Vote 100 and International Women’s Day

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which he has made very well. He is absolutely right: this is our collectively responsibility, and 32% is not good enough. We also need to look at equality in other representations in addition to gender balance. He makes a very good point, which I would in no way ever describe as mansplaining.

It was heartbreaking today to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) recite the names of all those women who have died at the hands of men. Sadly, one of them, Linda Parker, was from my constituency. My heart goes out to her friends, family, children and grandchildren. I dream of a future International Women’s Day when my hon. Friend no longer has a list of the names of murdered women to recite, and when the figure of two women murdered every week by a current or former partner has become history due to better investment in women’s refuges, women’s safety and a complete change in attitudes.

Today is International Women’s Day. It was my pleasure yesterday to attend the launch of a report commissioned by the all-party group on population, development and reproductive health, of which I am an active member. The report is entitled, “Who Decides? We Trust Women” and concerns abortion in the developing world and the UK. I pay tribute to the chair of the all-party group, Baroness Jenny Tonge, for her tireless work. As a retired GP, she really knows her subject and demonstrates the value that can be brought to the other place by experts in their field. The report makes the important point that from 2010 to 2014, one in four pregnancies worldwide ended in an abortion. Abortion rates have been declining in the developed world since 1990, but the rate in developing countries has remained fairly constant.

An estimated 56 million abortions occur worldwide each year, with three quarters taking place among married women. Significantly, abortion rates are roughly the same in countries where abortion is legally restricted and those where it is liberally available. Restrictive abortion laws do not prevent women from seeking abortion; they only endanger women’s health and lives as women seek unsafe procedures. There is a clear correlation between restrictive abortion laws and higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. In the group of countries where abortion is completely banned or allowed in very narrow circumstances, three out of four abortions are unsafe. Lack of money prevents women and girls from accessing safe abortions in the private sector. In addition, fear of being reported to the police prevents women and girls from seeking medical attention when they are faced with life-threatening complications due to unsafe abortions.

The report makes the important point that more family planning will reduce abortion worldwide. Family planning is one of the most cost-effective strategies to prevent maternal deaths and suffering from unsafe abortion. Indeed, the lowest rates of abortion in the world can be found in Germany and Switzerland, where family planning is widely and easily available. Yet only last week I heard from Marie Stopes International that due to President Trump’s global gag, which blocks US funds going to any organisation involved in abortion advice and care overseas, its funding has been cut drastically, severely restricting its ability to provide contraceptive services to women and girls in the developing world. The international campaign SheDecides says that every girl and every woman has the right to do what she chooses with her body. She must have access to education and information about her body and her options, modern contraception and safe abortion. Only when women are in control of their own fertility will they have control over their own lives.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her very thoughtful speech, and she is absolutely right. Those of us who, many years ago, marched and took to the streets to protect the Abortion Act 1967 and ensure that it was not in any way interfered with did so because we knew about the extremely important point that she is making. It was not because we wanted people to have terminations of pregnancies; it was all about women having a right of control over their bodies. That is about empowerment, a lack of prejudice, their freedom and a lack of discrimination.

[Liz McInnes]

The right hon. Lady makes an excellent point. We have to allow women the world over to control their own bodies and therefore their own lives. However, there is still much work to be done, both nationally and internationally. Today, on International Women’s Day, I call upon our female Prime Minister to call on President Trump to reverse the global gagging order. A woman Prime Minister who is prepared to stand up for women around the world would do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.