An article on ConservativeHome over the weekend claimed there will be an “historic increase” in the number of women and ethnic minority Conservative MPs following the general election.
With such a statement you would expect the increase to be significantly more, or at least matching, that which Labour achieved in 1997, when 101 women MPs were elected. In fact, they predict that with a Conservative majority of one, there will be 61 Conservative women MPs elected.
It will of course be a historic increase for the Conservative party, who at present only have 18 women representing them, but this is not good enough.
What is perhaps more shocking, is the statistic that if the Conservatives were to gain a majority of 100, there will be 69 Conservative women MPs. This is only a further eight than with a majority of one. More simply put, there will be an extra eight women MPs, and a further 91 male MPs.
The Conservatives have previously said that they want to increase the number of women MPs representing their party, and introduced the A-list to put forward a large number of women and ethnic minority candidates to be selected in key Conservative target seats.
However, of the 51 candidates selected for the Conservative seats where MPs are standing down, or where boundary changes have created new Conservative seats only 16, or less than a third, are women. Surely, if the Conservatives are truly committed to increasing the number of women in parliament, they should be taking advantage of the existence of safe seats to put forward talented women who can take their place in Westminster.
The polls are also against a “historic increase” in women for the Conservative party. Current polling is predicting that the Conservatives may even struggle to gain a majority of one, let alone 100. If this is the case, the number of women gaining seats in Westminster will again suffer.
The best bet is that – as I have argued previously – the number of women in parliament is likely to stay the same. This is in large part due to the role played by the Labour party, who even with a defeat will be retaining a huge number of women MPs.
Increasing the number of Conservative women MPs in Parliament to 61 is progress for a party who currently have extremely low numbers of women MPs, but much more needs to be achieved before we can hail this as a “historic increase”.