Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:01 pm on 6 February 2018.
Well, absolutely. We won the battle, and the war is by no means over, and there are a number of fronts on which that war—if that's the word that you want to use—needs to be conducted. There are some interesting things about the suffrage, as it was first instituted. If all women had been allowed to vote at 18 just after the first world war, there would have been far more of them than there were men, of course, because of the tragedy of the great war. One can't help but feel that the policy makers, who might have been all men, might have had that in mind when they considered the suffrage. It's a really good example of why you need a diverse range of decision makers to take all of these things into account when you are going forward. So, you are absolutely right, and you are absolutely right to highlight the fact that there are campaigns that affect the whole of society that women tend to bring forward because they are the carriers of the burden, quite often. As society changes, we hope that we will not be able to say that in the future. But, as we speak, it is still the case that the majority of women carry the burden of the family alongside them in public life.
So, part of this campaign will be about gender equality. I started a campaign called 'THIS IS ME' last Monday in Gower College, about making sure that everybody can be the person that they want to be, regardless of their gender or their sexuality or their race or their creed or disability or any other characteristic. Until we accept that human beings are human beings, and that they should be able to be the best person they can be and make the best contribution that they can make, we will still have this struggle. So, it is very much, Llywydd—it's a good place to end this debate—it is very much the case that what we are actually talking about with gender equality is the right of every individual human being to be the best person they can be and to make the best of their own selves and take their rightful place in the world, whatever that rightful place is—in public life, in private life, in economic life, in cultural life, in every other aspect of our society. Only when we've achieved that will we have achieved equality.