More Women MPs-“If not now, when?”
When I was invited to present the Ayr Gold Cup soon after becoming the first ever woman MP for Ayr in 1997, I stood there thanks to a woman called Catherine Taylor who came to Ayr Racecourse almost 100 years earlier.
She wasn’t invited to present the Gold Cup. This cinema cashier from the Gorbals came to Ayr in the dead of night in 1913 and burnt the Racecourse grandstand to the ground as part of the Scottish Suffragette Campaign.
The damage was £300,000 in today’s money and 5 years later a Bill was passed giving women over 30 the vote and the right to stand for Parliament.
Every advance for women has had to be fought for by women themselves and without sustained pressure and resistance these advances are quickly eroded and lost.Between 1918 and 1997 only 168 women had been elected to the House of Commons (and 4,000 men). In the 1992 to 1997 Parliament the number of women reached an all time high – 62 out of 659. More than half of them were Labour. But in Scotland only 3 Labour women were elected. Even in the so-called ‘breakthrough’ in 1997 only 9 Labour women were elected in Scotland (102 in the UK - 18%).
The advance in 1997 was made thanks to positive action which saw 5 Scottish Constituency Labour Parties selecting from all women shortlists – Ayr, Edinburgh Pentlands, Stirling, Aberdeen South and Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. In 2001 all five MPs were re-elected. Following the positive action of All Women Shortlists in Wales, the number of Welsh Labour women MPs has doubled from 4 in 1997 to 8 today.
However, there was no more positive action in Scotland and with all women shortlists in abeyance the number of Labour women MPs in Scotland has dropped from nine in 1997 to seven today. The setting up of the Scottish Parliament saw a high proportion of women elected in both 1999 and 2003 elections – putting Westminster to shame.
However, the latest elections have resulted in the Scottish Parliament slipping from fourth to 13th place in world league tables on women in parliament. Women have taken just 43 out of 129 seats in Holyrood, 33.3 per cent, compared with 39.5 per cent in the 2003 elections. Women make up 50% of the 46 strong Labour Group but only 25% of the 47 SNP members.
Labour’s strong showing is thanks to the decision to twin seats back in 1999.Why do numbers matter? Research has shown that having high numbers of women in the parliament changes the focus of the traditional political agenda and the way politics is carried out.Niki Kandirikirira, Director of the women’s oganisation Engender, said:
"A reduction in women MSPs brings with it the threat of a reduced focus on issues that concern a large proportion of the population: equal pay, The cost of caring, violence against women and children, and poverty ".
In 2004 the Electoral Commission published research confirming that women candidates are an electoral advantage. The report shows that overall women are as likely to turn out to vote in elections as men, but that they tend to be turned off by male-dominated Westminster politics.
However, this report also demonstrates that the presence of women candidates significantly increases women's turn out and engagement. In seats with a woman candidate, women voters are more likely to turn out than men (a gender gap of four percentage points).
Turn out among men is unaffected by the sex of the candidate. In constituencies with a woman MP, women voters are much more likely to believe that ‘government benefits people like me’.
Women voters are more likely to be motivated to work and campaign for a woman candidate than for a male candidate.
The report recommends that removing the existing barriers to women being selected and standing for elected office is an important priority. The challenge to the parties is clear – whilst the Labour Party continue to use all-women shortlists in at least half the vacant Labour or winnable seats, the record of the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives and the SNP on selecting women for winnable seats is poor. You would have to add to that list of shame, Labour in Scotland.
In 2005 there was a case for setting aside positive action since the Scottish Westminster boundaries had been redrawn reducing the number of MPs from 72 to 59. Clearly there were more sitting MPs than available seats to fill. However, the same argument was used again in 2007 for the new Local Council Elections. With STV and multi-member wards there would be far fewer Labour Councillors elected and so this was not the right time to bring in quotas for women.We have recently completed reselection of MPs for the Westminster election.
Where Labour MPs are standing down, Glasgow Central has selected sitting MP Mohammad Sarwar’s son and there is an open selection to replace Rosemary McKenna in Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East. We may get a woman candidate in Lib Dem held East Dunbartonshire and we also have a vacancy to fill in Airdrie and Shotts where John Reid is standing down.
With no clear mechanism or commitment in place we will be lucky to see the number of Labour women MPs in Scotland stay at the current level. There is no inevitability that progress to equality will continue without struggle and positive action.
Once all-women shortlists are taken out of the equation, there is no evidence at all that the party culture has shifted significantly, and as it stands, the legislation allowing all women short lists is time limited with a sunset clause of 2015.
I will always remember the words of the Ayr Labour stalwart, the late Jean Prentice at a hustings meeting back in 1997. After some of the panel prevaricated on how and when to achieve equal representation for women, she put her question in four words: “If not now, when?”
Sandra Osborne MP
