That 50% of MPs should be women

[Frumpitydoo]

Why aren't they? Why isn't this mandated? I know fewer females go into politics, but having had this brought to my attention through Mumsnet, boy has it riled me.

We just get shat on and shafted from the get go and stand no chance, do we?

That doesn't solve the problem that the people selecting candidates are local party members generally retired and biased towards 'the nice man in the smart suit'. You can be utterly amazing, do all the right things, but if Agnes is worried about you leaving your husband or children behind, she will select the middle aged, middle class white man because he 'looks like an MP'.

So you can change the system and empower people all you like. It doesn't mean more women (or diverse person) will be selected.

What I would say is that LGBT are actually pretty well represented in Parliament, and I know of quite a few trans councillors.

Only skimmed the thread, sorry.

Yes, I would like to see more women in politics. But I think the way to get a better spread of politicians is to give them more rights and better working conditions, and a lot of people don’t want to hear that! Remove ridiculous late night votes, give them proper employment rights (including maternity leave), remove the financial barriers to standing as an MP, give them proper training, hold fewer sitting days in Westminster with more time spent at home in constituencies. Pay them more, so that we get the people who can command higher salaries actually wanting to be an MP, and put new rules in place about not holding additional jobs at the same time.

Except the reality (and the data backs this up) is that more often than not they won't get there on their merits. Because unlike a professional job interview, they are selected by the votes of 100-200 mainly retired people, who believe women shouldn't be leaving their husband and children to go to London. So they vote for the nice man in the smart suit who looks like an MP, because they aren't trained recruiters, all they can go on is a leaflet and maybe a quick phone call.

I used to feel like you did, but 20 years at the coal face of politics and I have changed my mind....and I have never had an intention of standing as a candidate myself.

I generally vote for policies and if they work hard enough to win the seat, not if they are male or female.

I'd have thought a lot of people do want that.

Pay is always contentious, but it's wrong that this used to be a comfortably off man's second job and that hasn't entirely been eliminated yet.

I'd rather people were voted for on merit, rather than gender.

We would all love that, but if that actually happened we wouldn't be having this conversation.

The answer isn't just to vote women in to make up the numbers though.

I think more women would be elected and a wider range of skills and experience were we to have PR, the form used for the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Dail Eireann especially.

@Hoplolly "I'd rather people were voted for on merit, rather than gender."

I would too. Have you ever been involved in the parliamentary candidate selection process?

That just tells me your company botched the approach or never put the effort into making it work.

I work for a Fortune 500 who tried this but with a big effort behind it and it has been very successful at bringing women forward who were previously hesitant. It focuses the minds of male leaders fantastically when their own targets include improving the diversity of the workforce.

Has every woman/minority been perfect? No of course not - a few turkeys went through. There was no shortage of turkeys when top slots went by default to the male, pale and stale. Women are allowed to be turkeys as well.

What it has done is force a closer look at the whole cohort in scope for promotion rather than fine words followed by defaulting to the same old faces. This means the "good" pool is also larger and makes for a stronger organisation.

As for the "women want part time/less responsibility with children". Its a symptom of the same problem where men are assumed to be free to prioritise their careers secure in the knowledge that the default parent is compromising hers. Its the reason men with children earn more and get promoted more whilst women suffer a lifetime career/earnings hit even if they go straight back to work after mat leave.

If you don't do something dramatic to prime the pump then "change" happens on geological timescales - as Blair proved with all women short lists. What Blair couldn't do was change the institutional sexism which still pervades large chunks of the Labour party.

Yes like you, as a young woman I fell for the "merit" argument. After years of watching good women repeatedly lose out to a mediocre men I thought "bugger that" and started supporting quotas for pump priming.

Not disagreeing, but to accurately reflect you'd have to have more black/Asian/women and then would you have to balance that again splitting that split down?

Let those that want to stand, stand. And then try and find the competent ones

"I'd rather people were voted for on merit, rather than gender."

The current lot are hardly there on merit, much less actual competence.

Wales became the first country in the world in 2003 to have an equal number of men and women in parliament but has never met the same amount of women since which is odd if you consider the advanced you would have assumed we would have made in gender equality over the past 2 decades!

Although a parliament is never going to exactly replicate the demographics of society is it? A good percentage of the population would be either too young or too old for one thing. A percentage would not speak English to a good enough standard to carry out their functions or would have a disability too severe, etc. I also don't like the concept that people can only represent the interests of someone with the exact same life experience as them.

Personally I think the amount of MPs who were privately educated is more concerning and more out of step with the general population.

I remember 30 years ago being told by the Permanent Secretary in my civil service department that there was no need for any positive action-women would just "come through the system naturally.....

Sorry- sent too soon. To date, less than 40% of the Senior Civil service are women and (from memory) 19% of the highest grade....

Which, very obviously, doesn't happen currently.

The current system in the UK is very clearly broken.

This may be because MP's don't get maternity leave. It makes sense as it's not a standard job that can advertise for a temp to cover, but it still must put some women off. I didn't realise this until I had a female Labour MP in my NCT group, who then lost her seat at the next election. She put it down to not being able to campaign as effectively as a mother of young children. I put it down to her being a hypocritical person not at all in touch with most people :-)

That's so funny, the idea that MPs are elected on merit!

Stooping here to state the obvious, even with the best intentions, if people were to vote bearing merit in mind, sexism is so ingrained that they would still vote for males over females of comparable merit.

I mean, ffs, this has been extensively researched and shown wrt jobs and other areas where people are supposedly chosen according to ability to perform.

The Green Party, back when they understand women and men as, by definition, belonging to different sexes, had a system whereby each post had a male and a female sharing the role. That overcomes the pitfalls of positive discrimination.

Also, mandatory paternity leave for MPs might do something, though what it might do could be interesting to see.

If we switched to proportional representational this wouldn't be difficult.

Cohort intakes are known to have more diverse intakes than filling jobs individually. And there seems no reason why this shouldn't also be true for selecting MPs.

Each party would identify a pool of potential MPs and set a minimum level of competence that candidates must have. Candidates would then apply to meet the MP standard and separately complete a characteristics questionnaire (which would not be publicly shared but would be used to make a representative list). Seats would then be allocated according to a pre-agreed order (probably involving listing randomly but for larger parties also considering "how well" the candidate met the criteria.) with a responsibility on a political party to ensure it could fill every seat it won.

Using this method you'd also have a pool of people to cover maternity, paternity and long term sick leave. Which would be another improvement.