Women

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:58 pm on 8 March 2007.

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Photo of Baroness Morris of Bolton Baroness Morris of Bolton Deputy Chief Whip, Whips, Shadow Minister, Education 3:58, 8 March 2007

My Lords, that is even better.

In last year's debate, the Conservative Party was also somewhat chided for not fully participating. As I explained then, my noble friends were at a memorial service. Today we again had a memorial service, for Lord Mowbray and Stourton. However, the Conservative Party—the party for which Emmeline Pankhurst stood as a candidate, which had the first woman MP to take her seat in the Commons, and which produced Margaret Thatcher, one of the world's greatest leaders—has a proud record of commitment to women. I should add that we are also the party that appointed the first Minister with responsibility for women. Anyone who tries to airbrush my noble friend Lady Shephard of Northwold from the history books had better beware! She is a formidable operator and, as she demonstrated today, a passionate advocate for women.

Today's debate has, as always, been wide-ranging, thought-provoking and moving. All the contributions from noble Lords deserve comment but, unfortunately, time simply will not permit me such a luxury. However, I must mention the excellent speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, which should be required reading, and the touching speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen. There can be no doubt when we look at advancement in the equality of women that there has been a generation of revolutionary change. Who would have thought that we would see the All England Lawn Tennis Club announce equal prize money for the women's and men's Wimbledon championships, as it did last month; or that the Financial Times would be reporting on Wall Street's "gender agenda" where:

"Former bastions of macho culture, trading floors, are now going out of their way to retain female competencies"?

Access to good education, innovations in health and childcare and better working practices have all played their part in transforming life for many women both here and abroad. Greater recognition of and a willingness to confront challenging and taboo issues such as those raised today on domestic violence, rape, honour crimes, female genital mutilation and trafficking have enabled women to tackle these issues head on.

Last weekend, I watched a programme on Channel 4 called the "50 Greatest TV Dramas", one of which was a harrowing and moving drama entitled "Sex Traffic". I remembered how shocked I was when I first saw that drama. It depicts a truly dreadful trade which, as many noble Lords said, is made all the worse because trafficked women and children are brought to the UK with such high hopes for a better life, with promises of good, honest work in the hospitality or domestic service industries. We know how cruelly they are deceived. Once here, their documents are confiscated and they are forced into bonded labour, including prostitution. But in addressing this issue we must not overlook a scandal much closer to home whereby children who leave care are trafficked internally. These are vulnerable young people and those who violate them in this way are truly despicable.

I am therefore proud that that has been such an important issue for the Conservative Party. My noble friend Lady Anelay of St Johns has been focusing on it in this House since 2004. In January of last year we announced a major package of proposals and, since then, trafficking has been a topic discussed at the centre of many of our conferences. And so it should be. There are now as many people trafficked as once there were slaves, and it must stop. I should like to take this opportunity to thank the Government for responding to calls to sign, although yet to ratify, the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings. I hope the Minister will be able to update us on the progress of the consultation paper on this issue.

Part of any solution must be to ensure confidence and economic and social security in the home countries. Providing women with the means to set up and run their own enterprises to strengthen their communities can go a long way to preventing them being taken in by promises of work abroad. Microfinance loans have helped enormously in this area. In 2006, Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to create economic and social development from the grassroots up through microfinance loans. Their work shows how empowering people at the bottom of society can really help women.

Women are increasingly taking part in the formal economy. They currently hold eight out of 10 jobs in Asia's booming export business and account for 55 per cent of the developed economies' GDP. In the UK, 55 per cent of women with children under five now work outside the home, compared with 25 per cent in 1975. Women form a large proportion of the public sector workforce, making up half of the roles available as school governors, NHS trust board members, magistrates and board of prison visitors. We need only to look around the Chamber today to see the significant contribution made by women to our public life. Research undertaken by the World Bank suggests that the greater the representation of women in parliament, the lower the level of corruption. That is just one of the very good reasons why we must fight for female equality as a precursor to good governance in developing countries, and we still have to fight for it here at home.

In our debate last year I explained how the Conservative Party had transformed the way we selected candidates. My noble friends Lady Shephard of Northwold and Lord Taylor and I were charged with encouraging, and ultimately selecting, a more diverse list of candidates. David Cameron built on this and introduced the priority list, with the explicit aim of securing the selection of more women. For the last year I have served on the priority list committee. It has been a challenge, and has certainly not been without its detractors. It has, however, also been a privilege. I am so impressed with the calibre of all our candidates in winnable seats, men and women, but the women in particular are going to make such a difference to the Conservative Party, and therefore to British democracy. I am delighted to announce that almost half of our winnable seats have selected women. That initiative, however, would not have been possible without the Government's introduction of the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, which allowed us to adopt these positive measures to reduce the inequality between the number of men and women elected, and I say a very big thank you.

While we on these Benches recognise and welcome the steps that have been taken by all sides to advance women, this debate has highlighted that there is still much to do. Although things are looking better, as my noble friend Lady Flather reminded us, women still do two-thirds of the world's work but earn only 10 per cent of the world's income. Transparency International reports that women are disproportionately affected by today's global challenges, such as the impacts of corruption. Climate change and health problems like HIV/AIDS are two other examples, with UN figures showing that in sub-Saharan Africa women are three times more likely to be infected than young men, as so graphically illustrated by my noble friend Lord Fowler.

As your Lordships have often highlighted in international development debates, there is much research to show that educating girls and empowering women boosts a country's economy and is good for business. Indeed, women are considered the key to solving many of the challenges faced predominantly in the developing world.

I take this opportunity to share with your Lordships the work that one of the UK's leading companies is undertaking in this area. Standard Chartered is involved in promoting the advancement of women's economic, political and social status throughout the world, a wonderful example of the private sector taking this agenda forward where it is most needed. One of its current projects in India is a sport-based social inclusion model called "Goal". The project draws women in to play netball, but around that it provides a unique modular leadership course, teaching them skills and confidence, telling them about health issues and acting as a vehicle for women's empowerment. Because the programme is based on a sport, it helps to overcome some of the objections that some members of the community might have had if it had just been a straightforward education course for wives and daughters. My noble friend Lady Verma made a passionate plea for us to remember that these problems are also close to home.

Equality in the workplace is not just an international issue. The gap between male and female entrepreneurship is wider in the UK than it is in the US, Germany and Italy. As has already been mentioned, the number of female directors in FTSE directorships has fallen. Fairness and Freedom: The Final Report of the Equalities Review, published last week, stated that simply encouraging more women into employment has not solved all the problems. In fact, it suggests that this has created a new type of inequality: a tiered workforce in which mothers often find themselves close to the bottom, let alone those who are full-time carers and cannot enter the system at all. It suggests that sidelined, overlooked and squeezed-out mothers of young children are more discriminated against than anyone else in the workplace, and are often forced to choose between children and a career.

That is not helping the gender pay gap, which for full-time work, as we have already heard, is 7.2 per cent, and for part-time work a whopping 37.6 per cent. The request for flexible work may have hugely opened up the opportunities for part-time and flexible work, but it has failed to improve the quality of that part-time work. Not only do women fail to get true recognition while they work; they still face real unfairness in pensions. I am sure that many of your Lordships are looking forward to engaging actively on that issue in the forthcoming Pensions Bill when it reaches this House. We onthese Benches welcomed the recommendations of the Women and Work Commission which tackle so many of these issues.

Over the decades we have seen the ever-increasing advancement of female equality in so many spheres of life. It is up to us to ensure that we continue to lead the way as an example to societies where local cultures continue to seek to hold women back. Last year, I quoted Annette Lu, the vice-president of Taiwan. As her words so graphically describe everything that we have been talking about, I shall unashamedly quote them again. She told us that we must never forget that,

"Women hold up half the sky".