Women Candidates for Parliament: Transforming the Agenda? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Selecting women candidates: obstacles to the feminisation of the House of Commons
European Journal of Political Research, 1989
Despite concern by the major British political parties to increase the number of women at Westminster, progress has been slow, yielding only just over 5 per cent of women MPs. This article presents the results of an investigation of party selection procedures designed to determine whether selection practices were themselves the explanation for the poor showing of women. The study consisted of interviews with party officials and a survey of the candidates in the 1987 General Election. It was found that selection procedures were in a process of change which included efforts by central leaderships to promote women's candidacies. But local selectorates were not always cooperative. Although women did not appear to be selected in the proportions in which they were coming forward, no evidence of direct discrimination against aspirant women candidates was found. But indirect discrimination may have taken place. Both the way in which the role of a candidate is defined and the qualities selectorates seek produce ideal candidate profiles which may penalise many women. The article concludes that if women are to be better represented at Westminster, parties must go beyond procedural change and the introduction of positive action to a reconsideration of the criteria for choosing candidates.
Women in parliament: making a difference
Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers, 2002
International IDEA was established in 15-the same year as the world's governments recognized that, despite the widespread transition to democracy taking place in many regions, 'the popular participation of women in key decision-making as full and equal partners with men, particularly in politics, has not yet been achieved'. 1 From its very inception, IDEA believed that women's political participation was, and remains, central to democratic governance. IDEA also recognizes that if the world's established and emerging democracies are to be truly democratic, half of the world's population cannot be excluded from either representation or participation. To that end, IDEA's Women in Politics programme seeks to collate different methods and models for enhancing women's political participation. By bridging the divide between the academics and practitioners, IDEA aims to provide relevant policy options and data to those working to find practicable solutions to the underrepresentation of women. While taking into account a global perspective, it tries to ensure that the materials generated also reflect an awareness of and comparisons between the different national, regional and local contexts. This Handbook, Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers, together with a whole series of handbooks that IDEA's Women in Politics programme has produced since 1, is a testament not only to this philosophy, but also to its persuasiveness among the multitude of people working to achieve similar goals globally, as attested by the need for this second Englishlanguage edition. This publication brings to six the total number of handbooks in the series. 2. A Decade On: Incremental Progress the World Over Ten years on since IDEA's founding in 15, and seven years since the original Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers Handbook was published in 1, the picture regarding women's political participation has slowly changed. Overall the past decade has seen modest progress with regard to women's presence in national parliaments. 3.2. Target Audiences This Handbook brings together a variety of authors, and draws on the shared experience of women as well as men working as researchers, politicians and activists at the local, regional and global levels. The Handbook is targeted to a wide range of actors working to promote the participation and representation of women in political structures. This includes first and foremost women members of parliament and those campaigning for elected office. Also targeted are members of civil society, including activists, academics, researchers, journalists, and other stakeholders working to advance women in politics. Ecuador: Unfinished Business. The Political Participation of Indigenous Women Case Study: Ecuador * Israel did not exist, and the Federal Republic of Germany did not hold elections in 145. They are therefore not included in the 145 numbers. They are included for all years following 145. ** Greece, Portugal and Spain became democratic in the 10s and are therefore only included in the calculations from 10.
With only 22% of the world's parliament being female (UN Women, 2016), this dissertation seeks to understand the contributing factors behind the lack of political representation for women in the UK House of Commons. The overall aim of this research was to ask the question 'why?' and therefore this paper looked in depth into the work of Childs and Lovenduski, drawing on their work for context and critiquing their conclusions. This dissertation looks at three contributing influences including; the influence of political parties, socio-economic factors and social constructivism. This paper breaks down each factor, by looking into the existing arguments presented by scholars and questioning their conclusions.
Gender and political representation in the UK: the state of the 'discipline
British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 2004
Who governs is a traditional question in the study of politics: who is absent and who is present in the domains of public power? Feminist political scientists have taken and transformed this conventional question by focusing on the intractable problem of the relative exclusion of women. In so doing, the under-representation of women in parliaments and in national, local and regional assemblies has moved from the footnotes of political science to the focus of a flourishing international sub-field of scholarly inquiry. Academic interest has mirrored and paralleled growing political activism and advocacy around the issue by actors in local, national and international arenas. Despite global trends towards transformations in gender roles, such processes do not translate in a straightforward way into opportunities for political leadership . During the 1980s and 1990s the political under-representation of women was reframed as a serious problem for democracy and human development, which was seen to raise awkward and crucial questions about the distribution of power. Governments and political parties were placed under increasing pressure to counter women's chronic minority status in political institutions through affirmative action such as gender candidate quotas. 1 Until recently, the British field was relatively underdeveloped, in contrast to the US and Scandinavia. This was the consequence of three inhibiting factors: the low numbers of women in the political science profession, 2 the marginal status of gender-or women-focused research and teaching in the academy, 3 and the poor levels of women candidates and elected representatives that remained largely static for most of the post-war period. In short, in the UK 'political science remains a very "male dominated" profession. But in addition its core subject matter, the world of "high politics", remains stubbornly masculine' (Randall 2002, 129).
Women in Parliaments: Descriptive and Substantive Representation
Annual Review of Political Science, 2009
This essay reviews two research programs. The first focuses on variations in the number of women elected to national parliaments in the world (descriptive representation), and the second focuses on effects of women's presence in parliament (substantive representation). The theory of the politics of presence (Phillips 1995) provides reasons for expecting a link between descriptive and substantive representation. The safest position would be to say that results are "mixed" when it comes to empirical support for the theory of the politics of presence. However, when a large number of studies covering a wide set of indicators on the importance of gender in the parliamentary process are piled together, the picture that emerges shows that female politicians contribute to strengthening the position of women's interests.
The return of 101 Labour women MPs to the House of Commons in 1997 was accompanied by an expectation that their presence would enhance women's substantive representation. Indeed, many of Labour's newly elected women MPs claim to have acted for women since their election. Yet, demonstrating the difference MPs make is not easy. Much of what goes on in the chamber of the Commons reflects party identity and much of what goes on elsewhere in Parliament is hidden. Studying sex differences in the signing of early day motions provides one way of testing whether Labour's women MPs are acting for women. Analysis of all the early day motions in the 1997 Parliament, some 5000 motions, establishes that Labour's women are more likely than its men to sign 'women's' and especially feminist 'women's' early day motions. This finding constitutes clear evidence of behavioural differences between Labour's women and men MPs. In turn, it lends support to arguments that women's political presence is important because of the substantive difference they might make.