International Women’s Day

Debate between Margaret Ferrier and Maria Miller

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Maria Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for those kind comments. It demonstrates how we work together and have shared interests. Just to refer back to our venture to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women earlier this week, I chaired a panel of young women, and they were asking about how we work together, and where the political divides were. I have to say that I used Jo Cox’s words that there is more that unites us than divides us. That is another thing I would like to remember fondly today.

Having women in Parliament and in leadership really matters—we know that—because it changes the conversation, the discussion and, above all, the decisions that are made both here and in organisations across the country and around the world. To mark International Women’s Day, at the start of this week I led one of four delegations of UK parliamentarians to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. My delegation was from the all-party parliamentary group on United Nations women. We thank the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association for its support in helping that delegation happen.

At the CSW in New York, thousands of women from around the world met to discuss the status of women, with four delegations from our Parliament. There were 18 hon. and right hon. Members and noble Members of the House of Lords at that global event. The event was at times harrowing, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) will draw later on some of her work while she was there. It was harrowing in particular to hear directly from women from Afghanistan, Ukraine and other parts of the world, including Colombia and Mexico, about their own personal experiences, particularly around sexual harassment and worse. The Afghan women we heard from talked about the brutal beatings, the torture and worse, but they are still there, prepared to protest to regain the hard-won rights of the past two decades. We also heard from women in Iran living with a brutal regime. We must continue to play our part in this Parliament, as we have a proud tradition of doing, in keeping these women’s plight at the fore and ensuring that their need for support and change is never forgotten.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

It has been difficult to watch as women’s rights have been stripped away in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of troops. Now, Afghan women who were divorced and able to escape abusive marriages under the previous Government have found those divorces nullified and found themselves at risk under adultery laws. Does the right hon. Member agree that the Government must pick up the pace with the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme to make sure we can offer sanctuary to those women?

[Dame Maria Miller]

In bringing this matter up, the hon. Lady is doing what we all must do, which is to raise these issues in public. That is what the Afghan women I met were pleading for—to make sure that their plight was not forgotten—and they were enormously grateful for hon. and right hon. Members raising these issues, so that not only does the world media not forget, but our colleagues on the Treasury Bench do not forget either.

[Dame Maria Miller]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is always a great supporter of women. He raises an important issue, which is that women have many different roles in this country and in our national life, and we should celebrate all those roles in this debate. But, above all, we need to ensure that women have a choice as to what role they take on, and we should never allow barriers to get in the way of them succeeding and reaching their potential in life. I am sure his sassy granddaughters would agree with that.

The Commission on the Status of Women, as well as being harrowing at times, was also enormously uplifting. It was empowering to hear from other female parliamentarians, NGO leaders and activists about how they are working and campaigning for change. I had the great pleasure of meeting the Speaker of the Belize Parliament, the honourable Valerie Woods, who is also deputy chair of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians. The Inter-Parliamentary Union had many meetings at the CSW, which serves to remind us of the importance of organisations such as the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the IPU, in the light not only of our Parliament, but of Parliaments around the world. They are incredibly useful organisations for women to be able to drive change and learn from other Parliaments.

As I said, the UK Parliament had four delegations—the biggest group ever to be at the CSW—demonstrating that the significance and importance of women’s rights among colleagues across the House has never been more heightened. At the UN this week, thousands of women from across the world saw laid bare the global erosion of women’s rights since the Beijing declaration was adopted in 1995: the reversal of Roe v. Wade; 4 million women and girls out of education in Afghanistan; women in Ukraine rendered victims of sexual violence at the hands of aggressors. Closer to home, two women are murdered by their partners each week in the UK—I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) will be talking about that in her contribution to the debate.

There is no doubt that in the UK over the past decade a huge amount of progress has been made. I pay tribute to the Minister for Women and her predecessors—of which I am one—for all they have done to ensure that we continue to see momentum in women’s rights. The Minister has done so much, particularly on women’s health, and I pay tribute to her work in that area. Although I will speak about some of the challenges that we have to face, and ways to address them, it is important to keep at the back of our minds that huge progress that we have made as women, and the huge contribution that women make to public life, making this place, and other places, better as a result.

How do I know that this place is better for having women in it, and why it is important that we continue to push for more women to enter public office? True representation is the answer to that question. Representation—good, strong, diverse representation—is vital in political life because it encourages trust in political bodies. Engagement in democracy is stronger when people see themselves in their elected representatives. Representation tends also to result in diversity. That in turn results in a greater range of ideas, which for a deliberative system such as our democracy is hugely important to improve our decision making.

In the business world, research by McKinsey found that, for every 10% increase in gender diversity in senior executive teams in the UK, earnings in that company before interest and tax rose by more than 3%. There is a dividend not just for commercial organisations, but for organisations such as ours in ensuring that that diversity is in place.

[Margaret Ferrier]

The right hon. Lady is generous in giving way. I was at a Balfour Aviation event last week, where it was pointed out that women remain significantly under-represented in more senior roles, with only 6% of pilots being women. The training is incredibly expensive and we have heard about the barriers to becoming a high earner that many women face. Does she agree that the Government could be providing more financial support aimed at encouraging women into industries such as aviation where they are under-represented?

[Dame Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady raises an important point about pilots. I know her point is slightly broader than that, but pilots face issues in staying qualified to fly, if they have children. That is one of the reasons— I met that sector of the industry a number of years ago—it sees such a haemorrhaging of women out of the industry. But she makes a broader point. Over the last decade and a half, we have made some important progress in getting in place the idea and notion that having more women in senior roles in organisations is important. On STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths— I actually think those on the Treasury Bench should be singing much louder than they do on their success in putting STEM first and foremost in young women’s minds. When we compare STEM graduates coming out of our universities now with the graduates who came out of our universities in 2010, there are now more women than men coming out with STEM degrees. We do not shout about that enough, but she is right that those women are still on a junior level. We need to ensure that the barriers have been removed so they do not, as we see in the case of pilots, end up having to move out of the industry because barriers are in the way. She makes an important point.

As I say, in the business world, research from McKinsey found that gender diversity increases earnings and that companies in the top quartile for diversity outperform their industry mediums. McKinsey believes that that is because diverse companies are better able to win talent to improve customer understanding, employee satisfaction and decision making, leading to what it calls a virtuous circle.

If diversity can improve our businesses, it can improve our Parliament, too. Where our performance metrics are not found on balance sheets, they are found in the decisions we make for the future of our country. Diversity and deliberative processes, by which I mean voices from more backgrounds bringing new ideas from different life experiences, are foundational to what we do here. The Center for Talent Innovation identified that 56% of leaders do not value ideas they do not personally see the need for. Given that we know that women have experiences of life that are very different from those of their male counterparts, we can see from that figure how important it is that we have more women not only in this Chamber but at the decision-making table of Government.

What is the solution? We need diversity in leadership, and having women central in our debates adds legitimacy to our democratic process. It means that our work in scrutiny is done in a more rounded and full way, and policy can be made that more fully encompasses the needs and dreams of the people we serve. The UK electorate and all electorates are half women, so representing women’s voices here is directly important to at least half of our constituents. Gender equality in Parliament is all about democracy and improving our democracy. It is clear to see why it is important that we make an ever-increasing effort to ensure that diversity can thrive in this Parliament.

Our Parliament has come a long way and we have a very reforming Speaker, who has put the role of parliamentarians front and centre in this place and picked up some of the issues that are incredibly important to women not only coming into Parliament but staying in Parliament. I am thinking particularly here about personal security. However, our Speaker has also inherited an enormous backlog of issues that have not been tackled for a variety of reasons in recent years. It is my belief that the House of Commons must continue to renew its energies in this area to ensure that it is not only the political parties that are working hard to get more women into the House of Commons, but the House of Commons itself that is appealing and is a place where people want to come and have a career. The women who have the capacity, the capabilities and perhaps even the personality to come into Parliament have a lot of choices and different ways they can use their lives. If we do not make sure that the people who have the best capacity are attracted to come to Parliament, as well as have a vocation, we are going to miss out on the brightest and the best, a phrase that is often mentioned to me by Ministers who are responsible when I talk about this issue.

One of the ways we can ensure that we increase the appeal of our Parliament is through gender-sensitive audits, to ensure that we have an understanding of what makes our Parliament strong, and where we can improve it and make it more appealing for women. I pay tribute to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which developed the concept of gender-sensitive Parliaments in 2010. Since then, multiple Parliaments around the world—including our own—have conducted gender-sensitive audits to see how they fare. That was developed further by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, which put together a toolkit to make it easier for all sorts of Parliaments to implement such an audit.