By Lucy Kenningham
Our current system passively accepts that the egregious gender imbalance in parliament will continue – but it shouldn’t, argues Lyanne Nicholl
Allow me to conjure up a wild, fantasy image: the gender split in parliament is now 65 per cent female and 35 per cent male. In some seats, voters are choosing from 100 per cent female candidate lists.
Not only this but the journey to elected office is much more difficult for men, with many citing financial restrictions – campaigning costs money and women generally earn more than men. What’s more, the burden of caring responsibilities rest disproportionately on men. Outdated practices and ideals – and sometimes even the female gatekeepers – block men from getting their names on a long list.
Patently, this is not the case. Or, rather, it is – but I have flipped the genders.
Can you imagine the noise if the above were actually true? Can you imagine the headlines? The voices of dissent, the outrage? Yet when this is the reality for women’s representation in politics, there is barely a whisper.
It is a given that men will be the significant majority of our elected officials. It is ingrained that men have the most seats at the top table and that they run nations. And so the conversation around this, around the very real, very unfair gender imbalance, even on International Women’s Day, is muted.
Just last week, in Rochdale, there were 11 candidates on the list for the by-election. All male. This was a controversial by-election for a number of reasons, not least because it was won by George Galloway. Imagine if this had been an all-female candidate list.
The Covid Inquiry threw into sharp focus the problems that arise when you exclude women from the conversation. Representation shapes policy and policy shapes lives. If we are leaving out a large proportion of our society – we cannot hope to adequately address how policy will affect them. Women make up 51 per cent of the UK’s population, but only 35 per cent in parliament and in elected bodies.
There have been great strides forward in attracting and selecting women to stand as MPs. Following 50:50 Parliament’s inception in 2013, the UK has seen a 12 per cent increase in women MPs, but progress is still slow. At the current trajectory it will take decades to achieve gender parity in Parliament.
50:50 and other partners, including Centenary Action and Elect Her, want to see equal numbers of women and men in Parliament in the next six years and this is what we are collectively working towards.
The lack of women’s representation isn’t because women don’t want to or aren’t interested. Our annual #AskHerToStand Day in November and year-long #SignUpToStand campaign have resulted in a network of 8,000 women who are eager to learn more about how to get involved in politics. 3,000 of these women have signed up to stand and our cross-party network helps them to progress with the political party of their choice. “We aren’t broken. We don’t need to fix the women – we need to fix the system,” as Anna Whitehouse, a campaigner for flexible working, said at our recent International Women’s Day event.
Our current system is one that still implicitly accepts that men have been in the majority in governance for centuries and passively accepts that this imbalance will continue. That’s despite great efforts inside and outside the House to change things.
It’s not hard to imagine the sudden urgency for reform that would suddenly manifest if the scales turned.
This is an election year. Parties are still selecting candidates; there is the opportunity right now to move the dial. So this International Women’s Day, let’s be vocal about the gender imbalance in Parliament – whilst there is still time to do something about it.
Lyanne Nicholl is CEO of 50:50 Parliament
