Janet Young, Baroness Young

Who was Janet Young, Baroness Young?

Janet Mary Baker Young, Baroness Young PC, was a British Conservative politician. She served as the first ever female Leader of the House of Lords from 1981 to 1983, first as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and from 1982 as Lord Privy Seal. She was the only woman ever appointed to the Cabinet by Margaret Thatcher.

Born Janet Mary Baker in 1926, she went to the mainly boys Dragon School in Oxford where she played rugby and cricket, and then to Headington School. During World War II she studied at Yale, and then took an MA in philosophy, politics and economics at St Anne's College, Oxford. She married Geoffrey Tyndale Young, and had three daughters.

She became a councillor for Oxford City Council in 1957 and was leader by 1967. Not long after she was made a peer on the advice of Edward Heath, as Baroness Young, of Farnworth in the County Palatine of Lancaster. As the Lady Young she was appointed Leader of the House of Lords, and sat on the boards of large corporations such as NatWest and Marks and Spencer.

In later life she was mainly known for her staunch opposition to gay rights. She worked to try to stop legislation going through that would allow unmarried couples to adopt children, and also led campaigns in the House of Lords to prevent equalisation of the age of consent for homosexual men with that of heterosexuals, and also fought the repeal of Section 28. She was ultimately defeated on all counts. Although she managed to delay the repeal of Section 28 in England and Wales in 2000, Section 28 was finally removed from the statute book in 2003.