Maria Miller
Main Page: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke) International Women’s Day
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Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered International Women’s Day.
It is a privilege to lead this International Women’s Day debate on behalf of members of the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament, who put forward the application. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for its continued strong support for this debate as an annual event.
I want to start by sending my thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of Sarah Everard, who are going through such a painful time. Her abduction has sent shockwaves across the UK. Sarah did everything to avoid danger. Let us be very clear: women are not the problem here. For many women, this news story will bring back memories of threatening situations they found themselves in through no fault of their own, sexually harassed on the streets when walking home from meeting friends, receiving anonymous threats of physical violence on social media, or sexually assaulted in plain sight in rush hour on public transport on the way to work. Many choose not to talk about this and not to report it for fear of not being believed or taken seriously. But the research shows that these sorts of events are part of women’s everyday lives, and that is why what happened to Sarah Everard feels so very close to home.
The shocking findings of the report published yesterday by the APPG on United Nations women show that virtually all young women have experienced the threat of sexual violence in public spaces and, indeed, that three in four women of all ages have experienced sexual harassment. Although the raw facts may show that it is rare for a woman to be abducted, the experience of young women is that the fear of sexual harassment, or worse, is ever in their mind, whether on a night out at the pub or after threats to their physical safety on social media, while for the one in six women who will be stalked in their lifetime, the fear of attack is very real.
So rather than telling women not to worry, listen to our experience. Understand why so many women relentlessly campaigned in this Chamber for change to make women feel safer by stopping the harassment and threats of violence in the first place. We should not accept a culture of violence towards women, we should not be complicit in covering it up, and we need to give women effective mechanisms to report what happens in order to expose the scale of the problem, call it out publicly, and punish those who perpetrate this culture of fear.
Reflecting on the past 12 months women have gone through in terms of their response to the challenges presented by coronavirus, at home women have been prominent in delivering on the frontline of health and social care, with two women professors, Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green, helping to pioneer a global solution to the pandemic. In the US, Kamala Harris has become the first woman to be elected Vice-President of the United States, shattering another glass ceiling in the political world. Even closer to home, you, Madam Deputy Speaker, became the first woman ever to hold the role of Chairman of Ways and Means, bringing your infinite wit and wisdom to that important role.
While we acknowledge these significant milestones, the pandemic has brought existing inequalities into sharp focus too. Women have faced pressures in balancing work with home schooling and childcare. Domestic abuse cases have spiralled—up by 83%. When it comes to job losses, women have faced a heavy toll, with those aged 25 to 34 facing the highest unemployment rise. The Government’s mission of levelling up is very relevant to women. To mark International Women’s Day 2021, my message and hope is that a focus on levelling up for women is in place now more than ever before, both here in the UK and across the world.
We have record numbers of female MPs, yet still men outnumber women two to one in positions of power. A 50:50 Cabinet would help to ensure that women’s voices are heard where they need to be—right at the heart of Government. This week, as part of a whole host of International Women’s Day celebrations, we heard from the parliamentary archivist, Mari Takayanagi, about the remarkable contributions of early women MPs and the huge impact they had on law-making—how they spoke out 100 years ago in this place about the most sensitive of crimes against women, like FGM. These stories of courage can be seen in the work of women elected to this House today—women like my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), whose courage means that we have world-leading domestic abuse legislation and the Modern Slavery Act 2015, a blueprint for others across the world.
We need more women aspiring to become Members of Parliament, so I warmly welcome the Women and Equalities Committee’s inquiry looking at the actions taken on gender equality in the House of Commons. I hope that we can conduct a second gender-sensitive audit as soon as possible, with a body identified as being responsible for putting its recommendations into practice.
Above all, we need 2021 to be the year that we finally grasp the nettle of online abuse, which so badly affects women, particularly those in public life. We need the forthcoming online harms Bill to be more than a set of regulatory guidelines. We need laws that make it clear that online abuse is a crime, particularly with regard to posting intimate images online without consent. A safer, more respectful environment online will also lead to a kinder politics; I really believe that. In the meantime, let us stand up to those who gratuitously abuse women online—particularly women MPs and journalists—to help make sure that more women choose to stand for election and be leaders in our media too.
Women face barriers here in Westminster, but the same is still true of other sectors—in healthcare, for instance, where women account for more than three quarters of the workforce yet fewer than half have leadership positions. An out-of-date workplace with a presenteeism culture does little to support women, particularly when they have had children, so it was helpful to see the Birmingham Business School conduct research through the pandemic to show that flexible working can improve productivity. We need as a nation to adopt flexible working as standard, as part of levelling up for women and delivering a truly modern British workplace shaped around the whole workforce. We need to look closely at what Parliament should retain from the last 12 months of changed ways of working, so that we can play our part in modernising our workplace too.
In levelling up, we need to provide pregnant women and new mothers with better protections to stop them being pushed out of work simply for being pregnant. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that one in four pregnant women felt discriminated against in the last year. Outlawing pregnant women from being made redundant, as Germany has done, would help to stop so many women falling out of the labour market into low-paid work when they have children.
In this mission of levelling up for women, our voice on the global stage will be just as important. The Prime Minister has been a long-time advocate for girls’ education as central to levelling up for women across the globe. As the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office considers its new role, including championing international development through open societies, we need to continue to take forward this principled commitment to girls’ education, alongside the UK’s internationally acknowledged role in outlawing the other inequalities and abuses that women face—for example, abuse in conflict zones, forced marriage and the lack of a host of other basic human rights.
With the UK leading the G7 this year, there is a truly unique opportunity for our country to show leadership on the global stage in promoting gender equality. The UK Government ratifying the International Labour Organisation convention on violence and harassment—the first international labour instrument that recognises the right of everybody to work free from violence and harassment—would be an act of leadership and an appropriate start. Let us celebrate an astonishing year for women and call for a commitment to level up for women across the UK and across the globe, for a fairer society for everybody.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
It will not surprise Members to know that well over 60 people wish to participate in the debate, and therefore I am afraid that we will have to start and remain with a time limit of just three minutes.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Today, I feel pretty angry and sad: angry that women walking home in the dark have to be scared of the person walking closely behind them, and sad because for far too many women, even getting home safely does not mean they are safe from harm. So I say to all colleagues right across the House: let us never allow party politics get in the way of protecting women and girls. I want to use my short time today to raise an issue that would help women, and that is making flexible work standard.
In 1995, I was working for Barclays. At the age of 32, and five months pregnant with my first child, I was promoted to senior executive. Of 240 senior execs, only eight were women. I was told that taking on this massive new job would mean coming back quickly from maternity leave, and I naively leapt at the chance. Three months after Fred was born, I had fallen in love with him, but he did not sleep much and I was under huge pressure from my male boss to go back to work. I will not dwell on it, but after post-natal depression and 18 months holding down the job while seeking to go part time, and two miscarriages later, I took legal advice. The head of the UK bank had said:
“We have managed without female directors until now. We certainly do not need part-time ones.”
I was advised to sue for constructive dismissal and sex discrimination, but blissfully for me, I was now pregnant with Harry, and this precious pregnancy was not worth the stress of a court case so I took voluntary redundancy. The reason that I could have sued was that, even then, employers were not allowed to refuse to consider part-time work, and 25 years on, that is still the case, but the 21st century demands change.
Mrs Miller
Does my right hon. Friend not agree that this is one of the many reasons why we should protect pregnant women from being made redundant, as in the case that she is talking about?
Andrea Leadsom
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend, and I absolutely agree with everything she said in her remarks.
During my time in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, a top priority was to make the UK the best place in the world to work, by encouraging flexible working as standard, transparency of employment terms and regular working hours. I planned to bring this forward in the employment rights Bill, so that applicants could propose their own working day as opposed to the employer setting the terms. Whether someone works in a supermarket or behind a desk, they should have the right to request a working pattern that suits them without negative consequences. Of course, employees can already request flexible working, but I have found that many fear to do so because of repercussions for their job security.
Flexible as standard can also be a huge advantage for employers. If job ads do not specify fixed working arrangements, applications will come from a much wider and more diverse pool of candidates. Employers must of course be able to refuse unrealistic offers, but enabling flexible as standard will, in my view, improved quality of life as well as productivity and diversity in the workplace. We know that women provide the majority of part-time workers and also the principal caring roles, so capturing all their talents will benefit both our economy and our society. So, as we look to build back better, let us put flexible work as standard at the heart of our recovery.
Mrs Miller
This is probably the first time that two Marias have followed each other in a debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am very glad about that. This debate comes at the end of a week of events organised by the all-party group on women in Parliament marking International Women’s Day, with fantastic support from Mr Speaker, many right hon. and hon. Members, the House service, the Parliamentary Archives, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Fawcett Society and UN Women. This has been the first time that we have organised events in this way, but I do not think it will be the last. I also thank the APPG’s secretariat, the Fawcett Society and my parliamentary staff—particularly Rachel Edwards, for her extraordinary commitment to organising this week’s programme.
In a world where gender equality issues are so entrenched, it is right that we should spend some time thinking about how we can do things better. I thank every one of the 67 colleagues who wanted to contribute today, many of whom were not able to speak. Perhaps next year we should have a new tradition: a full-day debate to reflect the overwhelming support, to consider the issues that affect women’s equality and to mark International Women’s Day here, on the Floor of the House of Commons, at the heart of our Parliament.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered International Women’s Day.