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Women, Justice and Gender Equality

It is a great honour to speak for the Liberal Democrats on this important day. Members will be relieved to learn that I shall not use the occasion to make cheap political points about Baroness Thatcher or anyone else—except to say that she acted as such a role model to her party that it has the lowest percentage of women in Parliament, at 9 per cent. of Members elected. At the rate that the Conservatives are going, it will take 400 years to achieve parity of gender. However, I acknowledge that Baroness Thatcher stimulated women—Labour and Liberal Democrat Members—to go into politics to try to remedy the damage that she did. I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House for signing the early-day motion that I tabled yesterday to mark international women’s day. The word ““mark”” is more appropriate than ““celebrate”” because, although we have made some advances, many of which were heralded by the equal opportunities legislation 30 years ago, women in Britain and all over the world are still not treated equally and they are still abused physically, mentally and sexually. On the Order Paper, the title of today’s debate is ““Women, justice and gender equality in the UK””, so I will confine most of my remarks to what is happening here at home. Goodness knows, there is enough material for 10 debates, let alone one. However, on international women’s day, it is right to spare a moment to think about our sisters overseas who suffer regular physical abuse, rape and torture. We are debating equality and justice in the UK, but compared with some of our sisters overseas—in Rwanda, Sudan, and many other parts of the world—we do not know that we are born. The theme for international women’s day this year is ending impunity for violence. According to the UN, violence against women is the most common and least punished crime in the world. One in three women has had violence perpetrated against them. Domestic violence affects women all over the world, irrespective of location, culture, ethnicity, education, class or religion. Violence against women is the bully’s way of demonstrating their power in the most humiliating and—literally—hurtful way. In the UK, behind closed doors, women put up with sexual and physical abuse every day of their lives and say nothing.