How wrong they are! Many African nations take the issues of both women’s representation and their economic activity much more seriously than we do in the UK. In fact, they tend to put us to shame.

Consider, for instance, ministerial appointments. Only 18% of David Cameron’s Cabinet is female – the same level as after Gordon Brown’s last reshuffle. There are no Liberal Democrat women in the cabinet, and of the four Conservatives one (Baroness Warsi) is unelected.

Then have a look at the South African Government, where 39% (14 out of 36) Cabinet ministers are women, including those with responsibility for Defence, International Relations, Science and Technology, Mining, and Home Affairs.

Or Nigeria, where President Jonathan Goodluck has just appointed 13 women Ministers (out of 40), and is now subject to criticism for not having met his own target of 35% women ministers. Before the 2010 election David Cameron pledged that 33% of his Cabinet would be female by the end of his first administration; Goodluck’s pledge was about the start of his, and, at 32.5% with a few appointments still to make, he may yet meet his target.

Nigerian women are heading up some of the key ministries including Petroleum Resources, Industry, the Niger Delta, Education and Land Reform. Not to mention Finance and the Economy, whose new Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, was managing director of the World Bank, and is the source of the immortal comment ‘I keep my ego in my handbag’.

There is also a (female) Minister for Affirmative Action, something which would be unthinkable in the UK, because the very existence of the post suggests recognition of the problem, which the UK is reluctant to admit in a serious way. Yet there clearly is one – South Africa comes fourth in the international league table for the percentage of women in Parliament (44.5%), and whilst the level in Nigeria (4%) is woeful, there is at least a recognition that something needs to be done. And it is also true that, at 22%, the UK Parliament is closer to the Nigerian position than the South African.

Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has also said that ‘Investment in women is smart economics. Investment in girls is even smarter economics because they are at the centre of development’, and this is something David Cameron and his delegation might like to bear in mind. Africa is an economic powerhouse for women. In many countries there are more women entrepreneurs than men, and women’s incomes are growing faster. The UN believes that women hold the key to economic growth, whilst the United States are prioritising supporting women’s businesses in the developing world. In the UK, the Federation of Small Business believes that we have a lot to learn from what is happening elsewhere in terms of supporting women in the economy.

However, we’re unlikely to learn it. UK trade delegations tend to want to sell, not listen, and the UK government does not want to be taught how to increase women’s political representation by ‘developing’ nations. This is a pity. By turning up with an all-male trade delegation David Cameron looks, in both countries, both out of date and out of touch.

The intention to move the debates round the country is laudable (there will be one in the north west, one in the south west, and one in the midlands), as are the arrangements which sort out the problems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but overall what we will see is likely to be the white, male, middle-aged face of our politics.

This is a pity, if only because the face we see will be the one which even now is on its way out. There will be more women standing at this election than ever before, and more candidates – both male and female – from BME communities. The average age of candidates will be younger. The next parliament will, whatever happens, look different from this one. Why could the leaders’ debates not have reflected this?

The picture presented of British politics will be depressingly traditional and stereotypical.  Three white men at varying points of the age spectrum will line up wearing three dark suits, three plain shirts and three carefully chosen ties.  Their ‘debate’ will be chaired by three more slightly older white men similarly attired (Alastair Stewart for ITV, Adam Boulton for Sky, and David Dimbleby for the BBC).  Women may be present in the equally carefully chosen studio audience, and will probably ask some of the carefully vetted questions, but they will not be centre stage.  Neither will anybody else not meeting the implied criteria.

It did not have to be like this.  The leaders are who they are, but there must have been options when it came to the presenters.  There are any number of able women on television news programmes; it would be interesting to know whether any of them were considered, or whether it was simply assumed on all sides that since gravitas would be required, middle-aged white men were the only option.  Or did this aspect of things not even occur to them?  Are there really no women in television current affairs who can be considered seriously for serious political occasions? Was the choice based on seniority alone?  Or was it perhaps decided that the egos of the big political beasts required the egos of the big beasts of television to keep them in order. Hard to tell, but the outcome is all too clear.

So there will be nothing unpredictable about our debates this year, and no amount of clever set-building or graphics will disguise how old-fashioned they will look.  Those six white men between the ages of 42 (Cameron and Clegg) and 71 (Dimbleby) will address one of the most diverse electorates in the world.  Applause – or any other expression of opinion – will be limited. Questions will be screened by ‘a panel of senior journalists’. The first debate will have the merit of novelty, but after that audiences may well tail off.  The intentions are good, but the outcomes will do nothing to re-engage a disengaged  body politic.

If we really want to improve political and democratic participation we will need to do better than this.

Prior to the 1997 General Election, 9.5% of UK MPs were women, and we were 73^rd in the international league table (out of 177 countries). At present, 19.5% of our MPs are female, yet we still rank only 69^th (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 25^th 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 30^th 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.

At present, if you want to stand for parliament you’re pretty much on your own. You might be lucky and have an understanding employer, or private means, or a partner willing to support you while you campaign, but for most people the financial disadvantages of candidacy are so extreme that they discount the possibility of standing altogether.

The Speaker’s Conference Report says that something should be done about this. In particular (and amongst other things) they are proposing that:

• candidates should be able to apply for a short period of unpaid leave, or flexible working, specifically to enable them to campaign
• candidates should be able to take unpaid leave rather than having to resign during the election period itself (i.e., the short campaign)
• in the longer term, there should be a state grant equivalent to the minimum wage for candidates during the short campaign
• a new national mentoring scheme should be developed to cater for anyone who is interested in elected office or becoming a member of a public body

For some people, parts of these recommendations are bound to be controversial.

Employers are likely to point out that, although unpaid leave might not penalise them financially, it can cause other problems. Losing a member of staff for a period also means losing their contribution to the job. In some industries, that will matter, particularly where the individual concerned occupies a leadership role. Some disruption is inevitable, and possibly also some resentment on the part of other staff.

On the other hand, the benefit to the candidate is clear, and the facility to apply for unpaid leave would certainly make things easier for many people, especially those whose constituencies are at some distance from their work. And, from the point of view of employers, a stable, vibrant, representative democracy must be better this than one which is jaded, elitist and excludes people with experience outside the Westminster village.

The minimum wage idea is also interesting, and could certainly work. Perhaps it could be taken even further and made a requirement for all candidates to live on the minimum wage for the period of the short campaign so that everyone elected, however wealthy or privileged would have at least some idea of what existing on a low income permanently might be like.

For either of these ideas to work (or for any kind of national – and therefore publicly funded? – mentoring scheme to be set up for that matter) there needs to be some political will. There will be public opposition to spending any public money for political purposes, and the cynicism people currently have about the motives of anyone going into politics will only intensify it.

But that doesn’t mean that these are not ideas worth exploring. Making it possible for people from a much wider employment base to stand for parliament must be a good thing, and it won’t happen simply because people wish for it. And access to politics has to be affordable for ordinary people, otherwise we will continue to draw our legislators from a narrowing section of the population.

So yes, some aspects of these proposals want a bit of thinking through. But the effort would be worth it.

The report begins with proposals about citizenship education, which, at the moment, is regarded very much as a poor relation in schools, and which people generally regard as unnecessary afterwards.

According to recent research, 55% of teachers responsible for citizenship education actually have no training in it, and headteachers are said not to view it as a priority when it’s set against all the other things that are. And pupils usually know when something doesn’t matter – when there’s no exam at the end of it, for example – and will treat it accordingly.

And although in theory politics GCSE and A level courses – which do have exams at the end of them – include modules about the UK political system, in practice one is driven to wonder how effectively these are taught. Certainly by the time students come to study politics at degree level there seems to be very little time for domestic political structures or events – to the point at which politics graduates taking up internships or posts at the Centre for Women & Democracy sometimes need a crash course in British political institutions (including elections) before they can start work.

Of course, what is local and known (e.g., how elections and structures in the UK work, how they interact one another and the public, and how they might be changed and developed in the future) has little allure compared with the politics of revolution in Mexico or Peru or of religion in the Middle East.

But surely what is local and known is what makes our own political system tick? And our own political system – for all its many faults – is what most people need to understand. It’s not quite in crisis yet, but it’s getting there. Lack of trust and lack of engagement are all too often underpinned by something else – a fundamental incomprehension about what politics are for, how they work, and what our involvement in them can and should be.

This doesn’t need to be the case. Good citizenship education, valued both at school and after it, funded properly and taught effectively would at least start people off with a grasp of the basics.

But there is another issue. The Speaker’s Conference was composed entirely of MPs, who, not surprisingly, start from the premise that although there are some problems with the existing political system, many of them could be put right if only other people were better educated. But the problem may actually be that, despite the lack of education, people understand it all too well, and don’t much care for it.

After all, despite some slow adjustments over the years, it is in many ways unchanged from the century before last. When Iris Robinson resigned her seat last week a statement was put out by the Treasury announcing that she had been appointed as the ‘Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds’. To most people, this is completely meaningless. Why can MPs not simply resign?

This is just a small example. The day-to-day business of politics often looks like a closed book because it seems so irrelevant. And since the day-to-day detail of politics was considered outside the remit of the Speaker’s Conference (which, to be fair, was about rectifying under-representation), it remains the subject of interesting experiments such as Power2010’s Deliberative Democracy day rather than initiatives arising from the political centre itself.

This is not a simple problem. If there was a single magic measure – or combination of measures – that could be taken to change levels of engagement, we’d have sorted it out long before now. Politics have always been viewed with suspicion, but since historically the majority of people have been excluded there has also been a view that getting in would somehow change things. Now we know how limited that change is. Our theoretically open democracy has some of the lowest turnout levels in history. We need to do more if we are to maintain levels of democratic credibility.

That said, improving political education, both in and out of schools, would be a good start. At least people would have less excuse for ignorance. It is scandalous that so many young people leave school with no idea of how decisions affecting their lives are taken and how they are paid for, and still less of how to influence them. But in itself, as the Speaker’s Conference recognises, it is not enough. Politics have to be changed fundamentally, not  simplified or dumbed down. We need new political standards, new mechanisms and new communications, and we need structures and institutions which themselves reflect and value  how the world works now, and what its drivers are, and recognise how far away that is from the lofty Victorian splendour of parliament, its buildings, its language and its procedures.

Then we might get close to politics that meet our aspirations.

And, apart from anything else, the picture of British politics they present will be depressingly traditional and stereotypical.  Three white men at varying points of the age spectrum will line up wearing three dark suits, three plain shirts and three carefully chosen ties.  Their ‘debate’ will be chaired by three more slightly older white men similarly attired (Alastair Stewart for ITV, Adam Boulton for Sky, and David Dimbleby for the BBC).  Women may be present in the equally carefully chosen studio audience, and will probably ask questions if questions are to be asked, but they will not be centre stage.  Neither will anybody else not meeting the implied criteria.

It did not have to be like this.  The leaders are who they are, but there must have been options when it came to the presenters.  There are any number of able women on television news programmes; it would be interesting to know whether any of them were considered, or whether it was simply assumed on all sides that since gravitas would be required, middle-aged white men were the only option.  Or did this aspect of things not even occur to them?  Are there really no women in television current affairs who can be considered seriously for serious political occasions? Was the choice based on seniority alone?  Or was it perhaps decided that the egos of the big political beasts required the egos of the big beasts of television to keep them in order. Hard to tell, but the outcome is all too clear.

This is a pity.  From the look of it, the format being proposed for the debates is one that needs more than the new to make it attractive to viewers.   According to the Commission on Presidential Debates the audience for the first McCain-Obama debate in 2008 was lower than that for the first Bush-Kerry debate in 2004, and the average audience for all three debates was only slightly higher in 2008 than 2004.  The vice-presidential debate did better, but there the prospect of what Sarah Palin might or might not say added a little frisson of unpredictability to the proceedings.  In fact, the real story of last year’s US election was the new and creative uses made of online campaigning techniques rather than old-fashioned adversarial debates.

There will be nothing unpredictable about our debates this year, and no amount of clever set-building or graphics will disguise how old-fashioned they will look.  Those six white men between the ages of 42 (Cameron and Clegg) and 71 (Dimbleby) will address one of the most diverse electorates in the world, and, from the look of it, will then reproduce either the kind of debate we see at Prime Minister’s Questions (which is generally agreed to be a turn-off for most people) or a sort of Question Time without the leavening of other members of the panel.  The intentions are good, but the outcomes will do nothing to re-engage a disengaged  body politic.

If we really want to improve political and democratic participation we will need to do better than this.

In 2010 the political parties will have a chance to do something about this, but the challenge for each of them is different, and, as the election approaches, the political will may also start to waver. So what does each of them need to do?

Labour has 94 women MPs – and the huge gap between them and any other party could itself be a problem. Labour needs to keep up the momentum as the gap narrows, as it will, whatever the outcome on polling day. So far, only 28% of Labour candidates overall are women, but this masks the fact that the use of All Women Shortlists (AWS) has kept the number of women candidates in Labour-held seats relatively high. On the other hand, the number of women in marginal seats may mean that losses cancel out gains, depending on the results.

The challenge for the Conservatives is greater. There are currently only 18 Conservative women MPs a mere 9%. The A-list system introduced when David Cameron became leader led to a real increase in the number of women candidates in seats the party could win, but on the whole the newer open primary process has not benefited women, and has cancelled out some of the A-list gains. 22% of Conservative candidates are women at present; any future use of AWS may increase this. Either way, the Conservatives will probably see a significant increase in their number of women, though whether it will be enough to make a real impact on the percentage in the House overall is another matter.

The 9 women MPs the Liberal Democrats currently have (out of 63 overall) is very low, but the party has made a sustained effort to do something to change that and has a very high number of women standing in seats where sitting MPs are retiring. Overall, 22% of Liberal Democrat candidates to date are women. However, the numbers involved are in themselves so small that, even if the number of Lib Dem women more than doubled, the impact would be marginal.

In 1997, there were 24 countries with a higher percentage of women MPs than the UK; there are now 65. This is not because we have got worse, but because we’ve more or less stood still and other countries have overtaken us. This does actually matter; the under-representation of over half the population and the under-utilisation of their skills, experiences and abilities does the whole country a disservice.

CFWD will be monitoring how the parties do – see our Candidate Watch page on our website.

We hope you enjoy it – feel free to contribute, but make it constructive!