The Speaker’s Conference’s final report recommends that if there is not progress at the 2010 election in terms of women’s representation, parliament should consider the introduction of compulsory quotas. But what level of progress will be considered satisfactory? And what will happen if, as some people predict, the number of women MPs actually falls?
Prior to the 1997 General Election, 9.5% of UK MPs were women, and we were 73rd in the international league table (out of 177 countries). At present, 19.5% of our MPs are female, yet we still rank only 69th (out of 187 countries).
January’s elections in Uzbekistan – which in terms of women MPs resulted in an increase from 17.5% to 22% – highlights the reason why the UK’s standing in the world rankings has, in terms of elected women in parliament, improved very little during the thirteen years between January 1997 and January 2010.
The 1997 general election produced 18.2% women MPs and bumped us up to 25th in the rankings. Since then we have made very little progress but in the meantime, other countries have made great strides, from Rwanda – which was 30th in 1997 with 17.1% and now leads the world with 56.3% - to Uzbekistan, which leapfrogged the UK last month.
Almost all of the countries which are doing better than us use quotas in some form or another. They are the only mechanism which have been proved to work, yet we still shy away from them, and still want to believe in merit rather than justice. The Speaker’s Conference has changed the debate, however, and put the issue firmly onto the post-election agenda.
The forthcoming UK general election may actually produce a small increase in the percentage of women MPs, but it is unlikely to take us much beyond Uzbekistan’s new level. Between that election and the one after (even if the new parliament is hung and the next election comes hard on the heels of this) other countries will continue to overtake us and we will continue to fall slowly but steadily through the world rankings.
So how is parliament going to decide what to do? Who is going to look at the results and conclude that there are enough/not enough women in the House of Commons? Will this be the new cabinet, the Leader of the House, the Prime Minister, the Speaker – or perhaps someone outside parliament; the Electoral Commission, for instance, or some kind of civil society coalition which has finally lost patience with the whole debate?
At some point in the very near future someone is going to have to work all this out. Until then, we will continue to be overtaken by other countries such as Portugal (which rose from 13% in January 1997 to 27% in January 2010), Belgium (13% to 38% in the same period), Singapore (5% to 25%), Tunisia (7% to 28%) and Ecuador (4% to 32%) – to name just a few.
