The Scottish Parliament is 22 years old this year, but it hasn’t yet had a woman MSP of colour.
This failure was explored by a Disclosure Scotland programme broadcast last night. In it women of colour from all parties talked about the barriers they faced in getting selected and elected.
The Liberal Democrat representative was the brilliant Aisha Mir who stood for us in Edinburgh South West in 2017 and is on our Mid Scotland and Fife list for the forthcoming election.
There is also some very insightful analysis from Talat Yaqoob, the founder of Women 50/50. She’s done so much to hold political parties to account for their failures to elect equal numbers of men and women and to ensure wider diversity.
You can watch the whole programme here on BBC iPlayer.
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3 Comments
Thanks. That’s one to watch later.
I can speculate on a number of reasons, but hopefully we can focus on getting some in the future.
I attended the LibDem Campaign for Race Equality (LDCRE) fringe event at conference, and the message coming over loud and clear was that we need to do much more work to attract voters from ethnic minority backgrounds, and that reliance on targeting campaigns in the areas where we’ve had good results before perpetuates the problem.
However, the point is that if you can divert some time and money to campaigning in different areas, and get better at connecting with ethnic minority voters, then we can work on ethnic minority members and ultimately more ethnic minority candidates.
There’s no doubt that focused campaigning and getting out the vote in areas where you already have support is effective in the short-term, but if we are serious about connecting with communities that are currently under-represented in the party, then we need to go and campaign in areas where we don’t currently get much support.
Interesting article. The SNP appears to have taken steps to address this issue by deciding that half of the 8 Regional Lists would be headed by a a BAME candidate and half by a disabled candidate. In reality, few of these List candidates are likely to get elected as the SNP is expected to win the overwhelming number of constituency seats, but it is a statement of intent.
I’ve just finished watching this and it was very interesting, but also depressing. Well worth a watch, and not just for those of us in Scotland. The party as a whole need to do better in this area and the problems won’t fix themselves by magic.
The reasons given in the documentary are varied and complex, and while it’s beyond any one party to fix the sexism and racism that pervades society as a whole, I’m sure we can do more as a party to remove some of the obstacles faced by women of colour and that’s on all of us. We should definitely listen to the advice given by Talat Yaqoob.
Aisha was great and a credit to the party. She’s right that Scotland is a progressive and open country, but she is also right that we’re not as progressive and open as we think. We spend a lot of time talking about how great we are, but not enough time checking if we live up to it in reality. I’d love to hear more from her and I hope we can find her a winnable seat. However, what she said about the extra scrutiny, and therefore abuse, suffered by candidates in target seats was heart-breaking. So not only do I hope she can stand in a winnable seat, but that we make sure there’s plenty of support.