My Lords, I will take the opportunity of this International Women’s Day to emphasise the vital importance of educating and attracting more women and girls into engineering.
The UK has a real shortage of engineers and there is a pressing need to diversify our engineering workforce. According to recent analysis by EngineeringUK, only around 15% of engineers are women. The supply of UK engineering skills has largely stagnated in recent years. In higher education, the proportion of students studying it has remained at around 5% for 15 years. UCAS data on university application and acceptance figures for the 2020 cycle shows that women represent just 18% and 16% of accepted applications to engineering and computing degrees respectively. At the current rate of progress, gender parity among entrants to engineering degrees will not be achieved until 2085. The number of young people starting engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships has also been in decline.
The UK is not unique in this. There is a global skills shortage in engineering; there are simply not enough engineers to tackle pressing global challenges, such as climate change. Engineers play a hugely important role in shaping the world we live in, not least in the engineering response to the Covid-19 pandemic and in helping us reach net zero emissions by 2050, so it is even more important that the engineering profession reflects the whole society it seeks to serve.
Over the last five years, the Royal Academy of Engineering has made it a particular mission to show what engineers and engineering really look like, changing public perceptions of engineering and inspiring a new generation to choose it as a career. The academy’s digital This is Engineering campaign aims to inspire young people from all backgrounds to consider engineering as a career.
The All-Party Parliamentary Engineering Group, the APPEG, is very active in inspiring young people about engineering. I declare an interest as its co-chair, along with Laurence Robertson MP. Sponsored by a range of engineering companies and organisations, we invite schools from all over the country to lunch events in the Cholmondeley Room here in the Lords. Typically, each event is attended by about 100 schoolchildren, all doing A-levels in sciences. Around 50% of them are girls. Each event covers a different engineering subject and brief presentations are made by three practising engineers, two of whom are usually young women. There is plenty of time for questions, and there are always many from the schoolchildren.
Recent APPEG events have covered a wide range of topics: engineering for disaster relief in developing countries; engineering for the space industry; engineering for the food industry; and, most recently, the engineering of skyscrapers. The feedback from the schoolchildren at these events has been superb. All of them have had their eyes opened to the huge variety of opportunities in engineering, particularly the girls, and many of them resolve to apply to engineering courses at university.
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for bringing this Motion to the House. International Women’s Day is an important date in our annual international calendar. It has come a long way from that first gathering by the Socialist Party of America in New York on 28 February 1909. The following year, the International Socialist Women’s Conference was organised in Copenhagen in Denmark, and the following year the day was observed in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and so on—and the rest, as they say, is history. It is a well-known fact that the genesis of this movement is rooted in a true socialist ideology: equality for all—for men and women of all races and creeds. I am pleased to be speaking on this issue in your Lordships’ House.
Over the centuries, women and girls in every country, community and culture have suffered at the hands of male-dominated societies. This suffering has been horrendous, not only in western societies but even more so in eastern societies. In some eastern societies, girls were seen as burden—not worth having—because when they were married off, the family had to give them dowries, which put a dent in their family’s wealth.
My mother, Joginder Kaur Sahota, grew up in the 1930s in Punjab in India, when school for girls was unheard of. She married my father, Gurdial Singh Sahota, in the late 1940s and had several children. In 1967, she moved to the UK. She became a widow at 49 and threw herself into looking after the welfare of the family. Eventually when grandchildren arrived, she took them all under her wing, including my two sons, while their parents went to work. As the years passed on, I once asked her, “Mum, is there anything in your life you did not have and you wished you had?” She replied, “Yes, I wish I could read. It does not matter what language, I just want to read books.” Alas, she never learned to read. She had 12 grandchildren, and she encouraged every one of them to study hard if they wanted to get on well in their lives. Every one of them now has a university degree and is doing well, yet she had a thirst for education all her life. She passed away in 2020 at the age of 91, without knowing that two years later her eldest son would become a proud member of your Lordships’ House.
My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Lampard on her excellent speech and welcome her to this House.
The last time I participated in a debate on International Women’s Day, I spoke about my personal experience of working in financial services in the 1980s and how I was confronted with sexual harassment, molestation and abuse. The view then was that, if you wanted to make it in a man’s world, you had to pay the price and shut up. Thankfully, today in the UK, that kind of behaviour is considered totally unacceptable, even illegal. The view that only men can succeed in politics, business or the arts is no longer acceptable. We have moved a long way in one generation.
The challenge today is to get the balance right and not let the pendulum swing too far in the other direction. We should not condemn femininity, nor should we emasculate men. We should not wage a war between the sexes. Above all, we should not fall into an ideological split between true feminists, of which there are many in this House, and groups that promote extreme ideologies to the detriment of women’s rights. Woman should be allowed to identify themselves as women; allowed to speak without fear of being cancelled; and allowed to have their own space and privacy. Unless we women rise up against these belligerent gender-based ideologies, we will reverse all the hard-fought progress that we have achieved since the 1960s, while the next generation will find themselves more confused and constrained than our parents ever were.
This is why I am deeply concerned at what is being taught in schools, where external lobby groups have been allowed to disseminate inappropriate teaching materials to promote their belief that gender identity is a fact. Of course, teaching children about the lives, experiences and rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual people is welcome; it will help them to understand sexuality in a non-judgmental manner and develop empathy for people from different backgrounds and with different beliefs. However, this is far removed from teaching children that there are 100 genders, and that they may have been born in the wrong body; and encouraging them to believe that changing their gender could be the solution to their problems and anxieties. This is moving from the factual to the ideological. Sex is binary and immutable; encouraging children to believe otherwise is unscientific and dangerous.
My Lords, I am grateful for the privilege of being able to speak in this debate. I express my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for the way she introduced the debate and, in particular, for her concluding remark that much remains still to be done, as we have heard from so many speakers. I also extend a warm welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard, and congratulations on an outstanding maiden speech. I think we have an association, as I am interested in addictions and the noble Baroness’s work with GambleAware. Perhaps we can speak about the assistance we give to people, as an increasing number are having problems with gambling addiction.
I am a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on 12-step recovery from addictions, and that led me, prompted by my noble friend Lady Donaghy, to try to get in in on her Oral Question on Wednesday. I will repeat her Question for the benefit of the government Front Bench:
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve women’s safety (1) from domestic violence, and (2) in the streets.”—[Official Report, 8/3/23; col 795.]
A number of the questions asked in that short debate were not answered.
I have worked on domestic violence, particularly in relation to alcohol and drugs, and in fairness to the Government, I am pleased to say we are seeing some progress being made on drugs. A very good drugs strategy has been drawn up, and I thank the Government for that. In due course it will, I hope, ease some of the pressures arising from domestic violence. I pay tribute to Dame Carol Black, who has led the work and the research and produced a wonderful report. I hope the Government will be willing to encourage and support Dame Carol Black in doing similar work on alcohol. They had a good strategy in 2012 under David Cameron; regrettably, it was not followed through. There remains a lot of work to be done on alcohol and its effect on women and girls, particularly those living on the streets, so we could do with a strategy.
My Lords, on International Women’s Day, while we are discussing very important issues such as steps taken to support the education of women and girls in the United Kingdom and worldwide, we must not forget those women in conflict zones facing physical torture, verbal abuse, harassment, rape and murder with complete impunity. One of those areas is Kashmir, where I was born.
According to a London School of Economics and Political Science article of 14 September 2020 entitled “Indian Apathy and Systemic Violence against Women in Kashmir”:
“The reality of Indian democracy is most conspicuously exposed in Kashmir, a truth that no nationalist Indian wants to hear. On August 5, 2019, the Indian state stripped Kashmir of article-370 followed by the denial of very essential rights via regular crackdowns on the internet … and phone services, restriction on movement, prolonged lockdowns, and so on to make Kashmiri life even more wearisome. Besides, the routine humiliation—army and police checkpoints, surveillance, harassment, blockades, illegal detentions, profiling—that the people face has become a gruesome yet banal reality of their everyday existence … For the half-widows of Kashmir (husband disappeared/taken away by security forces or militants) leading a dignified life can become a real challenge. In a typical Kashmiri society, women’s identity is intertwined with their husband’s once a woman is married off, she becomes the man’s responsibility. Thus, many of these women (half-widows) and their children get into a survival crisis with no source of income. Nyla Ali Khan an academic … writes ‘the lack of closure in their lives makes their existence unbearable’ … The deep-seated prejudice in India towards Kashmiri women and men is also evident in the selective criminalization of Kashmiris typically—Ali Muhammad Bhat, Lattef Ahmad Waza, Mirza Nasir Hussain wrongfully imprisoned for 23 years, and recently a Kashmiri couple in Delhi, Jahanzaib Sami and Hina Bashir, arrested on alleged charges of links with ISI—as it is quite easy to picture Muslim and Kashmiri labels together with ‘beard and burqa’ as terrorists”.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord and to take part in this interesting debate. I welcome the chance to make a short contribution. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lampard, on her maiden speech. I am sure we all look forward to hearing many more of them, and I am sure she will now have the same sense of relief having made it that we all in our time have had ourselves.
The Motion that we are debating refers to the education of women and girls, and I want to speak today about women and science. It is a good week to do this because on Monday this week we had a major science event in the other place called STEM for Britain, about which I will say more in a moment, and next Monday we have another major science event called Voice of the Future where, to put it bluntly, there is a role reversal: members of the Science and Technology Select Committee and the major spokespeople for science for the major parties appear before a group of younger scientists and engineers sitting around the horseshoe.
I declare an interest: I am president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. My colleague in another place, the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock, is the chair, and between us we do a great deal to help to improve the extent to which Parliament has the opportunity to debate and discuss science.
In a debate such as this, I need hardly say that we need to celebrate the achievement of women in science to consider some of the barriers that still exist to their making their full contribution. Over recent years there have been plenty of reasons why the opportunities for women to study science have not been as great as they could have been. By the way, I thank the Campaign for Science and Engineering, the House of Commons Library and other scientific societies for providing far more statistics than I could ever get into this speech today.
My Lords, I declare my interest as founder, chairman and trustee of the Loomba Foundation, a UN-accredited NGO leading the global campaign to eradicate injustice against women whose husbands have died.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, I first pay tribute to my dear friend the late Baroness Betty Boothroyd, who for many years was not only a patron of the Loomba Foundation but a steadfast and vocal supporter of our campaign. She helped, in her inimitable way, to make people sit up and take notice. Betty attended all our events in London and, in 2004, came to India to meet destitute widows and see our work on the ground. The world needs fearless women like Betty Boothroyd, and I will always be grateful for her contribution.
Since International Women’s Day was introduced some 100 years ago, it has been true that, in many communities, women at all stages of life are marginalised and undervalued by traditions and ideas that are so deeply rooted that they are almost impossible to dislodge. It applies to girls deprived of education, women exploited in the workplace and widows deprived of their status and inheritance rights.
As a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development, I want to highlight the importance of fighting gender discrimination in all its forms if we are to secure a sustainable future for humanity and the planet. Ending poverty and hunger, achieving food security, ensuring healthy lives at all ages, ensuring quality education for all, achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls—none of these sustainable development goals can be achieved unless discrimination against all women, including schoolgirls and widows, is comprehensively ended.
When discussing gender inequality, we must see all forms of gender discrimination as aspects of the same problem and work together to tackle them all. This is what is meant by the guiding principle of the sustainable development goals, which is to leave no one behind.
My Lords—there is an irony in that phrase—I will say a few words about the independent report on child abuse, which has had very little airing because its publicity was waylaid by a number of fantasists and their encouragers. I think I accurately observe that all of the people involved in that were men. I spent 30 days on that report and represented 30 people, a number of whom were men who had faced the most horrific abuse as children. But the vast majority of people whom I represented from my area were women.
In the 2015 election, when I went around seeking election, as one does, randomly knocking on doors, something happened with unnerving regularity. I would knock on a door, a woman would answer, thank me for my work on child abuse and say something like, “There’s something you need to know.” I have done a lot of canvassing—probably as much as anyone in the country—and I am familiar with trends on the doorstep. That was a trend—I was randomly knocking. I was well known in my area: people recognised and, clearly, sufficiently trusted me. Those cases are not in the system, and the lessons from that inquiry are not being learned—there are some huge lessons.
One thing that I immediately gleaned from that was a suspicion that the problem was hugely deeper than I was aware of. I gathered a group of young women, mainly teenagers but a few more in their very early 20s, to look at the situation anonymously—I was not there. They were asked to say what was happening and what the situation is for young women in this country. The feedback I got, in total and absolute confidence, which I would never breach—other than to generalise—is that the level of sexual assault and impropriety with young women in this country has gone up very significantly, and not from a low watermark to begin with. This is not in the public domain because none of them had taken a case even to their parents, usually, never mind to the authorities, given the trauma of doing that. They were living with this. In itself, that seems a major problem, but the growth in it is also a problem. It is obviously linked, but we are not effectively addressing it. I note the way in which young boys grow up and their interrelationship—pornography was raised previously. What they see as the norm, and indeed what girls see as an acceptable norm at the time, are a major problem, and as a society, we are doing nothing about it.
2:06 pm
20 of 40 shown
Progress in engaging young girls in technical subjects is steadily being made, albeit slowly. A 2022 report from EngineeringUK, Women in Engineering, found that around 15% of those working in engineering are women, compared with around 10% in 2010. This proportion is still much too small, but at least it is increasing. The engineering sector is aiming for 30% of the workforce being female by 2030, which is not high enough but would be a substantial improvement.
How should the education of girls change to achieve further improvement? The real barrier to girls entering the engineering profession is perception. At a very young age, peer pressure has a strong influence on what girls decide to study. Many girls miss out because they perceive that engineering is about only machinery or hard hats and construction—apparently subjects only for boys—and they do not want to be thought of as the odd one out. This perception of engineering as a boy’s subject is also widely held by parents and many teachers. In fact, engineering is very much wider than machinery or hard hats and construction. It is simply applied science, and covers a huge range of subjects, including building the net-zero world of tomorrow— ranging from biotech to environmental solutions, and from innovative new materials to novel energy systems such as hydrogen. These subjects are all very creative and potentially very attractive to girls.
Arguably, the misperceptions about engineering are already there by the time a girl reaches secondary school. Education about science and technology should really begin at primary school age. Primary Engineer, an organisation founded in 2005 by Dr Susan Scurlock, does just this. Each year, it engages around 4,000 teachers, 60,000 pupils and 1,500 engineers from hundreds of companies. When children as young as three and four are exposed to exciting engineering, they become inspired. Importantly, when engineering is offered at such an early age, gender is hardly an issue—not only can girls be engineers but the boys know that girls can be engineers.
Inspiring girls about STEM subjects, especially at primary school level, is all important. We must make it an urgent priority to provide many more girls with the skills needed for the exciting, highly varied and fulfilling world of engineering. They are the future, and have so much to offer.
All the mothers of the world are wonderful. On this International Women’s Day, I say something that should not be confined to just one day of the year but should be said every day: we should value men and women equally and as equal partners. Societies, cultures and Governments that deny education to their girls in this day and age should listen to their mothers. The world has moved on leaps and bounds from my mother’s younger days. Every country is doing its best to close the gender gap in every field—in educational attainment, economic participation and opportunity, health, survival, political empowerment and so on.
However, there still remains in this day and age the problem of gender stereotyping. In some countries, poor families often still favour the boys when it comes to investing in education because the boys are seen as the breadwinners. There still remain many barriers and problems for women and girls in a male-dominated society. According to the World Economic Forum, at the present rate of progress it will take 150 years to close the political empowerment gender gap, 150 years to close the economic participation and opportunity gender gap, and 22 years to close the educational attainment gap.
Currently, women represent only 35% of those in STEM education. Around 129 million girls in the world are out of school, including 32 million of primary school age and 97 million of secondary school age. These figures are unacceptable. The large companies of the world, such as Microsoft and Unilever, have launched a global programme called Girls’ Education Skills Partnership. I applaud them for their effort and call on other large companies of the world to search their consciences and do likewise.
I have a six year-old granddaughter, Puneet Sahota. When I compare her opportunities with my mother’s, they could not be more different. But, sadly, many of the barriers that my mother faced remain for my granddaughter. On that, none of us should rest until those barriers are permanently removed. To all the incredible women who make the world a better place, I wish happy International Women’s Day.
Girls often reject womanhood as they start to go through puberty; this is an understandable reaction to their bodies changing and to society’s expectations of what a woman should be. When I lived with my parents in Africa, I had short hair, climbed trees and played with Dinky Toys; that tells noble Lords my age. I wanted to be a boy; I behaved like a boy. This was a phase of my development into who I am today. Not all girls who prefer male pursuits when they are young are trans.
Propagating ideologies that are not based on facts and indoctrinating children reminds me of the Soviet Union. This gender ideology plays straight into the hands of Mr Putin, who accuses the West of moving towards Stalinism—that is a funny comment from him—and
“teaching sexual deviation to children”.
As he explains,
“we’re fighting to protect our children and our grandchildren from this experiment to change their souls … The Russian people still know which bathroom to use.”
Thank goodness for Miriam Cates, who is calling for an urgent inquiry into what is being taught in schools. Will my noble friend the Minister urgently review the material used at school? Will she also press for RSE lessons to be truly age-appropriate? Does she not agree that talking about sexual desires with adults is not only embarrassing for children but is a clear safeguarding red flag?
While we are talking here about our rights, we must remember all the Ukrainian women and children who, at this moment, do not have that privilege. Their concern is survival. Their wish is to end the war, to end the devastation of their country and to survive.
Life for women has improved in many areas, as my noble friend Lord Monks, demonstrated, but in other areas we are still struggling and I regret to say that in some, we are going backwards. An example is pornography, which is a growth industry on a tremendous scale. We are seeking to address it through the Online Safety Bill but, regrettably, the Government’s attempts are falling well short of what is required. I welcome what we are doing to try to prevent children accessing online pornography, but clearly, the availability of pornographic content that depicts violence and abuse is not just a matter of child protection. I bring to the House’s attention the report by the APPG on Commercial Sexual Exploitation, which is well worth reading to discover the all-pervading extent of pornography. As the pornography industry grows, its impact on the whole of society increases.
We do not debate this enough. We do not stand up and say that a halt must be called or at least an attempt made to reverse the direction we are going in. Next week, some of us will be sampling the metaverse opportunities that are now developing, where you put a headset on. As I understand it—with others, I will experience it next week—what is happening there is really quite frightening. We now have censorship, in the lightest possible way, applied in the film industry and with DVDs, but there is no such approach adopted with regard to the material we have online. It is time to review that, to seek a change and to try to find legislation. We need to do that because I suspect that what will come with metaverse digital technology developments will be even more difficult to contain and regulate than what we have experienced in the past. In turn, there will be consequences which will, in particular, affect women and girls.
I hope that the Minister will say that the Government share the views I am expressing about pornography and its growth. What are they doing about it and what will they do to try to reverse the trend?
This is the tip of the iceberg. There are tens of thousands of men and women held in different parts of Indian prisons, often charged under the notorious Public Safety Act or sedition, provocation and anti-state activities laws.
I will share three examples of women held in prison away from Kashmir for a long period. The first is Asiya Andrabi, founder and chairman of one of south Asia’s biggest women’s organisations, Dukhtaran-e-Millat. Aged 58, she is one of the most prominent woman pro-freedom leaders of Kashmir, and is a science graduate in biochemistry, biotherapy, and bacteriology. Andrabi is the first woman resistance leader from Kashmir, who has been booked under the Public Safety Act 20 times since 1993. In 1998 she was arrested for opening rehabilitation centres for widows and orphans of rebels and political dissidents killed by the Indian state.
The charge against Andrabi is simple: she fiercely advocates Kashmir’s liberation from Indian rule. In October 1990 Andrabi married Ashiq Hussain, a resistance ideologist who happens to be Kashmir’s longest-serving political prisoner. The couple have spent only four years together in their 28-year marriage. The 58 year-old Andrabi suffers from various life-threatening diseases and is denied medical support.
The second is Sofi Fehmeeda, who on 20 April 2018 was arrested by the National Investigation Agency of India and charged with sedition. Since then, Sofi has been imprisoned in Tihar, and her mother is still waiting for her release. The third is Nahida Nasreen, who has spent two years in prison, also in New Delhi, which is far away from Kashmir. She is a graduate in theology and Islamic studies.
There are thousands of similar cases of men and women who are held in Indian prisons. Their only real crime is to have taken part in the campaign for the right to self-determination, which was promised by India at the United Nations in 1948 and 1949. I ask the Minister to say what the British Government can do to aid the release of prisoners, such as these three ladies, from Indian prisons. Furthermore, are the British Government prepared to link human rights to their free trade deal with India?
There are many strategies that the science community could adopt to address what is known as the leaky pipeline. In particular, we must do more to encourage women taking career breaks to keep in touch with their science, to make it easier for them to return as soon they want to and not to positions less senior than those they occupied before taking a maternity break, for example.
It is a well-known fact that female scientists frequently fail to get proper credit for their research. Rosalind Franklin, whose name is now rather more historical than current, was the X-ray crystallographer who made possible the discoveries of Watson and Crick—who got the Nobel prize. I am not saying that they did not deserve it—after all, we have the world-famous Crick Institute by St Pancras now—but Rosalind was not even referred to in their paper, which is a scandal. The problem of undercrediting women in science remains.
We must not forget that people still suffer from a great deal of sexism. I read in the Evening Standard this week about the first woman Tube driver, who started in 1978. Well, 11 years earlier, in 1967, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, probably Britain’s most distinguished living astrophysicist, personally discovered pulsars, a remarkable discovery for which she did not get sufficient credit. She has it now but did not then. She was left off the paper, and other people—men—got the Nobel prize. She has gone on to win almost every scientific prize you can think of. I was at the Royal Society last week to see her get another one, but she should have been properly recognised from the beginning. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for reminding them that when she made her historic discovery in 1967, it was her male colleagues who were asked about the astrophysical significance of the discovery. Guess what she was asked about? I am sorry to have to tell your Lordships that it was her bust size, her hip size and how many boyfriends she had. You could not make it up.
I like to think that things have changed since then, but many Members of this House will be wondering whether they are quite so sure. We have a lot of women active in science. Anyone who listened the other day to Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who presents “The Sky at Night”, will know how inspirational she is. I was interested to hear that they have now manufactured a new Barbie doll based on her. I have only seen the photo in newspapers, but the doll has a dress that looks like the night sky. I hope that this will get people interested in astronomy because, whether you are male or female, it is nothing short of amazing.
My time is running out, so I ought to get in a couple of other references. The first Briton in space was a woman, not a man. A few years ago, Tim Peake got a lot of publicity. That is fine, but the first Briton in space was Helen Sharman, more than 30 years ago. There are other women scientists, such as Sarah Gilbert, who developed the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine and who has been recognised, I am glad to say, and Catherine Green. Others have also in their time been given a Barbie doll in their image.
I want to say a word about an event that took place in the other part of this building on Monday, STEM for Britain. It is a competition for early career researchers who bring their papers to display and discuss them. Their local Members of Parliament are invited to meet them. Others, including some Members of this House, came along to support them, and very welcome they were too. The proportion of women in the five major categories this year was heartening. Some 60% of the physicists were female, as were 55% of those in chemistry, 60% in the biosciences and 50% in maths but only 40% in engineering, which remains an area where there could be more equality.
My time is up, but these are the future. I welcome any support that this House can give to the promotion of women and girls in STEM subjects. I like to think that this House will have many other occasions on which we can discuss such an important subject.
Notwithstanding that International Women’s Day takes place every year on 8 March, in 2010 the UN adopted 23 June as International Widows Day, recognising the plight of millions of disadvantaged widows in developing countries who are suffering from poverty, illiteracy, diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, conflict and injustice.
The World Widows Report, which was produced by the Loomba Foundation in 2016 and remains the only comprehensive data source about discrimination faced by widows and their dependants, country by country and worldwide, starkly illustrates the practical impacts of discrimination in countries all over the world, with examples of property theft and land-grabbing, unjust inheritance laws, degrading so-called “cleansing” rituals, violence, abuse and intimidation.
If a widow cannot work to support her dependants, if she cannot inherit the family property or business, if she is unable to pay for her children to be schooled, the wealth and stability of the family is at risk. Last year, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution recognising that discrimination and violence against widows are an impediment to the achievement of gender equality, the empowerment of all women and girls and the full realisation of all human rights.
Could the Minister tell us, first, whether an assessment has been made of which education and empowerment programmes for girls and women have been impacted by the reduction in development aid finance? Which countries are affected and what are the impacts? Secondly, in view of the reduced foreign aid, what can the Government do to increase effective partnerships with the private sector, as well as charity work and voluntary organisations, to help to tackle challenges faced by widows and their dependants?
In the child abuse report, there are only a few nuggets that I think help. One is looking at what are the resource and expertise within schools. The idea that random teachers or low-grade—in terms of status—support workers can handle this is clearly nonsense. This problem is the single biggest unseen problem that we face as a country.
I have no lived experience as a woman, of course, but, looking around our generation—I am not suggesting that we started from a high-water level at all; the child abuse inquiry demonstrated many examples of that—as decision-makers, we are way off the mark in understanding how deep this problem goes, never mind what can be done to solve it. If there was one role for this Chamber, this House, it would be to set up its own special commission to look at this in a proper, deep and thorough way and to come up with more practical answers and put the spotlight on this danger. If we do not, we as a country and society will suffer very bad consequences.