What’s the Problem? Women in politics

At the moment I'm volunteering with the rather fabulous WAITS (Women Acting In Today's Society). We're currently working on a CEDAW (http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/) based campaign to help tackle a Women's Rights issue that we feel is important. In the last meeting I volunteered to do some research based on Article 38 of CEDAW:

Increase the number of women in political and public life, at all levels and in all areas, and include benchmarks and concrete timetables	38 a)
Introduce temporary special measures to strengthen its efforts to promote women to positions of leadership	38 a) and b)
Increase the availability of training and capacity-building programmes for women wishing to enter or already in public office	38 b)
Enhance awareness-raising campaigns on the importance of women’s participation in political and public life	38

and find out whether there is a need for a Birmingham based campaign aimed at getting women more involved in politics and public life. It's a pretty broad field so I decided to focus my research on female MP's. 

It's a funny one because, whilst I feel that working towards increasing the number of female MP's is hugely important, one of the other members of the group brought up an issue I'd not heard of before in relation to another article that, if her research shows it's as bad as she thinks, would probably be a more appropriate and immediately necessary topic for our campaign (I'll explain the issue in full in the future if we decide to campaign about it!). 

However, partly because I'm a bit of a nerd and mostly because I reckon that, even if we don't pick this topic for our campaign this time the research will be useful in the future, I've been looking into the deficit of female MP's in Birmingham, what's putting women off becoming MP's and what we can do about it, and here's what I've found (unfortunately my lovely colourful graphs refuse to be posted on blogger so sorry for the wordyness):

Today, just 22% of MPs in the House of Commons and 20% of members of the House of Lords are women.

The first female MP took her seat in 1919. It’s taken 93 years for female representation to go from 0% to 22%. Given the well documented disproportionate effect the recent austerity cuts have had on women and women’s services, the fact that domestic violence remains the second most frequently reported crime in the UK and that a wide variety of studies have shown that teams which include women are more successful than exclusively male teams[i], we definitely can’t afford to wait another 93 years to get an equal female presence in Parliament, the most important decision making body in the country.

At the moment there are currently more millionaires in the cabinet than women[ii].

In Birmingham there are also issues.

 Only 10 women have been an MP in Birmingham since 1945.  Here they are[iii]:

Name	Election date	Party	Constituency	From	to	Years
Edith Wills	5 Jul 1945	Labour	Duddeston	1945	1950	5
Dame Edith Pitt DBE	2 Jul 1953	Conservative	Edgbaston	1953	1966	13
Dame Jill Knight, DBE	31 Mar 1966	Conservative	Edgbaston	1966	1997	31
Mrs Doris Fisher	18 Jun 1970	Labour	Ladywood	1970	1974	4
Miss Sheila Wright	3 May 1979	Labour	Handsworth	1979	1983	4
Rt Hon Clare Short	9 Jun 1983	Labour (’06 – Ind Lab)	Ladywood	1983	2010	27
Dr Lynne Jones	9 Apr 1992	Labour	Selly Oak	1992	2010	18
Rt Hon Baroness Estelle Morris	9 Apr 1992	Labour	Yardley	1992	2005	13
Ms Gisela Stewart	1 May 1997	Labour	Edgbaston	1997	date	14+
Shabana Mahmood	6 May 2010	Labour	Ladywood	2010	date	1+

There are currently 10 constituencies in Birmingham:

There have been 18 general elections since 1945[iv].

So, taking into account women who’ve served multiple terms in office and constituency boundary changes between 1945 and 2010 out of a potential 213 MP’s[v] that have represented Birmingham 34 have been women. That means that only 16% of our MP’s over the past 67 years have been female.

  

At the moment we have two female MP’s, 20%. Unfortunately this is actually the lowest number of female MP’s since the 1987-1992 Parliament. There has actually been a decrease in the number of female MP’s in Birmingham over the past decade.

General Election	Male MP’s in Birmingham	Female MP’s In Birmingham
Thus 5th July 1945	12	1
Thu 23rd Feb 1950	12	1
Thu 25th Oct 1951	12	1
Thu 26th May 1955	12	1
Thu 8th Oct 1959	12	1
Thu 15th Oct 1964	12	1
Thu 31st Mar 1966	12	1
Thu 18th June 1970	11	2
Thu 28th Feb 1974	10	2
Thu 10th Oct 1974	11	1
Thu 3rd May 1979	11	1
Thu 9th June 1983	9	2
Thu 11th June 1987	9	2
Thu 9th April 1992	8	3
Thu 1st May 1997	6	4
Thu 7th June 2001	7	3
Thu 5th May 2005	7	3
Thu 6th May 2010	8	2

My Research:

On the 25^th January I created an online survey aimed at gaining a rough idea of what women perceive as the main barriers preventing them from wanting to become MP’s, here are my results:

Are you:
Female	30
Male	0
Other	0

Which Political Party (if any) are you a registered member of?
Labour	1
Conservative	3
Liberal Democrats	1
None	24
Green Party	1

Which Political Party (if any) do you most identify with?
Labour	11
Conservative	6
Liberal Democrats	4
None	7
Green Party	2

Would you ever consider trying to become an MP?
Yes	2
Maybe	8
Not Sure	5
No	15

Which would the main areas of concern that would put you off becoming an MP? (You may select multiple answers)
The high pressure work load	12	40%
The work hours negatively affecting family life	12	40%
The work hours negatively affecting social life	6	20%
The negative portrayal of MP’s in the press	11	36.7%
The male dominated environment of the Houses of Parliament	6	20%
I don’t know how to become an MP	12	40%
I don’t feel strongly about any political party	18	60%
The process of becoming and MP is too long and complicated	8	26.7%
I don’t know what an MP’s role entails	6	20%
The large amounts of traveling involved	5	16.7%
I’d be interested in becoming an MP but I don’t think I’d ever be selected as a candidate	5	16.7%
There are no concerns putting me off trying to become an MP	0	0%
Other (please specify)*	3	10%

*The MPs in the public eye are all either cowards or self-important to the point that they don't actually care about what they do as long as they are in power. Who would want to have these people around them every day? You'd go insane.

31/1/2012 18:25View Responses

Doesn't seem like a democratic process i.e 'safe seats'; potentially not representing an area you resonate with; also concerned that I am too middle class

26/1/2012 8:42View Responses

The fact no one gives a f**k what you say or appreciates any amount of work you do and at the end of the day, its still your fault

Can you name any groups/organisations that are currently running campaigns aimed at getting women more involved in politics?
Tory Party Initiative to get more women in the Cabinet	1
Women Into Politics	1
UK Feminista	1
No/No Answer Provided	27

  

What solutions have already occurred?

The lack of female MP’s isn’t a recently recognised phenomenon and various groups have already implemented programmes to try and help tackle this issue, most famously the all female shortlists utilised by the Labour Party in some constituencies during the 1997 General Election. Statistically speaking this approach had a significant impact, greatly contributing to the increase in female MP’s from 60 to 120 during that parliament. 

Most recently in 2011 David Cameron pledged to increase the proportion of women in the cabinet to one third by 2015. The Counting Women In pressure group (http://www.countingwomenin.org/) is currently running a campaign aimed at making Mr Cameron keep his word.

In Northern Ireland the Women Into Politics organisation is a CEDAW based campaign group aimed at raising awareness of, and working with grassroots organisations to provide, workshops, information and training for women to help them get ahead in politics.

In the UK various women’s organisations such as UK Feminista, the Women’s Institute and the Fawcett Society campaign to raise awareness of the disproportionately low number of female MP’s and support national campaigns such as Counting Women In and individuals such as the Home Secretary Theresa May  are highly vocal about the need for more women in Parliament.


However, in my research I've yet to come across a large scale UK based campaign aimed at encouraging women to get involved in politics at grass roots level, the campaigns are more typically based around quotas within Parliament and the parties themselves.

What do I propose?

From my research (which I freely admit is far from conclusive) I found that the major concerns most commonly shared by the women who filled in this survey were:

I don’t feel strongly about any political party: 60%

I don’t know how to become an MP: 40%

The high pressure work load: 40%

The work hours negatively affecting family life: 40%

The negative portrayal of MP’s in the press: 36.7%

Whilst we can’t really do anything about women feeling unable to identify with political parties or the workload of MPs, we can help educate women in how to become an MP and help tackle the issue of the negative portrayal of MP’s in the press by highlighting positive examples. 

From my research I’ve yet to find a step by step guide to becoming an MP that isn’t either overly complicated and confusing or highly reductive and over simplified. One potential campaign could be to create a Birmingham specific online resource aimed at not only providing the general steps interested women would need to take in order to become MP’s but the addresses and contact details of the organisations they’d need to get hold of (such as the details of local political parties) and an honest description of the amount of time each step would take. 

As part of the online resource we could also potentially get in contact with female MP’s and former MP’s from across the political spectrum and ask them to give either recorded interviews or written advice to women about how long becoming an MP took, the impact the job had on their family life and advice on how to get ahead in politics. 

We could then promote the website to universities and schools and work with other women’s rights groups to help raise awareness of and build up content for the site.

The downsides: This plan isn't perfect, we would have to raise a bit of money to get a decent website created and initially work quite hard to build up the content and contacts to interview. It would also require regular updating to ensure that the content remains accurate. It would be an on-going campaign as opposed to one with a definitive conclusion.

The upsides: As it would be an online resource the costs would be relatively small, the issue is a longstanding one so there is no great rush to have any project launched before any particular date and, as this is an issue that many women’s rights organisations feel passionate about, we would be quite likely to be able to find partner organisations who would want to get involved.

This is of course just one suggested campaign to help tackle the issue and I’m sure there are plenty of other options too.

I would also like to state that my results are by no means definitive and if we were to continue with this idea a more conclusive and professional survey would probably need to be created, perhaps taking into account which areas of Birmingham individuals are from, age, ethnicity and what level of education they’ve obtained in order to find which groups have the lowest level of MP aspirations, as well as whether women would actually find such a resource useful.

---

[i] ‘a recent study by psychologists at MIT and Carnegie Mellon, who divided people into teams and asked them to complete intelligence tasks together. The IQ scores of the groups' members barely affected collective performance. The number of women on a team, however, affected it a lot--the more women, the better.’ http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/161/branding-for-girls-advertising-for-women

[ii] http://www.totalpolitics.com/articles/290297/theresa-may-a-feminist-in-kitten-heels.thtml

[iii] http://brimmin.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/women-mps-in-brum/

[iv] http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/uktable.htm

[v] This figure takes into account boundary changes: between 1945 and 1970 there were 13 constituencies in Birmingham, 1974 to 1979 there were 12 constituencies, 1983 to 1992 there were 11 constituencies and from 1997 to present there are 10.

Miss Undergraduate: Dangerous Misogyny or a Woman's Choice?

Right. Now, call me crazy but I thought that the whole point of the Women's Rights movement was to give women the right to make their own choices. No longer would they have to have patriarchal notions of 'good womanly behaviour' (i.e. to put it in a highly reductive manner: be obedient, keep your education to a minimum, marry who I tell you, then have lots of babies and become a house wife) shoved down their throats by an outside influence. We now have the right to behave autonomously and do whatever we like, as long as it's within the confines of the law.


In short, when it comes to women's rights I believe that all women have the right to make whatever legal choices they wish free from undue external pressures, in awareness of the consequences of their actions and without the fear of being ostracised by their community. Which is why I find the University of Birmingham Women's Association's choice to create a campaign against Touch Tuesdays' Miss Undergraduate 2012 pageant so bizarre.


Now this isn't a dig at the Women's Association, they're a lovely bunch of people who do a lot of good work, it's more an expression of my confusion at this extreme intolerance of beauty pageants shared by rather a lot of Women's Rights groups. What is it about a group of adults, in this case intelligent enough to gain a place at university, choosing to be judged on their looks that causes such a vitriolic backlash?


I've never entered a beauty pageant. To me being forced to appear in one would constitute my idea of one of the innermost circles of hell. But I've seen them on tv and instead of seeing a group of oppressed, misled individuals I've seen driven women who've decided that this is the field they want to succeed in. It's a different lifestyle choice, not one that I'd subscribe to personally but I respect just that, that it's their choice.

Does it represent an unhealthy focus on looks over personality and a restrictive view on what beauty is? Probably, but all competitions, whether judging an individual based on appearance, intelligence, success, physical strength or knowledge of a chosen field represent restrictive notions of what makes a person a success. Some women choose to be judged on clothing, hair and makeup (and in the case of Miss Undergraduate how much money they’ve helped raised for cancer research/how many guests they can bring along) and some choose to compete in other fields from chess to kickboxing. Plenty of women who take part in beauty contests do not confine themselves just to one field but are highly successful in other areas to. Assuming that by choosing to take part in a beauty contest a woman is either a victim of severe body confidence issues/a villain perpetuating these issues in the wider community is pretty unfair. I don’t feel any less confident in myself as a woman because I’d probably have very little success in a beauty contest than I do because I'm unlikely to win any athletics awards any time soon and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Certainly, there is still a need to elevate the standing of female role models who are successful because of their skill and/or success in other fields, but this battle won't be won by demonising women who choose to take part in beauty pageants.


Almost all the women I know genuinely would like to hear more about female role models and all of us probably know a couple women who could be classed as such. So how about this: instead of spending time, money and energy just fighting beauty pageants why not organise your own alternative pageants? Instead of swim suit contests discuss the impact contestants have had on their communities, instead of evening wear, entrepreneurship and, if you don't want to, you don't even have to select a winner at the end, just celebrate everyone as equals.


Now you might say 'no one would come to such an event' but why not think creative, team the event with other fundraisers, debates, dinners and while you're at it, maybe think about presenting an alternative to male beauty pageants too. Let's be honest, competitions such as 'Mr Universe' present at least as a, if not more, damaging body image to men (and just plain damaging to the eye of any unwitting viewer) about what it is to be a beautiful man than Miss Universe and Miss Undergraduate present to women.

And for those who'd inevitably say recognising the amazing work of a few successful ladies would just 'promote another unattainable standard that negatively affects the way 'real' [whatever that means] women perceive themselves' well, I guess I can't please everyone.


Finally going back to the event that started this train of thought, the protest against Touch Tuesdays' Miss Undergraduate 2012 competition (which I should point out is being run in association with Cancer Research, a highly un-misogynistic charity), it's worth noting that I'd never heard of Touch Tuesdays, the venue it's held in, Touch-x tv or the Miss Undergraduate 2012 competition before the Women's Association announced its intention to protest against it. From what I can discern from obsessively googling the event, noting the minimal views their youtube channel has received and the few 'likes' the night has gained on facebook, it's really not a big deal. By deciding to protest against it they have in fact, unwittingly, just raised awareness of the event and help publicised the pageant to exactly the target audience they are trying to reach: undergraduates. Now the event has even been commented on in national news http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-16703135 this protest is probably the best thing that could have happened to the organisers.


Btw to any members of the Women's Association who might be reading this, definitely don't take this personally, it's just that, in my opinion, instead of just shouting about, and drawing attention to, what you don't like, women's rights groups should also focus on drawing attention to what they want to see and do their best to make it happen.


H.B.
x

To Church? or not to Church? That is the Question

I'm not particularly religious. I thoroughly resented thirteen years of being forced to attend Chapel services twice a week at Church of England school's and, up until a couple of years ago, the mere thought of voluntarily attending a religious ceremony of any kind made me feel faintly sick with boredom. However this festive season I've been going to carol services. For fun. And donating money to the Church in collections.

Now some of my more militantly atheist friends have found this deeply outrageous demanding how I can be so hypocritical or, in one slightly more extreme case, how I can support what is transparently a system of lies designed to control the masses with fear and concentrate power in the hands of the religious elite.

Well I have a few reasons:

1) I dunno about everyone else's but my local Church isn't an evil force full of corrupt priests seeking to control the congregation, it's rather nice. Aside for Church services they run a whole range of prayer groups, old folk befriending services, soup kitchens and charity ventures. True, not all Church-goers are the saintly types they'd like to pretend but there's a great big core of essentially good folk who combine their beliefs with helping people, and at Christmas I like to show my support for such good will, especially since there's rather too many people out there willing to mock them for their beliefs.

2) Jesus taught nice stuff! Of all the religions I've looked into the teachings of Jesus appeal to me most. Love thy neighbour? Do unto others as you would have others do unto you? Forgiving sins? One of his closest followers was a former prostitute! I'm not convinced that he was the son of God but for a man living a couple of thousand years ago in the Nazareth you've got to admit he was pretty forward thinking. In this time of trouble and strife I think it's nice to hear a bit about good will and peace.

3) And finally I get presents on Christmas day primarily because a nice fella called Jesus Christ died over 2000 years ago. I might not be a Christian myself but thanks to Christians once a year I get to eat hefty amounts of food, exchange gifts with my friends and see the family all together in a cheerful festive mood (a rare occurance). So what if it's just an appropriation of a pagan winter solstice festival into the Christian calender? I love Christmas and I see no problem with singing some cracking carols and donating a bit of money to the nice folk down at my local Church to thank them for it.

So that's why I like going to church at Christmas, and in this day and age where congregations are down and everyone's complaining about a lack of local community, if your a bit curious, why don't you go too?

...Though if you're utterly appalled by the idea and would rather sit in your nice warm house drinking hot chocolate and looking up funny things on the t'internet you can always check this out http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/photos/20-most-awkward-santas

Now I'm off to get ready for midnight mass, Merry Christmas everyone!!

H.B.

x

Exploration Archive: Flat Pack Suburbia

Here we have a copy of my latest article for the North America section of the fabulous fledgeling online travel magazine Exploration Online. If you haven't heard about Exploration before and are interested in travel advice and anecdotes, fun facts or becoming a regular contributor yourself check it out! http://www.eruditiononline.co.uk/exploration/article.php?id=243

A few years ago I went to visit some of my increasingly vast collection of American cousins. All that I really knew about them was that they lived in a suburb of Chicago so, naturally, I was expecting it to be like London suburbs: connected to the main part of the city by a vast urban sprawl, narrow streets, narrow houses, a fair bit of traffic and lots of hurried looking people catching buses. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

My first experience of Orland Park was a slightly surreal one. Far from the stereotypical English suburbs I was greeted by a picture book American one: huge houses, wide streets, kids playing in the road, neighbours waving to each other and nothing that resembled a city in sight (turns out Chicago itself is a good 40 kilometres and a 45 minute train journey away). It was adorable.

After talking to my aunt and uncle about it I discovered that, for them, it was truly a dream home. They are in the late seventies; my aunt met my uncle when he was a GI stationed in England during the war. They fell in love and moved to America. Years later, after long careers and raising five children, they bought a plot of land in Orland Park, picked what elements they wanted in their house out of a catalogue, watched it being built and settled in. Their grown-up children were also impressed; so impressed that most of them bought their own flat-pack dream homes in the area and now live within a twenty minute drive of each other. They spend much of their time working, going to church, hanging out with the neighbours and having extended family bowling nights. They love it. Their kids however, aren’t so impressed.

The majority of my younger cousins are around my age, and most of them can’t wait to get out of Orland Park. It’s boring. There’s nothing fun to do within walking distance and all their neighbours know both them and at least one or two of their relatives so there’s little chance of getting away with any misdemeanours. What is a safe little slice of American paradise to their middle aged and elderly relatives is just dull and frustrating to most people under the age of 30. And I kind of saw what they meant; my time in America was spent being handed from cousin to cousin of various generations to be shown stuff, taken to things and constantly entertained, whilst also having a random selection of their friends and neighbours drop by to meet ‘the English girl’. It was sweet and really well meaning, but a little stifling. Yet living close to way too many of your relatives who know almost every detail of your day-to-day life must be even worse for my cousins.

Despite all this, Orland Park does look like an amazing place to grow up. It’s safe, secure and all your friends live near-by. Having spent my childhood split between a small countryside village, Rugby town, Oxford and (more briefly) London, and having few close relatives beyond my immediate family, I can honestly say I’ve never experienced anything quite like it in the UK. And I’m sure, once my cousins have kids of their own, they’ll look back at Orland Park and its flat-pack monotony with a lot more fondness.