Vote 100 and International Women’s Day

Stella Creasy Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I am delighted to agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of that meeting of the commission. Her emphasis on making sure that we get real policies for women in rural communities is essential.

I am proud to be part of a Government who are wholeheartedly committed to improving the lives of women and girls. Since 2010, we have made significant progress in accelerating gender equality at home and abroad, whether by empowering women in the workplace, tackling violence against women and girls or improving girls’ education around the globe.

We all know, though, that there is more to do, with sexual harassment scandals, stories of debauched dinners, one third of women worldwide experiencing physical or sexual violence, and the fact that it will take an estimated 118 years to close the global gender pay gap. As the theme for this year’s International Women’s Day makes clear, we must continue to “press for progress”. This effort must span countries and continents, policy areas and political allegiances.

I wish to kick off today’s debate by talking about three areas in which I think women are still losing out to men globally, and what we are going to do about it. The first is violence: too many women and girls face harm and abuse. The second is money: many women still earn less than their male counterparts. The third is influence: around the world, men still occupy the majority of the top jobs.

Let me start on the first point, violence. A truly equal society is one in which everyone is free from the threat of gendered violence. Today, I am proud to announce the launch of the Government’s consultation on tackling domestic abuse, which will help to inform the introduction of the domestic abuse Bill. Domestic abuse affects approximately 2 million people in England and Wales every year, and the majority of the victims are women. The Government are determined to do all we can to confront the devastating impact that such abuse has on victims and their families, and in doing so to address a key cause and consequence of gender inequality.

Our consultation seeks to transform our approach to domestic abuse, addressing the issue at every stage from prevention to early intervention to bringing more perpetrators to justice. It reinforces our determination to make domestic abuse everyone’s business. This comprehensive consultation will last for 12 weeks, and I encourage every Member of the House to engage with it and share it with those in their networks who have, or who should have, an interest in this area. This is a critical opportunity to bring these crimes out of the shadows.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister will know that, last week, the United Nations convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women said that the way we treat women in Northern Ireland, denying them access to abortion in their home nation, is a form of violence against women. Today, 135 parliamentarians from throughout the House have written to her asking her to commit to providing an opportunity to put that right in the legislation she is talking about. Will she give us a right to vote to give women in Northern Ireland equal access to abortion rights?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady will know about the limitations on my announcing any such statement, but may I nevertheless take the opportunity to thank her for the good work that she has done in this area, including in ensuring that, for the first time, the women of Northern Ireland have access to abortions? We now have a new system—a centralised system—for those women so that they find it much easier than ever before to access the health support that she, like me, thinks is so vital.

The consultation will last 12 weeks, and I urge every Member of the House to engage with it. Domestic violence is not the only type of violence that demands our urgent attention, though. Internationally, too, we must continue to combat violence against women and girls. Globally, one in three women are beaten or sexually abused in their lifetime. We are generating world-leading evidence through our £25 million “What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls” programme. This year, results from 15 innovative interventions being evaluated across Africa and Asia will provide new global evidence about what works to stop violence before it starts. We want this evidence to be a game-changer in supporting more effective UK and international support for ending violence against women and girls globally, and it is essential that we put what we learn into practice.

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[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—it is wonderful to see the number of men who are in the Chamber for this debate growing exponentially as we continue, in whatever role.

So many Members have made fantastic speeches, talking about the past and what we have achieved, but I want to honour International Women’s Day in the way that I feel is best. I consider International Women’s Day to be feminist Christmas; it is about what goodies and actions are coming. I want to talk about that because we need to learn from what the suffragettes drummed into all of us: deeds, not words, make a difference. Even when there were men who claimed to care for women’s rights and for the future of women, they knew that it was not enough to have them speak for them. The true deed was to have true and equal representation.

We must learn that lesson today as we continue to look at the inequalities in our world. It is simply not enough to pay lip service to equality. It is not enough to march and to use the hashtag. I am struck when I go in to shops such as Hennes that people can now buy plenty of t-shirts that say, “Female Equals Future”. But we will only have a more equal future when we have deeds, and when we actually tackle the barriers to discrimination and the inequality that holds 51% of our population back.

In perhaps being the Grinch of feminist Christmas, I am inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft, who said:

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”

When we view the world as it is and are rational creatures, we see that if the call is to push for progress, we are not making the progress that we think we are and its pace is agonisingly slow. We are celebrating 100 years since some women got the vote, and we have talked about the fact that we have now achieved a 30% share of this Parliament for women. A whole 12 extra women were elected at the last general election. If we carry on at that trajectory, we will need another 14 general elections to achieve parity. I know that we have been having elections more frequently than we used to, but we need more appropriate action.

It is not just national Government where we fail to make the progress that we want. The hon. Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) rightly pointed out the progress in local government. I am proud that we have one of the few female leaders in local government in my borough, Clare Coghill, the new leader of Waltham Forest Council—the first woman to be elected there. Only 17% of council leaders in this country are women. We would need 12,000 women to stand for election if we were to achieve the extra 3,000 who would give us parity in local government.

We know that this country continues to fail what I shall now call the Piers Morgan test. This morning, Piers Morgan tweeted that the fact that there were six women in positions of responsibility in the country meant that the country was run by women. Job done: we can all go home. The point is that such women are still too often the exception rather the rule. That is why we can name them. True equality will come when there are so many women from so many backgrounds in those positions that it is simply the norm, and the fact is that we are nowhere near the norm. Only 11% of surgeons in this country are women—it will take 100 years to achieve parity—and only 24% of judges are women. Why do we never hear about all this? I would wager that it is because only 34% of people in senior roles in our press are women.

Too often we tell ourselves that because we have seen one woman, there must be more behind her, but the truth is that this country is still agonisingly behind where it needs to be to realise the potential of all its people. We see that not least in the arguments that we are having about equal and, indeed, fair pay. The equal pay legislation is older than I am, but we still have to explain to the young women coming into our workforce that there is a 14% gap—and, yes, it is growing for their generation. This is not just about women having children. Women ask for pay rises just as often as men, but men are four times as likely to get them. We are starting at lower salaries, and that inequality is continuing and is not being reduced.

Companies facing gender pay gap reporting are now hiding behind each other. I welcome the legislation: we all fought for it, and we can see the cleansing effect that it is starting to have. However, we know that only 1,200 of 9,000 companies have declared their data so far, and we know that the deadline is fast approaching. That tells us that plenty of companies are waiting until the very end, hoping that they can find cover in each other. Let us send a strong message today, on International Women’s Day: “ It does not matter whether you publish today, or whether you all publish together. We will look at every single set of data, and we will hold to account every single company that does not offer equal pay.”

We must also, as a House, speak up for the right to talk about equal pay. As we have seen at the BBC, when women start asking questions, they get shut down. Freedom of speech in the workplace is a fundamental human right, and the legislation relies on the principle that we can start to have such conversations. We must not give an inch on the idea that it is acceptable for managers to tell employees that if they start asking those questions, they will be labelled difficult and it might harm their chances of promotion. It is what we might call the John Humphrys test.

[Anna Soubry]

Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the problems is the fact that we do not have as many trade unions operating in as many workplaces? I used to be the mother of the chapel when I worked at Central Television, which was obviously a very long time ago. One of the things that shop stewards do is to act on behalf of all their members when, as sometimes happens, they are fearful of stepping up to say the sort of things that the hon. Lady rightly identifies. If we had better, more democratic, more open trade unions, that would go a long way towards advancing the cause of women.

[Stella Creasy]

I completely agree. Let me put on record that if I were ever to face problems in my workplace, I would certainly hope that the hon. Lady would act as shop steward.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

And vice versa—[Laughter.]

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[Stella Creasy]

I know that the hon. Lady would fight the good fight. She is absolutely right: this is about representation and voice, and we see the impact of women not having that voice.

This is not just about gender; it is also about ethnicity. We know when we talk about inequalities in pay that our sisters from the black and ethnic minority communities face even higher differentials, and we, as a country, are a long way from knowing how to tackle that. I welcome the initiative from my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), who said, “It is not enough to have data—we need to see what you are going to do about it.” It is clear from the data that we have already seen from only 1,200 companies how far we have to go.

This is also not just about the major companies. We know that 62% of people earning less than the living wage are women. It is about persistent poverty pay, and what it does to families around the country. It is little wonder that one of the themes of the debate that we have started to have in 2018 is period poverty. All too often, women are trying to pick up the pieces of a failing economy in an institutionally unequal society. What does that mean? It means that women are often the ones trying to make the difference, and it is the men who, like Piers Morgan, simply say, “I’ve seen one of you do it. If one of you can do it, all of you can do it.”

We see that nowhere more than when we try to tackle violence against women. The writer Margaret Atwood said:

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) set out so clearly, that is still a challenge for us in our society. Violence against women is endemic; the #MeToo movement has started a conversation about something that has been part of our society for generations. It is just a conversation, and we have not yet seen the real change—the real progress—we know we need to make. When 85,000 women report being raped, and 400,000 report sexual assaults, we know that that is just the tip of the iceberg. Then there are the 12,000 honour-based violence crimes and the 135,000 women and girls living with female genital mutilation. That only 15% of these crimes get reported is not about the women, but about the society we are right now; and about our failure to understand these crimes and prosecute them, and to support the people affected by them.

As part of dealing with that, I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to ratifying the Istanbul convention, but one of the things I want to do today is to hold the Government to account for deeds not words. If we are going to ratify the Istanbul convention, we have to right a long-standing wrong. I pay tribute to the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), who made a powerful speech about the importance of women’s reproductive rights, because women’s reproductive rights are human rights. I want to put on record my gratitude to every one of the parliamentarians who has signed the letter to the Minister for Women and Equalities calling for us to give equal access to abortion for women in Northern Ireland.

Members may say, “A year ago, we decided to provide funding to help women from Northern Ireland to travel to England to have an abortion.” The figures we have today show that 600 women have taken part in that scheme—clearly, there is a demand. But it is little wonder that the United Nations says very clearly that the way we treat Northern Irish women—by making them travel, and by putting that restriction on their access to a basic human right—is degrading and inhuman. We cannot ratify the Istanbul convention unless we right that wrong. That treatment is inhuman. Not everybody can travel. We are treating women in one part of the United Kingdom differently—the women who cannot travel, the women in coercive relationships, the women who have small children and the women who are undocumented.

We cannot leave this to chance. We cannot say, “Because we can give you some ability to travel, that means you have equal access.” We cannot let whatever deal the Government may have needed to do with the DUP allow us to get away with arguing that women’s rights are devolved, especially when the Government have committed to giving us a vote on same-sex marriage. Equality cannot be selective. It is right that people should be able to love who they love and to record that in the way they want to, and it is right that women should be given control over their bodies and not be forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy.

I say to Ministers that these things are there in the Istanbul convention. We are treating citizens of this nation with contempt and in a way that the UN called degrading. If we are not going to have a free vote on the domestic violence Bill, which is supposed to ratify the convention, when will we have parity? When will we treat equality as what it truly is—about solidarity? If we want to show solidarity with our Northern Irish friends and their right to marry who they want, we should show solidarity with our Northern Irish sisters in giving them back control over their bodies.

I also want to echo the call by my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton on the global gag rule, but I would go further. On International Women’s Day, the deed that we need is for this Government to commit to contribute to the SheDecides fund. It is one thing to face Donald Trump and his decision to withdraw funding—we know that women have died in the last year because they have not been able to access maternal healthcare following the funding cut he made to stop abortion services—but it is another thing when other countries step up to the plate and say, “We will bridge the gap.” However, this country shies away from being part of that fund.

This is not just about the money; it is about the message of solidarity it sends when we are part of the SheDecides fund. I call on the Government not simply to tell Donald Trump that he is wrong to cut this funding, but to put our money where our mouth is and to stand with our sisters around the world who need the services that his withdrawal of money has cut.

We have also today had the wonderful Women for Refugee Women organisation in Committee Room 10. I am sure that they are still up there singing, and I hope that Members will go up and join them. They are singing for their sisters who are in Yarl’s Wood. In 2018, we in this country are not making the progress we think we are if we are still locking up women who have been the victims of violence, sexual abuse and torture in conflict, yet that is exactly what we are doing in Yarl’s Wood. The fact that 75% of the women in Yarl’s Wood are set free, sometimes to be detained again and then set free again, tells us that the system is broken. This expensive system enshrines inequality in the way in which we treat the most vulnerable women in our society, and I urge Ministers to rethink their determination that this is the only way to manage our immigration system.

Like many of us, the lessons that I take on International Women’s Day are from my constituents, and I want to share two quick stories. In 1962, Beryl Swain was the first woman to compete in motorbike racing on the Isle of Man. The men were so horrified that they changed the weight categories to prevent women from taking part, and that continued until 1978. Karpal Kaur Sandhu was the first Asian female police officer in the world, and she proudly served Walthamstow. She was murdered by her husband in 1973 because he disapproved of her job. What that tells us is that the backlash, the power, the abuse and the violence will always mutate.

We have to keep fighting the patriarchy, and in that sense, that is why I am proud to see so many men here today, including the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman). In creating these deeds, men have a vital role to play. As we have all tried to remind Piers Morgan, we do not think that all men are violent. This is about standing up for the reputation of men and for the better world that men and women working together as equals can create, and we ask men now to be our allies and to show solidarity. This is also about cold, hard economic logic. More equal societies are more prosperous, more resilient and more diverse. The right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), who is no longer in the Chamber, said that the equal employment of men and women would create $28 trillion in growth, from which we could all benefit.

That is why I say to the men in this Chamber and the men in Britain: do not leave it to the women of Britain to resolve these problems. Do not expect us to lead this fight on our own and to come up with all the solutions and the deeds. Do not tell us that you do not think that quotas work or that you do not think that turning misogyny into a hate crime is a good thing. Tell us what you will do to create an equal society. We all have a responsibility to come up with deeds, not words. I will end with the words of Millicent Fawcett, who said:

“What draws men and women together is stronger than the brutality and tyranny which drive them apart.”

I will champion the contribution that every one of my constituents, male and female, makes to this country, but I know that only a truly equal society will realise that for all of them. On International Women’s Day, I call on every man and woman in this country to ensure that we have not just one day of fighting for that better world, but 365 days of fighting for it. Truly, it is worth it for all of us.