When I first took charge of Scottish Liberal Democrat Women earlier this year, my mission was simple: I was going to save the women.
In Scotland, we are fortunate to have the brilliant MPs Jo Swinson and Christine Jardine, but the proportion of women elected at all levels simply isn’t good enough. We are running an almighty campaign to get the brilliant Beatrice Wishart in the Scottish Parliamentary by-election in Shetland later this month but even when we get her elected, she will be the only one of 5 Lib Dem MSPs who is a woman. Luckily, our elected men couldn’t be better allies – I have personally witnessed Willie Rennie putting in real effort to push through new rules on all women shortlists, and encouraging many women to consider their futures with the party.
As to how to save the women, this was the subject of many a conversation amongst my network of Lib Dem Ladies, a WhatsApp group which has become somewhat infamous at Scottish conferences full of women who inspire me every day. There are a few more ideas in the pipeline but the one we’ve been working hard on for the last few months is #GirlsSupportingGirls.
We know that there are many, many women in our party who would make brilliant MPs, MSPs and local councillors, and we want to make sure that they achieve their goals. That is why for the last few months, we’ve been gathering SLDW members and sending them to support female candidates of all sorts. We started with the brilliant Jenny Marr, PPC for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, and have been travelling across the UK since, even road tripping to Brecon and Radnorshire to help out our brand new MP Jane Dodds.
Our goal is to give women the support they need in order to run their campaigns. Aside from the practicalities of getting boots on the ground, our biggest goal is to do what we said in the title – we want to create a network of women who can provide all sorts of support to other women in the party.
If you’d be interested in getting involved, please sign up to Lib Dem women at www.libdemwomen.org.uk and keep an eye on your emails for word of our upcoming events – including a trip to Sheffield Hallam on 5th and 6th October to see Laura Gordon elected as our next MP.
* Ruth McElroy is the chair of Scottish Lib Dem Women
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4 Comments
Not certain what the current position is with positive discrimination and all women short lists. Can someone please enlighten me? Is it being extended/ employed for other groups – gays and disabled for example? Which constituencies have used positive discrimination so far? Is this info available on a national level?
All mentoring and campaign support to women is very much to be welcomed. Let’s hope structural barriers to candidacy like maternity leave (lack of) are at long last going to be tackled as well.
A lot of work needs to be done to ensure more women and men are elected at all levels.
There are few alternatives for candidates who wish to be elected, to hard work, long term campaigning and building up a strong local team.
Opportunities in the past have been missed which would have ensured that excellent women could have been elected. Hopefully in the future those mistakes will not be repeated.
David:
There is this marvelous website called “Google”…