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8.32 pm
Ms Julie Morgan (Cardiff, North): Thank you for calling me to speak in this important debate on international women's day, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I should like to speak about the position in politics and society of women in Wales. Women have always been under-represented in politics in Wales. Of the 40
Members of Parliament from Wales, only four are women--although Labour has four more than any of the Opposition parties. There have only ever been seven women Members of Parliament from Wales. Before the election, my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) was the only female Member of Parliament from Wales.
We also have few women councillors in Wales. A recent research paper by my right hon. Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) showed that Wales has the worst record in the UK for the number of women councillors. Again, the majority of them are Labour. Only 27 per cent. of councillors in the UK are women and Wales is bottom of the league, with only 20 per cent. Of the 10 councils with the lowest percentage of women, five are Welsh. Anglesey and Blaenau Gwent have the worst representation of women in the United Kingdom. My local council in Cardiff has the highest percentage of women councillors--35 per cent. From what I know of the women who are coming through to be candidates, it looks as though there will not be much of an increase at the coming elections in May.
Dealing with the under-representation of women on local authorities is a huge task for all political parties. Local authorities deal with bread-and-butter issues. It is sad that such issues are decided by people who represent only 50 per cent. of the population. That is particularly important given that women are so active in other areas, such as school governing bodies and voluntary groups. In Wales, women more or less run the voluntary sector, but they have not taken enough places on local authorities.
The National Assembly for Wales will be elected on6 May, and half the Labour candidates will be women. That was not an easy achievement, bearing in mind the traditions of the Welsh political parties, where men have totally run the show. Despite the natural problems caused by the introduction of the twinning procedure--there has been concern about constituency autonomy--we now have 30 women and 30 men in place. Many of those women would not have been candidates if we had not had that arrangement. The Labour party should be proud that we have an equal number of men and women standing as candidates. I am sure that the presence of those women will make the National Assembly a very different place from this House.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) said, we hope that power will be shared, and that women will not have to operate like men to achieve power. In Wales, an exciting time is ahead, with a unique body--perhaps the first in the world with an equal number of men and women. If Labour wins every seat, there will be an equal number of men and women.
In Wales, women are under-represented in many positions. When the unitary authorities were created in Wales, the only two chief executives appointed who were women were in those local authorities which followed the equal opportunities guidelines recommended by the Local Government Association. That produced two women chief executives out of 40 in the unitary authorities. Generally, women lost out in the unitary authorities, and we have few women in senior positions.
Outside Wales, the popular image of the Welsh woman fluctuates between the idea of the traditional woman in a tall, black hat and shawl--the traditional costume--and
the image of the Welsh "mam"; the home maker, and the indomitable figure, holding the Welsh family together in bad times and good. In Wales, when we talk about opportunities for women outside the home, we should never play down the role that women have played as home makers.
Women's lives in Wales have been hard and, for some, they still are. "Struggle or Strive"--a book describing the lives of women in the south Wales valleys between the two world wars--draws attention to the constant struggle of women to keep their homes, backyards and pavements spotlessly clean. I can remember my own grandmother struggling to keep the house and the backyard clean despite the constant dirt and dust that was coming in from the pits. Miners were working a seven-hour day, but their wives' working day was nearer 17 hours.
Women's work was as well regulated as men's: washing on a Monday; ironing and cleaning on a Tuesday; baking and shopping on a Wednesday; cleaning the upstairs on a Thursday--it was a full-time task. The book tells us that "tidy" was the most important word in "mam's" vocabulary. To be tidy--or "decha" in colloquial Welsh--was to be decent and respectable, and despite the grinding poverty that existed in those valleys, there was many a tidy woman. We should recognise the enormous contribution made to society by women who have worked in the home for many years, and still do.
Most of the mines in Wales have closed now, and women are employed outside the home in smaller numbers than in England, and for less pay. However, there has been a big shift in working patterns in Wales--particularly following the end of the heavy industries. We must continue to develop and deliver policies in Wales that will enable women to take their place in the new Wales.
We are starting to do that in many different areas, two of which are child care and health. A 1996 survey by Chwarae Teg--an organisation promoting equal opportunities in the workplace--showed that 80 per cent. of women in Wales found it difficult to work because of the lack of child care.
The Government launched the Welsh child care strategy last year. For the first time, a Government have seriously taken on board the importance of child care, both to allow parents to be economically active or to train, and for the good of the children. All research shows that it is good for children to go to nurseries and mix and socialise.
It will be up to the National Assembly to ensure that the strategy is developed to suit the individual needs of Wales. There is a thriving Welsh language playgroup movement, which we have tried to protect this year and will continue to protect next year.
We must also consider the needs of rural areas and the particular problems of acute areas of deprivation. Some parts of Wales will never have thriving nurseries, playgroups or after-school facilities unless a permanent subsidy is built in, because the deprivation is too great to rely on one, two or even three-year funding. We need affordable and sustainable provision, and I call on the Assembly, when it starts in two months' time, to continue to invest in child care and to develop the strategy to suit the needs of Wales.
Health is tremendously important for women, with breast and ovarian cancer being an abiding concern. The most recent reliable age-standardised figures for the
incidence of breast cancer date from 1992, when the rate for England and Wales together was 107.4 per100,000, but the rate for Wales alone was significantly higher, at 125.8 per 100,000. That higher incidence is being tackled by the additional funding for breast cancer that the Government have granted and by Breast Test Wales, a regional screening service of very high quality that operates outside the hospital system and delivers a service for healthy women.
One of the biggest issues for the health service is the availability and development of anti-cancer drugs and how to cope with their cost. New drugs to treat ovarian cancer are not universally available in Wales; it is a lottery, with the drugs that women get depending on the area where they live. Each health authority in Wales has been recommended to prescribe and pay for certain drugs--they prolong life for 12 to 14 months--when the doctor thinks it appropriate, but some authorities say that they cannot afford it. The situation is not acceptable and must be tackled. A big breakthrough is being made in anti-cancer drugs but we have yet to work out how to tackle the issue.
I want to end with a tribute to a woman who died of breast cancer in Wales a week ago. Bernice worked hard to support other women with breast cancer, helping them to cope with the upset and strain of the disease as well as campaigning for more research. She lived life to the full until the end.
Lorna Fitzsimons (Rochdale):
I warmly welcome the second opportunity that I have had in my 20 months as a Member of Parliament to speak in a women's debate, celebrating not only international women's day, but our Government's record on delivering for women. As yet, we are the only party that has given such days for debate, following our practice when we were allowed to choose subjects for Opposition days. That shows our consistent support for women's issues. We have also paid consistent attention to the fact that women are the majority in the population and it is, therefore, naught but common sense to ensure that we engage women in the political debate. Government and Parliament must be seen to be for women and relevant to women.
We have heard much about the difference that101 Labour women and 121 women Members of Parliament overall will make. My mother often jokes that women will know that they have true equality when mediocre women are accepted alongside the multitude of mediocre men by whom we have been governed--I know that there are plentiful exceptions--for many a decade.
I wish to pay tribute to the strong women in my life, who have been my role models. I am sad to say that I lost my grandmother this year--Queenie Elizabeth Grimshaw. It is obvious that she was born at the turn of the century
with a name like that. She was a socialist before my mother was born and gave me a grand old lecture when I was 16 about not presuming that, just because she spoke properly because she wanted to better herself, she was not a root and branch socialist. She organised women-only speaker engagements, training and choirs just after the second world war and ran a home, looking after a disabled mother--my great-grandmother--and two young boys. She knew exactly what grinding poverty was, but she also knew what pride was about. Her older sister, May Banks, is still with us at 98. She went through two world wars and was still doing meals on wheels at the age of 86. She now faces the indignity of developing breast cancer at 98.
Such women have been the backbone of our society and that is why it is important for us to celebrate international women's day. It is not unfashionable. Other hon. Members have talked about feeling awkward about 70s feminism, but it is common sense to examine how Government policies affect women. I want to put on record the abject difference between the approach of the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and that of the hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard). Labour Members can appreciate the genuine attempt to make both critical and supportive comments by the hon. Member for Taunton, which are evidence of her commitment to women's issues. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, North (Ms Ryan) pointed out, the hon. Member for Maidenhead gave us false opposition that did not ring true, given the record of the previous Government during 18 years in power.
In contrast, we had the stark honesty of the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), who is honourable in her political beliefs to her fingertips. On many occasions before I became a Member of Parliament, I found myself agreeing with the hon. Lady on the issue of female reproductive rights. Her comments struck a chord with the truly international speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) about the correlation--which is so simple that even the International Monetary Fund and the World bank have now cottoned on to it--between educating women and improving the economic circumstances of a country. As the hon. Member for Billericay pointed out, educated women regulate the size of their families. A large group of my constituents come from Bangladesh and that country is having great success in turning around its economy. It is educating women, and thus slowing population growth and increasing prosperity. Neighbouring Pakistan, whose population growth is going through the roof, is only just beginning to realise that if women are educated and given real choices in education and employment, they will regulate the size of their families. That ensures a greater benefit for all the population through growth in the economy.
We need only consider the position of women in the rest of the world to realise how fragile our position is in this country. The programme that this Government have implemented has been much needed for a long time.
As we approach the millennium, I find it sad that Opposition Members, who claim to belong to the party of the family, can say that women, children and families will pay the price for ending bad employment practices and poverty pay. We should be saying that there is no room in a modern society and a prosperous economy for bad business practices, which have probably caused the UK to be the divorce capital of Europe and which have had some impact on our scandalous teenage pregnancy figures.
I pay tribute to the thoughtful and honest speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). It is sad that we cannot be honest without being browbeaten by people who do not have everyone's best interests at heart and who refuse to consider the reality of people's lives. Those people try to say that proper sex education in schools will lead to children going off and getting pregnant. They do that already; it makes no sense to argue against education. Around the world, it is clear that there is a downturn in teenage pregnancy and an increase in rates of staying on at school where people are more progressive about sex education,
Young women outstrip men in terms of their educational performance, but they are under-represented in the job market. Why should that be? That is a big question. As my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley said, as soon as there is a downturn in their interest in school, there is a stark increase in the chances that they will become a teenage pregnancy statistic. We must stop that.
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