Equality, diversity and the Speaker of the House of Commons

On Friday 25^th May I was fortunate enough to co-chair an event featuring the Rt. Hon. John Bercow MP, Speaker of the House of Commons. For those who aren’t sure the Speaker of the House of Commons is that fellow who sits in the big chair in the House of Commons and tells MP’s off when they over step the mark (like when David Cameron called Ed Balls a ‘muttering idiot' on PM’s question time last week). His role is to stay impartial and maintain order. As well as this he’s also doing some rather excellent work with the Parliamentary Outreach service to help improve public engagement in politics and improve equality and diversity in the House itself.

The event in question was a W.A.I.T.S (Women Acting in Today’s Society) Policy Forum on the opportunities for and barriers facing women wanting to get involved in politics (see my previous blog post http://henshouse1.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/whats-problem-women-in-politics.html for a brief overview of the situation). Aside from Mr Speaker being delayed in traffic and arriving half an hour late the event was a great success, with the Policy Forum speakers and Mr Speaker himself delivering engaging, informative and occasionally amusing speeches and deftly answering challenging questions.

Our first speaker was Sharon Thompson. Sharon is currently a magistrate and has a vast amount of first-hand experience of the issues women, and especially mothers, face with wanting to get involved in politics. The key points that I took away from her presentation were:

1) There are two kinds of women local parties need to consider: those that are already engaged in politics and those that would make a fantastic contribution to the political scene but feel that they lack the knowledge (‘I don’t watch the politics show!’), skills or ability to make it. To help engage these women we need more successful female politicians to act as mentors and ‘pass the baton on’ to the next aspiring generation and more family and female friendly events. Things like low key, welcoming coffee mornings where women can get together in a friendly environment and chat about what makes them tick and how they can get more involved in party politics.

2) Parties need to raise awareness of political positions beyond just councillors and MP’s. Sharon made the point that there are loads of local party positions (such as women’s officer) that can represent fantastic ways for women who are interested in politics to gain a bit more experience without being shoved in at the deep end of the  MP or Councillor candidate selection and campaigning process. But hardly anyone knows about them.

Our next speaker was Ally Sultana. Ally is the Coordinator for Saheli Women's Group Empowerment Project which works to increase the understanding of politics and political structures amongst women in South Birmingham. She spoke passionately about the importance of politics and the difficult experiences of the women she had delivered training to on how to become a local councillor.

1) Ally began by talking about the experiences of the women she had worked with, saying that it’s not just the women who have to change but the parties themselves. After helping deliver training to South Birmingham women on how to become a local councillor, in line with parliamentary guidelines on the matter, many of the women were put off the political process by the in-fighting, pettiness and bickering that they had witnessed. If parties are serious about improving equality and diversity in their numbers, they need to be serious about changing their ways too.

2) Next Ally made the point that, if you’re going to run for candidacy you need to 1) know yourself and be confident that whatever the barrier you can get through, 2) build a vast support network around you. It’s a tough process and will involve a load of highs and lows, so you really can’t do it alone. Despite these difficulties and barriers, though, Ally concluded with an impassioned plea to the audience: get involved. Things won’t change until we make it happen so whatever you come up against, keep going and it’ll be worth it in the end.

Our final W.A.I.T.S Policy Forum speaker was Nura Ally. Nura is currently the Community Development Officer for the Hodge Hill constituency and founder and director of the Allies Network; a community organisation set up by women for disadvantaged women from ethnic minority backgrounds and communities in the West Midlands. She had some interesting advice and feedback based on her own experiences of competing for candidate selection:

1) The ‘tick box’ approach to equality is not always helpful. Nura felt that during the selection process there was far too much emphasis placed on the external qualities gender, race, sexuality, and not enough on what an individual can truly offer. She believed that a stronger set of guidelines to go alongside the process, weighting the importance of these external qualities against the individual’s personality and experience would help make the system fairer for all.

2) Like Ally, Nura called for all of the assembled audience to get more involved. Her own experiences may not have been difficulty free but that does not change that fact that she believes that it is every woman’s (and man’s) civic duty to get involved in politics. She asked that every audience member join a political party of their choice and start participating as it’s only through participation that change is going to occur.

Our final speaker of the morning was Mr Speaker himself, the Rt. Hon. John Bercow MP. Mr Bercow attended the W.A.I.T.S Policy forum as part of a series of events he was participating in in Birmingham that day as part of the Parliamentary outreach programme, aiming to bring Parliament to the people and helping make national politics national, not just London centric. The main theme of his speech was what Parliament is already doing, and what still needs to be done, to help make it more accessible to women.

1) He discussed changes he had insisted on already such as the creation of a nursery within the Houses of Parliament to help female employees and MP’s with young children. He also referred to the creation of ParliAble (a Parliamentary Disability Equality Network) and ParliOut (a support group for LGBT individuals) before talking about the female ‘movers and shakers’ of Parliament.

2) He then referred to what he felt were still key barriers facing women wanting to get involved in politics. First the anti-social work hours (on Mondays and Thursdays, for instance, Parliament opens at 2:30pm and ends at 10:30pm) which he felt should be swiftly dealt with. Secondly the ‘ya-boo’ (heckling) atmosphere of the House of Commons itself and the masculine ‘boys club’ attitude it can portray, which he hopes will be changed by more women striving to become candidates and thus more women making it into Parliament.

After this we moved onto a brief question and answer session in which the assembled audience excelled, asking tough and poignant questions and suggesting improvements to the system Mr Bercow should take back with him to Parliament. There were too many to list here so here’s just a few:

1) Job share MP’s? One lady had an interesting suggestion: in order to make high profile political positions more attractive to women Parliament could look a job share scheme. She argued that many women, especially in the public sector, manage to juggle advancing their careers with looking after young children by opting in to a job share position, so how about applying the idea to MP’s, divvying up the role so that one individual does the local constituency work and the other the Westminster role/varying combinations of the two?

2) How can we guarantee that the hard work Mr Speaker has put in to improving equality and Parliament outreach will be continued by his successor? This highly apt question had a very simple answer from Mr Bercow: we can’t. But on the plus side he plans on sticking around for a good few more years.

3) The selection process for MP’s is ridiculously expensive, requires a large amount of travelling and favours candidates with public speaking training and experience (i.e. private school or Ox-Bridge), what about a hardship fund and how about making the selection process as much about the person’s other abilities as it is about public speaking? Mr Bercow agreed with this statement but discussed the difficulties of getting either Parliament (and the public) to agree to putting a portion of tax payer’s money aside to help candidates of any party in dire financial need, or individual parties to put a portion of their funds towards an in party scheme.

At this point Mr Bercow was whisked off to his next appointment, already a little on the late side, and myself and the assembled audience were left to reflect on what had been said and what still needs to be done.

For me, I was personally genuinely impressed with Mr Bercow’s down to earth, often amusing approach to his role as speaker and his dedication to going out in to the community to engage with harder to reach groups. However, despite the leaps being made forward, I was left feeling that the fight for more women in Parliament is still an uphill struggle. Mr Speaker himself stated that just getting a nursery facility in place in Parliament came up against opposition and apathy, with many colleagues complaining ‘there’s nowhere we could put one’ (a statement proved glaringly untrue by the fact that there is now one in place). Likewise, the W.A.I.T.S Policy Forum speakers all depicted an image of local party politics that really needs to make more of an effort to become more approachable for women in ways that really would not require too much effort on their half (coffee mornings, mentoring, family friendly event times, fairer selection process). 93 years on from when the first female MP took her seat the proportion of women in Parliament remains stubbornly at just 22%. Only 37 out of Birmingham’s 120 local councillors are female. I’m very glad that someone is standing up for common sense policies to get more women involved in the political process but there’s a heck of a lot more work still to be done.

Fortunately the W.A.I.T.S Policy forum speakers seem more than willing to take on the challenge. Sharon, Ally and Nura are all carrying on their fantastic work either by running for political roles themselves or helping many other women discover their potential and take on greater roles of responsibility. On top of this in the post event networking several of the audience members declared their intention to get more involved in local politics and even go for candidate selection before the next local election too. We need more dedicated and inspiring women like these to keep building up the momentum and pushing for positive change in the UK. Luckily for us, if this event is anything to go by, we’ve got them in abundance.

H.B.

X

W.A.I.T.S. Women in Politics Event

So I haven't done any blog posts in a while, but it's not because I haven't been doing anything interesting; quite the contrary, it's been hectic. First up tomorrow morning I'm co-chairing a W.A.I.T.S Policy Forum event with the Speaker of the House of Commons, Rt. Hon. John Bercow MP. More details to follow after but, for now, here's  the press release for what's set to be a rather interesting event.

PRESS RELEASE

Women Acting In Today’ s Society ( WAITS)   is hosting a vist of  The Speaker of the House of Commons Rt Hon John Bercow MP   Friday May 25^th  

Speaker of the House Of Commons Rt Hon John Bercow MP will be visiting Women Acting in Today’s Society (WAITS) as part of an outreach visit to Birmingham and Dudley.

The speaker will be hearing from members of WAITS Policy Forum who have experience of being involved in local politics and the most recent Council elections. 

                         

The speaker Rt Hon John Bercow MP will also be speaking at the Football League Community Trust Annual Conference at the NEC, attending a session of the Dudley Youth Council, and delivering the Frank Foley Memorial Lecture in Stourbridge. 

House of Commons Speaker, Rt Hon John Bercow MP said: “WAITS is involved in crucial work building the leadership skills of local women and supporting women affected by domestic abuse. For all the progress made in recent years to increase female participation in politics, we still have a long way to go. I am very much looking forward to the WAITS event and hearing the personal experiences of women involved in politics”.

About Women Acting In Todays Society WAITS:

WAITS is a registered charity established in 1993. WAITS mission is to enable women from diverse communities within the West Midlands to develop themselves and others. WAITS two main areas of work are:

1. Empowering Women- building the leadership skills of local women to engage more effectively with other women, groups, networks, policy makers and service providers.

2.  Women’s Support and Development Services – supporting women affected by domestic abuse, in particular BAME and Chinese women, through advocacy, counselling and Accommodation

For more information Contact Marcia Lewinson WAITS CEO marcia@waitsaction.org

Why I'm Voting Yes to a Birmingham Mayor

*I would like to apologise in advance for any misspellings/not good writing style, I'm in my final year at uni and it's exam season so I've only given myself a brief break from revision to write this...the joys*

In just under 18 hours voting opens in the Birmingham Mayoral referendum. Luckily for me I know quite a lot about the Birmingham Mayoral debate; I’ve attended events, read blog posts and local news articles, met potential candidates and personally heard from both sides of the divide. The vast majority of citizens of Birmingham, however, haven’t. The first time that most people I know heard about it (apart from for those exposed to my incessant chatter on the subject) was when their polling cards arrived. As well as being a pretty bad failing on the half of the council who should, whether they want a mayor or not, be committed to encouraging democratic engagement in the city it has led to a significant amount of confusion, misapprehension and frustration amongst my friends and colleagues. So, rather than talking at unfortunate bystanders, filling up facebook and twitter feeds and generally driving my friends and family nuts I’ve decided to do a brief as possible blog on the one reason that, above all else, I think we should have a mayor: accountability.

As some of you may know and some may be surprised to find out the city council’s annual budget is approximately £3.5billion. This, given that the population of Birmingham is around 1,036,900, works out as roughly £3375 per citizen per year. This is a vast amount of money. Up until recently the budget was even bigger, £4billion a year. Can you name any of the 120 councillors who decide what this mindbogglingly vast sum gets spent on? I can’t.

There’s no doubt that Birmingham has not been using its resources entirely efficiently over the past few years. Take for example the Birmingham city council website: back in 2009 the original estimated cost of overhauling the outdated design and moving more services online (in order, in theory, to save money) was £580,000. The final cost, taking into account delays in getting services up and running, was an estimated £6million. And then the council announced plans to outsource 100 IT jobs to India (a number later cut down to around 55 due to public outrage).

Now, we move on the current plans for the Birmingham metro. Don’t get me wrong, a council project that will create an estimated 1,300 new jobs is a great idea. Paying £128million (£75.4million from the Department of Transport, £52.6million presumably from the council budget) to connect two stations that are a fifteen minute walk apart, isn’t. Especially since the only other places the metro currently goes are Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and Wednesbury (Wolverhampton being a 17minute train journey from New Street anyway). Call me crazy but this doesn't seem like the best possible use of public funds.

For every big spend in one area cuts have to be made elsewhere. As a keen women’s rights campaigner I’ve been shocked and horrified at the reduction in funds available for domestic abuse charities, especially when incidences of domestic violence have trebled over the last 18months (http://www.birminghampost.net/news/west-midlands-news/2012/04/30/number-of-domestic-violence-victims-in-birmingham-trebles-in-18-months-65233-30870775/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter). This is by no means the only area where cuts have been made but it serves to highlight my point: the way the council chooses to spend its budget really can change, and even save (or lose), lives.

Now, I haven’t highlighted these issues to condemn the city council: they have done a lot of good over the years and an elected Mayor will have just as much potential to cock up. The difference is if we don’t like what the Mayor does we will know who they are and we will be able to hold them accountable.

Right now we don’t know who is responsible for taking these decisions. If a Mayor messes up we’ll be able to identify the issue and vote them out at the next election. Councillors are essentially anonymous. We don’t really know who’s responsible for what. Mayors publish manifestos, councillors, for the most part, don’t. If Mayors breaks promises we know, if councillors do (if they made any promises in the first place), no one notices. We really need someone we can hold accountable when things go wrong so we can make damn sure that it does not happen again.

This might seem an oddly negative reason for electing a mayor, ‘we’ll know if they mess up’, but I think it is an important one and one that has not been largely touched on elsewhere in what I’ve read/heard so far. There are of course, many wholly positive reasons for voting ‘Yes’ tomorrow. These include, but are not limited to:

-        -   The Prime Minister is going to create a special cabinet for elected Mayors. If we have one they can gain influence in Westminster unheard of for our current city representatives and lobby for better provision for our city and the addressing of our cities issues. If we don’t, we won’t, where other cities will.

-        -  A Mayor will be mandated to represent the whole city, not just and individual ward, with a clear set of policies designed for the whole city, not just their immediate locality, so we can vote based on their plans for the city, not just the party they’re affiliated to.

However, rather than continue to vent my thoughts on this increasingly long  and disjointed blog post I will direct you to some other posts written by people who are much more articulate, and have a much better understanding of the Birmingham political scene than I do:

Marc Reeves on an elected mayor’s ability to provide a whole City Vision: http://www.thechamberlainfiles.com/elected-mayors-its-all-about-the-city-vision-stupid/

Kevin Johnson on the need to shake up the status quo: http://www.thechamberlainfiles.com/say-no-to-the-status-quo/

And in the interests of democracy the ‘No’ campaign website: http://www.votenotoapowerfreak.org.uk/

In conclusion I don’t believe an elected Mayor system is perfection itself. Personally I like the idea of so called ‘metro-mayors’ or regional Mayors that oversee the strategic development of regions, not just cities (something the West Midlands could definitely benefit from). However this is not on the cards and probably never will be unless we take this first step (that is if it ever is). An elected Mayor is not perfect, but it is a better system than the one we have now. As the saying goes ‘things don’t move unless you push them’. For me, an elected Mayor for Birmingham represents the first big step towards making local politics, well, interesting. Last year’s local election saw voter turnout in some constituencies of Birmingham drop as low as 23.9% (Ladywood, 2011) and our city is routinely ranked in the top 4 in the UK for high rates of unemployment. We need to reengage the citizens of this great city in politics, and we need a strong, visible leader to help tackle the issues we face strategically and on a city wide level, as well as representing us on a national or even international basis. And I believe that if we vote ‘Yes’ to a Birmingham Mayor tomorrow, we might just get it.

H.B.

x

Elite Professionals Archive: Tech Stars Under 30 - Hugh Hopkins and SO News

It's March! So it's time for my next article for http://eliteprofessionals.org/ on UK based young professionals. This time it's Hugh Hopkins and Selly Oak News. Are you from a Brummie business looking to target advertising at University of Birmingham Students? Give them a shout ;)

If there is one thing that my generation have had relentlessly drummed into them it’s the amazing potential of social media. Yet actually meeting young people who have turned this potential into a viable business is a surprisingly rare experience. This is where Hugh Hopkins and Selly Oak News come in.
Hugh (the one in the pink), was in the same halls of residence as I was in my first year at uni. He’s always struck me as a highly ambitious and capable future businessman, so it was no surprise to me when I heard that, together with co-founders Nick Day and Jonathan Craven, he had set up his own business. And, unlike many student businesses, it was going places.

Selly Oak News is an online platform for student news, media and opinion. It started out as a twitter feed and now, just over a year later, it’s a fully-fledged online service complete with a vast and ever growing following.Not bad for a bunch of university students.
So, eager to find out what’s next on the agenda, I caught up with Hugh earlier this week.

Tell us a bit about you and your background, what are your main interests and aspirations?
I’m in my third and final year at Birmingham University reading Business Management with Communications. In my first year I was elected the Entertainments Officer for my hall and it started a growing interest, as well as my confidence, in starting large projects and seeing them through. This also intertwined with my interest in the News and Media industry and how the internet is revolutionising the production and communication of content.

I have big aspirations, perhaps some of them are a little crazy and I’m cautious of actually listing them. I can say that it involves the creation of an international business.

In a few sentences, sum up what your company does and your role within it
SO News provides instant news tailored to University of Birmingham students on an interactive and unbiased platform. Nick Day, Jonathan Craven and I founded the business about a year ago and we’ve already managed to turn a profit. We each have specialised roles but mine is to run day to day operations of the news and just push the business forward.

Where did the idea for your company come from?
The idea came to us in a fast food shop. We were just chatting about Selly Oak and how information for students is fragmented and often out of date. Starting a news site to solve this seemed simple and since then the initial concept has grown significantly. We’ve created a platform on which we can create some truly great services and SO News is just the start.

What would you say has been your single greatest challenge in getting this far?
It’s hard to pinpoint a moment but at times it has been a challenge to keep momentum. All three of us are still students and apart from our own desire to create a great service there are very few reasons why we should start and run our own business.

What’s been your high point?
When we were awarded a £2,000 grant from Birmingham University’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation centre it transformed us into a serious business. It gave us a huge moral boost, meant we could invest in producing better content and organise ourselves as tangible business.

Where do you see you and your company in five years time?
The future of SO News is highly dependent on the next few months but we aim to be the most innovative source of high quality news and media. We would have established offices in Shoreditch and launched our side projects SO TV, SO Film and SO Music. We hope by then for SO news to have gained an international audience and we would be considering expansion outside of Europe. As for myself, remaining instrumental and innovating the business.

If you could give other budding professionals one piece of advice what would it be?
Be part of a business you enjoy.

For more information on Selly Oak News or to request some advertising space check out http://www.sonews.co.uk .

What's so great about a Young Mayor?

Well, as some of you probably know, I'm currently part of the UpRising Alumni Advisory Board's campaign to get a Birmingham Young Mayor. A couple of weeks ago we had an open letter published in the Birmingham Post and are now working on building up our campaign, sorting out our website (www.yestoabirminghamyoungmayor.wordpress.com) and scouting out potential supporters ready to set up a steering group. 

Now, right from the very first tweet about the possibility of creating a Young Mayor I've encountered a bit of cynicism - 'what's the point?' some asked 'it'll just be a waste of money'. I've got to admit, when I was first asked whether I thought campaigning to get a Birmingham Young Mayor was a good idea I was, shall we say, unconvinced too. ‘A Young Mayor?’ I thought, ‘Isn’t that just nominal role local councils employ to give them the appearance of tackling ‘youth issues’ without actually having to bother engaging with the people and problems?’. But rather than just shoot down the idea I agreed to do some research and, much to my surprise, I’ve found myself a convert.

So, for all you other sceptics out there here are three excellent reasons why having a Young Mayor is a great idea:

Kieza Silveira de Sousa,

 Young Mayor for Lewisham 2010/11

1)      They have real influence over the Youth Agenda

Young Mayor’s already exist in the London Boroughs of Lambeth, Lewisham, Newham and Tower Hamlets as well as in North Tyneside in Newcastle. The age range of Young Mayors varies from location to location but generally falls between 14 and 18 years old. In each case Young Mayor’s function as far more than just a nominal role and many have real influence over the youth agenda. In Newham, for instance, the Young Mayor and their team have an annual budget of £25,000 to spend handling youth issues. Newham has a population of around 240,100. Birmingham has a population of approximately 1,036,900, over four times that of the London Borough. The equivalent budget, then, of a Birmingham Young Mayor could be in the region of £100,000, giving them real potential to make a difference to the lives of young people in the city.

Now, given that if we are successful in getting a Birmingham Young Mayor we don’t actually know what budget they will be given by the powers that be it’s also important to make clear that a Young Mayor’s influence goes beyond just their financial resources. In Lewisham the Young Mayor is regularly consulted on a wide range of issues from regeneration of the area, to homelessness and the borough’s customer service strategy to electoral services. The Young Mayor’s voice counts and they have a real say in the council’s decision making process.

       Wilf Petherbridge, (former Young Mayor of Lewisham)

2)      They have a vast support network

Young Mayor’s don’t act alone. In Lewisham, for instance, the Young Mayor is supported by a Deputy Young Mayor and 25 Young Advisors. There is also a Young Citizens Panel consisting of over 600 members who discuss issues on online platforms and are regularly consulted on various subjects and invited to attend an assortment of events and training opportunities throughout the year. There are also two full-time adult members of staff in the Young Mayor’s Office including the Advisor to the Young Mayor who supports the Young Mayor, co-ordinates their diary and helps them achieve their goals during their time in office. In short, far from being just a random young person sitting in the back of council meetings, a Young Mayor is surrounded by a vast support network which aids them in their bid to improve the lives of young people in their area.

Nahimul Islam, Young Mayor of Tower Hamlets

3)      It’s a great way for getting young people involved in politics

Right now most under 18’s don’t really care about politics, and why would they? They can’t vote and rarely see MP’s and decision makers that they can relate to. In recent years we’ve seen a worrying decline in the proportion of citizens voting in local and general elections. If we wish to continue to say we live in a democracy where the views of the many, not just the engaged minority, are heard something must be done to reverse this trend.

Young Mayoral elections generally have a voter turnout of around 50%. This is well above many local election turnout rates and even many full Mayoral elections. In many areas all local residents aged 11-18 can vote. Most voting is done through schools but provision is made for young residents who either go to school outside of the area or are not in education to use postal voting.

In Lewisham the elections are run in a way which mirrors adult elections with voting booths, ballot boxes and electoral staff stationed at each school and college during voting day. Their Young Mayor elections also take place during Local Democracy week each year and Voter registration, for 16-18 year olds, is promoted at the same time.

The aim is that, through getting young people interested in and used to taking part in voting whilst still at school, they will continue this interest into their adult lives.

On another level Young Mayor schemes offer a fantastic opportunity for a selection of young people to take on real roles of responsibility within our city's decision making bodies. It gives young people a chance to become part of the establishment and a chance for their peers to see figureheads that they can actually relate to. By getting young people involved in politics in this way we hope to see the Young Mayors of today become the Mayors, MP’s and Councillors of tomorrow.

Sir Steve Bullock, Mayor of Lewisham, 2006

For more information on existing Young Mayor models check out:

www.ymn.org.uk

Or for information on the Lewisham model:

http://www.b-involved.org.uk/

or

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ezn_nr3K2q-6v2dqRyQS83UB-yHP4XGzdAyawWGqKGI/edit

Given the increasing momentum of the Yes To Birmingham Mayor Campaign now is most definitely the time to push for a Birmingham Young Mayor too. If you’d like to get involved, join the steering group or just offer some advice or support please email us at yestoabirminghamyoungmayor@gmail.com.

  

Since London already has four Young Mayors to its name isn’t it about time that Birmingham, Europe’s youngest city and largest local authority stepped up to the mark?

H.B

x

Elite Professionals Archive: Tech Stars Under 30 - Daniel Blyden

Right, so not content with writing for one online magazine whilst in the final year of my degree, working part time, having a placement with WAITS, sitting on the Birmingham UpRising Alumni Advisory Board and running a little (increasingly neglected) vintage etsy shop, I've also started writing for Elite Professionals.org.

Elite Professionals (http://eliteprofessionals.org/) is a Philadelphia based online magazine targeted at, and written by, successful professionals and elite professionals of the future. It's only been set up recently so is still finding its feet a little but it's already beginning to draw in some interesting content and viewing figures and founder Karen Ammond hopes to continue to build on these early promising signs to eventually turn it into an international professional news and networking tool.

At the moment I'm writing on UK based young entrepreneurs. I've met a fair few at uni and through my involvement with the UpRising Leadership Programme and I thought it was about time I did something good for me (i.e. continue to develop my writing skills and CV) whilst also doing something good for them, increasing their international exposure, doing a little bit to help out the kind of entrepreneurial talent our recession-haunted country desperately needs.

First up on my list of talented business-folk is Daniel Blyden, and here's my article on him and his fabulous company YEP Media:

As we all know, starting up a successful creative agency in the highly competitive modern media market is not easy. Add to this starting up a business when you’re fresh out of university and fresh out of substantial capital and it’s pretty darn difficult. But this is precisely what Daniel Blyden, co-founder of YEP Media has done, and he’s just 23.

YEP Media was founded in 2010 by three university graduates with a boat load of talent and drive and the business know-how to spot the growing demand for independent media agencies. Together they create the kind of top quality authentic content that their clients recognise resonates with a younger audience in a way that the hyper-glossed campaigns of some of the more substantial agencies no longer do.

Just two years on the Birmingham UK based company already boasts clients as diverse as the ACS Vocal Academy and the Birmingham Say It Online Campaign. It also runs its own live music night, Above and Beyond, at one of the biggest student clubs in in the city, the HMV Institute. And they are just getting started.

Dan himself is a full of surprises. I first met him through the UpRising leadership programme on which we were both participants. UpRising is aimed at helping young people find issues in their community, then equipping them with the knowledge, skills and professional networks to help them tackle them.

At first I knew him as a guy who cared passionately about his community and in fighting social problems. It was only further in to the programme that I realised that as well as being a community minded campaigner, Dan is also a fiercely capable and talented business man with an iron determination that will, without a doubt, see him accomplish a heck of a lot in the future.

To find out what’s been happening with YEP Media I caught up with Daniel and interrupted his busy schedule with some quick questions about how his business is developing and where he hopes to be in the future.

So, tell us a bit about you and your background, what are your main interests and aspirations?
‘My background is one of many conquests in the management and production of creative projects and events. I completed a degree in media and communications specialising in visual communications and communications management and I use these skills for a wide range of things, from marketing and promoting businesses to working on delivering events.’

Where did the idea for your company come from?
‘It was a collective effort when I finished university with a couple of friends. We wanted to start a creative communications agency since we were already operating as one for our final project at university. We then developed the company into what it is today.’

How would you describe YEP Media and your role within it?
‘It is a creative agency that provides creative media production and consulting services for the development of online media brands. The company is in its start up stages so my role basically spans across all aspects of the work, from marketing communications to finance and delivering/producing the work for clients. Thankfully I am not alone as a founder and so I am able to work more on the marketing and communications for the company which is where my strengths lie.’

What would you say has been your single greatest challenge in getting this far?
‘Keeping a consistent amount of work coming in has been challenging as a small start-up because when there are 3 people within a company to start off with it can strain the resources when there is less work to be done. However, we manage this by understanding each others’ needs and allowing each other to have room to deal with other commitments.’

What’s been your high point?
‘When we paid ourselves for the first time!’

Where do you see you and your company in five years time?
‘In five years time YEP Media should be in a position where it is fully staffed and can run without my full time commitment and so I will be able to go off and work on other ventures.’

If you could give other budding professionals one piece of advice what would it be?
‘Develop that ‘staying power’ and be resilient despite the setbacks you might get. ‘A setback is only a setup for a comeback.’’

If you’re interested in checking out some of YEP Media’s portfolio have a look athttp://yepmedia.co.uk/ they’ve got some serious talent, and they’re not afraid to use it.

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.