Debate contribution: International Women’s Day 2024

Debate contribution by Ms Connie Egan on 11 March 2024.

MLA

Ms Connie Egan

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

11 March 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

International Women’s Day 2024

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4270108

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I am glad to speak on the motion, and I welcome the fact that it has been signed by Members from across parties. I spent last Friday, International Women's Day, at an event organised by a local organisation, Kilcooley Women's Centre, which is in my constituency. The atmosphere at and spirit of the event captured everything that International Women's Day should be about. Local organisations and women from all backgrounds came together not just to celebrate how far we have come but to discuss what more we need to do and the challenges facing women today. We heard from a senior PSNI officer who overcame an historically male-dominated working environment, juggled the demands of training with a young family and prevailed over gender stereotypes to excel in her career. She now uses her role to help women and children who have been victims of sexual assault and rape. I was heartened to hear how legislation surrounding coercive control, stalking and cyber-flashing introduced by the Justice Minister, Naomi Long, in the last mandate were being effectively used by the PSNI to apprehend offenders. We also heard from a woman who ran a successful local family business. She overcame adversity in the form of coercive control and now uses her experience to help others in our local community.

We are so lucky in Northern Ireland to have a strong community and voluntary sector that does the legwork when it comes to supporting and lifting up women. Whether it is through having an affordable social enterprise model of childcare, providing therapeutic support to those who have been subject to domestic abuse or having education and employment courses, we owe them the recognition that they deserve for their transformative work in communities. There can be no doubt that we have made progress over the past century. Women now have more legislative protections than ever. We have the most representative Assembly in our history, and we enjoy freedoms for which those of previous generations had to fight. But there is so much more to do.

Absolutely, and I thank the Member for her intervention. Advice that was given to me before I became an MLA was, "You cannot be what you cannot see". If we really want to have a representative society, whether in local government, in this Chamber or in Parliament, we need to make sure that this place is accessible for women. That includes security and maternity provisions. I know that there are women in the Chamber today who did not avail themselves of those, and it has been a massive challenge for them. As I was saying, there is a lot more work to do. One illustration of that is research published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists on International Women's Day. That research showed that the leading cause of mental ill health among women in the UK is violence and abuse, closely followed by relationship issues such as coercive control. With more women than ever before having been elected to the Assembly, I hope that we can come together and use the rest of the mandate to make progress. We have many outstanding issues. The strategic framework to end violence against women and girls has still not been published. We are the only part of these islands not to have a strategy to end gender-based violence. Last month, we passed a motion supporting a women's health strategy, something that is desperately needed for women in our society who face health inequalities such as delays to cervical screening tests, inadequate diagnosis and care for endometriosis and treatment pathways for menopause. That is certainly not an exhaustive list of women's health issues that need to be actioned urgently by the Assembly and the Executive. One of the biggest barriers to women accessing employment opportunities is accessible and affordable childcare. I was heartened to hear recent commitments from Ministers on that issue, but many families need intervention and support now. I also want to speak about the women who have faced unimaginable abuse: the victims and survivors of the mother-and-baby institutions and the Magdalene laundries. Those women in Northern Ireland have been left behind. While the Republic of Ireland has made some progress on addressing that shameful part of our past, we still have neither introduced a redress scheme for those who were subjected to the trauma of those institutions nor installed a memorial to the victims and survivors. I sincerely hope that we can come together and deliver for those women as a matter of urgency in order to recognise and address the horrors that were inflicted on them. I could talk about so much more, but I am constrained by time. I hope that the women in the Chamber work together with common goals to address historical injustices faced by women and the current challenges in our society but also to celebrate how far we have come and to uplift one another.

820 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:52 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification