International Women’s Day

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shinkwin (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate. As someone who owes so much to my refugee surgeon, who was on the last train out of Prague before the Nazis closed the borders, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Lampard on her outstanding maiden speech.

I declare my interest as the unpaid chair of the IoD’s commission, The Future of Business: Harnessing Diverse Talent for Success. This debate is a chance to thank and pay tribute to the women leaders who serve on the commission and from whom I have learned so much: I Stephanie Boyce, the first woman of colour to be president of the Law Society; Virginia Clegg, senior partner at DAC Beachcroft; Dr Zara Nanu, CEO of Gapsquare; Theresa Shearer, CEO of ENABLE; and my noble friend Lady Morrissey.

This is my first opportunity to pay loving tribute to a powerful and passionate educator of so many people: the Irish playwright, and my aunt, Josephine Egan, who was killed in a car crash on Christmas Eve. I will always love, thank and miss her. She was a very strong woman, like her sisters, one of whom, of course, is my mother, who raised me as a single mum for much of my childhood, while holding down a demanding job. Her example makes it impossible for me to see women as anything other than equal.

This visibility is so important both for celebrating progress and in addressing threats. For, without doubt, the danger of almost unimaginable regression is sadly very real. My noble friends Lady Jenkin and Lady Fall referred to Afghanistan, which provides perhaps the most poignant example. I suggest that the institutionalised misogyny of the mullahs in Tehran comes a very close second. How well the women protesters in Iran have earned the title “women of courage”. I ask my noble friend to relay to her ministerial colleagues at the FCDO the urgency of proscribing the IRGC and thus striking a body-blow to this women-hating terrorist regime. Its collapse cannot come too soon.

Away from such brutality and closer to home, I hesitate to use the term “women of courage” in a first-world context, but I feel it is none the less appropriate when one considers the totally unwarranted vitriol directed against another group of women, who bravely educate us all by their example. I refer to those who, while respecting trans people, nevertheless push back against the polarising poison of trans fanaticism, which tragically toxifies the vital debate on the essence of what it is to be human, especially in relation to our immutable biology. I join my noble friend Lady Seccombe in paying grateful tribute to, among others, JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock, Maya Forstater and of course my noble friend Lady Jenkin of Kennington, as well as Joanna Cherry KC and Rosie Duffield, both of the other place. I pay tribute to their courage, tenacity and integrity in standing up for equality. Recent developments in Scotland have sadly more than vindicated their concerns.

In conclusion, my noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned the survey published yesterday by Ipsos and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London. This showed that 55% of men say that society has gone so far in promoting women’s rights that it is discriminating against men. After millennia of discrimination against women, the fact that men are at last beginning to know what it feels like has to be a promising sign. What a small price to pay for progress.