Labour must not get smug about its record
—It was a striking image quickly spotted by Ed Miliband at prime minister’s questions last month, when the government, usually with a few women coalition ministers strategically placed in sight of the TV cameras, offered up an all-male frontbench.
It came as no shock: we know the Tories’ record on this is bad; and, in fact, the Liberal Democrats’ might even be worse, thanks to scandals surrounding Chris Rennard and Mike Hancock and the fact that there are as many Liberal Democrat members of parliament who are knights of the realm as there are women – something that would be hilarious if it was not so depressing. That image of the frontbench just confirmed for many Labour supporters what we knew: we are the best party for women.
But, in reality, it is time we stopped patting ourselves on the back for being better than bad and started striving to be the party of women’s equality by more than default. We are rightly proud of the number of women who will be fighting the next general election for Labour, but only a handful have been selected in open selections, and some contests have seen members choosing from an all-male shortlist, in direct contradiction of party rules. The excuse that no women wanted to run rings hollow when dozens put themselves forward in neighbouring seats.
This is certainly no reason to scrap all-women shortlists, which have proved the only way to make an impact on the number of women MPs. But we cannot think that they will solve the problem of a political culture dominated by men.
Complacency can have real consequences, as evident in the Welsh assembly. It was one of the first legislatures in the world to achieve gender balance, thanks in no small part to Labour’s policy of twinning assembly seats, whereby constituencies were paired and selected a man and a woman, ensuring half of all seats had a woman candidate. But the percentage of women has shrunk in the last two elections – at the election in 2011 six Labour members stood down and only one woman was selected to replace them. Tellingly, this was in the only seat with an all-women shortlist.
But it is not just about elected members – our party structures do women a disservice. Is it any wonder we have seen all-male shortlists go unchallenged when only two regional directors are women (and both of these are currently on leave or secondment), down from half when Margaret McDonagh was the first, and so far only, woman general secretary. And women and men were rightly outraged when the 2010 general election campaign sidelined women but, for all the anger then, the 2015 strategy team is completely male. Being able to point at a few high-profile women does not mean we have reached equality and, in fact, risks turning us into those Conservative MPs who spent that PMQs shouting back that there was no problem because Margaret Thatcher had been their leader.
It is time we started holding ourselves to a higher standard than the Tories and Liberal Democrats, because it is the only way we can honestly call ourselves the party for women.
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Estelle Hart is a member of Progress
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