My local council is selling its offices because people have been so much more productive working from home. Having children and looking after them well is a role that has value to all of us, especially those of us with mothers. We should do our best to make sure that those who fulfil that role are not at a disadvantage when they return to the workforce. We have learned how well part-time at-home work works. It will be easy in a company which maintains that to fit in parents with care and to keep them involved, up to speed and part of the team so that when they return to the world of work they do so without disadvantage and without having missed out on 10 or 15 years. I say to my noble friend the Minister that the place this should start is the Civil Service because so many of the jobs civil servants do are entirely suitable for part-time home working. The Civil Service should take a lead and make this big step forward for women to take advantage of all we have learned in the pandemic.