Robert McIlveen completed his PhD at the University of Sheffield last year, which looked at Conservative Party strategy and organisation. He has a forthcoming article on the A-list in the Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties. The opinions he expresses here are entirely his own.
The Speaker’s Conference on diversity in Parliament, highlighted by John Bercow’s call for both “a Tory Harriet Harman” and all-women shortlists (AWS) raised hackles, not only on ConHome.
Asking why there are so few women in Parliament has often led to assumptions of sexism in local parties making the selection. This is certainly the implication of Labour’s use of AWS, suggesting that unless forced to local parties would not select women. But just because Labour don’t trust their local branches to choose on merit, should the Tories follow?
There are two sides to the candidate “market” – supply and demand. Sexism, or local parties refusing to select women, is a demand-side problem. While there is the occasional comment (at Party Conference I heard one elderly member scoff in horror at the idea of Louise Bagshawe going canvassing while pregnant) it is striking how little there is when we are constantly being told that there are not enough women being selected.
So what about supply? The A-list, controversial as it was, stopped well short of forcing constituencies to select women. It did, however, drastically alter the supply pool. The overall candidates' list is roughly three-quarters men and one quarter women so if we assume that there is a totally fair process women should get around a quarter of seats. The A-list increased this by restricting the supply pool to half men and half women, although once local candidates are taken into account the proportion of women drops to around a third. Which is roughly how many seats women were selected for under the A-list rules.
So what did we learn from the A-list experiment? After the rules were watered down the proportion of women selected fell back towards a quarter. There may be some sexism about, but simply to demand that women are selected for half of seats is grossly simplistic when they make up a disproportionately small group in the selection pool.
Achieving a fully representative parliament, as many seem to want to do (although would we want Parliament to represent the full range of intellectual ability, with half below average? Or represent fully by age, with some MPs direct from sixth form?) does not need gerrymandering the selection rules. Two things are needed to get the best set of candidates. A fair selection system – such as banning sexist questions, the PAB to ensure all candidates are of a minimum standard, updating the selection event – needs to be complemented by a wide selection pool. Which is where the problem comes in.
Research from the USA suggests that men are much more likely to put themselves forward for politics than equivalently qualified women. Even as careers which tend to lend themselves to politics (law, finance) become more feminised this may not feed into Parliament if women are less likely to consider switching.
So what should our response be to Bercow’s call for AWS? We need to think about who we want in Parliament – more diverse candidates in terms of career and region certainly. Yes, women and ethnic minority candidates are under-represented, but the best way to increase representation to fair levels is to ensure a fair (to all) selection process and make efforts to go out and recruit.
