Vote 100 and International Women’s Day

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to follow that wonderful speech by the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), for which I thank her.

On International Women’s Day, there is certainly cause to celebrate women who have achieved great things, as well as remembering the women who are still striving to change the world. For example, there is cause to celebrate the career of Anne Glover, a biologist who was Scotland’s first chief scientific adviser and later became chief scientific adviser to the President of the European Commission, again being the first to hold the position. Professor Glover is about to become the next president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

The hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) would be interested to hear about Victoria Drummond, who was the first woman marine engineer, the first woman to serve as a merchant navy chief engineer, the first woman to hold a Board of Trade certificate as a ship’s engineer, the first woman member of the Institute of Marine Engineers, and the first woman to receive the Lloyd’s War Medal for Bravery at Sea for her courage under fire in world war two.

Or, we can talk about Roza Salih, Amal Azzudin, Ewelina Siwak, Emma Clifford, Jennifer McCarron, Toni Henderson and Agnesa Murselaj. As schoolgirls, they shook the country, demanding better treatment for child asylum seekers and an end to dawn raids on families. They got movement—the UK Government stopped the policy of detaining children for immigration removal purposes in 2010—but none of them would claim total victory, I think. Those “Glasgow Girls” are all young women now, and it is to be hoped that they will continue to make a difference in their lives and the lives of others. They are already impressive and I hope we hear much, much more about them.

There are legions of women who have proven their ability in many, many fields, and there are many more who are proving that now. Being a woman is not a design error; nor is it a blessing without measure. Women are, quite simply, human beings. All around the world, though, there are examples of women being treated unfairly for the simple crime of being a woman, and we have heard some examples today. I think, though, that we can be too smug in suggesting that that is something that thrives elsewhere and has no foundation here. The “Time’s Up” and #MeToo revelations have shown that sexism is deeply embedded in our culture—that it is seen as simply a part of life and that women are expected just to deal with it.

We see it in this House: a juvenile, grinning idiocy that is sometimes so offensive; the smugness of a minority of men who think that supposedly clever point scoring proves something; an anti-intellectual nonsense that makes this continuing debate so tiring. There are men in this House who have a record of opposing progressive politics, without substantive argument but with plenty of bluster and filibuster, opposing equality as a playground joke. Like others, I am sure, I am tired of engaging with men with so little—so very little—to offer and am pleased that they represent a tiny percentage of the men I encounter.

I encourage all Members to watch the video of the debate on misogyny as a hate crime in Westminster Hall yesterday. If they do, they will see an intervention that illustrates very well what I have just described, but they will also see several excellent and important contributions that are really worth digesting. In particular, I recommend the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black). The direct manner of her speech added a clarity that makes a harsh point so much more effective.

As the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) said in that debate, we seem to have come to a point where very often it is women, rather than men, who are expected to address misogyny. I hope that this year turns that around. I do have hope for Scotland’s politics in that regard. We have a woman First Minister, who is an extremely effective politician, a woman leader of the Opposition in Holyrood and a woman head of our civil service. We have a gender-balanced Cabinet in the Scottish Government already, and a large number of very good women in local government. It is not so much a case that change is coming, more that change is already happening, and Scottish politics is being rebalanced.

In this world where the President of the United States excuses juvenile offensiveness by claiming that it is just the talk in which men indulge in the changing room at the gym, and where Members of this House are falling short of decency, leaving the staff of this place feeling unable to raise complaints, it is surely time to clean the stables. I ask all Members to take that on board, as I know that they will.