International Women’s Day 2016

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)]

Like many women sitting at home watching this debate today, I remember catching a glimpse of a female MP on telly and wondering what kind of woman one had to be to enter politics. What kind of woman is she, I thought. Now, working alongside them, I have encountered strong women, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) who have brought this debate to the Chamber today. Their strength comes from knowing who they are. They are tenacious and determined women who have gained respect in this male-dominated field of politics. There are 191 of these pioneers in this House, and we on the Government Benches should be proud to claim 68 of them, 27 of whom were newly elected last year. However, while being proud, we must also be ambitious for more. We who are lucky enough to be here must take seriously our responsibility to those who are not.

I would like to ask the House to join me in saluting all women and especially all female parliamentarians. It is often suggested that we are pioneers, and that we must buck trends, refashion the system and upset the milk cart. Yes, in a way we must—we are all pioneers and have shared experiences of the fight and struggle for the privilege of sitting on these green Benches. It is our duty to raise issues that have previously gone unspoken. The collective female membership of this House is a powerful forum for change, and I want to raise three brief points.

First, how do we as a collective compel legislators, parliaments, the United Nations and all the decision brokers to better represent the lives and aspirations of women? Here today we have a groundswell of energy to represent women from all walks of life, and we need to hold national and international organisations to account to perform for women and not just for men.

Secondly, how do we harness technology to promote and support women? We heard earlier about online stalking, bullying and cybercrime. We are all on social media and all of us female parliamentarians must have been trolled at some point. Imagine the response there would be if we women who are targeted by misogynistic trolls all supported each other in shouting them down. Let us challenge Facebook and Twitter to support women to get online and shame the bullying tactics of anonymous people, mostly men, who dare to put us in our place. We must come together not just for one day, but use our collective voice to shout more loudly every day. We must take over those social media spaces and make them our own.

Finally, as an MP in this Parliament I do not have to justify my gender to represent one of my constituents, nor do I have to justify the way in which I represent someone because of my gender. That is how it must be in society too, and in every community, every family and every organisation, but that, unfortunately, is not the case throughout the country. In my constituency, Wealden, men earn 20.8% more than women. We must champion those women in this House.

In sharia courts in this very country, the testimonies of women are worth half as much as those of men. We must represent those women in this House. In communities where gangs groom and abuse children, their victims’ testimonies are often ignored by the authorities. We must speak up for those women.

We still have a long way to go to ensure that the testimonies of women are taken as seriously as those of men. When all of society accepts that our daughters, our sisters and our mothers are not owned by any man—are not owned by anybody but themselves—and have something to offer because of, rather than in spite of, their gender, only then will we have succeeded.