International Women’s Day

Ruth Edwards Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Edwards (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), who made a powerful speech.

“A woman is like a tea bag: you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”

After the year we have had, Eleanor Roosevelt’s words certainly strike a chord. Women have spent more time home schooling and are more likely to have been furloughed and to have experienced anxiety and loneliness. I want to thank all the women in Rushcliffe, whose sacrifices have got their families and communities through this pandemic. In particular, I want to thank four incredible women.

First, Hetvi Parekh recently won the Prime Minister’s Points of Light award for her volunteering with Sewa Day. She has provided hot meals to frontline NHS staff, furnished a respite room in Queen’s Medical Centre hospital, and made 750 activity packs for children on low incomes, which I am told involved wrestling with a staggering 29,000 pipe cleaners. No task is too big, no challenge too daunting. She is currently collecting Easter eggs for children living in refuges.

Then there is Nicola Brindley, with whom I am working to set up a network of J9 safe spaces in Rushcliffe, where survivors of domestic abuse can go to get help. J9 is named after Janine Mundy, who was murdered by her ex-husband. Nicola has trained 60 people in Rushcliffe. She set up J9 in all Nottingham’s jobcentres and launched a programme to train a domestic abuse specialist in every jobcentre across the country. That work has saved lives from day one.

Farah Jamil set up Meet, Greet and Eat a year ago—a project that enables adults with additional needs to come together and create a place they can call their own. It helps participants build confidence, communication and practical skills. The group provides food bags and hot meals to elderly people, and it wants to set up a café and a social supermarket, providing opportunities for adults with additional needs to learn, grow and be themselves.

Jill Mathers started the Cotgrave Community Kitchen in 2019 to tackle social isolation. It gets everyone together for a nutritious meal at an affordable price. Refusing to be beaten by lockdown, Jill and her volunteers provide 200 weekly food bags and takeaway meals. She also runs a mini-market with donations from FareShare. She cooked 188 Christmas lunches for local pensioners. She hopes she will soon be able to open a community café, providing a social space, training opportunities and a market for locally grown produce.

Women are survivors. Women are fighters. As the stories of Hetvi, Nicola, Farah and Jill show, women are the heroes at the heart of our communities.