International Women’s Day

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab) [V]]

It is so important that we have this debate each year to honour the contribution of women across society. Covid-19 has highlighted and exacerbated inequality. Because of deep-rooted gender inequality worldwide, women and girls have experienced the pandemic differently. Some 47 million women worldwide are expected to fall into extreme poverty this year, and 20 million girls, on top of the 131 million out of school before the crisis, may now never return to school.

We have seen a huge surge in gender-based violence. In some parts of the world, it has been called a “shadow pandemic”. Women’s sexual and reproductive rights and services have been dramatically reduced. That is why the Opposition have been calling for gender analyses in the UK’s international response to covid-19. Instead, the Government shut down the Department for International Development, which was renowned for its work on gender equality around the world, and now, as the Father of the House pointed out earlier, they are slashing the aid budget.

The Government must reverse their decision to cut their aid from 0.7% to 0.5%. That will threaten lives. Let me give an example. There has been a 60% cut to the International Rescue Committee’s health programme in Sierra Leone, which helps over 3 million mostly teenage girls in a country where one in 17 women dies in pregnancy or childbirth. The global covid response has abandoned women and girls. Another programme in Rwanda, which was helping over 200,000 young girls, has also been scrapped.

On International Women’s Day, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) and I launched a consultation on advancing gender equality in development. If we really want to understand how to address structural inequalities in our society and in the world, we must engage with communities and civil society, and understand the international perspective active in the global south. Will the Minister please speak to the Foreign Secretary and reverse the aid cuts that are taking place, because they are endangering so many women who are already in difficult circumstances? Only if we all fight together and stand in solidarity can we make a better, more equal world.