International Women’s Day

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Friday 10th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord and to take part in this interesting debate. I welcome the chance to make a short contribution. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard, on her maiden speech. I am sure we all look forward to hearing many more of them, and I am sure she will now have the same sense of relief having made it that we all in our time have had ourselves.

The Motion that we are debating refers to the education of women and girls, and I want to speak today about women and science. It is a good week to do this because on Monday this week we had a major science event in the other place called STEM for Britain, about which I will say more in a moment, and next Monday we have another major science event called Voice of the Future where, to put it bluntly, there is a role reversal: members of the Science and Technology Select Committee and the major spokespeople for science for the major parties appear before a group of younger scientists and engineers sitting around the horseshoe.

I declare an interest: I am president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. My colleague in another place, the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock, is the chair, and between us we do a great deal to help to improve the extent to which Parliament has the opportunity to debate and discuss science.

In a debate such as this, I need hardly say that we need to celebrate the achievement of women in science to consider some of the barriers that still exist to their making their full contribution. Over recent years there have been plenty of reasons why the opportunities for women to study science have not been as great as they could have been. By the way, I thank the Campaign for Science and Engineering, the House of Commons Library and other scientific societies for providing far more statistics than I could ever get into this speech today.

There are many strategies that the science community could adopt to address what is known as the leaky pipeline. In particular, we must do more to encourage women taking career breaks to keep in touch with their science, to make it easier for them to return as soon they want to and not to positions less senior than those they occupied before taking a maternity break, for example.

It is a well-known fact that female scientists frequently fail to get proper credit for their research. Rosalind Franklin, whose name is now rather more historical than current, was the X-ray crystallographer who made possible the discoveries of Watson and Crick—who got the Nobel prize. I am not saying that they did not deserve it—after all, we have the world-famous Crick Institute by St Pancras now—but Rosalind was not even referred to in their paper, which is a scandal. The problem of undercrediting women in science remains.

We must not forget that people still suffer from a great deal of sexism. I read in the Evening Standard this week about the first woman Tube driver, who started in 1978. Well, 11 years earlier, in 1967, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, probably Britain’s most distinguished living astrophysicist, personally discovered pulsars, a remarkable discovery for which she did not get sufficient credit. She has it now but did not then. She was left off the paper, and other people—men—got the Nobel prize. She has gone on to win almost every scientific prize you can think of. I was at the Royal Society last week to see her get another one, but she should have been properly recognised from the beginning. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for reminding them that when she made her historic discovery in 1967, it was her male colleagues who were asked about the astrophysical significance of the discovery. Guess what she was asked about? I am sorry to have to tell your Lordships that it was her bust size, her hip size and how many boyfriends she had. You could not make it up.

I like to think that things have changed since then, but many Members of this House will be wondering whether they are quite so sure. We have a lot of women active in science. Anyone who listened the other day to Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who presents “The Sky at Night”, will know how inspirational she is. I was interested to hear that they have now manufactured a new Barbie doll based on her. I have only seen the photo in newspapers, but the doll has a dress that looks like the night sky. I hope that this will get people interested in astronomy because, whether you are male or female, it is nothing short of amazing.

My time is running out, so I ought to get in a couple of other references. The first Briton in space was a woman, not a man. A few years ago, Tim Peake got a lot of publicity. That is fine, but the first Briton in space was Helen Sharman, more than 30 years ago. There are other women scientists, such as Sarah Gilbert, who developed the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine and who has been recognised, I am glad to say, and Catherine Green. Others have also in their time been given a Barbie doll in their image.

I want to say a word about an event that took place in the other part of this building on Monday, STEM for Britain. It is a competition for early career researchers who bring their papers to display and discuss them. Their local Members of Parliament are invited to meet them. Others, including some Members of this House, came along to support them, and very welcome they were too. The proportion of women in the five major categories this year was heartening. Some 60% of the physicists were female, as were 55% of those in chemistry, 60% in the biosciences and 50% in maths but only 40% in engineering, which remains an area where there could be more equality.

My time is up, but these are the future. I welcome any support that this House can give to the promotion of women and girls in STEM subjects. I like to think that this House will have many other occasions on which we can discuss such an important subject.