Women in Society

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Verma for giving us another of our regular opportunities to talk about the position of women in society. She made a number of very important and welcome announcements, particularly about rape centres, forced marriages, an increase in the right to ask for flexible working and, of course, the very important commitment to international aid.

In the past we have normally been led in our discussions on women by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, and I pay tribute to the indefatigable way in which she has returned us to these important matters—we have heard yet another very fine speech from her today. I, too, look forward to the galaxy of maiden speeches that we are about to hear.

I was interested in the wording of the Motion. It mentions not the role of women in society, but the position of women in society. It is a sad fact that the position of women is too often at the bottom of the ladder in employment, on the floor in the home after a violent blow from a violent partner, or on her back, either willingly or unwillingly, but without any contraception or health protection. It is these things that I wish to address today.

There is no doubt that the key to the progression of women to their rightful place in society—equal to men and full partners with them—is education in its widest sense. Education is the route out of poverty, the key to independence, self-respect and self-confidence and the best contraceptive in the world. It is tempting to think that women and girls in this country have no problem with all these things, but that is not true. We still have young girls whose aspirations are limited at an early age because of poor career guidance in the choice of subjects at school and stereotyping in work-experience placements and choice of subjects to study after school. Women are underrepresented in the higher-paid apprenticeship sectors and those which offer level 3, as well as on the boards of big corporations and everything in between, and we all know about the gender pay gap more generally. Poor aspiration appears to be a factor in unwanted teenage pregnancy, since a significant number of young mothers had disengaged from school before they became pregnant.

It is important that we recognise that boys and girls, though equal, are different. Having taught both teenage girls and teenage boys, I would say that is particularly so when the boys are stuffed with testosterone and desperate to show how manly and forceful they are and the girls are showing their feminine side. Interesting work has been done on attainment in science subjects which showed that girls taught in single-sex groups did far better than when they were in with the boys, who tended to take over all the experiments and answer all the questions put by the teacher unless that teacher was very careful. That chimes very much with my experience.

Therefore, I have a lot of sympathy with the view expressed in one of the briefings that came to us before this debate that we need to look carefully at gender-specific services where it has been proved that these work better. However, while young people are in their compulsory schooling years, we have a big opportunity, which we must not squander, to ensure that they have the right knowledge, skills and values as well as the ability to get qualifications and earn a living. Yes, it is important that boys as well as girls have high-quality sex and relationship education—after all, it takes two to tango—but it needs to be in the context of a broad and balanced PSHE curriculum which helps them develop understanding of all kinds of relationships and gain the confidence which will keep them safe in future. In other words, I am not in favour of sex and relationship education on its own. I want the curriculum review that we are about to have to embed SRE within a holistic PSHE programme based on sound principles for all pupils in all schools. No aspect of our lives is an island; all are affected by all others. Learning how to make money and then manage it is as important as contraception to prevent young women feeling that they have to have a baby before anyone will take notice of them.

In so many discussions about women, the elephant in the room is population growth. In 1950, the global population was 2 billion; it now stands at 6.5 billion and is likely—I am told—to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050. The majority of this growth will take place in the poorest countries, where parents cannot guarantee that their children will live long enough to support them in their old age, so it is hardly surprising. Women will take the strain of this growth and continue to be poor and downtrodden unless something is done. The trouble is that once a woman gets into early pregnancy, it tends to become a cycle in her family. Recently, I read a book from Plan International entitled Because I am a Girl, which relates the stories of women and girls around the world to illustrate the need for Plan’s excellent work. One story, by the author Kathy Lette, talks of a woman in Brazil who became pregnant at 12 and had three children by the time she was 16. Her three daughters also became pregnant at 12 and 14 and one had two children by the age of 15. However, the woman’s own mother had also had three children by the age of 16. They were all starving, she said, and at 10 years old she became a prostitute to earn money to buy milk for the baby and food for her siblings. She took drugs, as did her 13 year-old violent boyfriend, who acted as her pimp. Those three generations of women did not stand a chance. All had violent, abusive relationships and all demonstrated that “copulation means population”, in the words of the author. Of course, all these women were deeply poor and at terrible risk of contracting HIV and other STDs. Women must have control over their fertility. In parenthesis, it was wonderful to read this week about the discovery of a new anti-viral gel that halves HIV infections, which women will be able to use to take their sexual health literally into their own hands.

The work that Plan and other charities such as UNICEF are doing to educate girls around the world helps not only this generation but generations to come. Will the Minister say what DfID’s business plan contains to rectify the most off-track millennium development goals; that is, goals four, five and six, on child and maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS? These, along with universal primary education, are the ones which will benefit women and girls the most.

Finally, although we are debating women, we really need to be saying just as much about men. It is time that some men, in some societies, took their responsibilities more seriously. Society should have no patience with the baby-mother and absentee father concept, if it means that the mother and child are unsupported by the father. To quote one famous author, one of the biggest problems these days is men with the three Cs—cash, car and cellphone—but lacking the fourth, a condom. Family planning saves women’s lives, but it goes much wider than that, and it is time that men in all nations and all cultural groups took that to heart. When we are cutting all the things we are forced to cut, I am delighted that we will not be cutting international aid. However, I trust we will also ensure that family planning at home and abroad is not cut also. Other kinds of snips, yes, but not a snip in the budget for family planning, please.