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International Women's Day

It is a question not of British women being nominated and standing in all posts, but of British women being part of an international network of women that is working to deliver for women in our own country, while also backing up the women who are struggling for development internationally and in their own countries. There has been a sea change in public attitudes. I do not think that we would have got anything like those answers to the survey 10 or 15 years ago. This change of public attitudes to women is matched by changed opinion about gay and lesbian partnerships—controversial at the outset and now accepted and celebrated in civil partnerships. The change in public attitudes is matched by changed opinion about older people. There is real annoyance about how older people—especially older women—are written off. The change of attitude is reflected in changed opinion on representation—that, in a multicultural society, we should not have, as we used to, an all-white Parliament. There is a big, and long overdue, change in attitudes to disabled people.