The headlines have almost all been the same: ‘Where have all the women gone?’ or ‘Women lose ground’ or ‘Politics still seems to be a man’s game’. Of course, some of this is true, but not all of it. It is true that the number of women candidates fielded by the three main parties dropped compared to 1997, particularly in the Labour Party, giving only a total of 118 women in the House of Commons (18 percent). The situation is therefore static rather than advancing as many of us had hoped following that 1997 historic leap forward.
The Liberal Democrats doubled their number of women MPs from three to six, one woman MP was elected for the Ulster Unionist Party, one for the Democratic Unionist Party and one for Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, and one woman MP for the Scottish Nationalist Party. In dismal contrast, the number of Conservative women MPs has risen very slowly over the last 20 years. There are still only 14 women MPs out of 166 Conservative MPs (8 percent).
However, Labour cannot escape the fact that fewer women were selected in key or previously Labour-held seats. The number of Labour women MPs dropped to 95 compared to the famous 101. We lost two women MPs in seats that were extremely marginal, and men were selected to succeed a woman MP who retired, or sadly when Audrey Wise died, except in Redcar where Mo Mowlam was replaced by Vera Baird and Glasgow Maryhill where Maria Fyfe was replaced by Ann McKechin. Just two women were selected in seats previously held by men – Anne Picking in East Lothian and Meg Munn in Sheffield Healey.
What is really frustrating to those of us who have worked with women inside and outside the Parliamentary Labour Party is that we know that the women MPs have worked tirelessly to improve the lives of women in Britain, but have received very little public recognition and certainly not from the media. The Working Families’ Tax Credit scheme, the improved rights at work, the minimum wage, which affects so many low-paid women, and many other ‘family friendly’ policies were at the heart of the ‘women’s agenda’. So when people say to me ‘Blair’s Babes did nothing but ask sycophantic questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time’ my blood boils! Now that we have 31 women ministers – seven of them in the cabinet – I am looking forward to seeing more of them on current affairs programmes and being quoted more frequently in the press. It was both damaging to the Labour Party and sent wrong messages to women voters when our women MPs and ministers were hardly seen during the election campaign. It reflected a ‘boy’s agenda’ rather than one that women could identify with their lives.
Prior to the 1997 election, some of us travelled around our regions talking to constituency parties about ‘winning women’s votes, winning the election’ or what became known as ‘winning words’. Our task was to spread the message to party members so we could increase votes by changing our language, style and presentation; speaking plainly, avoiding jargon and being positive not aggressive. The top issues of concern to women were money, jobs, family, schools, the NHS, and crime. Women believed they talked about people whilst men talked about ‘things’. Women cared about issues not just as they affected themselves, but also those around them. Women, we were told, were far more likely to make up the ‘don’t know’s’ in polling surveys and were far more likely to decide how to vote in the last days of the campaign.
We were told to describe our policies and beliefs more realistically. For example, we could say: ‘John is a father living on social security. He was offered a day’s work for £30 but he’d have to spend £5 on travel and the DSS would have taken away the rest.’ This was preferable to saying: ‘We have to stop imposing these punitive marginal tax rates on people claiming benefit.’
Two statements from the ‘winning words’ presentation that have stuck in members’ minds are: ‘If women had voted the same way as men in 1992 we would have won,’ and ‘If women had always voted in the same way as men, we would have had Labour governments continuously from 1945 to 1979.’ It follows therefore that women’s votes are valuable and should be nurtured.
It does appear though that the lessons from before 1997 disappeared into the mist of time. Does this mean that womens’ votes are no longer important? Of course not, but for many of us it is more important to implement good policies which benefit men as well as women.
Throughout this year’s campaign I listened in vain for those ‘winning words’. Instead I heard lists – sometimes of billions of pounds spent on this policy, or millions spent on that policy. All worthwhile, of course, but sounding like a digest from The Financial Times. Although the Working Families’ Tax Credit scheme is wonderful, couldn’t we have thought of a snappier name for it? And Minimum Income Guarantee is a terrific policy but it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. More importantly, it is not clear to people what it means nor if they are eligible to claim the benefit.
One method of improving the communication of Labour’s policies might be to remember the lessons we learned from ‘winning words’, and have more women role models so that women in the community not only hear words they understand but see women succeeding in a pivotal role in our legislatures at Westminster, the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly, the Greater London Assembly, or in Europe. They also need role models nearer to home, in parish, town, district and county local government. This must surely make sense to everyone in the Labour Party if we wish to engage with the electorate and encourage them to vote for our candidates – male or female.
We have a long way to go before we have equality between women and men. We cracked the glass ceiling slightly in 1997 but there are many more battles to be fought. One of them is to convince constituency Labour Party members that they should select women candidates. Unfortunately, members of the Labour Party still seem to think that MP means Male Person when they begin to select their candidates.
During the last selection I heard many confidential, anecdotal stories from women about their selections. Some were heartening where women had been treated fairly and equally, where they felt the selection procedure had been correctly implemented and the result had been fair – even when they were not selected. This was, however, a rare occurrence. More often the tales were of direct and indirect discrimination. These events cannot be publicised, primarily because the woman telling the story would be admitting her political career was at an end and because she would be called a sore loser. She has to grin and bear it and learn from the experience. There is one story which is a prime example of a small incident becoming significant. Entering a room to wait for their turn for interview three women found the refreshment provided was three cans of lager placed carefully in the middle of the table. Although we might smile, it is rather sad that the organisers of this selection seem to have assumed their guests would be men who liked lager.
The selection procedure was also abused. The rules said there should be a 50/50 shortlist of men and women. There was more than one occasion when constituencies in various parts of the United Kingdom shortlisted women who lived miles away and who had no local connection to the seat. This tactic enabled the shortlisting committee to take off the shortlist a local, female candidate who could have made a strong challenge to local male candidates. Once again, hard to prove since the committee would insist they had made their choice on the basis of ability.
Personalised rumours that were circulated during selection campaigns were rife – sometimes true but more often untrue. Again, these were hard to challenge because doing so gave substance to an inaccurate rumour.
Another significant reason for keeping quiet was because of loyalty to the Labour Party. No one wants to give fodder to the opposition or the media so they can use it against us. However, there are times when these issues need to be discussed and anyway, we know that women in the Conservative Party have even worse problems of discrimination.
There have been some small improvements but the resistance to change within the Labour Party still reflects the culture of our society. A recent European Women’s Lobby report found that only 24 percent of members of European governments are women, varying from 5 percent in Greece to 18 percent in the United Kingdom to around 50 percent in Sweden.
One of the Lobby’s most important findings was that men occupy 87 percent of the key positions in the media with women only representing 29 percent of journalists and editors in the print press in western Europe. No wonder we have such a problem with the media! Even where we have sympathetic female journalists who write sensible, well balanced stories, they are often heavily edited by male sub-editors who then top them with silly headlines.
Except in the Nordic countries women are still performing 80 percent of household tasks and as a result it is no surprise that 83 percent of part-time workers in the European Union are women. And sadly, women are still being paid only 76 percent of a man’s hourly wage when doing the same work.
There is now a groundswell of opinion that the only way forward is for the government to change legislation to enable political parties to introduce a mechanism like women-only shortlists into their selection processes, if they wish to do so. The campaign for this change has been active for several years across a wide spectrum, from women in the trade union movement, the co-operative movement, women MPs, the Fawcett Society, the 300 Group, and women in all political parties. Thankfully, the Labour government has listened and the promise of new legislation has been announced in the first Queen’s Speech of this parliament.
The next task is to make sure the new Bill is correctly drafted, that it incorporates safeguards so it cannot again be challenged, and that it is given parliamentary time at the very earliest opportunity. Selections will begin to be timetabled towards the end of this year for regional government in Scotland, Wales and London as well as the European parliamentary elections. It is therefore imperative that the new law goes through Parliament quickly so that discussions can start to find out if political parties wish to implement it.
I wholeheartedly agree with those who say they believe candidates should be selected on merit. Through my work with Labour Women’s Network and Emily’s List there is absolutely no doubt that talented, exciting, intelligent women in the Labour Party are waiting to serve their communities and their country. They should get selected on merit but they do not. That is why we need positive action to aid in that selection, so it can be used to ensure equality of opportunity for both men and women. There are various ideas for the way this would work and zipped lists or parity quotas have been mentioned. Of course, women do not wish to be thought of as inferior candidates who need a mechanism to advantage them. They, too, believe they have merit.
Just dream for a moment. If the new law and selection procedures work properly, it could mean we would not only elect the first Asian woman MP but many more women and men from the ethnic minority communities; where the Welsh assembly retained its majority of women representatives, the Scottish parliament and the Greater London Assembly continued to have large numbers of women, and when an elderly male MP retired, his place would not be automatically filled by a male inheritor. What a wonderful prospect for the 21st century.