Tag Archives: campaign for gender balance

Opinion: “I don’t like them, you don’t like them… We have to have them”

By Dinti Batstone | Published 14th September 2011 - 9:25 am

This Saturday, Conference has the opportunity to show that Liberal Democrats are genuinely committed to achieving gender balance in our own distinctively liberal and democratic way.

Conference will debate an amendment which Jo Shaw and I have put forward to Mark Pack and Paul Tyler’s Lords reform motion. Our amendment builds on the approach taken by our party in the late 1990s, when one-off zipping was used to deliver a gender-balanced cohort of Lib Dem MEPs in the first PR elections to the European Parliament.

In an ideal world we wouldn’t need these kinds of measures. But with just 12% women …

Posted in Conference, Op-eds | Also tagged claire tyler, constitutional reform, equalities, gender balance, house of lords, jo shaw, lords reform, lynne featherstone, mark pack, paul tyler | 14 Comments

Dinti Batstone writes… If not now, when?

By Dinti Batstone | Published 17th May 2011 - 5:27 pm

Notice anything about this 5-minute BBC report on House of Lords reform? While it talks of ‘revolution in the air’, every interviewee is a white middle aged man.

Yet House of Lords reform could – if the Coalition chooses to make it so – prove a game-changing opportunity to promote the cause of gender balance at Westminster.

Our Commons party consists of just 12% women and the Commons as a whole barely 22%. The reasons for this are complex and different in each party, but electoral volatility and a leaky pipeline of female candidates are two major factors for the Liberal …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged all-women shortlists, constitutional reform, equalities, gender balance, house of lords, lords reform | 13 Comments

Opinion: Where are the girls?

By Ruth Irwin | Published 30th January 2011 - 10:15 am

There are more Labour MPs called Ann than women Lib Dem MPs. There are more ‘David’s in the coalition cabinet than women. How can we dare to call ourselves a progressive party whilst continuing to operate tacit acceptance of male domination? And, just as importantly, why are more women not banging on the doors of power, trying to become PPCs and councilors? Why is the organisation I intern for, Women Liberal Democrats, limited to one part-time staffer and a fast-diminishing grant? Virginia Woolf famously wrote that women needed independent means in order to pursue professional careers – “a room of …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged blairs babes, lynne featherstone, positive action, sal brinton, women liberal democrats | 27 Comments

The party’s diversity dilemma

By Mark Pack | Published 13th May 2010 - 9:20 am

The party’s efforts to have a more diverse Parliamentary Party have long suffered from the historic legacy of an all white and all male House of Commons Parliamentary Party. Whilst the gender balance amongst newly won constituencies has vastly improved, the overall balance of the party was kept heavily male by the party’s failure to ever select a woman to succeed a retiring man in a held Parliamentary seat. For the 2010 general election the party had finally cracked the problem – with half the retiring male MPs succeeded by female candidates.

But in a cruel twist, all of these women …

Posted in News | 30 Comments

Female MPs: how’s the party doing?

By Mark Pack | Published 12th March 2010 - 4:54 pm

We’ve twice covered the question of gender balance in (Westminster) politics in recent days with the challenge from the Fawcett Society What about women? and Dinti Batstone’s call to Make politics fit women’s lives, not vice-versa.

With party conference in Birmingham about to start, we now have the latest figures on how the party is doing at getting a less male-dominated Parliamentary party. The Campaign for Gender Balance reports:

Winnable seats: approximately 40% of our most winnable seats have women PPCs.
Held seats: 4 out of the 8 seats that have MPs standing down have selected women.

The last point is particularly important as, …

Posted in Selection news | Leave a comment

Opinion: Make politics fit women’s lives, not vice-versa

By Dinti Batstone | Published 12th March 2010 - 1:50 pm

For today’s women “motherhood, not sexism, is the issue”. So says The Economist (“We Did It”, 30 December 2009), noting that “women who prosper in high-pressure companies in their 20s drop out in dramatic numbers in their 30s and then find it almost impossible to regain earlier momentum”.

Could the same be true in politics?

Nearly 80% of current male Lib Dem MPs first entered Parliament in their 30s and 40s. Yet our female MPs were overwhelmingly elected in their 20s or 50s, and not one was first elected while raising young children. Achieving the same age spread as the men could …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged azita qadri, catherine bearder, female candidates, jo swinson, sharon bowles | 9 Comments

Opinion: No to All-Men Shortlists‏

By Jo Swinson MP | Published 9th November 2009 - 11:25 am

At our 2001 party conference I donned a shocking pink t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “I am not a token woman” and spoke in opposition to all-women shortlists.

Eight years on, I am still opposed to the use of single gender shortlists, but I wonder if I was then taking aim at the wrong target.

Research done by the party in advance of Nick Clegg’s recent appearance before the Speaker’s Conference showed, as I argued back in 2001, no evidence that our party discriminates against women in candidate selections.

Far from it: analysis of 237 selections shows that two thirds of the time where a woman is on the shortlist, a woman is selected.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged all-women shortlists, equalities, jo swinson | 57 Comments

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