Increase in % of female MPs

[seaweed123]

There is an article on the bbc, about how the number of MPs in parliament has risen by a 3rd:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32601280

which is great... but when you look at the numbers, there is a huge disparity between the parties.

Tory = 20%
Labour = 43%
SNP = 36%
Overall = 30%

It's not really a surprise - I didn't expect much better from the Tories, and Labour have had a strong female presence for a while.

But am I right in being worried about the implications of the ruling party only having 20% of female MPs? The last government was criticised for implementing policies that had the greatest negative impact on females. The pre-election scaremongering was all about cuts to child benefit, maternity pay, etc.

The coalition only had 15% (shocking, I never realised that at the time!), so it is an improvement. But still pretty pathetic, IMO.

(Sorry for all the posts, my phone loses posts half way through a lot!)

I am feeling too miserable about the result to get excited about the increase in women, unfortunately.

I do feel though that having more women is better whichever "colour" they are. So pp is correct that a Tory women won't give a fuck about a poor family for eg but she won't be any different to a Tory bloke in that respect But she will have understanding of things like street harassment that a man would not have. Some Tory women have spoken out about sexual violence very strongly and you know they get it as they're women. Of course some will be hopeless / horrible but so would a man in their place. So I say yes to more women irrespective of hue.

On device so hope that is coherent!

Well fuck me I didn't know that. What an enormous barrier. Needs addressing asap.

Holymoly, Yonic, I had no idea!

I thought it was just me that had a mental block with those graphics. I needed to work out the % because they meant nothing to me.

Not just you. To put into context I'm a scientist so putting data into graphic forms is a daily part of my job. I would say the graphics were deliberately confusing to make things look better than they actually were. How would 50% look in those cubes? It wouldn't be clear that things were even, whereas the bars at the bottom make it very clear that things are still far from even.

I'm not convinced that a Tory female MP would have any more life experience that enabled them to empathise with the cuts that impact women than a Tory man.

I don't think it's just a Tory issue, in my safe Labour seat the female standing MP is from a more affluent background than the male Tory candidate. Lots of left-leaning people come from the middle middle class (bleeding heart Liberals) and lots of right-leaning people come from the working class or lower middle class (think of the stereotypical UKIP supporter or the low Tory who has pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and expects everyone to be able to do the same thing).

I don't think that the lack of GE threads in FWR is an indicator of a disconnect from politics. In fact I'd say FWR posters are some of the most politically aware. There was a long thread about greeen politics and left/right wing politics and feminism. Lots of great posts and knowledge.

That is shocking about maternity leave, though. But unsurprising about the views of a 55yr old white dude about "socialising". Wonder who was looking after his kids til 10pm and why he thought that was OK?

All that would be needed is to allow proxy votes or written votes to be submitted in certain very limited circumstances.

Right now, with a small majority, any party wanting to treat its MPs fairly will be under pressure to get every vote to count. In the dark days of the Major administration, they were practically wheeling people in from hospital to the division chambers.

This is the sort of thing that will only get looked at when the numbers of women in parliament hit a certain level. And again, it's across the board. Women of all political flavours have babies. In the being pregnant, giving birth, recovering, maybe BF sense. No men do that, irrespective of their politics.

This is the thing, things that effect women will ONLY get up the agenda (to where they should be as we are 1/2 the population not a minority) if there is a critical mass of women in power.

Things that don't affect you directly - you can care about them, if you think to, but they don't matter in quite the same way.

This is the crux of the "can men be feminists" and privilege conversations isn't it.

There is a system of pairing to allow MPs to miss votes. It requires the agreement of one MP from either side to not vote, so their non-votes cancel out. But a real alternative would be much better.

I seem to remember hearing that pairing had been stopped. Not sure, though.

Yes, whirlpool. I'm incensed by Yops seeming to imply that the low number of women in parliament is due to women not being interested in mainstream politics.

Here's the numbers:

The new Westminster Parliament will see a record number of female and ethnic representatives, with 191 women (up from 143) and 42 from an ethnic minority (up from 27).

A lot of the new women are from the SNP.And of course Nicola Sturgeon leads the third biggest parliamentary party now

A good thing is that Harriet Harman will be interim leader again and that Farage has recommended Suzanne Evans for UKIP's interim leader. Cooper and Harman are both strong candidates for the Labour leadership and May will probably stand for the Tory leadership when Cameron steps down (perhaps she can corner the Anyone But Boris vote!). .

Please note: I am not saying that any of the names above are the "best" to lead their parties just because of their vaginas; I am pleased that there are some very credible female candidates for the two main parties.

Pico, the whips "cancel" the pairing for key votes and with a small majority, many more votes are key. And if someone is off for 6-12 months, is it fair to actually enforce an informal arrangement not to vote for that time? Much better to somehow count the vote of the person who is off, by proxy or by written vote

I completely agree Yonic.

Off-topic but waves at drinkscabinet - I explain data for a living too and whie some of the electon graphics have been lovely others have clearly been designed for prettyness rtaher than information transfer.

Calling an adult female a 'girl' doesn't help!

As to the voting, how many days a year does a sitting mp really have to be there for a vote? I can't imagine it's all that many. Could they be like the 'keeping in touch' days women on mat leave get?

Afaik yvette cooper became the first female minister to take maternity leave over a decade ago. I don't know how that worked out logistically?

In the Scottish Parliament Aileen Campbell is now officially on maternity leave and another msp has been given her ministerial responsibilities for 9 months.

As for the SNP, before september's explosion in member numbers the proportion of women in the party was consistent from the grassroots up ie the proportion of members matched the proportion of elected members. However this was lower than the numbers in Scottish labour, as a comparison. In the last couple of years there's been the rise of women for independence (non SNP but there is some overlap) and a women's academy within the party to encourage more women to run in elections. It has improved the stats- a third of their candidates were women. 2/3 who didn't get in were men.

I do think all parties should do more to get more women through the system. Even a Tory woman could have experience of unequal pay, harassment, employment discrimination, nhs and maternity services, care of the elderly, mental health, violent crimes against women, stalking, discrimination against lesbians, child support etc. Not all Tory women are thatcher!

As to why it's not on fwr much. As someone who's both active in feminism and active in politics we have to be very careful about what we say in a public forum, even behind a psydonym. Being an 'out' feminist is not necessarily very compatible with political success!

Well I am sorry if my question caused offence. The question was specifically if the FWR brand of radical feminism was disconnected from mainstream UK politics. I might have asked the same question about other groups such as young voters, left wing voters or a specific racial group if I was on such a board and no discussions had appeared.

Given that FWR is by it's nature political, moreso than AIBU, chat or dog owners, the GE struck me as something that would attract feminist analysis. It was the fact that nothing really appeared for 24 hours after the results that made me ask. I wondered if any disconnect - if there is one - may come from disillusionment rather than not caring. I still don't see why this would anger anyone, but you live and learn.

There are hardly any radical feminist posters on FWR.

No, Yops. We were posting on other threads. And there was a thread spanning the GE asking if being left wing was a prerequisite for being a feminist , which was quite busy.

Did you look before the results, or just afterwards?

I was staggered to learn that in 102 seats (about 16%) there were no women standing at all!

I am assuming there were no seats where there were no male candidates.

So, I suppose one interpretation might be that women won 35% of the seats in which a woman was standing (regardless of the party). Still too low.

Yes there are so many seats in the UK that have never had a female mp.

I'll certainly not be ever voting for a party with only 20% women.

But you don't vote for a party, you vote for a candidate.
What if your local candidates consisted of a female Conservative and a male Labour candidate?
Vote for the male MP because his party has 43% women, or the female MP to get more women into parliament?

"But you don't vote for a party, you vote for a candidate." I disagree. I would never vote UKIP no matter who the candidate was. You can't just ignore what the party policies are about. It is important.

Having said this I'll try and vote for a woman where the party policies line up mainly with my views. But as left wing parties are far more likely to have a female candidate that is not usually an issue.

Well you vote for a candidate, who is a member of a party.
OP said she wouldn't vote for a party with only 20% women, but surely she wouldn't vote for a party with 50% women if she disagreed with their views & policies.