206. Baroness Kishwer Falkner

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0:36Well behaved women rarely make history. Bloody difficult women do.

0:47This week I'm joined by the former Equalities and Human Rights Commission Chairwoman, Baroness Kishwa Faulkner. She tells me all about the ups and downs she's faced in her five years in the role but our conversation begins with the most fascinating first answer I think I've ever had on this podcast so buckle up and welcome to Difficult Women.

1:29As the very recent chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission for the past five years, Kishwa Baroness Faulkner, whose family left India for Pakistan after partition, found herself at the ideological rather than geographical or religious centre of one of today's most toxic and politically charged cleavages, the argument over sex and gender. As EHRC chair, she was accused of transphobia for defending women's hard-fought rights and spaces, and she became the subject of poisonous briefings from both within and without her organisation after she expressed views regarding the primacy of biological sex and the rights of women to challenge the biological status of trans women who were born as men.

2:17All very uncontroversial views up until about 10 years ago. As well as decrying violent trans rights activism, she's also spoken out against trying to codify Islamophobia and about the importance of acknowledging the ethnicity of grooming gangs. Well, Kishwa, if I may, for a female born in Pakistan who moved to the UK as a teenager, that is quite the record. I expect this, your first audio interview, your first sit down, to be both free flowing and spicy. before we get onto the meat in the sandwich, tell everyone about the girl who was Kishwa Khan when you were back in what we used to call the subcontinent.

3:03Yes, well, thank you, Rachel. First of all, can I say, I hope this is going to be illuminating beyond those three things that you've described. But the girl, yes, I was profoundly fortunate that I came from a family where parents believed in education for girls. They were both university graduates. And the house was, I was the youngest of five. The house was full of books and full of animated conversations. And at Sunday lunch, the children had to prepare by having read one article in The Economist that they would share and debate with everyone else. So at the age of 12, I was already reading The Economist magazine from cover to cover, along with other periodicals.

3:54It was an enormously liberating household to grow up in because my mother was the first wave of feminists. And even for Pakistan, I think she was a bit of a hard act to follow. She was a professional journalist. She became a television producer, then had a column in a newspaper. My father helped to train spooks. He was head of the intelligence training outfit in Pakistan. And there was unwritten assumption amongst the five children that everyone would get an education and improve themselves. The other side of the coin was that because my parents had come as migrants, as refugees, as they were called, to found the new country that was Pakistan to help to set it up.

4:52We were a small but slightly elite group of people, but never properly accepted amongst those people whose ties to the land, Western India, were much stronger than ours. So we didn't speak any of the local languages, Punjabi or Sindhi. We still spoke Urdu, which was the language of the royal courts from India, similar to contemporary Hindi. And so there was always a bit of an outside element. We were never really insiders. And I think as the political situation in Pakistan deteriorated over the period from when I was born, which was 1955, till the time I left, which was 1976, actually. So I was just a very young person, but not a teenager any longer.

5:46It was evident at the time that I was a teenager that my parents didn't see a future for us, particularly the girls in Pakistan, and expected us to go abroad, earn scholarships or whatever, to get out of the country. There wasn't enough money to send us, the five of us, abroad. but to get out of the country and improve ourselves. That is the most fascinating first answer to a quite simple question that I think we've ever had on Difficult Women, Kishwa. I mean, you know, we could spend 30 minutes just talking about your childhood, the expectations for girls in Pakistan as against boys in Pakistan, whether you feel Pakistani because you were part of such a new country where you arrived as, as you say, a refugee.

6:35following that enforced displacement of millions of Muslims after partition. I mean, we could, as I say, spend all of our time on that. I saw a wonderful photograph in one of the background pieces I was reading about you. You went to a boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas. Now, tell us a bit about that. Why were you sent there? And was that a good preparation for coming to rainy England, a bit of boarding school? Yes, actually, it was one of the happiest periods of my life. It was a very elite school, I would say probably the most elite girls school that there was in Pakistan. But it was just circumstance, not wealth that got me there, because my father was one of the station commanders of this, which was an intelligence base, a military base in the foothills of the Himalayas in Murray.

7:28and due to being locals, I don't remember whether we got concessory fees or what, but I wasn't a boarder. You were a day pupil. A day scholar, as they used to be called in Old English, and my mother was a teacher there. So I went to the convent of Jesus and Mary, but I remember one of my abiding memories is running errands for another rather difficult but impressive woman, the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. I just knew you were going to say that. What was she like? And she was quite formidable. Even then, she was incredibly... That's why when you were a little girl, you wanted to please.

8:07I mean, she was enormously warm to me. I remember sitting in her lap and her cuddling me when I got her something from the tuck shop or whatever. She was quite formidable. But there were other quite strong and formidable women there. And the nuns were pretty strict. Right. So you got my when I came to the UK, I spoke particularly slightly posh old English. I was going to ask you where your posh RP comes from. And the first thing people when I met young people, I came here at 21 and when I met young people here, they would be slightly taken aback by my accent. And the first thing they would ask is, why did I speak like that?

8:46And I said, well, a thick wooden ruler across my wrists and knuckles had it beaten out of me for years at school. So that was the reason that I spoke the way I did. I hope I've moderated a little bit. So going back to your childhood and your teenage years, people will be wondering what was a Muslim Pakistani girl doing at a Catholic boarding school, where you were a date scholar for a start? And how normal was that for young Muslim girls to be sent to be educated by nuns? So that was not very unusual. There was St. Lawrence College, which was next door. Then later on, my family moved. I left that school and came to St.

9:27Joseph's Convent in Karachi. What used to happen was that Muslim parents paid the full fees and the fees that were paid by Muslim parents subsidized the charitable work of the convents to do within the Christian community. So it was quite a normal thing. We were theoretically excused from scripture, but I used to love singing the hymns. So when I go to church here, someone's memorial service or whatever, I belt it out just like anyone else. What's your favorite hymn? I think there's several, but I think I vow to thee my country because this is my country. When you came to England in 76, you settled in Windsor.

10:14you said it was terribly white doesn't surprise me at all and you you've also said it was a pretty bad time to be a non-white person even someone very educated in English ways who spoke English beautifully you experienced a prejudice from how you where you'd come from and what you looked like well it was the time the late 70s when I arrived here was the time of the p word and yes and and You know, white skinheads roaming streets. And if you were any, it doesn't matter. I don't think it was visible that I was Pakistani, but I certainly was a brown person, a small brown little woman, young woman scurrying around.

10:59Why didn't they pick on someone their own size and sex? Well, I, you know, I was never violently assaulted or anything like that. But you would go into a country pub nearby, predominantly white, and people would turn around and look at you. Sort of like this, like what are you doing here? Sort of like that. But then on the other hand, I have to say, I also had a really positive experience and that was due to Pakistani friends. I had introductions to several English people when I arrived here who were very well educated. I would say they were slightly too posh. They were the hunting, shooting, fishing set.

11:40But with them, I was adopted, almost adopted instantly, because I think it mattered that you were slightly educated and could converse and had similar interests, you know, whatever they were, art, opera, things like that. And I think I have to say that I think the way one spoke got one further than it would these days. You went to the LSE where you got an MA in international relations. You also got a degree from the University of Kent. I don't know which way around. The other way. The other way. Kent first. So then I want to sort of speed up because you're a highly educated woman from Pakistan.

12:27Did you naturalise quite soon to become a British citizen? What happened? I naturalised in 1982. Oh, very soon and six years later. As soon as I could, as soon as I was, I think it was four years was the time you had to live here at that time. And then I was a bit slow and took a year or two and getting my papers together. Did they have all the sort of, you know, you had to know about Queen Victoria? No, not at all. There was no citizenship test. Because you'd come from Pakistan. But I had a lovely experience of a copper on a bike coming to my sister's house in Eden across the river from Windsor.

13:04Yeah. and having smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches, I'd insisted on that, with us and a cup of tea to find out how genuine we were and whether we were the real thing or not. And after about 45 minutes, he was very pleased. I got the impression and he went off. A policeman came to your house? Yes, to interview us. So you gave him cucumber sandwiches? That was brilliant. And smoked salmon, which was pretty expensive all the time. I mean, he must have been putty in your hands. He would have done anything after that. He noticed where there was a very prominent photograph of my father in full military honours.

13:39He was an army man in full uniform and military honours on top of the television set, silver framed. And I think that's what did for him. Very impressive. I'm sure it's a very imposing photo. What did you do in your 20s? And did you have any sort of any brushes with the authorities because of you not looking like a white British woman? going about your business? Well, apart from the odd speeding ticket. Oh, fast woman, as well as a difficult one then. No, I was lucky. I, you know, had a job, got on with it, got transferred to New York, which was great. And it was a wonderful experience to live in New York.

14:28And then I went off to Paris for the same company and lived in Paris for a couple of years. So I was working for an airline called Saudi Arabian Airlines and they established bases in different countries because Saudi Arabia was not the most welcoming place for foreign foreigners, nor foreign women, because there had been an Islamic revival in 1976, a famous coup in Kaaba, in Mecca. And atmosphere towards foreigners and particularly women had become quite hostile. So they opened bases around Western countries from where they could base crews and operate their functions. And I was, I understand, quite a good administrator.

15:15So I got sent to New York as setting up a new office there and then in Paris. But one of the things I think that struck me while I was here in the UK and that stayed with me when I was in New York was how important politics was. And the one time I felt entirely out of things, because I was a bit of a political animal, read papers and things like that, was the fact that one couldn't vote. Oh, here you mean. So here, until I got a passport, I couldn't vote. so getting that passport getting a British passport wasn't really about not having to queue in front of foreign embassies to get a visa for me it was this badge of honour now I was a proper citizen now I could go and vote but I was I think 27 by the first time I ever voted which was the 87 election when the SDP which was the political party I joined came through oh you were an SDP woman way.

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17:03I was asked by a newspaper once to go off to Saudi Arabia. This is in the last three or four years. And everyone says, oh, it's changed so much. Can you just reflect a little bit on the relative status of women in the Middle East and those parts of the Middle East? And how you could function as a woman in the United Kingdom, particularly after you've got a passport? I mean, it was dramatically, dramatically liberating, profoundly so, to be able to breathe. I mean, you know, literally, one was breathing more freely when one came here. It was a deeply oppressive society. It has been deeply oppressive recently.

17:49And a lot of people think, oh, well, you know, they can buy the best clothes. They can wear as many jewels as they like. They can drive. Great. They're so rich. Well, money doesn't suffice for being essentially chattel. You cannot, if you're a Southie woman, I don't know whether this is the fact today, but till very recently, you have to have your guardian's permission to leave the country. You have to have your guardian's permission to marry. You have to have your guardian's permission to do X and Y. A male relative, if not, if your father's died. Or your brother or your nephew. Or your husband.

18:25Yeah. So, how can that, I mean, you know, coming here, even in the 70s, was so profoundly different to Pakistan. I had come, as I said, from a liberal family in Pakistan. Going to work in Saudi Arabia was profoundly regressive for me. For all of us who came from a relatively open country like Pakistan, as I said, my mother worked, my sisters worked. My sister was the first female journalist for AP, the Associated Press and Reuters back in Pakistan. We were accustomed as a family for breaking through ceilings because that was just the atmosphere. My grandparents had been very liberal, by the way, so it wasn't as if my parents broke great bounds.

19:14But to go to societies where you had no real freedoms. I remember at one point going back into Saudi after a trip to London and I'd gone to the bookshop on Fulham Road. I think it's called. The Pan Bookshop, remember? Pan Bookshop. Yes, I remember. It's closed now, but it's now Peter Express, I think. But carry on. That's right. So I'd gone to the Pan Bookshop because one of the things I did was buy books because you couldn't get good books. And so you went to buy books and I bought Arthur Koestler's book, Darkness at Noon. Exactly. Exactly. And I knew what the book was about. Obviously, I wouldn't have, I was interested to read it because of what it was about, his repudiation of communism.

20:00And I was trip searched for having this book. A book or this book? This book. I had half a dozen books, but it was this book. And I knew something was wrong with this book because they were speaking in Arabic to each other, the customs people. and it was only this book they picked up and the chiclet and the other stuff they weren't interested in at all. So it was that repressive. And you were intimately strip-searched. Yes, yes, of course. Now, what do you mean? I mean, cavity searches? Yes, of course, of course. What justification? By the way, I have to say that isn't the only time that's also happened to me in the US after 9-11 when my origins, because I was born in Quetta, were deemed to be dodgy and I was taken into a separate room.

20:45Oh, I'm so sorry. So it's not the one. Goodness me. Did they have, can I just ask, were you intimately strip-searched by males or females? No, by females. Okay, thanks. Yes, I mean, I wouldn't have tolerated a little bit of a male. Absolutely appalling. But no, it was so different. And that's why I think I decided that I had to be liberated from jobs which paid very well, but was simply not fulfilling in terms of the entitlement. And that's why I decided I had to do politics. Once I decided I had to do that, there was only one route in the mid-80s to do that. I had to come here and do A-levels because you couldn't get into a decent university without A-levels.

21:32So I did A-levels at Hackney in East London College, which was full of tall, dark blokes with knives and cannabis. one or the other you could choose what you wanted and got a couple of A-levels and then got into LSE to read both law and international relations I chose IR. You mentioned the SDP but you fought Kensington and Chelsea because you were I remember Michael Portillo actually won the seat yes that's 2001 2001 election yes that's right and did you how did you do and what was your experience of campaigning in my borough, my constituency, actually. Right. It's where I still live. Oh, nice.

22:12We must be neighbours. We must be near neighbours. Well, it was great fun. My drawback was that the Libs wanted Liberal Democrats. I was a Liberal Democrat at the time. Again, there was a little bit of this innate bias, prejudice, call it what you will. But as I was going through my selection process, I was asked which northern constituency I'd like to go to. And the three that were mentioned were all three, were they large Muslim or brown or Pakistani populations. And I said, oh, no, I'm going to be applying in London. And there was some surprise on the part of the selection panel to that. And I explained that I worked in foreign affairs and that they weren't exactly the best foreign affairs.

22:57What did they think you were going to put on a sari and go and work and be in a seat in Birmingham? Yes, I think that was the expectation. Oh, my Lord. And I would have been so fake. There was no point in even thinking of that. And so I stayed at home. I had a young child. Your daughter, who is now grown up? Who's now 29 and is at Stanford University. Congratulations. Long way away. But because I had a young child, and my husband was still doing his defil. And this is Robert Faulkner, your husband, who's an academic? Yes, he's an academic. He was doing his doctorate at Oxford at the time, so we had a bit of a commuting relationship.

23:40And I couldn't go very far, frankly, when you've got to... I mean, I leafleted with Sophia in a pram, and we took turns as to when I could go and do hustings and things like that. I had a delightful result. If I remember correctly, I got nearly 17 % of the vote. That's very good. Do you remember how many thousand? I bet you do. No, I don't, actually. But I have to say to you, it was the highest liberal or Lib Dem vote since 1931. And that proved my point, the point that I think still holds today, which is that there isn't this intrinsic, generalised, systemic racism in the UK. And the fact that people didn't particularly look at my background, but looked at what the Lib Dems were saying, what the message was, and liked and heard the message.

24:32And they voted, you know, 17 % have voted for me. Did you get the bug? I mean, were you fully infected by the political virus by then? Well, I was already fully infected by the political virus because I had worked in headquarters for the Lib Dems. I think it terrified me, actually. Electro-politics terrified me. Why? Because I had campaigned in other elections for other people. I'd done canvassing and stuff. And outside London, people did notice the colour of your skin in the late 1990s. They did notice that you were probably not, possibly not indigenous to this country, whatever that means. And I'd had one or two hairy experiences up cancer blocks and things like that.

25:22So I think in general, what was terrifying was that I didn't have the confidence, and perhaps I shouldn't be saying this, I didn't have sufficient confidence in Lib Dem policy to be able to stand on the doorstep and sell it. And I knew that my brain was telling me this is not good enough. And yet I was having to sell that. And I think all political parties have that problem. that the foot soldiers, the candidates, the activists may or may not believe in some of your barmier stuff. We need to move on to the role for which you are well known, which is the EHRC, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, who you were appointed there by Liz Truss.

26:10The appointment was made after an independent selection. You were reappointed by Labour. Only for a year. Only for a year. Now, there is quite a lot to talk about now because... There's a lot of water under that particular bridge. I always say blood under the bridge. Well, can we actually talk about the sort of... the campaign from within that was amplified by the media that you were a transphobe at the heart of the EHRC? Tell everyone the outline of the story. Yes. Well, first of all, to talk about when Liz Truss appointed me, George Floyd's murder had happened. Black Lives Matter was all that was dominating at the time.

26:58And I thought that I'd been appointed to really major on the race issue, whether Britain was racist or not. And in fact, within a year, I realised this other issue, which I knew nothing. Gender ideology. Gender ideology was actually where all the litigation was happening, where all the upheaval was, where people were having to go to court to assert rights or not. Just remind everybody of the kind of awful toxicity and febrile quality of those times. Within a few months of my coming in, there was a court case that had been lost at tribunal of a woman called Maya Forstater on the basis of what I think these days is described gender critical.

27:44I prefer to use the word gender realist. She had said that she thought that a person who was being depicted as female was actually a male and she lost her job. So I determined that we had to intervene there on the basis of a protected characteristic of religion and belief. It was her belief this was a male. And therefore, there was a plausible case to be made that she was entitled to hold that belief. That's what the law was. So in 2021, we backed her appeal to upper tribunal and she won. And that was a landmark case to ensure that women were allowed to say things about the reality. There was a backlash, though.

28:27And that's where the backlash started. We then published in 2022 single sex spaces guidance to remind people of what the law was, because we thought that the reason so much tribunal action was happening, litigation was happening, was because people didn't understand the law. So we thought we'll clarify it. So we published this guidance and six months later, when we're doing a review, nothing's changed. Explain what the guidance was. The guidance was a clause in the Equality Act, several sections of the Equality Act, which require that for the privacy, dignity and safety of women and men, because sex, the protected characteristic of sex covers both men and women, girls and boys, that people were entitled for their dignity, safety and privacy to have single sex spaces in certain circumstances.

29:19and that these circumstances had to be reviewed by the providers of spaces, hospitals, trusts, toilets, changing rooms and things like that. And nobody was following that, that particular part of the Equality Act. They were promoting something called gender self-ID. So if you fancied wearing a dress and you fancied using the women's loo, why couldn't you? There didn't seem to be a problem. That was part of government policy, though. It is still part of government policy. What, gender self-ID? In the cabinet office, yes. I've spoke about that in Parliament only this week. So nobody's done anything particularly as...