Where are all the women in the cabinet?

[fruitstick]

I'll try again with a completed thread title this time!

Given that this was supposed to be the Mumsnet election, is there any hope that there might be one, just one woman in the cabinet?

Although Samantha Cameron looked lovely in her maternity wear and heels, I was hoping for slightly more representation than that.

Despite Labour's faults, at least they had women in important and influential positions, not just window dressing.

Sex is irrelivant, like someone said on here ability to do the job well is important, dont care if its a man or woman tbh. So many usless women in Labour government, Harriet Harman, Jackie Smith etc

"Only the best people should be chosen for any job, let alone one as important as running the country."

Why does this rule only apply when it comes to women? Aren't you being sexist, happysmiley?

We've had so many knobs running the country before now; there are so many thicko male MPs out there.
But when someone argues for making politics more accessible to women suddenly its 'Ah, well wimmin, you're not up to the job.
Err, yeah... thanks guys- for the credit crunch, oh and all the wars, and prostitution and underfunded schools and etc, etc. Clearly those who've been in charge untill now were up to the job

Sakura, was being a tad sarcastic in that last post.

Of course the best person should be chosen for a job. But the reality is for every job you don't know how good some one will be until they get a chance to do it. Some people (men and women) will always be better than others. With our current set up, either men really are five times as likely to make good politicians as women (unlikely) or something is stopping women from trying and potentially succeeding (more likely).

piglet, there were lots of bad men in the last government. Gordon Brown was not a successful Prime Minister. Nobody is holding him up as an example of why men should not be allowed to run the country.

There are 649 MPs (one seat is to have another election as one of the candidates died).
Of these MPs 142 are women. That is approx 22% of all MPs.
There are 20 senior members of the cabinet and 4 of these are women (granted one if these women sits in the House of Lords). That means 20% of the Cabinet are women.

Now I know that it is not representative of the country as a whole, but it is representative of Parliament.

As several people have said, there are many first-time female MPs this time round and you cannot give a Cabinet job to a rookie MP.

As I've said earlier in this thread, yes it would be great to have more female MPs and therefore more women in the Cabinet but let's not go down the road of giving someone a job based purely on their sex.

CaveMum, there are also lots of long serving female MPs that have been overlooked. One example is Sarah Teather. She's been a Lib Dem front bencher for years, a very popular local MP, regularly put in front of voters on Question Time etc, articulate and principled. Yet she wasn't one of the Lib Dem MPs Nick Clegg nominated for cabinet.

One thing that strikes me on this thread is that people are assuming that the reason that there are fewer female MPs is because fewer female candidates put themselves forward.

This isn't quite right (although I'm sure that fewer females do put themselves forward, for reasons that have been suggested previously).

The real issue is that women are generally not selected to contest winnable seats. When a shortlist is put in front of a constituency panel which contains both women and men (even in equal numbers), the women are overlooked time and time again. One reason suggested for this is that a white male able-bodied candidate looks like a 'safe' choice for a winnable seat, probably because that's what most MPs are.

All women shortlists were brought in by Labour so that panels in winnable seats (50% of winnable seats having AWS being the target) would be forced to select a woman. And it worked. The number of female MPs rocketed in 1997. Then there was a legal challenge so they weren't used in the 2001 election and the number of female MPs dropped. Legislation was then passed to make it legal to discriminate on grounds of gender in elections. This option is open to all parties until 2015, however Labour is the only one that makes use of it. The Conservatives and Lib Dems prefer to use other measures to increase the number of female MPs.

To see the success of all women shortlists, you need to look at the proportion of female MPs within each party. 31% for Labour, 16% for Conservatives and 12% for the Lib Dems. Clearly the other measures aren't working. If you want the rate of female MPs to increase at a reasonable rate, AWS in winnable seats are the best method.

Other countries where there are reasonable amounts of female representation all use some form of quota for women.

This report goes into the issue in some depth:
www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blogs/publications/archive/2007/10/01/Women-at-the-Top-2005.aspx

I find it very depressing that we continue to talk about best person for the job and women choosing not to enter politics.

Many people have said that the hours are long, stresses are high, have to spend long periods away from family, boorish attitudes and aggressive culture. And yet we think this is fine and we are giving women a choice. In no other industry would this culture be thought of as fair or non-discriminatory but when it comes to the trivial matter of running the country, we think it's OK.

I don't argue for quotas, gender representation or anything else, but I do think that we should seriously look at the working practices of parliament which are stacked against attracting capable and talented people (rather than workaholic megalomaniacs), whether men or women.

I do hope that one of the main benefits of this rather strange coalition is that the political culture will change, and make it more encouraging to women.

It is no surprise that female politicians excel in arenas such as Question Time, Any Questions et al where they are given the opportunity to make articulate, well thought out and coherent arguments rather than the public school debating society free for all that is PMQ.

Even Nick Clegg struggled to be heard.

happysmiley, Sarah Teather was named as an education minister (though not a prominent Cabinet position) last night.

Read here: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8681719.stm

I saw that and wish her the best of luck. I do think that she will make a fantastic minister.

noblegiraffe thanks for that post - really interesting. I am in favour of all women shortlists (as you say, they work) and it's good to know some background.

I agree that someone should only be given a position if they are the best person for it. But as many commenters here have pointed out, there are many reasons why we never find out if a particular woman would be the best person for the job, because she never gets there. As for the dangers of positive discrimination, all women lists etc, hasn't this been what has happened for many years, the only difference being that until recently it was all male lists. We have suffered negative discrimination for such a long time, I think we are justified in asking for the pendulum to swing the other way for a little while.

Ah, I see happysmiley

that was really interesting noblegiraffe fruitstick "I don't argue for quotas, gender representation or anything else, but I do think that we should seriously look at the working practices of parliament which are stacked against attracting capable and talented people (rather than workaholic megalomaniacs), whether men or women."

I think this is the main thing that needs to change. Apparently you have to be a real narcissist or have a personality disorder to get to the top in politics (Tony Blair, for example- I think he was a sociopath, I really do, to be able to lie so barefacedly again and a-fuckin gain just to get what he wanted)

There is interesting stuff in Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink' about how ONLY positive discrimination can make an impact against embedded cultural stereotypes around things like gender and race, because we all internalise them so successfully, even those whom they work against, and even those who are aware of and horrified by such stereotypes...

For anyone who thinks that 'best person for the job' is an effective way to recruit, he points out that a massively disproportionate number of US CEOs are above 6 foot, compared to average heights in the country. I think it's something like 60% are 6ft-plus, vs 15% in the population. There is no way you can argue that somebody's height has an objective impact on how good they are at their (non-physical labour) job! It's all to do with internalised concepts of power.

"You cannot go giving a cabinet job to a rookie MP". Clegg's only been in Parliament since 2005, I believe.

excellent piece here about why this matters - including pointing out that Liam Fox has NO qualification to run defence, nor have many of them to run their departments.

I hear there are more old Etonians in the cabinet than there are Tory women

I wonder where their natural sympathies lie?

"even those whom they work against, and even those who are aware of and horrified by such stereotypes... "

God that's so depressing, but I know it's true. I still can't get over what I saw on the BBC, when David Cameron gave his opening speech outside No10 and she was just playing this submissive wife role. It would have been so much better if she wasn't there, if she was just getting on with her own life doing something else.
It's fine for partners to support each others work, but what she was doing was more than that... It was different...playing second fiddle, and it's so ingrained that it seemed normal, even to me, until I thought about it for half a second. Do female MPs have their other half hanging around like that?

Sorry- that was the Sam Cam thread

It's interesting though to compare the media's portrayal and treatment of her, compared to say Cherie Blair who very definitely did not play that role.

I think that the media will treat her much better than Cherie Blair. Sarah Brown had a pretty easy ride because she was quite prepared to make a career out of playing the dutiful wife. Cherie Blair did not conform and payed the price for it in terms of her media coverage. Sam Cam must have learnt the obvious lessons here. Make sure you are always in the back ground behind your husband, with some pretty clothes on and nice shoes and a smile on your face because that's where the public thinks women belong.

I'd be interested to see how the media treats Miriam (aka Mrs Clegg). So far she hasn't seemed keen to play the game but they have been quite kind to her. I wonder if that will continue. But then usually less is expected from other ministers' wives compared to the PM's wife so she may be ok.

I don't care what sex the cabinet is comprised of as long as they are all competant ministers.

yeah, when DC strode up to the prime ministerial podium leaving Sam standing several feet behind him adopting an adoring wifey pose it did make me feel a bit sick. Like the UK version of one of those extremist Islamic (or Christian) sects where the wife has to follow several paces behind her lord and master.

Would have been far better if Sam had been out of shot - she didn't need to be there and the poor woman's heavily pregnant and shouldn't be made to stand anyway.

I know edam. She actually let him go forward then took two steps back.
It was definitely staged, so it would have been rehearsed before-hand. Is she a bit thick or something, Sorry. She does look lovely as a person, but I'm honestly curious as to why an intelligent woman would accept that.

Maybe she's just been caught up in the whole hype of everything. She is pregnant, after all: you're not at your most political at a time like that. Then again, I get the nagging feeling that the pregnancy is being used to the max in order complete DC's "image"