International Women’s Day

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

Like others, my thoughts are constantly with the family of Sarah Everard. I have daughters around the same age, and I can only imagine how devastated the family must be at what has happened. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for her yearly reminder of the dangers that many women face, both here and around the world, as they continue to be attacked for their gender.

Last week I spoke to one of my oldest friends, Henrietta Blyth of Open Doors, on a Facebook Live chat. We talked about how Christian women around the world face the double danger of being attacked not only because of their gender, but because of their religion. We are seeing the systematic murder of women in leadership roles in places such as Afghanistan. Those women could be the future in a failed state and could make a difference, yet they are gunned down. On a more positive note, I welcome to her post Najla El Mangoush, who yesterday was confirmed as Libya’s Foreign Minister by its Parliament—the first woman to hold the post. I know that all Members of the House will wish her and her colleagues well in re-establishing peace and order in Libya.

The theme of International Women’s Day this year is “Choose to Challenge”, and while I want more women to challenge for the leadership in their field, whatever it is, we must recognise that our ability to make that choice often depends on an accident of birth or nationality. I have been reading the World Economic Forum’s report on the global gender gap, which contains striking details on the subtleties of inequality. Without including women, who are half the world’s talent, we will not be able to deliver the fourth industrial revolution for all societies, or grow our economies for shared prosperity.

Technology is still overly dominated by men, but there is also potential for it to improve the place of women in the world. Technology offers us a means of education, and a channel for us to communicate with those who face oppression. It also offers a means for women, whose stories we might not otherwise hear, to get those stories to the outside world. Sometimes they are positive stories, but too often they are stories of abuse and neglect. Technology can help to empower women through education. “Knowledge is power” might be a cliché, but it is also a solution to reducing gender inequality. We should surely be using our foreign aid to harness the technology that women can use for education, business and leadership. The covid pandemic has shown us all how we can work differently, so in the spirit of this day, I “choose to challenge” every Government, organisation and non-governmental organisation to be more effective in using technology directly to empower women and beat gender inequality.