GW69 Feature
Our male-dominated parliament
The effects
are obvious, says Natalie Bennett, chair of Green
Party Women
You might call
it a cause for a very small celebration – a
tiny glass of cheap cava perhaps: the
percentage of women in the UK parliament has
gone up (when any feared it would decline)
after the general election, but only to 22%
(from 19.5%), putting us 60th in the world
rankings for women MPs.
Spain, by contrast, has 37%, and Rwanda 56%. Cabinet ministers – the people who are making huge decisions now about Britain’s future, are 16% female.
But does it really matter? Does there need to be a certain percentage of women before they can really have an impact, particularly in getting issues important to women considered, or is what matters that activist, feminist women get elected – quantity or quality?
Academics have long debated this, and it was one of the chief discussion points around submissions to the Speaker’s Conference, which this year produced an important report on improving the representativeness of parliament. (Sadly it was released just before the election so sank almost without trace, but it’s well worth digging up.)
Two debates since the general election have thrown pretty clear light on the answer to this question. Quality matters, of course, and there are some excellent female MPs, led by our own Caroline Lucas, who’ve asked penetrating, important questions on women’s issues.
But quantity matters as well, and if there aren’t enough women’s voices – a critical mass of women able to club together in this most old-school of clubs – then the 51% of Britons who are female aren’t adequately represented.
That was clear in the outcome of the budget – identified by the Green Party and women’s groups as extraordinarily unfriendly to women. The House of Commons Library, a highly respected source of independent research, concluded that women will bear the brunt of three-quarters of extra taxes and benefit cuts. Of an additional £8 billion net revenue to be raised by the financial year 2014-15, almost £6 billion will be from women.
That analysis doesn’t even allow for the effect that women are 65% of the public sector workforce, and the planned slashes to its numbers will have a disproportionate effect on them.
Were the Budget to be subjected to the Gender Equality Duty, to which all public bodies owe adherence, which calls not simply for equal treatment but treatment that is fair, it would surely be judged to have failed.
The need for a greater quantity of women’s voices was also clear in the debate about anonymity for people accused of rape – which saw a clean gender split across the parliament, with even many Tory women speaking against the government proposals. Louise Bagshawe, Conservative MP for Corby, said by “singling out rape … ministers are sending a negative signal about women and those who accuse men of rape”. Anna Soubry, another Tory, and former barrister, said she’d seen many cases where when an accused’s name was made public, other victims came forward. (Hardly surprising given the low reporting levels.)
Yet this proposal as I write is still being pursued, despite being in neither the Liberal Democrat or Conservative manifestos.
And the new government’s hardly given hope for improvement in other matters – the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, a key body making decisions about the future of our fragile economy, is after the latest appointments all-male.
There are many reasons to argue for changing Britain’s voting system to one where each vote has an equal weight – that is proportional representation (not the pale imitation of alternative voting). One of them is that it would certainly boost the election of women. Elsewhere in the UK with PR systems the results are more balanced: in Scotland it’s now 33%, in Wales they’re very close to parity with 47%, and a third of the MEPs elected from the UK in 2009 were female.
In the meantime, it’s up to all political parties – and the Green Party again led the way in the recent general election with 33% of candidates being female (Labour 30%, Tory 24%, Lib Dem 21%), to work to improve representation of women at all levels as long as the current electoral system continues. At conference the all-women WomenbyName group will be having a meeting to discuss this – please come along if you can!
Spain, by contrast, has 37%, and Rwanda 56%. Cabinet ministers – the people who are making huge decisions now about Britain’s future, are 16% female.
But does it really matter? Does there need to be a certain percentage of women before they can really have an impact, particularly in getting issues important to women considered, or is what matters that activist, feminist women get elected – quantity or quality?
Academics have long debated this, and it was one of the chief discussion points around submissions to the Speaker’s Conference, which this year produced an important report on improving the representativeness of parliament. (Sadly it was released just before the election so sank almost without trace, but it’s well worth digging up.)
Two debates since the general election have thrown pretty clear light on the answer to this question. Quality matters, of course, and there are some excellent female MPs, led by our own Caroline Lucas, who’ve asked penetrating, important questions on women’s issues.
But quantity matters as well, and if there aren’t enough women’s voices – a critical mass of women able to club together in this most old-school of clubs – then the 51% of Britons who are female aren’t adequately represented.
That was clear in the outcome of the budget – identified by the Green Party and women’s groups as extraordinarily unfriendly to women. The House of Commons Library, a highly respected source of independent research, concluded that women will bear the brunt of three-quarters of extra taxes and benefit cuts. Of an additional £8 billion net revenue to be raised by the financial year 2014-15, almost £6 billion will be from women.
That analysis doesn’t even allow for the effect that women are 65% of the public sector workforce, and the planned slashes to its numbers will have a disproportionate effect on them.
Were the Budget to be subjected to the Gender Equality Duty, to which all public bodies owe adherence, which calls not simply for equal treatment but treatment that is fair, it would surely be judged to have failed.
The need for a greater quantity of women’s voices was also clear in the debate about anonymity for people accused of rape – which saw a clean gender split across the parliament, with even many Tory women speaking against the government proposals. Louise Bagshawe, Conservative MP for Corby, said by “singling out rape … ministers are sending a negative signal about women and those who accuse men of rape”. Anna Soubry, another Tory, and former barrister, said she’d seen many cases where when an accused’s name was made public, other victims came forward. (Hardly surprising given the low reporting levels.)
Yet this proposal as I write is still being pursued, despite being in neither the Liberal Democrat or Conservative manifestos.
And the new government’s hardly given hope for improvement in other matters – the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, a key body making decisions about the future of our fragile economy, is after the latest appointments all-male.
There are many reasons to argue for changing Britain’s voting system to one where each vote has an equal weight – that is proportional representation (not the pale imitation of alternative voting). One of them is that it would certainly boost the election of women. Elsewhere in the UK with PR systems the results are more balanced: in Scotland it’s now 33%, in Wales they’re very close to parity with 47%, and a third of the MEPs elected from the UK in 2009 were female.
In the meantime, it’s up to all political parties – and the Green Party again led the way in the recent general election with 33% of candidates being female (Labour 30%, Tory 24%, Lib Dem 21%), to work to improve representation of women at all levels as long as the current electoral system continues. At conference the all-women WomenbyName group will be having a meeting to discuss this – please come along if you can!
greenpartywomen.org.uk
women@greenparty.org.uk
More information:
References:
http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm (number of women in national parliaments worldwide)
Speaker’s Conference report:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/spconf/spconf.htm
women@greenparty.org.uk
More information:
References:
http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm (number of women in national parliaments worldwide)
Speaker’s Conference report:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/spconf/spconf.htm
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