International Women’s Day

Vicky Ford Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

It is a huge honour to speak in the Chamber on the eve of International Women’s Day and 100 years after the first woman took her seat in this place. What an amazing year it has been. I think of that beautiful day in June when thousands of people took part in processions, dressed in suffragette colours, across each of our capital cities; that inspirational day when hundreds of women from all across the country came here to take part in the Ask Her to Stand event; that powerful day when 100 women MPs from all across the world came here to stand together and share experiences; and that very proud day for me when I held a Pankhurst party on the famous lady’s birthday at which I, as the first woman MP for Chelmsford, joined the woman mayor and woman lord lieutenant to lay a wreath on the plinth where the suffragettes stood and made speeches.

E quality matters. Organisations that are more diverse are more effective and successful, which is why I am proud to chair the all-party group on women in Parliament, the women’s caucus. We work to encourage women to stand and then when they come to this place we stand together to support each other. This has been a great year for the all-party group, and we have made some progress. Just yesterday was a historic day. My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) was entrusted with the vote of my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), who became the first man to vote by proxy after the birth of his child last weekend.

There is a lot more to do, particularly about online abuse and harassment. That is not just an issue for us in the UK. The Inter-Parliamentary Union recently looked at MPs and staff in 45 countries in Europe: 85% had suffered psychological threats of violence, nearly half had received threats of death, rape or beatings, one in seven had suffered physical violence and one in four had suffered sexual violence. The violence against women in public life is linked to the rise in online abuse, and our election law is not fit for purpose in the digital age. It is changing the way women who are elected act. It is deterring women from standing for election. It is a direct threat to our democracy. I ask the Government to make sure that our new online harms report does everything necessary to rectify this situation.

On a positive note, I was pleased to take part in the gender-sensitive Parliament audit with staff and Members from both this House and the other place. We have made several recommendations that should improve accessibility for all who want to come into this place, and I am glad that the Women and Equalities Committee, under our excellent Chair, is taking responsibility for making sure that those recommendations are implemented. As a member of the Committee, I have been very pleased to take part in our work on women in the workplace more broadly. The numbers of women in work in the UK are at record highs and the gender pay gap is at a record low. I understand that the way we measure the gender pay gap has now been adopted by Bloomberg as the metric by which companies all across the globe will be measured.

People who know me well know that I often like to look at how the UK compares with other countries. A report this week, the women in work index, compared the situation for women all across the OECD. It looked at the gender pay gap, access to maternity rights, and the number of women at different levels. The good news is that in comparison with our peers, we are on the way up—we have gone from No. 14 to No. 13—but wouldn’t it be great to get into the top 10? That is what we should aim for. It is estimated that if we could get to No. 2, it would help not only women but the whole of society. According to the maths, we would enhance the GDP of our country by 9% and enhance prosperity for all.

The women’s economic empowerment strategy on which the Government are working is important for everyone. It focuses on helping women who are on lower pay and helping older women to return to the workforce, and I hope that it will also focus on sexual harassment in the workplace. As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, a recent survey showed that 40% of women have experienced it, and I strongly support her call for the role of the Equality and Human Rights Commission to be strengthened in that regard.

We in the UK are lucky, however. Across the world, 63 million girls are out of school and in conflict zones. Girls are two and a half times more likely not to be in school than boys and three times more likely to be victims of modern slavery. We should be enormously proud, as women, of the work that we are doing overseas, and as women, we should champion the work of the Department for International Development. Our DFID programmes are leading the fight to end sexual violence and conflict, to stamp out female genital mutilation and to protect children from forced marriages. We must stand together to support all the work that we are doing both here and overseas.