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.
However the most worrying figure for me, was that of these 237 selections, only 90 had a woman on the shortlist. 147 all-men shortlists were nodded through, giving our members no choice to select a woman. It’s not just in “unwinnable” seats either. Norwich South, St Albans…
At the recent Speaker’s Conference hearing with party leaders, Nick rightly made several mentions of our rule requiring at least one man and one woman on each shortlist. But it is empty rhetoric if it is not enforced. I’m not saying that in special circumstances we shouldn’t allow the rule to be waived – where a popular, incumbent PPC has come within a few hundred votes of winning it is not surprising that no challengers emerge even after two advertisements.
It should not, however, be standard practice, as it now clearly is. When 147 seats are ending up with all-men shortlists, it’s a pretty clear sign of a problem. The solution is not to sit back and do nothing. In approaching the Regional Candidates Chair to waive the gender balance rule the local parties say: “There are no women candidates” or “We’ve advertised twice and emailed every approved woman on the list”. These are not good enough excuses. Finding candidates – men and women – is not something local parties can outsource to the federal party. If local parties know in advance that the rule won’t be waived, they will have a clear incentive to ensure women apply – and that means getting women to become candidates in the first place. The experience in our party, and others, is that women often need extra encouragement or nudging.
The Campaign for Gender Balance has an excellent record in supporting women to become approved, and helping women get selected in winnable seats. 40% of our target seat candidates are women. 67% of candidates in held seats where the MP is standing down are women.
This cannot though be solely a centralised initiative. Local parties must actively engage in the search for and encouragement of our next tranche of women candidates.
If we enforce our own rule to have both genders on every shortlist, I believe we can prove that it is possible to achieve gender balance without resorting to positive discrimination.
We need to campaign now to get all parts of the party to agree that after the election, in the new round of selections, this rule will have meaning. Local parties will have to ensure women apply if they want to proceed with selection. That means winning arguments in the English, Scottish and Welsh Candidates Committees, and possibly at Conference.
“Say No to All-Men Shortlists” – I can see the t-shirts now 😉 Who’s with me?
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55 Comments
Good for you for raising the issue again, Jo. Though I do wonder whether such a move would simply mean more women on the approved list getting more of the calls that many of us have experienced at some stage, which say in essence “We’ve got a selection coming up and Head Office tell us we need a woman on the list. Will you be our token woman?”.
Where is the problem occurring in the chain? Is it the balance on the list of approved candidates? Or that fewer of the women on the list are actively applying for seats? Or that local parties are putting fewer of those women on their shortlists? Without a diagnosis, it’s hard to prescribe an effective remedy.
Lorna
(posting in a personal capacity, obviously)
Jo is quite right that the problem does not occur at the point when members vote for their candidate, but in ensuring they have the option of a woman candidate at all.
The real challenge is getting more women onto the approved candidates list and wanting to be selected.
The first time I met jo was when she attended the first LDYS Activate weekend. This weekeknd I was again helping to train Liberal Youth activists and there was some very talented young women there.
In my view that is where the resources need to go – positive action to encourage more women to think about standing and to give them the skills and support so that they can.
(And I’m not so naive as to believe they won’t then encounter some sexism along the way, but the priority has to be upping the numbers at stage one.)
I’m quite happy to work and encourage women PPCs to come through. As I said on a previous post, I have some very good potential PPCs at the moment, whom I’m working with and ensuring that they have a strong future potential. If I can only stop the GBTF from leaping on them, encouraging them to stand long before they are ready or have the experience they need. One of them was approached only six weeks after being elected as a Councillor and a few months after joining the party! This is just absurd.
Those of us who are ‘testicularly challenged’ would like to see a much more structured and logical approach than that described above. A much better candidate selection system where approving people as councillors was seen as the first step on the ladder to – potentially – becoming an MP would be a start. This type of open ended system would be far less intimidating and would see far more women coming through, as well as candidates from ethnic minorities.
Differentiating between candidates approved to stand purely for their local non- target seat and those approved to stand for a target seat would be another.
Finally, if you really want to do this properly how simply getting rid of shortlists? I’ve never heard of more than a dozen candidates coming through for any seat, so why do we need shortlists at all? And if, say, there was more than 6 why not have an initial postal ballot to reduce the number? Then a hustings for the last six?
Or surely it’s not beyond Liberal Democrats to come up with some convoluted PR system to do the job!
Martin, I’m not at all sure that approval as a council candidate should be seen as ‘the first step on the ladder to – potentially – becoming an MP’. The two aren’t necessarily the same thing at all. There are many people who would make excellent MPs who have no interest in becoming a councillor; and equally, many people whose ambition is to represent their local communities on local authorities with no interest in the House of Commons. Let’s not demote (and demotivate?) our councillors by suggesting that they are only apprentice parliamentarians!
Being mschevious, should we have all-men shortlists for teaching jobs in Primary Schools, where the female dominance is, iirc, 90%+?
>90%+?
Sorry – 83-84%
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4336092.stm
As I’m standing down from the English Candidates Committee in less than two months, I feel rather less bound by the ‘Party line’ than I used to. And, accordingly, I can be more blunt.
In truth, the number of women (or BME for that matter) candidates is not so terribly important. What is important is the number of women and BME candidates in seats that really matter, i.e. those that we might win. My gut feeling, supported by the data that I get to see, is that the likelihood of a woman on the approved list achieving selection is slightly higher than that of a man. The problem is that there aren’t enough women (I’d need to check the data for BME candidates). Indeed, I would like to see the requirement to shortlist at least one person of each gender removed for development seats altogether if possible.
As a Returning Officer who has handled more than his fair share of ‘development seats’, I have always insisted that the Selection Committee approach everyone on the approved list within a reasonable radius of the constituency unless I know that a real contest is likely. And I tend to think in terms of counties so, if I was the Returning Officer for Bury St Edmunds, I would be thinking in terms of Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. But generally, you get more complaints from candidates who are fed up of being bothered than responses.
So we’ve tried to be a bit cleverer. We now contact those on the approved list to see whether they are actively seeking a nomination, or whether they only have a small number of seats (often just one) in mind. We are, after all, trying to fill a post and, in the real world, probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of personally contacting every potential applicant for every post to invite them to apply.
Perhaps we need some research to find out why some of our highly capable, highly qualified women don’t come forward. I’m married to one who never wanted to be in the House of Commons – she’s quite open about the fact – and there may well be a significant proportion who quite simply don’t see being a Parliamentary candidate as something they want to do. I’d rather respect their decision than continue with the sometimes annoying assumption that being an MP is the only thing that matters (and no, Jo, I’m not accusing you of that…). We do, after all, need women to be MEP’s, to sit in the Lords, to lead internal party committees, to lead council groups (not necessarily in that order!).
I wish that we didn’t have men-only shortlists. I wish that we had two thousand approved candidates, all of whom wanted to be selected, all of whom wanted to be an MP. We don’t. As a result, Regional Candidates Chairs end up making pragmatic decisions because, when all is said and done, their job is to make sure that we put up a candidate in every seat. And given the correlation between seats that select early and relative success at local government level, I’m yet to be convinced that making it more difficult for Local Parties to select candidates is in our best interest.
So, whilst I have supported everything that the Campaign for Gender Balance has done, and respect everything you’ve said on the subject of equality of opportunity, in this instance, sorry, but I’m not with you this time, Jo…
“The first time I met jo was when she attended the first LDYS Activate weekend. This weekeknd I was again helping to train Liberal Youth activists and there was some very talented young women there.”
I don’t know about the latest LY event but my memory is that the first Activate cost “the party” about £80-100 per attendee in hard cash (ie not including staff time but venue hire, food, travel etc).
That gives some idea of the scale of investment required to genuinely provide “training and support”. Organising a few training sessions at conference is no where near enough (This isn’t aimed at the people commenting above who know this too well but sometimes people seem to think it is a cheap option)
Lorna’s two comments echo my thoughts on this. We need to know where the problem stems from in order to find a solution that’s not going to cause more problems. My gut feeling is that it’s a complex one, involving a huge number of factors.
The problem with that Jennie is that people have been saying “it’s very complex and we need to know what the real causes are” for several years. Indeed it was one of the reasons All WOmen Shortlists were defeated at the conference Jo refers to as part of the motion asked for an audit of various bits of information.
Whilst its not used as a reason by any of the people on this thread the “we need to know all the facts before making a decision” is the sort of rationale SIr Humphrey uses before suggesting the matter be referred to “an inter-departmental sub-committee with wide ranging terms of reference to look at the matter on an holisitic basis”
My view has always been that whatever strategy adopted the best way of ensuring a more diverse Parliamentary Party is to elect more of them. We have had, since 1997 the parliamentary party has gone from 3/47 women to 9/63 – so the net gains since 97 have been 6/16 and on the figures Jo quotes above that is likely to continue. That the figures are so low is really down to the “drag” factor of the the 97 intake. Certainly if 2/3rds of the seats where the sitting MP stands down select women candidates the change rate will be much higher than suggested elsewhere.
But is anyone actually doing any research, or are they just saying they ought to?
My gut feeling is that this is a societal problem, much wider than Lib Demmery. 2/3 of leading roles in television are male. Even though the blogosphere is female it is presented as male.The number of women CEOs is actually decreasing. This is not just a narrow problem of parliamentary representation, it is systemic and systematic across all sections of power. And until men start believing that this state of affairs hurts and stifles them as much as it does women, we might as well just piss in the wind.
Sorry if that sounds defeatist.
To quote another Sir Humphrey-ism, though, Neil, we’ve got to avoid a response which basically says “Something must be done; this is something; therefore we must do it”.
I likened this earlier to prescribing a remedy in response to a diagnosis. Let’s shift metaphors, and think of it more as a value chain. The process at its plainest is something like Application to List -> Approval (or not) -> Application to Seat(s) -> Shortlisting -> Selection. At which point(s) along this value chain are we losing women and what they can bring to the party? Are they under-represented from the outset ie fewer than desirable putting themselves forward for approval? Is it those pesky local parties not shortlisting them despite the fact that they’re applying for good seats in droves? Is it somewhere in the middle of the chain? At one, or multiple, points? Knowing where the failures are occurring is vital in knowing where to intervene to put things right.
If we can’t provide basic statistics as a party to answer these questions, then no wonder we’re still in a muddle. And asking for them isn’t an excuse for inaction, it’s a necessary basis for decision-making about the way forward. They may well be kept routinely for performance monitoring purposes (I hope they are); if so, they need to be produced as evidence to support whatever proposals for action come forward, I’d have thought.
Lorna
(once again, in a personal capacity)
(Bemused at the product placement – advert for “Conservative Member? Want to take a more active and engaging role in the party? http://www.conwayfor.org.uk/JoinToday” underneath the comments section).
Lorna – I fully agree with your analysis and the ‘chain’. My understanding is that the first and most obvious point at which women are underrepresented is the very first step – they don’t go for approval as much as men – and that is something we can do our best to improve and where there have already been some improvements.
Hywel – completely agree about resources – if the party is to affect this issue significantly it will mean agreeing to put resources into it. I happen to also think that we put too low a proprotion of our resources into training and development generally, and this issue specifically. This is challenging because of the often overwhelming pressure to put as much resource as possible into on the ground campaigning, but is something we absolutely have to do if we are to ever grow out of our current limitations as a party.
Jennie – I am sure you are quite right that wider societal issues are a big factor here. In my view we probably can’t fully solve the imbalance ourselves, but we can make a difference to it, and in doing so we may help push society along a bit with us. I see that as being realistic rather than defeatist.
Thanks for a great article Jo, i have to admit id never heard of the ” 1 of each ” rule. I cant see why we need wait another 5 years to apply the rules, lots of constituencies are still to select candidates. My local party chose from an all men shortlist a couple of weeks ago, if i had known we were actually breaking party rules i might have made more of a fuss.
In that case, Neil (and thank you for agreeing with me about the ‘chain’), assuming your understanding is right, why is the step being proposed to deal with the last part of the chain – ‘you must have a woman shortlisted before you can select’ – when the first part is the bit we need to try to sort out?
It’s a great shame that there is not more common cause between those that want more women MPs and those that want BME under-representation addressed.
The fact that Jo Swinson doesn’t mention the absence of any Black MPs on the Liberal Democrat benches is regretable; not least because the two issues share a great deal in common.
The recent Speakers Conference, which heard from all three party leaders, was originally set up specifically because Labour could not get agreement on all-Black shortlists; but the Speakers Conference in fact debated under-representation of many parts of society. In fact the majority of the discussion in this committee was on women.
I have no problem with that. But I think it would certainly benefit everyone if we could have more unity between those arguing for change.
Anyone remember the Reflecting Britain campaign of 2006?
They seemed to recon that the solution to more women and BME PPCs was more approved candidates, and the solution was a mixture of directed encouragement and training.
I agree with others that the first thing we need to do is get more women to apply to become approved. This applies as much to council seats as much as parliament.
There is also the other side that needs addressing, the retention of PPCs needs also to be looked at, I have heard that the resignation rate is higher for women than men. I am guessing this might be true for all political parties and come back down to society expecting different things of Men & Women. Plus women & men expecting different things from themselves. But I am no expert, but there are members of CGB who are.
I think the point here is that local parties see encouraging people to become approved candidates as someone else’s problem. That their responsibility is to set up a selection committee, advertise the seat and sit back.
The requirement to have a woman on the short list sends the message that “Actually encouraging people to enlist as approved candidates is your problem.”
Also if we leave it to individuals to come forward as candidates, we may be left with a mixture of wierdly altruistic and ultra-ambitious which may not even give us the best middle-aged white male candidates.
@Mark Valladares: “We do, after all, need women to be MEP’s…”
We do indeed! I am still quite angry that the East of England list this year had only one woman, Linda Jack (out of seven!). At least she was second so had a chance of being elected, but it looks very bad. Linda has now been selected to fight Nadine Dorries in Mid-Bedfordshire, so good luck!
I hope that there will be some strong female candidates on the shortlist for the Cambridge selection (as I am at Cambridge!). Any people reading this who might be interested in standing for Cambridge please do apply! If a woman gets selected for Cambridge we can be pretty confident of going from zero to two female Lib Dem MPs in the East of England in 2010 (the other one would be Sal Brinton in Watford).
I also think Lester Holloway makes a very good point – underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities probably happens for the same reasons, so we need to work together on similar solutions; the two efforts should not operate in a vacuum.
Lorna – I think it is exactly what you were worried about – the tendency for: ‘there is a problem so something must be done’.
It is complex, and there are limits on what we can realistically acheive as a party, so some people understandably leap to simple solutions.
As a woman in the East of England who was on the Euro list in 1999, I must say, Niklas, that I would never, ever, ever do it again. It’s all very well being ‘angry’, but if women don’t see the point in being on a Euro-list, they won’t put themselves through the hassle of applying and then knocking themselves senseless campaigning across such a vast area when the odds are so stacked against their being elected – they’re far too sensible.
The party really needs to be clearer about what would motivate anyone (but especially women) about being in positions 2-to-end on a Euro list, and what those candidates are there to achieve other than futilely making up the numbers.
Like you, I hope some good women applicants go for the Cambridge seat (though I am very sorry indeed that we are losing someone of David Howarth’s calibre and integrity).
The requirement to have a woman on the short list even when there are none within sight, along with other awkward hurdles, sends the message that the simplest way to proceed is to leave selection until election time. Then it can all be done in a mad rush, at a terrible time for the Party, but at least the hurdles can then be ignored!
This is a perverse incentive to fail in our basic aims of getting our candidates selected properly and early.
There just isn’t a good solution, as things stand. Either we gerrymander selection in favour of women, or we accept perpetual male domination. Two alternatives, both unacceptable. So let me propose a Third Way (!)
We should propose to double the size of consituencies. Each constituency should then elect, in separate but parallel elections, one male and one female MP. So hey presto, an equal gender balance in the next Parliament, at a stroke. Then we really will have to find lots of serious female candidates – if we don’t want to let the other parties grab all the “female” seats!
So we really wanted STV not FPTP? Yes, OK, it will not be a big problem to create an STV version of this idea.
Enforced gender equality? Not at all. The parties will still be free to select a leader, and a cabinet, from all the elected MPs. If that results in a male dominated cabinet, or indeed a female dominated cabinet – so be it. All that we should “enforce” is that Parliament reflects the 50/50 gender balance of the nation as a whole.
Screams of pain from all those male MPs forced into premature redundancy? No doubt. The concession that might have to be made is that if (but only if) you are an existing male MP, you can call yourself an honorary female, and stand in a “female” seat. This would allow male domination to be phased out over a single generation of MPs. Probably a reasonable price to pay (always assuming the voters out there don’t decide to take against “honorary female” candidates, and go and vote for the real women who stand against them instead!)
Crazy idea? Well, you might say so. But if you do say so, you had better explain how to get equality without gerrymandering under the present system!
But, David, your proposal would only enforce equality between men and women. What about ethnic diversity or age or other factors? STV leaves it open to the voters – not behind-the-scenes fixers – to determine what they want in their representatives.
“Either we gerrymander selection in favour of women, or we accept perpetual male domination.”
The latter would seem not to be the case looking at the figures quoted above.
@Lorna Spenceley: As a woman in the East of England who was on the Euro list in 1999, I must say, Niklas, that I would never, ever, ever do it again.
I didn’t realise it was quite that bad, though I do understand that it is more difficult than campaigning in a parliamentary constituency.
The party really needs to be clearer about what would motivate anyone (but especially women) about being in positions 2-to-end on a Euro list, and what those candidates are there to achieve other than futilely making up the numbers.
While we’re waiting for STV perhaps we should have an open list so that people get rewarded for campaigning even if they are not first or second on the list? Trouble is Labour is probably not interested, though the Tories might like it given its vague similarity to the open primaries idea that they seem to like. It works well in Sweden and Finland. Perhaps we as a party should look for advice on Euro campaigning from the FDP, the Swedish Liberals and other parties that contest large Euro-constituencies (for Sweden the whole country is one constituency!).
Sorry, in case anyone is unsure what I was on about with open list PR, here is the Wikipedia chapter and verse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_list
Well done Jo. Yes indeed, an end to all-men shortlists. When I stood down as PPC in East Hampshire in 2007 I was heartbroken that the local party was allowed to proceed with a shortlist of five men. If I had had the remotest sign that I would have had some understanding about juggling my candidacy with my expanding family I would have carried on myself!
Neil, I am a huge fan, but it really is NOT just about the supply of female PPCs it is also about support to them as the years go by? The final straw for me was going to a ‘Moving Forward’ meeting and having to breastfeed my baby in the toilet between sessions so as not to scandalise the superannuated councillors all round me!
Lorna,
Yes, my proposal would only achieve gender equality. It wouldn’t solve climate change, it wouldn’t pay off the National Debt. It would also avoid tackling ethnic diversity or age issues, because it would make no sense at all to reserve x% of Parliamentary seats for (say) the under-thirties, and it would be quite crazy to suggest race-based elections. By contrast, it seems perfectly reasonable to reserve 50% of the seats for each sex. Just because my proposal only solves one major problem at a time is no reason to chuck it in the bin!
Yes, STV if you believe in it lets the voter choose between individual candidates. As things stand, just bringing in STV will still mean most of these candidates will be male. STV could also be used to elect (say) 5 men and in a parallel contest, 5 women for each 10-MP constituency.
Hywel,
Yes, women are slowly gaining ground under the present system. I shouldn’t have said “perpetual” male domination. At the present rate, we should reach equality within a millenium or two. If we’re happy with that…..
I think Martin is on the right track. The approval process is long winded and under resourced. Having said that it is simultaneously the wrong sort of bureaucracy and local parties are left to drift without PPC’s for years.
With so few members, there is never going to be enough PPC’s to go round. Let’s say 1 member in 50 wants to be an MP. That’s about 2 for every local party, yet we have a selection procedure based on short-listing from your dozen applicants, when only 2 or 3 apply.
Sorry Jo, but the excuses are valid. There aren’t many women on the approved list, they don’t apply for seats (and why should they?) and local parties (half a dozen people in most cases) aren’t going to suddenly start working miracles.
I’ve known former Council leaders and long serving councillors fail the PPC approval process yet met plenty of approved PPC’s I won’t vote for to be on the Council.
I suggest:
1) Scrap the approval process except for the top 100 seats.
2) Bring in follow up training/support instead of approval
Bring in a tight selection timetable, aiming to have most PPC’s in place by December 2012.
I see we’ve now moved away from Lorna/Jennie’s initial suggestion that we try and work out what the problem is before hurling solutions at it. It’s all very well Hywel being bombastic @1.57pm, but suppose the reason why women don’t come forward in sufficient numbers to be candidates/MPs is the obvious one hinted at by Ruth – children? How is any amount of fiddly selection alterations going to change that?
Candidature in the Lib Dems, rather more than in the two big parties, is notoriously absorbent of (a) time and (b) money, both things that women with young families are more than averagely likely to be in short supply of. It’s a self-reinforcing problem, because having children typically means simultaneous loss of both.
Most people don’t grow up wanting to be an MP and spend their twenties working at it. I can see people around me my age (30) now starting to think about it *waves at Jennie*, and unfortunately this is exactly the wrong life stage to be starting the process. According to Martin’s gruelling schedule, they’d have to at minimum serve their time on local party business (2 years) do a stint in council (3 years) then fight say two no-hoper seats (8 years) before finally turning it into a winnable or being accepted somewhere else and getting elected (4 years). Well, that’s your life swallowed between ages 30 and 47, so for any woman who aspires to a family life as we understand it today (and they’ll already have a job, of course) you can forget it. For the whole of that middle age group between late twenties and late forties, when people are working their hardest, achieving stuff and taking up challenges, when they’re most likely to consider things like being an MP, you’ve lost the women. So you’re reliant on the numerically insignificant exceptions – on women who have chosen not to have children or can’t have them, or whose household income allows them to lose salary potential, have their children cared for and still bear the costs of candidacy.
But I don’t know this is the problem (if it was the problem, free childcare might go a long way) – I’m trying to underline that we don’t know what the problem is. The solutions we propose here are so wildly different that we really don’t have a choice about understanding the problem first. It would be heartbreaking to spend a lot of money on “support” and change a few selection rules and find that the whole situation was exactly the same. So what research has the CGB done on motivations/reasons why people don’t stand?
Ok, just been to the website, and I guess the answer is that funding doesn’t allow for it. Can anyone point me in the direction of any similar studies that might have been undertaken in the past? Just wondering whether there’s a methodology we could replicate easily with a survey of our own membership (to which I imagine the CGB could get access for one large, important email).
great post jo…there should be no rubbish people shortlists..and thats all…women would win far mnore elections in that circumstance than they do now
Alix, if what you posit is the case, and it seems sensible, the solution clearly goes back to women being disproportionately the carers. Again. My wife would love to be a housewife, but we just can’t afford it, and I’m working fartoo many hours to take on candidature at the moment….
I researched this topic a couple of years back for my dissertation. Apart from the elephant in the room (it’s the children thing…. a whole demographic missing) I can confirm a couple of things – yes, women do get selected in roughly the proportions that they appear on the approved list. Same for the Conservatives (am obsessive reader of ConHome). And, as far as Lib Dems are concerned, many of the talented, ambitious women are already in power. They run councils. They control large budgets. And they get to go home at night, sleep in their own beds and bully the offspring about the homework. Do we seriously expect them to give up all that for the life of a LibDem backbencher? Don’t know what the answer is, except for the Holy Grail of fixing the electoral system.
That’s a very useful posting, Serena. Given the information you’ve supplied, it does leave me wondering more than ever whether we’re addressing the wrong part of the ‘value chain’.
Serena, I am right in positing this lost demographic, then? It’s always made sense to me, but I’ve never seen any evidence for it. Is there any reading you can point me towards at all? If someone else has done similar studies, maybe we could construct our own mini version, though if we were investigating motivations and attitudes, rather than just socio-economic correlations, we’d need someone trained in psychology to put together the method *cough* Belinda *cough*.
Alix, pretty much, yes–on that event in Parliament you couldn’t get to because of crappy tube service, Jo pretty much went through the same point: we have young female MPs, we have female MPs whose kids have grown up, but none with kids of school age.
It’s also worth noting that seats like Cambridge, where the new candidate selected is very likely to get elected, are a rarity in the party–most of our MPs had to fight damn hard and build their seat up over a number of elections; I know that’s true of Tim Farron, Ming, Adrian Sanders and others. Jo, IIRC, was expecting to fight twice to get her seat and was surprised to get in on the first attempt.
Thus that lost demographic is important, as it’s at that point that you need to be putting in all the effort to turn a maybe seat into a definitely possible seat and then into a gain. Most of our existing male MPs couldn’t have acheived it without the backing of their wives (I know that’s true of Adrian). My (female) PPC is of the ‘kids left/leaving home’ demographic, and I really hope that if she doesn’t get in she’ll fight it again next time. Except…
It’s far too much work. Running one election campaign over a 3 year period takes pretty much all your spare time. Doing it again? For the chances of me getting a decent Lib Dem MP, I really hope she goes again if we can’t get her in. For her personal sanity, as a friend, I don’t know what I’d advise her.
However, as has been touched on, the real issue is to change the electoral system–STV is simply better and, as has been shown in many other countries, multi-member seats encourages parties much more to put forward a diverse slate of candidates, not just some women, but also a good mix of ages and of ethnicity; even bloody Farage was going on about UKIP’s minority candidates.
But I think Simon also has a point. My council candidate for next year defected to us from the Conservatives. He was apolitical before they came to him and asked him, as a prominent local businessman and charity type, if he’d like to be on the council.
I think part of our problem is we’re very reactive–we help those who put themselves forward. We need to be proactive, going out and actively encouraging people who’d make good candidates to join and fight winnable seats.
Like I did with Jennie. Although we haven’t got much further down the line yet.
“We need to be proactive, going out and actively encouraging people who’d make good candidates to join and fight winnable seats.”
It’s not that I disagree with this, or with the other people who’ve said it above, but isn’t the danger here that we start slipping away from what is possibly (and I stress possibly) the main problem? *If* it is the case that dramatically more women would put themselves forward for candidature if their childcare arrangements could be taken care of and their household income supplemented somehow, then that is the main problem that needs to be solved. As I say, I don’t *know* this, that’s why I think we need to survey the membership and find out. But I think with the greatest respect there’s a tendency for everybody, however well-meaning, to start solving problems they CAN solve (like going out of their way to encourage more women, providing more training, or whatever) because the real problem is a hell of a lot more difficult.
But it’s not insurmountable. My immediate thought is that *if* we found that women would be much more likely to come forward if they were offered a supporting network of benefits including childcare and other income-replacing services, then I think, in the very far future, after a lot of work, that we could offer that. We’ve talked about this before, I think, the idea of varying the functions of volunteering for the party. People who currently deliver leaflets for the party probably include registered childminders, electricians and solicitors. Those services are worth something to a woman with a young family on a tight income who wants to be a PPC. They’re even worth something to a male candidate! It’s just a question of joining up party volunteering with candidates’ needs more effectively.
This isn’t necessarily the right solution. Maybe it would be too hard to do the joining up (and how would you share services out fairly without getting into means-testing and other ghastly stuff?) But my point is, *if* the child thing is the problem, then we need to address that, and that alone, and not get too distracted by solving the immediately solveable bits because that makes us feel like we’re doing something. So far as I know, the CGB does a lot of great training and I think that’s great, on the basis that all training for any candidate is a good thing. But I think there’s a risk in just shovelling more of the same at a problem rather than spending the resources (i.e. in this case for a psychologist and a market researcher to do survey work) to define it properly.
Alix, most of my stuff on this is anecdotal, cos when I input my data I foolishly simply entered the birthdates of approved candidates as just dates instead of coding them properly. Always meant to recode but ran out of time. Anyway, if anyone would like to see the research please get in touch. I promised to make it available but went and got ill instead so never got around to it.
I wonder whether there should be some latitude given in this context to local parties where the seat is a development one. We started the ball rolling on selection knowing getting a full list was going to be a challenge. In the end, there were just two applicants, both male. I suspect my competitor may have had his arm twisted to stand. We had to ask for the rule on having a female applicant to be waived. If it had not been, there simply wouldn’t have been a selection for a significant period, if at all.
I feel nervous about the idea of compelling local parties to choose specific genders, ethnicities, ages or similar. This is partly because positive discrimination is often counter-productive in addressing discrimination and is exclusionary to individuals whose situation isn’t precisely matched by the guidelines.
I do hope whatever is decided takes into account the situations of small local parties in development seats because reducing the likelihood of timely selection will significantly affect those parties abilities to develop.
Another demographic to add into the mix is political culture. Call me a wuss but that’s one of the biggest reasons despite the fact I live and breath politics, I’m still reluctant to even put msyelf through the ordeal. This is the same for many of my female friends-the old boys network culture is not inviting.
So for me, the issue starts at the beginning of the value chain and like jennie has stated, the culture that we live in today and the role women play in that.
So before we come up with any solutions, I don’t understand why we can’t encourage men to take on more caring roles in society? Why we can’t campign for greater paternity leave? And like someone mentioned above, encourage men to work more in primary schools?
@ Ruth
I don’t like seeing women breast feeding their children either. Couldn’t you have bottled the breast milk?
It’s the elephant in the room but women seem to want it ‘all’. My friend over obsesses over her child and has chosen to put herself in the position of being a stay at home parent despite the fact-and she adimtted this-her husband is actually better with the child-she’s naturally uptight and a tense person-but she’ll be damned if she want play the mother hen role.
So what gives? What DO women want?
This is a two way argument and discussion that should involve men from the start. Until we start redressing the balance with letting men in with more caring responsibilities in society, we’re just going to go round in circles.
rp – “So what gives? What DO women want?” I suspect it might be even more complex than that, and that different individual women might even want different things!
MatGB – “Most of our existing male MPs couldn’t have acheived it without the backing of their wives (I know that’s true of Adrian).”
True for many, but it is also the case that many of our male MPs were originally elected either before they had kids or after their kids had grown up. I think I am right in saying that the number first elected while they had young kids is pretty small.
I don’t think this factor hampers men as much as it hampers women, but it is still a factor.
I’ve certainly put my parliamentary ambitions on hold while our younger two kids are still young enough to want their dad to be around.
@rantersparadise I don’t like seeing women breast feeding their children either. Couldn’t you have bottled the breast milk?
!?! I can’t believe you said that!
I used to feel uncomfortable around brestfeeding women, BUT I was man enough to accept it was MY problem, and not one that needed to be indulged by anyone else changing their behaviour.
I was surprised by the talk in my wife’s post natal classes (I do most of the cooking at home) about breastfeeding and men walking out. The women there seemed to think it reflected on them rather than the men. I thought those men must be mortified to have mistakenly given the impression it was something other than their problem.
Being friends with breastfeeding women has helped me improve my eye contact skills.
Apologies to all for getting sidetracked onto this – but no rantersparadise why should I use a milking machine for an hour and bottle the produce in order to spare other people’s blushes?! The World Health Organisation says women should breastfeed for two years both for the sake of their health and their children. I suppose I could have stayed indoors for twenty-four months but somehow it didn’t appeal.
The party can’t have it both ways – there is no provision for PPCs to have maternity leave so people can’t be too disgusted if post-natal PPCs (blimey that’s a rare breed!) need to take their babies to conferences and meetings, at least for the first few months.
@rantersparadise
Then you need to sterilise bottles, get them warmed up, have them leak in your bag, clean the bottles afterwards. All a bit pointless when nature provides a handy container that does all that.
Alix,
In terms of what research there is out there, there is a lot to read through. One of the problems however is that organisations such as Fawcett long ago came to the conclusion that all women shortlists were the only solution and all their material is written through that prism.
In terms of Jo’s point about opposing all male shortlists, there are obviously certain practical considerations that Mark V et al have been keen to point out, and if all we end up with is a token women contesting every seat which can’t find one. However, I’m not sure that is entirely the case when it comes to target seats – Jo mentions two. We can certainly make a start there and no-one appears to have come up with a reason why we shouldn’t. In terms of delivering female MPs it is also the most important place to start.
When it comes to development seats, there is actually another issue here we ought to consider, which is that the selectorate is so small, the whole system has effectively broken down as a viable method for choosing a candidate. I’m tempted to agree with those who think we should just leave them to get on with things as best they can, but shouldn’t we also consider it unacceptable that there is ANY constituency out there with fewer than 100 members (and believe me there are huge numbers)? 100 members out of 70,000 constituents represents 0.014% of the electorate – surely there is enough latent support out there for us to be at that point or higher everywhere?
Maybe that should be our starting point. And maybe we should raise the membership threshold (currently 30 IIRC) at which we cease to consider local parties to be viable autonomous units.
Widen the pool and, in principle, an increased number of talented individuals – of all genders and ethnicities – will follow. But if all we ever do is invest in target seats, we can hardly then expect the development seats to scrape themselves off the floor.
I am not sure whether Dr Liz Evans (former Chair of WLD) has had her full research on women candidates/activists published yet. When it is it will be a useful resource.
I think there would be some value in knowing what questions are being asked of women and men at selection interviews. Is it okay to ask a mother questions relating to the impact of their children on their ability to campaign, when the same question is not asked of a father? I think not. For selection to be fair, then making presumptions about the roles of mother and father falls to easily into stereotype and assumptions.
Perhaps it would serve us to formalise some questions around areas where innocent prejudice could bias the selection committee.
The crazy thing about this is that surely these challenges are well researched and understood, as they are challenges equally applicable to job recruitment.
Another interesting area, I think, is open primaries. I have a hunch that open primaries may tend towards women as the successful candidate, and I wonder if this reflects candidates who are of higher calibre, of if it is down to greater cross party acceptability…
Once again, Neale, this makes the assumption that the problem is at the selection end of the value chain. There’s little hard evidence to support any conclusion, it appears – but most of the anecdotal information suggests that once they get to selection stage women have as good a chance as men of being successful, and that “women do get selected in roughly the proportions that they appear on the approved list” (SerenaH). The challenge appears therefore to be not the attitude of local party selection committees, but getting more good women onto the approved list and encouraging them to apply for seats – and it seems to me that that’s the end of the value chain we should be seeking to understand better. I’d forgotten about Liz Evans’ research, and like Ruth I hope that will be a useful source of information.
BTW, still reeling in shock at rantersparadise’s comment about not liking seeing women breastfeeding their babies (and at Ruth’s Moving Forward event experience)!
Neale: ironically the matter of what questions can be asked in selection interviews and at hustings is covered in some detail and (in my experience) works pretty well at stopping inappropriate questions being asked. I said “ironically” because these are the very rules that people so often in these threads say should be scrapped!
Jo mentioned Norwich South above, with which I was involved as a member of the Selection Committee. The problem with that decision – where the only female candidate dropped out on the day of the interviews, and the Regional Returning Officer secured the English RO’s permission to allow the contest to go ahead – is that it sets a precedent. It would be perfectly possible for a male candidate with a suitably qualified female ally to engineer such a situation in future. Indeed, it may well have already happened, for all I know.
There is little point in having gender rules if they are easily circumvented.
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