Lee's random blog

The new Liberal Democrat/Conservative coalition government has four women in its cabinet.  This is a very small number and does not compare well with other countries. But, much as the commentary would have you believe, this is not a simple issue to fix. Broadly, there are three areas that need to be looked at in order to increase the number of female MP’s.

1. Encouraging more women to come forward to stand as MP’s.

There is research from the US (applicable here) that shows that women need to be encouraged to run for public office rather than going for it themselves. There are several reasons for this, confidence being one, culture being another. (Yes I know there are examples of women who come forward but this research shows a tendency).  Addressing this would require a campaign not unlike an election campaign, reaching women in their homes and social lives.  We would need to expand the scope of  the political parties campaigns for increasing the numbers of female MP’s and empower them with budget to get out and about, round the country to encourage women to stand.  Now that the Lib Dems are in government we might find money for increasing the work that the Campaign for Gender Balance does.

2. Changing the perception of women as leaders in the party, in politics and in society.

This is even trickier.  Research shows that people automatically  think of a man when you use the word ‘leader’.  Our concept of leadership is masculine, which obviously makes it harder for a women to get elected, promoted within a company etc.  They have to work a lot harder to prove that they can lead, rather than it being assumed they can, the position men find themselves in.  (Yes I know there are examples of the opposite… etc)  The solution here is, paradoxically, to create role models of female leaders.  We need to develop and promote the female MP’s we have to be seen more obviously as leaders.  We need to actively encourage local parties to do the same and we need to encourage the media to run stories that portray female leaders in a positive light.  Less of the shoes and handbags stories about female MP’s and more about what they actually achieve in their roles.    This will make it easier for women to come forward to stand because they can see they will get recognition and will decrease the numbers of female MP’s leaving due to being constantly harangued by the press.

3. We need to change the nature of the job of MP.

It’s currently set up for a man.  Well, really for a person who has someone else at home looking after the kids and house full time. That tends to still be men. If a woman wants to be an MP, currently she has to fit into this mould. Hence the data showing that there are few mothers in parliament.  If we are serious about making room for women, then we need to understand that women bear the burden of raising our future generations.  We need to make it possible for them to do this (and dare I say for men to be able to do this too) and still become MPs.  We need to work out what parliament would need to look like for women to be able to contribute their thinking and their time, as well as taking care of community and family.  This is not a simple task and yes, is the redefinition of gender roles in society but it is basically what needs to happen.

So, you see, we should not moan about the numbers of women we currently have in parliament without a recognition of the deep systemic issues affecting a women’s chances of being successful at the job.  I’m up for changing this and will be making an offer to the Lib Dem/Conservative government to that effect.

Photo by Mike Baird on Creative Commons

You’ve probably read the interview in Total Politics with Sir Nicholas Winterton by now. Sir Nicholas was elected a Tory MP in 1971, the year I was born, which makes him a veteran of the party.  However, those at Conservative HQ are no doubt shaking their heads over his somewhat ill considered remarks about MP’s and expense paid rail travel.

“And now they want to stop members of Parliament travelling first class. That puts us below local councillors and officers of local government. They all travel first class. Majors in the army travel first class. So we are supposed to stand when there are no seats. And why are we going to waste our time when we can work on the train as we do. I’m sorry. It infuriates me.”

Well, I can totally see what he is getting at.  I travel a lot for work and if I am lucky enough to get to travel first class it does indeed allow me to get a lot more work done that if I am pressed tightly against someone in standard class, with loads of noise around me.  Fair enough, you’d think.  But then he digs himself into another kind of hole.

“They [standard-class passengers] are a totally different type of people  -  they have a different outlook on life. They may be reading a book but I doubt whether they’re undertaking serious work or study, reading reports or amending reports that MPs do when they travel.”

This, obviously, is a lot of rubbish.  Most people would choose to travel in First Class if given the choice.  Its quiet, it’s more spacious and they serve you tea and coffee.  Why wouldn’t someone want that?  There is nothing different about the people that travel in standard class other than they have paid less for their seat.  What is present in Sir Nicholas’ view is privilege and the mistaken idea that the reason you have something that others don’t is because they are different and somehow don’t deserve it.

Sir Nicholas’ view seems to typify the view of privilege held by many people in the UK.  Not that I grudge anyone decent stuff in life and a chair in First Class if you can afford it.  Lets just have a dose of reality alongside it.  He has the First Class seat because he can pay for it.  People have the privilege they have because they can afford it, be that through family money or their own hard work.  Lets not make the mistake that that simple fact makes them ‘better’ people than those travelling in standard class.  It only makes them better at having money and spending it.

What is problematic about privilege is the justification that arises in the minds of the people who posses it and their blindness to the reality of others.  The fact that Sir Nicholas really feels this way about the people who travel in standard class is frightening.  There is no ‘they’ that travel in standard class.  There is only the diversity of humanity in all its guises, each living a personal experience that Sir Nicholas cannot conceive of.  Surely we need to be able to embrace this truth in order to be a good public servant.  Otherwise the constituency you are serving is the constituency of yourself, from your own perspective, true only to your own needs.

(Photo by ThePatrick, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pftqg/, used under Creative Commons license, artist not connected with any opinions here given)

Revealed: David Cameron’s ‘Obama Army’, ready to change the face of the Conservative Party

Only the Daily Mail could make such a positive move by the Conservatives into a cringe-worthy headline.  Rather than trying to present the stream of usual suspects the Tories have actually decided to put forward women and black and ethnic minority candidates at the next election just a few months away.  As Conservative spokesman says:

‘We could not carry on presenting a line-up of largely male, middle-aged, white men in pin-striped suits.  The new candidates look much more like the country as a whole. If we want to represent modern Britain, we have to look and sound like the best of modern Britain.’

This is great news and if the Tories win with the candidates they are putting forward we may see up to 80 women, from a current 18 and maybe as many as 19 ethnic minority MP’s.  Of course, it’s about time that this happened for a number of reasons.  Partly because the country is not made up entirely of white men and should not be represented by such.  Can a white male from Oxbridge really understand what it’s like to be a black woman in Scotland or an Asian single father in Bradford?  No, they can’t and they can’t be expected to either.  We see the world from our own perspective.  White men are totally necessary to represent white men and to argue for their particular perspective and way of life.  However, there are other views and those need to be argued for too, hence the need for our MP’s to represent the community, the totality of the UK.

The other reason to have a diverse set of MP’s in Parliament is that the culture of the place – the hours, the conditions, the mood, the norms – will be set by the dominant group.  Currently that is white men with wives at home and has been for hundreds of years.  Whilst that is not a bad thing in and of itself, what happens is that their culture becomes so pervasive that it’s exclusive to anyone not fitting the bill.  Traditionally the hours are long – voting often occurs at 11pm.  That pretty much rules out anyone who wants to have a family life from taking the job.  Do we really want to have our laws set and policies decided only by people that don’t want to have a family life?  There is a shooting range in the House of Commons but not a crèche.  Though this error is hopefully being rectified this year it really does point to the priorities of the place.

However, really we need to understand something about women and black and ethnic minorities – they might actually be useful as MP’s. I know this is radical to some.  After all, there is a pervasive strand of thinking in UK culture that leadership really is a mans job.  We shouldn’t blame anyone for this, it’s been men leading for a long, long time and we have a lot to thank them for.  What we can blame people for is not wanting to move on, to open their eyes to what is around them.  Women now constitute 60% of University graduates in Europe and North America.  According to gender specialists 20-First, By 2010, just 25% of the UK’s full-time workforce will be white able-bodied men aged under 45.  We cannot waste this talent at any level of society and so we must include them as MP’s.

But there is nothing stopping women from becoming MP’s, people regularly say.  Yes, it is ‘possible’ for women to become MP’s.  It must be because we have some.  But that is not the same as the job being one that women would want to take and feel comfortable and supported in or that they can easily gain.  And we know from the business world that if people are supported and valued we get the best out of them.  If we are going to face the challenges that the next 20 years are bringing our way – water shortages, fuel shortages, a declining population, increasing debt and dwindling pension resources – we need the talent of the country to be leading us and that is no longer simply white men.  Women currently have to fight for themselves to get into parliament, against an assumption that it’s actually men that would make the best MP’s.  This is short-sighted nonsense. Headlines like the Daily Mails attempt to embed this view, that the only reason the parties are selecting non-white male candidates is some form of political correctness gone mad or simply an attempt to win the election.  White male selectors will recognise white men as the best candidates, because it’s human nature to pick your own.  And thus the status quo continues ad nauseum.  So what we have to overcome are stupid headlines like the Daily Mail’s when parties are actually trying to make a positive move forward and this so called truth espoused by the parties themselves.

“Mr Gove’s (Shadow Schools Minister) document candidly admitted that the reason local parties often chose white males was ‘because they tend to be the best people on offer’.”

(Photo by psd, under Creative Commons, artist not connected with views expressed above)