International Women’s Day

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is always a privilege to speak in this debate, and I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for bringing it forward year on year.

Despite the great progress made by the women who have come before us, women today are still subject to huge economic, social and political inequalities right across the world. Intersectional inequalities in particular should be highlighted here today. In its 2020 report and recommendations, the First Minister’s national advisory council on women and girls defined intersectionality as

“a framework for understanding how multiple categories of identity, such as gender, race and class, interact in ways that create complex systems in terms of oppression and power.”

How must it feel to be a woman who is disabled or of colour in the world today, even here in the UK? We know that disabled women are often disproportionately impacted by many of the inequalities experienced here.

The Glasgow Disability Alliance has spoken of the triple whammy facing disabled women today—from being disabled, being a woman and dealing with the impact of covid-19. An estimated 19% of women over 18 have a disability, compared with 12% of men. It is astonishing, and difficult to comprehend. Women, and disabled women in particular, face great bias and disadvantage in the workplace. Measures such as the right to call for flexible working from the start of employment would benefit those people, and benefit women generally, because women—let us be honest here—have a hugely disproportionate share of caring responsibilities, making it difficult for some of them to maintain or even take on work.

Women are also more likely to miss out on things like statutory sick pay. The UK, as we all know, has one of the lowest sick pay rates in the OECD, and this means that many women are not eligible for it—even women on maternity pay. So this might be a good place and time to call for an urgent overhaul of the wholly inadequate SSP system.

Crucial and long-awaited reforms to employment law are needed to keep caregivers—mainly women—and disabled women in the workplace and ensure that they get the support that they need to stay in work should they choose to do so. Disabled women are also disproportionately impacted by gender-based violence, and I thank the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips)—but I do not want to thank her; I want her not to have to do this year on year. We know that domestic violence and abuse are often under-reported. The World Health Organisation has estimated that around a third of women globally will be subjected to physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.

In 2017 the UN cited research estimating that disabled women experience domestic violence at twice the rate of other women and experience violence specifically because they are disabled. This has to stop. In Scotland there is a programme called “Equally Safe”, which is our strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls, focused on the need for prevention of violence. We need to make their priorities—achieving greater gender equality, intervening early and effectively and tackling perpetrators—things that happen as a matter of course right across the UK. We must continue to press for legislation to tackle gender-based violence, especially against women—it does happen to men as well, and we should never forget that.

Today we are all thinking of Ukraine, and showing solidarity with the women there. How many of us will ever forget the sight of a pregnant women being stretchered out of a hospital? This has to stop. There are many things that we can do, and I am going to make a personal plea to the Minister at this point, although I know it is not her responsibility. We cannot have people sitting at borders waiting to cross them. We have all acknowledged that the majority of refugees in Ukraine are women and girls; we have seen pictures of them at borders saying farewell to their men who are going back to fight. We should not be making people wait to come here. I would also call for article 11 of the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities to be taken into account as part of someone’s refugee status to help them to come here sooner.

All of us here, especially the women, have often been asked to give advice to young women who want to enter public life. I have been asked—and I had to think about it—how I got started. Well, I got started because a man stood down as a branch convenor and no one else would do it. I thought, “Here I go”, and I put myself forward, because I had been badly treated in a previous employment. The way I did it was this: I had to think of myself putting on a hat which would make me a different Marion; a Marion who could say and do things that I would normally not be able to say and do. I have given that advice to young women, but what I would really like to be able to say is “Ditch the hat; just cut the bias.” Let us do this on equal terms without having to build ourselves up to do it.