International Women’s Day

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Friday 8th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, and my ladies, I offer my apologies. The fact that I have not been here for a significant part of this debate is not because I was not interested but because I was attending “Learn with the Lords” at the education centre, listening to the views of the next generation of young women and men. It was a difficult choice but probably the right one in the circumstances.

I congratulate the Minister on her opening contribution. She covered the waterfront and showed us that there has been a significant amount of change. You need only to look around this Chamber to know that women are here, here in force and make a superb contribution, whether it is the Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, our own leader, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, or somebody such as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, the first woman General-Secretary of the TUC. To say that things have not changed is clearly wrong. I suppose it is a question of whether you see the glass as being half full or half empty; for me, it is half full.

I also want to congratulate someone it is not very fashionable to congratulate at the moment, and that is Liz Truss—although certainly not on her record during her brief period as Prime Minister. Prior to that she was the woman responsible for appointing the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, who unfortunately is not here today, as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. That was a fundamentally important appointment of somebody who is there to protect the rights of women and who, in doing so, has faced quite a difficult challenge herself. Liz Truss also appointed Kemi Badenoch, who has also been involved in protecting the rights of women in her role as Minister for Women and Equalities. Those were two important appointments.

Obviously, I want to come at this issue in a slightly different way. I look at the people who have fundamentally changed society through what they have done and who, more importantly, have influenced young women. I start with JK Rowling, who has probably encouraged more young people to read books than anybody else I can think of. I can remember queueing up outside Asda at six o’clock to get the next edition of Harry Potter. However, it is not just that. She had the temerity to say, “Didn’t we have a different word for ‘people who menstruate’? What was it? Oh, it was ‘women’. That was it”. As soon as she uttered that word, the people she made multi-millionaires—those who starred in the Harry Potter films—accused her of being transphobic. She is nothing of the sort. She is a woman who has been prepared not only to express her views clearly but to put her money where her mouth is. She has opened a women’s refuge in Scotland and done a number of other things, so it is not just about accretion of wealth.

This country has been through a profound change in the last couple of years. We have been through Covid and had lockdown, which has had a huge impact on the way we work and live. People have discovered the flexibility of working from home. Working women have found that, in fact, life can be improved significantly in those situations. Some 900 companies are now saying to people, “You can work a four-day week and we’ll pay you the same”, and they are finding that productivity goes up. These are important things that actually impact women’s lives.

I listened carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and what can I say? Her assessment was that all is for the worst in this worst of all possible worlds. It was almost an anti-capitalist contribution—nothing has changed or improved for women. That is absolutely not true, and the statistics do not support her. Things have changed. Are they perfect? Of course not; much more needs to change. I am cognisant of the fact that we seem to have gone backwards in Afghanistan, given the plight of women there, particularly in terms of education.

I am an acute observer when I go on the train—all of society is there when you take a train journey. Yesterday, I was sitting near to two women who happened to sit next to each other. One had a badge on that said, “Baby on Board”, and the other was carrying a small child in her sling. I was hoping they might engage in conversation, because, after all, there was the future—I do not know whether the baby was a boy or a girl—sitting next to each other. That, in a way, filled me with hope. It is not easy bringing up children and being a working woman. So, I have a question for the Minister: are the Government doing something about the taper in earnings for women who go out to work, so that doing so is still significantly worth while?

I also want to make a point about the books people read on trains; I am incurably nosy. This morning, a young woman was reading Pride and Prejudice, and I thought that was good—written, again, by somebody who had to fight for their recognition in literature.

Finally, I talked about Afghanistan, but it is International Women’s Day and the point I want to make in closing is this. In Iran, young women are laying down their lives for the right to dress as they wish: for the right to wear a hijab or not to wear a hijab. The thought occurred to me that if young Muslim women in this country could show solidarity with their sisters in Iran and take off their hijabs for just an hour, it might be a powerful gesture in the cause of women internationally.

It has been a privilege to take part in this debate, and I regret that I was not present to hear many of the other contributions. I can see that I have not pleased everybody—my noble friend is shaking her head—nevertheless, that is the benefit of the Lords: we have a wide range of views.