International Women’s Day

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I am disappointed that the Minister for Women and Equalities is not here to respond. That is no disrespect to the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), but the Minister should be here to respond.

Before I begin, I want to give my thoughts and prayers to the family, friends and loved ones of Sarah Everard and all the victims and survivors of violence against women. From my own personal experience, I know what it is like to walk in the dark feeling frightened, fearful and anxious, and I know that many Members across the House share that experience—in fact, I was not aware that many did, because my biggest fear was that I cannot see very well in the dark. We have so far to go to make our public spaces, both online and offline, safe for women.

Let me begin with the many contributions that we have heard; over 50 Members contributed. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) made a powerful speech, reading out those names. Certainly, we all only hope that, going forward, we do not have to hear such a long list of names being read. Many Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) and for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), spoke about violence against women and girls.

Many Members spoke about the hugely unequal impact that covid has had on women, and I will come on to that. I also want talk about the plight of women across the world, which my hon. Friends the Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) and for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) really shed light on. I pay special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), not just for raising the most important points about black maternal health but for her bravery in sharing her own personal experience.

International Women’s Day is a time to celebrate all the gains we have made in the pursuit of women’s equality. I want to pay tribute to many of the brilliant women on whose shoulders I stand here today, from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who was elected as the first black female MP over 30 years ago, to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and all she has done in introducing the Equality Act and championing the rights of women. The Labour party has been and always will be the party of equality. We introduced the Equal Pay Act 1970, the minimum wage laws and laws guarding against discrimination against women. I also want to pay tribute to activists such as the late Olive Morris, a member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group, who went to school in my constituency of Battersea and was a tireless campaigner against racism and sexism. It is a shame that we continue to still have those same fights and struggles today.

This International Women’s Day falls a year into a pandemic that has had huge consequences for women. Issues such as domestic abuse and childcare have been sidelined throughout this year. Pregnant women and new mothers have faced discrimination in the Government’s job retention and self-employment income support schemes. Young women have been more likely to work in sectors shut down, and mothers have picked up more of the unpaid care work and more of the home schooling. Meanwhile, the childcare and social care sectors, in which women are more likely to work, have been hung out to dry. After a decade of austerity and negligence, these sectors are on their knees and are being ignored. Women have been on the frontline of the pandemic in our hospitals, our care homes, our schools and our homes, and yet the Government think that now is the time to give nearly 1 million women on the NHS frontline an effective pay cut. It is shameful.

With gender pay gap reporting suspended for over a year, we have no way of knowing what the cumulative impact of these failures will be. But we do know that black women are still four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women; that over half of victims and survivors of violence against women were turned away from refuges last year because of a lack of funding; that migrant women remain excluded from the Domestic Abuse Bill, with the funding announced falling short of what is needed; and that abuse against women—especially black women—on social media and in the press is going completely unchecked. This week alone, we have seen the Duchess of Sussex vilified by some in the media. The continued denial of racism in the media is unacceptable. Racism is real. It is a lived experience for many women, including myself.

At the Budget last week, we did not see any action taken to tackle the widening inequalities that have been exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic. Instead, we saw a delay to the cut in universal credit. We saw a complete failure for disabled women by not applying the £20 uplift to employment and support allowance. We have seen the Chancellor out there doing his bit with his high-vis and hard hat, sending a clear message about the industries he is interested in supporting. All the talk of kickstart, restart and recovery is meaningless for women unless the Government commit to equal opportunities. We need to see them publish data that guarantees that equal numbers of jobs are created for women and men, so that STEM and care are valued equally. I hope that that will be the case, as we run the risk of a two-tier recovery, which will only widen gender inequality even further.

I mentioned the Equality Act earlier, and I want to come back to it. I am concerned that it is being all but ignored by the Government and colleagues, including the Minister for Women and Equalities, who is not here today. There have only been two equality impact assessments published since the beginning of the pandemic, despite this being the biggest public health and economic crisis for a generation. There was no equality impact assessment of the Budget last week. It is a complete failure that these Acts are not being assessed adequately. It is unacceptable that equality guidance is being overlooked and ignored. Can the hon. Member for Lewes confirm whether the Government will finally commit to publishing impact assessments?

We have come a long way, but progress towards meaningful change for women is still too slow. In the light of this week’s events alone, I would like to know what the Government will be doing to address violence against women in public spaces and in the press. Is it not time that misogyny is made a hate crime? Will the Government immediately reinstate reporting on the gender pay gap? Representation and leadership matter. Diversity in decision making matters.