My feeling though is that you can break down as many barriers cs you like, and make parliament reflect our national makeup as closely as possible, and the only thing you’ll be guaranteed to do is make parliament look pretty.

While we have to endure party whips and a legislative house that conflicts representation with power struggles there is literally no point trying to improve anything. Unless your goal is to brag about diversity while ignoring effectiveness of representation.

We get @17 correctly stating that “If only 25% of people who want to be MPs and willing to apply are women then 25% is a perfectly equitable outcome.” as well as the circular reasoning displayed @9 “I know several women who are involved in politics, are able and yet won’t stand. I have heard several reasons but think they worry that they won’t get selected so why bother.”

So women won’t stand because they think there’s no chance of being selected and this is based on a perceived bias towards men, which could be seen as a natural occurrence due to the low number of women standing.

Sure there may well be male bias in the process, but could we have some evidence that it exists before we start trying to create solutions to it?

Thanks. We don’t seem a million miles apart on the shape of the problem.

I think the personal upheavals issues are part of the broader issue of time/economic costs having a greater impact on women, those with children in particular. I would place a quite high priority on political parties and institutions trying to address those barriers as part of ‘meritocracy’. (And it seems to me less legitimate for a political institution – Parliament or parties – as compared to say, a law firm, to say ‘society is society: we can’t change it so just take the candidates who come forward’).

I think those factors probably are quite important, not least because we can now see that the next intake of BME MPs is likely to be 7% (against 8% of population) of the population, up from 1-2% against 8% in 1997, so there is a strong case for the argument that BME candidates have reached a ‘fairness tipping point’ while there has been little progress in gender equity heading towards 50% in the same period. (Labour was selecting over 20% women in 1992, and now is at 26%; the Tories have made more progress but from a negligible base).

So it seems to me plausible that factors which affect women but not BME candidates might deserve more weight, and that also implies that “stereotypes about MPs being male, white and middle-aged” are probably less important now than they were pre-97, since there is little reason to think these would not affect both groups equally. (Of course, one could argue there is stronger direct/indirect sexism than direct/indirect race discrimination, if there were evidence of that, but I haven’t convincing evidence to support that).

I think there were/have been strong direct and indirect discrimination effects, in all parties and especially the Tory party. For example, the Tories had a greater share and usually more women voters than any other party in post-war elections up to 1997 yet were very unlikely to select women candidates. Part of the reason for the v.low selection of women (cf 2001) were strongly sexist attitudes among key gatekeepers in the selectorate process, about whether women should be MPs: that is reported in studies of both aspiring candidates and ‘gatekeepers’. Eg, the question ‘what will your husband do for sex in the week’ to a candidate from a selection panel is not apocraphyl: that was in a Fawcett study in I think candidate interviews from the 2001 selections. (Sometimes these views were strongly held by women in the voluntary party, with a view about the right division of labour between professional/voluntary politics and the role of women in that).

It seems plausible to argue that the recent Tory progress – selecting candidates at a similar rate to other parties, though due to a lot of political capital at the top – means the relative strength of these factors is now less; and so the external/social factors (time, money issues for women with caring responsibilities) are more. But it is also plausible to argue that those attitude barriers remain at a weaker level. (There are also such attitudes in other parties, though these seem to have, overall, been weaker than in the Tory party).

PS: On academic evidence, a lot of the journal published academic literature is behind paywalls online; nor are book length studies available. Norris is British, based at Harvard, and her site does contain some of her articles (in the ‘articles’ section), both UK and comparative. She has run with Ronald Inglehart projects to construct robust attempts at comparative analysis which try to separate out how much changes in political institutions vs broader socio-cultural factors affect this, and one paper on that is here
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~pnorris/Articles/Articles%20published%20in%20journals_files/Cultural_Obstacles_JofD2001.pdf

One quite early piece (1989) on whether British women candidates/MPs are likely to affect political outcomes (on which there has been some post-97 work) is here
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~pnorris/Acrobat/Norris_Lovenduski_Women_Candidates_BJPS1989.pdf

Others may know of other hubs of academic info which can be accessed freely online.

1. Of course I support the meritocratic premise that women and men should have fair chances to be selected and elected?

2. I take the view that there is little or no inherent bias in selections and so men and women do have fair chances.

Based on my observations I would suggest that there are less women interested in being an MP (just as I would note that an even smaller percentage want to be MEPs). An element of this is down to differing levels of interest in politics, but just as significant is the personal upheavals/sacrifices involved with any job that involves working in two locations.

What to do? I would try to make working as an MP more female friendly. For example, I have long supported the idea of MPs voting remotely so they can spend more time in their constituencies (which I think would have many other positive spinoffs). Personally, I give especial support to female candidates and non-white candidates both in encouraging and supporting them with selections and then with their campaigns. To me that is enough.

I never realised that was a fact until now. Well done.

Part of it is down the to the old tory view of” I’ve got mine, fuck you.” But mostly it is down to the fact that they hate other woman.

Tories are by nature hypocrites and nothing is more hypocritical than woman who don’t agree with woman in the work place except for themselves.

Still, it is always funny watching the tories show their true colours. Anti woman, anti gay, anti science, anti brown people. No matter what ‘call me Dave’ tries to pretend, the evidence is that they have not changed one bit.

But could somebody send her a statistics textbook or an idiot’s guide or something …

“As only 30% of applications to become an MP are from women, and that’s after all the hype and window dressing, we have to ask the question, what do women really want? Because it’s becoming pretty obvious that 70% of them don’t want to be an MP.

I’m in the 30%”

—
She then defends that comment with some absolute gibberish

“Sorry! I was working on the basis that 72% of all women are employees and that if you average out the number of MPs of all parties and make an assumption as to the average number of applications… I didn’t mean it to be exact. Based on my own experience, I would say that if anyone asked ten women right now would they want to be an MP, only three would answer positively. More often than not, it’s less. In a recent talk I gave to a hall of 400 sixth formers, only a dozen or so of the girls put up their hands when I asked the question …

nd so, on the basis of my own experience, as raw as my assumption on figures was, I would say Im being a bit on the generous side when I say 70% of women don’t want to be an MP, its probably more like a good 85%”

—

—

re: ““For the anti-shortlists argument to be plausible – and I don’t rule that out – it needs to be based on more than polemic.”
says: I’d suggest that the onus is on those doing the discrimination to make an argument based on more than polemic.

—
- There is a very substantial body of comparative academic work in this field, which does precisely that. Pippa Norris is one good source on that literature http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~pnorris/

- Do you support the meritocratic premise that women and men should have fair chances to be selected and elected?

- And do you agree with the fairly universally held view that there have historically been legal, social, economic and or cultural barriers to women’s equal participation in power and society? One not very controversial example is that women did not have the vote for a long period, while men did. Most people think that might help to explain the 291 women vs 4559 men issue, (I have yet to see anybody claim this pattern is random statistical ‘noise’ across the 25 or so Parliamentary elections)

If you wouldn;t contest either of those starting points the question to address is (i) whether or not any legacy of this persists in a way which is having an impact on ‘fair chances’ and (ii) if so whether or not any particular means might address it.

- So do you think women have fair chances now, when they are winning 25% of selections, and if so do you think it is because they are (a) less able or (b) less interested, or for another reason? (i see there have been several takers for “less interested” though few for less able).

- Do you also think women had fair chances in 2001, when men won 97.5% of the Tory candidacies for safe and winnable seats? (Or perhaps you would take the position that there were quite significant barriers then, which have now dissolved entirely?)

It seems to me agreement on what the evidence shows ought not to be too difficult. The question of what can or should be done about it is legitimately contested.

I would be surprised if anybody could really defend the 2001 outcome as “meritocratic”; I would disagree with those who think the status quo is meritocratic, though some might think that a somewhat more arguable case.

None of that compels support for all women shortlists as the particular remedy, but understanding whether critics accept these premises, but want a different approach, or would challenge these foundations of the argument too would help to identify what issues an evidence-based or less polemical discussion of the issue might focus on.

xD.

“For the anti-shortlists argument to be plausible – and I don’t rule that out – it needs to be based on more than polemic.”

I’d suggest that the onus is on those doing the discrimination to make an argument based on more than polemic.

Multi-member constituencies are a really splendid idea to get us out of the present bind in the many rock-solid constituencies where the incumbent MP is dumb and there until he retires. Which is precisely why we are unlikely ever to get multi-member constituencies.

Are you serious?

Let’s have all-gay, all-straight, all-lesbian, all-Muslim, all-Christian, all-atheist, and all-vegetarian shortlists.

in trying to make a rhetorical point, i accept i shouldn’t have attributed a view to you.

but what are your proposals on quality/mediocrity … i will tell you if i support/oppose them.

my central point is not pro-AWS. that is one means which did make a difference. there are pros and cons. i also think there has been too heavy a reliance on this approach. my central point is that the various parties should scrutinise where there are unfair barriers to fair chances, and find ways to overcome these. that would mean bringing the class issue in.

it would also mean the ‘meritocracy’ advocates telling us what they would do to retain their meritocratic credentials. (I faced similar challenges when arguing all minority shortlists would be regressive. my response to that is that I think the Labour party has broken the ethnic barrier to fair chances, and so should continue its current approach, and while many people are on the other side of the argument, I have yet to hear any attempt at a rebuttal of the evidence about rates of selection).

Indeed what is the point of diversity anyway when how you’re going to vote will be determined by half a dozen people at the top?

Forgive of if i’m wrong, but all your arguments seem to be in favour of sorting out the representative proportionality of our parliament before sorting out the mediocrity issue. Am i the only one that thinks this is completely arse about face? Presentation before substance is all i can see in your ‘solution’

The point about class was well made in the Commons debate establishing the Speakers Conference by Tony Wright MP, which I reported on it on LC at the time
http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/11/13/speakers-conference-on-diversity-in-parliament/

I am sure that if we could get what would make sense – a holistic approach to gender, ethnic and other barriers to fair chances – it would bring you very squarely to class. I have tried to suggest that the question “why is the ethnic penalty to selection diminishing much faster than that for gender”, which I think arises from current candidate selection evidence, would bring the issue of class sharply back into focus, by focusing attention on the time and economic aspects of seeking selection.
http://www.nextleft.org/2009/04/women-still-face-political-glass.html

Tim – I am inclined to agree with you. Yet I should have added the class bit, but when you do you get fired down as this is irrelevant and way too 1970s.

Is the under representation of women and issue to be addressed – well that is, in my eyes, a given. But you do make a perfect point that there is little to no representation of the classes (which are as strong today as they always have been).

Should there be classes – I feel there should not, but as there are we should deal with that first. Last time I looked there are women in the working-class who were oppressed just as much, if not more, than women who were going for that top job at RBS.

As I am a working-class ‘bloke’ I do get a tad pissed off that the working-class are being ignored in the wider political argument – all for the illusion that some class themselves more progressive than others.

That’s not a party political point really – there’s not an atom to choose between Balls, Miliband and Brown on the one hand and Osborne and Cameron on the other. While, obviously, I’m not against the upper middle class, I don’t think they should have a monopoly on parliamentary representation.

Ou sont les Bevins de nos jours?

Why don’t you think that there is a greater sum total of mediocrity among the 519 male MPs than among the 126 women?

And as an aside, I’m pretty sure Eton does take girls, at least in the sixth form, Dunc @#7

I know this is a bit radical and could make some steam around the collar – but let’s give it a try, eh?

Thanks for the detailed response. I realise I am sounding like a stuck record on this but it frustrates me when I see someone like Cameron who goes out of his way to denigrate any argument for electoral reform going down the road of AWS when there are better ways to try and resolve this problem available in my view, albeit ones that would not allow him 50 or 60 odd % of the seats on 40 odd % of the vote.

You make some interesting points. What STV multi-member would give is the chance for the electorate to choose from a more diverse range of candidates. It would of course still be up to the electorate who they chose but there would be a built in incentive for parties to present a broader range of candidates without the need for stacking shortlists in favour of any one group. I am sure in some areas of the country there would still be a predominance of white, male candidates but there would be other areas where currently under-represented groups within parliament would have a better chance at getting elected.

I guess what I am saying is that I have faith that the majority of the UK population would rather just vote for the best candidate irrespective of gender, colour etc.

Equity isn’t a synonym for equality. If only 25% of people who want to be MPs and willing to apply are women then 25% is a perfectly equitable outcome.