시역_여성교육_김지유

[19기 김지유]

시역_여성교육_김지유.docx

18.62KB

International Women’s Day House of Lords Debate Volume 828 Opening Remark:

debated on Friday 10 March 2023

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities

<Glossary>

UN Commission on the Status of Women 유엔 여성지위위원회

International Women’s Day 국제 여성의 날

DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality DigitALL: 양성 평등을 위한 혁신과 기술

Girls’ Education Action Plan 여아 교육 실행계획

National Tutoring Programme 국가 개인교습 프로그램

the Worker Protection Bill 근로자 보호법

Online Safety Bill 온라인 안전법

Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative 성폭력 근절 이니셔티브

(The Government가 영국식 영어에서는 복수로 치기 때문에 are로 나옴)

The 67th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women is well under way in New York. This is the biggest event of the global calendar on women’s rights and gender equality. The priority theme for 2023 is innovation and technological change and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. The digital age holds exciting opportunities for the advancement of gender equality around the world, but we must ensure that no one gets left behind, that women and girls are supported to participate meaningfully and that technology-facilitated gender-based violence is responded to and prevented. I am delighted that the UK is co-hosting a side event on this important subject at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Throughout the world, International Women’s Day is celebrated in numerous ways. Equally, it is important to acknowledge that these celebrations take place against a backdrop of a growing cost of living crisis, which is disproportionately impacting on women. The Government understand that people are worried about the cost of living challenges ahead. That is why decisive action has been taken to support households across the UK, with a package of measures to help ease the burden while remaining fiscally responsible.

This year’s International Women’s Day global theme is “DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality”. A key facet of that is education, which is one of the key pathways towards achieving gender equality and remains a global priority. This Government have put education at the heart of their agenda, and I am pleased to support their efforts in this area. I am also pleased to have the opportunity to highlight the progress that this Government have made in the UK and around the world more widely to advance gender equality.

Girls’ education is a top international development priority, and the UK is committed to standing up for the right of every girl everywhere to access 12 years of quality education. From 2015 to 2020, the UK supported 8.1 million girls to gain a decent education. The UK committed to tackling the global education crisis through the Girls’ Education Action Plan 2021 and through two G7-endorsed global objectives: to get 40 million more girls in school and 20 million more girls reading by the age of 10 by 2026.

Here in the UK the Prime Minister, in his first speech of 2023, set out his ambition of ensuring that all school pupils in England study some form of maths to the age of 18. That reflects his mission to ensure that more children leave school with the right skills in numeracy and literacy.

We are helping our children and young people achieve their potential and recover from the impact of the pandemic. That is why we have made available almost £5 billion for education recovery, with many programmes—including the recovery premium, the National Tutoring Programme and the 16-to-19 tuition fund—focused on helping the most disadvantaged.

As society grows its digital economy, it is critical that we position women to be successful within that economy. This Government have made significant progress in increasing the number of girls studying STEM subjects, and we are keen to do more to get women into STEM careers to meet the demands of today’s workforce. Girls represented 44% of all STEM A-level entries in 2021. The proportion of women entering full-time undergraduate courses taking STEM subjects increased from 33.6% to 41.4% between 2011 and 2020.

However, in 2020 women made up only 29.4% of the STEM workforce in the UK and, worryingly, many of those women leave the workforce because they take time out for caring reasons and find it difficult to return. This Government are clear that the careers of talented women should not be held back because they take time out of work to care for loved ones.

That brings me on to the topic of women’s economic empowerment. As part of our international women and girls strategy, we are using our influence to encourage the international community and our multilateral partners to scale up their focus and activities on women’s economic empowerment. The UK has successfully included gender provisions in all our free trade agreements newly negotiated since leaving the EU. Our FTAs with Australia and New Zealand contain dedicated trade and gender equality chapters. They complement important provisions secured across the agreements—for example, on non-discrimination in the workplace, promoting women’s access to digital trade and supporting women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises.

Domestically, the government-backed task force on women-led high-growth enterprise was established to support women entrepreneurs, tackle investing barriers, challenge outdated gender stereotypes and increase the number of women-led high-growth businesses. This measure is driven by the Government’s ambition to increase the number of female entrepreneurs by half by 2030, equivalent to 600,000 new entrepreneurs. I am proud that such initiatives and others, such as flexible working and parental leave, will help achieve a considerable decline in the gender pay gap, which over the last decade has fallen from 19.6% to 14.9%, with the percentage of women in employment going up from 66.5% to 72.3%.

This Government’s commitment to improving the cost, choice and availability of childcare for working parents is central to this, especially as we know that unpaid care work, especially when it comes to childcare, is disproportionately done by women. We have spent over £3.5 billion in each of the past three years on our early education entitlements to support families with the cost of childcare. We know the sector is facing economic challenges, similar to the challenges faced across the economy, so we have already announced additional funding of £160 million in 2022-23, £180 million in 2023-24 and £170 million in 2024-25.

In addition to the action that we have taken to increase women’s economic participation, it is imperative that every woman is able to live without fear of harassment or violence, in the workplace as much as anywhere else. The Government are supporting the Worker Protection Bill, which will strengthen protections for employees against workplace harassment.

Online safety and digital access are key to achieving gender equality in today’s workforce. The ground-breaking Online Safety Bill delivers the Government’s manifesto commitment to making the UK the safest place in the world to be online. This new legislation will tackle criminal activity online, protect children from harmful and inappropriate content, particularly given the rise in misogyny, and promote greater transparency and accountability for platforms.

Gender-based violence threatens the lives and well-being of girls and women and girls in all their diversity around the world, and prevents them accessing opportunities such as education, healthcare and employment, which are fundamental to their freedom and development, education, healthcare and jobs. I am proud that the UK is recognised internationally for the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative, committing £60 million to prevent and respond to conflict-related sexual violence since 2012.

As I said in my opening remarks, I am proud to participate in today’s debate surrounded by so many champions for gender equality. I am proud of the work that this Government are doing to support women in all their diversities, in all areas of their lives, but I recognize that there is much more to do. Thank you.