In this blog Rachel Palma Randle, CEO of Scottish Liberal Democrats, reflects on the work being done in her party to increase the numbers of women candidates and what more needs to be done to get more women elected.
If you are a woman with political aspirations and you are not in one of the main political parties, Conservative, Labour or SNP in Scotland, you are looking at roughly 12 years to get elected to public office at a Westminster level.
12 years! That’s frankly staggering. 12 years is an enormous commitment for anyone. Think what has changed in the last 12 years in your life and in the world. 12 years for women to not only have to plan their financial income, but put off/plan for children, factor in the likelihood of caring for ageing parents and navigating, potentially at least, standing for election alongside the challenges of being perimenopausal/menopausal. So that gives women, as just one under represented group, roughly between the ages of 20 and 45/50 to gain ‘real life’ experience, identify a seat, navigate the political pitfalls of the unconscious and all too ‘conscious’ bias in internal selections and run a sustained campaign of significant scale to win a seat, only to put your income and that of your family at risk of losing your job on a 4 yearly or less electoral cycle based largely based whether the majority of people you won’t have met think you or the Prime Minster have done a ‘good job’.
So, when people ask me why more women don’t stand for public office my face often gives away my incredulity. Why WOULD a woman want to stand to be an MP?
Standing for election is not cheap. It prevents many women, particularly from lower socioeconomic groups from putting themselves forward. It can cost the individual, depending on their party, personally, between £10k and £133k. That’s beyond campaign costs like leaflets and billboards. Those costs are lost income from turning down promotions at work, travel, accommodation, dinners, clothing, and on and on.
The good news is there is a plethora of organisations which are committed to gender equality in politics. And brilliantly there is now more access than ever to training, mentoring and support for women who want to take this giant leap. Political parties are changing too, doing more to reach out to women from all backgrounds and asking them to stand. The Scottish Liberal Democrats ‘Future Leaders Programme’ is just one example and my own political baby. But the barriers remain enormous. And it’s important to be honest about this. For candidates from smaller parties this isn’t conveyor belt politics where you stand and then hey presto you get elected. Thankfully many organisations now offer support to candidates as do political parties, but in reality, it barely starts to cover the real cost.
Finding good women to stand is important. Training and supporting women throughout the electoral cycle not just at election time is key, but without changes to the way we elect our Westminster politicians we will never achieve our goal.
Proportional representation is traditionally the bastion of the bearded liberal male geek. But the reality is that PR is ultimately, in my mind anyway, a feminist goal. Equality is at its heart. Without a change in our electoral system to ensure that every vote counts, internal party selection quotas, the zipping of internal selection lists and investment in training and support will remain tokenistic with goals such as 50/50 representation out of reach.
A fair and democratic voting system in conjunction with the other measures mentioned could really generate a shift in female representation with more women elected and crucially re-elected to the corridors of Westminster.
There is a chance we could see the main political parties eventually selecting enough women in winnable seats to achieve the goal of 50/50 representation. The Senedd introduction of 50/50 gender quotas for the next assembly elections is a good opportunity to see if that makes a difference, but without shifting the ratio of votes to seats under the first past the post system those female candidates would remain part of binary choice for voters, all too often Conservative or Labour, Conservative and SNP, limiting the diversity of thought in a Parliament which disempowers minority voices inside and outside political institutions.