Tomorrow’s Labour Women’s Network conference could not be timelier; ahead of it I am pleased to be guest-editing ProgressOnline today.

This week has seen good news and bad news for the position of women within the Labour party.

On the plus side, the election of well-respected local candidate Lucy Powell in Manchester Central has confirmed that women candidates can be trusted to win by-elections. Lucy’s success follows that of Seema Malhotra in Feltham & Heston and Debbie Abrahams in Oldham East & Saddleworth, proving that it is the right candidate for the seat, rather than the safest available ‘family man’, which leaves Labour well placed for by-election victories.

Likewise, the selection of strong female candidates like Jane Kennedy and Vera Baird among our candidates for yesterday’s police and crime commissioner elections demonstrates the Labour membership’s faith that women can perform well – both professionally and electorally speaking – in what could easily have been seen as a ‘job for the boys’. Even male candidates such as Greater Manchester’s Tony Lloyd admirably avoided allowing the commissioner elections to become a race to the bottom of machismo language, positioning this as a ‘listening election’, and prioritising non-traditional issues such as victim support, domestic violence and hate crime, rather than merely trying to out-tough the next guy, which would have been an easy recipe to adhere to.

On the downside, this week’s tense selection in Rotherham has once again placed gender at the heart of an internal party row, leaving an otherwise extremely strong female candidate ‘selected’ on the back of a tiny proportion of votes by an injured and reeling party.

The NEC must hold its hands up and learn lessons here. Neither brave enough to impose an all-women shortlist, which could arguably have been an acceptable choice given the previous selection of male candidates to fight the other two by-elections called for the same day, nor faithful enough that a credible female candidate could succeed in an open shortlist alongside better known men, the NEC once again opted to exclude local candidates. They were, no doubt, fearful that in a by-election already dogged by cynicism (thanks to the circumstances behind Denis MacShane’s resignation), only a fresh candidate with a respected career outside politics and no involvement with historic local issues would be certain enough to inspire voter confidence. It’s just a shame that the NEC failed to either exercise decisive leadership on this, or trust in local party members to make an informed choice within what was obviously a politically heated context.

All this leaves tomorrow’s Labour Women’s Network Political Day – LWN2012 – a very timely conference indeed. With Barack Obama elected this month largely on the back of success among female voters, Labour is well positioned to succeed in 2015 if, and only if, we also effectively engage women in our ambitions for the country. Luckily, the coalition government’s ‘women problem’ – hardest hit by cuts and stretched household incomes, least attracted to an Etonian-run, male-dominated cabinet – is a gift horse, but we need to win women’s votes, not just wait for David Cameron to lose them. That means creative ideas, which resonate with women’s realities, and which are communicated consistently and approachably. It also means profiling our female talent, not sidelining our leading women as in general elections gone by, and building a solid base of grassroots female activists so we can truly import Obama-style peer-to-peer campaigning.

Labour Women’s Network has wisely lined up a breadth of speakers from each end of Labour’s political spectrum, with activists, councillors, and PCCs represented alongside sitting MPs. Equally wisely, LWN has secured several sympathetic media commentators as guest speakers, meaning the conference is likely to be commented on to an audience wider than the party faithful. Expect Labour’s male politicians keen to learn from Obama to be watching via Twitter with great interest.

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Claire Reynolds is guest editor of ProgressOnline today, a councillor in Tameside and a member of the Progress strategy board. She tweets @Mrs_CReynolds

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