Our Lib Dem Democratic Deficit

I am on the whole delighted today; amazed that a man, whom I knew had something good going for him from the moment I met him, that I drove about for a day in the back of my car during his party leadership campaign, is now Deputy Prime Minster. I suspect both car and driver have improved in quality somewhat! Well done, Nick! Hooray!

However, there is one big fly in the ointment for me and that is what looks to be like the lack of women in this new coalition government. An historic, new type of government and it’s still white, middle class men taking almost every plum job. The exception, as just announced is Theresa May, who seems to have two jobs Home Secretary and Women and Equalities. That to me, suggests that she’s the going to be the only female cabinet minster; let’s hope I’m wrong.

Oh dear!

Of course, you can’t put many more women into the Cabinet if you don’t have enough female MPs in the first place.

The number of Conservative female MPs has gone up but the number of Labour and Lib Dem female MPs has gone down. The only new female Liberal Democrat MP that we have is the wonderful Tessa Munt. However, Tessa has been standing for election for many, many years, starting off in the Ipswich by-election in 2001. So, it has to be said that despite the very best efforts of the Campaign for Gender Balance and Women Liberal Democrats that we have made no progress, in terms of outcomes in getting new women into parliament.

And you can’t get more women into parliament if you don’t have enough female PPCs in the first place. We didn’t even manage to get more women standing as PPCs: only 22% in 2010, compared to 23% in 2005.

Of course, the issues in why we don’t have more women as PPCs are structural – politics does not fit with the reality of many women’s lives, let alone that the whole thing seems to be a testosterone fuelled slanging match. Plus, the way to progress through the Liberal Democrats and get to the point that you can stand in a serious seat, also discourages many other potential female PPCs. We make a difficult journey, even more difficult!

I know that all PPCs make sacrifices and compromises; but I rather suspect that there are more compromises to be made by women, especially those with young families. Their male counterparts don’t have it easy, just easier.

This is a real shame as our policies that impact women are really good and we have made definite progress there.

As Ceri Goddard from the Fawcett Society said in the Guardian at the end of April:

"They have the most radical proposals of all the parties on issues such as equal pay audits and parental leave, but they haven't acknowledged the huge democratic deficit – their radicalism doesn't extend to challenging the status quo."

Nick Clegg has given us another election to sort it out; I hope that we don’t need another election I hope we get to grips with the fact that ‘encouragement’ and ‘training’ is not going to change the game and am sure that we will need to be far more radical in addressing this problem than we have ever been so far!

Posted via web from jochristiesmith's posterous

Political Wives

What a blinder! Miriam Gonzales Durantez is not giving up her very important post at DLA Piper to follow her husband around on the campaign trail; this is great news as it breaks the convention that if you are a woman married to a politician, that is your primary identity and everything else you do comes second

Even Mumsnet thinks it's great that Miriam has drawn the line at weekend campaigning only.

So, in insisting that she's not to be an electoral asset, she in fact becomes an electoral asset. One where principles and political strategy helpfully complement each other!

Parliament finally realises that women with young children work there too!

After 20 years of campaigning, it seems that parliament has finally been persuaded that the shame of having a shooting gallery but no childcare facility is its shame!

40 places in a parliamentary nursery doesn't seem alot to me, but it is a start and hopefully will make it easier for parents with young children, and particularly their mothers, to take a more proportionate part in our democracy and government.

It's a small step but an important step in the change of culture that we so desperately need in the practice of our politics. Hooray for Speaker Bercow and all the campaigners!

Members of the Speaker’s Conference

The membership of the Speakers conference that been set up to sort out the inequalities of representation in the House of Commons of anybody who isn't a white, able bodied man is out:

Name, Constituency, Party

Miss Anne Begg (Vice-Chairman), Aberdeen South, Labour
Ms Diane Abbott, Hackney North & Stoke Newington, Labour
John Bercow, Buckingham, Conservative
Mr David Blunkett, Sheffield, Brightside, Labour
Angela Browning, Tiverton & Honiton, Conservative
Mr Ronnie Campbell, Blyth Valley, Labour
Mrs Ann Cryer, Keighley, Labour
Mr Parmjit Dhanda, Gloucester, Labour
Andrew George, St Ives, Liberal Democrat
Miss Julie Kirkbride, Bromsgrove, Conservative
Dr William McCrea, South Antrim, Democratic Unionist
David Maclean, Penrith & The Border, Conservative
Fiona Mactaggart, Slough, Labour
Anne Main, St Albans, Conservative
Jo Swinson, East Dunbartonshire, Liberal Democrat
Mrs Betty Williams, Conwy, Labour

I shall do some digging next week, to see what sort of Speaker's Conference it is (are the people on it conservative with a small 'c' or will be have AWL before the year is out!) and whether we should expect any change.

Tories have a good old barny about women candidates...

I picked up this discussion on Conservative Home via CiF. I have to say that much of the debate around diversity and why women are not being picked is far more sophisticated that ours. I might also add that they are having a debate. There's always a few 'best person for the job' commenters but many of the people commenting do not view it as just a coincidence or a naturally occurring phenomenon that 85% of selections in the last few months have been of men. Most refreshingly they are actually having a proper conversation about it. We always get stuck on the discussion around positive discrimination, collectively condemn it and then go off to think about something else. And so, not much changes...

There is on the ConservativeHome comments thread serial recognition that the problem is not with women or ethnic minorities being good enough but that the role of candidate (and in their case MP) does not attract good quality women and minorities. That this debate is taking place with the arguments in place, tells me that on the path to organisational cultural change they are further on than we are. Or at least they are on Conservative Home.

For example, they talk about the roles that women are not occupying needing to change in order to attract high quality women who have choices in their life and may make decisions using different criteria on what to do with their life than their quality male peers.

I know that, of all the things I do in terms of voluntary or community work, I make the most difference in being a school governor or on the Executive and chairing working groups on my borough police consultative groups. These are groups that are keen to utilise my experience and skills developed whilst running my own rather successful business and not treat me like a ingénue just because I haven't been delivering focuses for the last 15 years. Many of my friends and family think it would be a much more logical thing for me to focus on those activities.

Still, I am the PCA Rep on the Diversity Engagement Group and I'm looking forward to see how we can make real and lasting cultural changes to the way we do things in the Lib Dems.

My logic, by the way, for sticking with the Lib Dems and continuing to campaign within the party for real diversity is that I can make a far bigger impact on society and equality by helping to sort out the problems around representation in my chosen political party. Just sticking with the current system and making sure I am head and shoulders above my male peers to try and get selected for a seat, and then keeping my head down and quiet, will not make it easier for those coming up with or behind me.

I don't want us to be doing a collective shrug of the shoulders any more when we discover that women and ethnic minorities aren't putting themselves forward for roles at every and any level of the party. I want us to work out why and change ourselves, so they do.

This evening the DEG Target Setting Working Group is having its first meeting. We need to make sure we set targets not just for candidate selections but for MPs, councillors, party chairs, federal committee members, organisers, local party committee members, conference reps and party spokespeople and members. Because we have to start measuring our success by outcomes rather than being hamstrung by a process that we are sure is fair and does not overtly discriminate but does not produce the outcomes we need. Our process may be a work of liberal democratic art but it is not working.

And before you all fall off your chairs, target setting is aspirational, it is not about setting mandatory quotas.

The Speakers Conference that was agreed last Wednesday is going to be very instructive. If you read the debate and look at it's purpose it is clear that the time when we can leave the political parties to sort their own houses out in their own way has gone already. It is being taken out of our hands and parliament itself has decided to do something about it.

Any idea the outcome of the Conference is going to be a commendation of what we are already doing and just a exhortation to try harder would be a naive one.

Nothing is off limits

MPs today have a free on whether to hold a Speakers Conference into whether MPs are a 'narrow, self serving elite'. A whole year to work that out! Surely not? Blimey I could give them something pretty substantial in just 24 hours and my daily fee is far less than a bunch of MPs!! Only just though ;-)

Seriously thought it is good to see that the Speakers Conference I first got wind of in July looks to be coming to something. So much talk on diversity and equalities in parliament (you know that bit with the power) is just hot air.

Of course Harriet Harman is thinking of gender, race, sexuality and disability imbalances but Michael White makes a very interesting comment about the white working class in his article on CiF. But I guess you have to prioritise and my guess is that there are more white working class men in parliament than say, ethnic minorities in total whether from the working or middle or elite and there are definitely more than ethnic minority women - of whom we have to our shame as a democracy only two (Dawn Butler and Diane Abbots) and they sit on the Labour benches. (there's also the thorny issue of whether you class is something branded on you by birth and something you can't change - which I don't agree with).

I do hope that MPs do the right thing today...there are still an awful lot of Tories who think that Parliament being male and white is nothing more than a coincidence (or perahps, just the way it should be).

My eyebrows were raised, however, by the idea that Patrick Wintour suggests that

"The conference could prompt legislation including a requirement for political parties to maintain all-women and all-black shortlists for parliamentary candidates".

I can't see MPs going for that en masse; but remember, our MPs voted for the legislation to allow all women or all ethnic minority shortlists to exist within the context of equal opportunities legislation, to be extended. The average Lib Dem activist may be outraged by them but not all of the parliamentary party is.

But I do thing that Harriet Harman is right when she says:

"It is not just about how can people think we are a fair, open and representative democracy if we just do not look like that, but also the fact that we cannot have sensible debates on policy. We cannot sensibly discuss the veil (in the Commons) when there is no Muslim woman MP; it was impossible to discuss domestic violence when there was 97% men in the Commons.

"So this is about changing the agenda for debate, as well as changing public perception of the Commons."

Certainly this is why I think that diversity is so important - it is not because of the way people look but for the different understanding and priorities that they place on things. It's not just about getting more women in but making sure that those women have between them a broad experience of life in the UK today.

She goes on to say:

"Nothing is off-limits. It is potentially a very radical, historic decision - it moves the issue right up the agenda, and puts something that used to be dismissed as political correctness right to the centre of the political agenda. If the Commons is not representative, it is nothing. This is about parliament saying 'we are not OK to go on as we are'."

Well, I'm not going to disagree with that..I just hope that MPs with their free vote don't disagree with her either and vote for the Speakers Conference. Fingers crossed, eh?

It looks like identity politics is not going away

In The independent today, the Tories are using a consultancy called Pretty Little Head to help them attract more female voters. Well, it’s pretty brave for a start to actually build in irony to your own company name!! Although I’m pretty sure that many won’t get it!

But at least the Tories are trying something slightly less offensive to women than the Republicans – who thought that by just putting up a woman, any woman, even Sarah Palin, the 17 million women who voted for Hillary Clinton in the democratic primaries would switch their vote just like that.

No, gaining the female vote, if there is such a thing, is not just a matter of putting up female candidates. As I’ve mentioned before, being female is never just enough to get my vote, you have to do things that will benefit women as well.

So, back to the Pretty Little Head: well, having a quick look at their website, I’m not too offended. As a passionate sceptic of the concept of biological determinism and a strong believer in the power of nurture or socialisation (as it was called over 20 years ago when I took my ‘O’ level in sociology) I absolutely do not agree with their assertion that some of the differences between men and women are inherent gender (sic) differences. In fact, I am slightly worried that they don’t actually understand that gender, the social construct described by masculinity or femininity and sex, which is of course male or female, are different things.

I believe that the two socially constructed genders are different and that we are all socialised to a greater or lesser extent to conform to those genders. I think for some people it is easier than others. Those women of us who possess very strong, traditionally masculine behavioural traits (like logic, assertiveness, confidence) can find it very frustrating to have people make the assumption that they are not there just because we happen to have certain physical characteristics. Where as some men, who wouldn’t be able to recognise a logical argument if it came up and bashed them on the nose, only have to put on a suit to persuade people that there are in fact a very smart, stable and logical ‘businessman’.

Still although we all have masculine and feminine traits and very few of us manage to completely buck all our socialisation we get from our parents, our schools, our workplace, the telly etc, etc. Hence you get research like this that shows women know that society doesn’t like them asking for more and so they tend not to. And hence I’m still wearing impossibly high heels to work every day.

In addition, even if a majority of us do not naturally conform to these gender stereotypes, we are treated as if we do. We are stereotyped: blonde hair, must be ditzy: soft voice, must be meek; confident woman, must be a bitch. And because we are after all human beings the way we are treated impacts on the way we behave.

All of which means, that although I don’t agree with these two women that differences between men and women are rooted in biology, I do believe that men and women often respond to different things on the basis of how successful societal norms have been in determining acceptable behaviour. I think that because masculinity says the zero sum game is good and most politicians are men who have been socialised to think that masculinity is good, then we have an assumption that the zero sum game is the best; when instead, if we were to take a more feminine approach, perhaps we would not think that. And perhaps the world would be a better place for us all and not just those with established power and money.

Hence I think that any political party is well advised to look at how they can appeal to those with a more ‘feminine’ outlook and approach to life whether or not they happen to be male or female. Not just because it will probably attract new voters but because it will make the world a better place: for men as well as for women.

So, my guess is that identity politics is here to stay and we in the Lib Dems should ignore it at our peril. The fact that the Tories are looking at it already doesn’t automatically mean it’s a shallow idea.

Can Sarah Palin be good for women?

I’ve picked up, via CIF America, on a very interesting blog compiled with material from women, both Democrat and Republican from across America called Women Against Sarah Palin. Apparently, to my great relief, Sarah Palin does not represent the every day ‘Hockey Mom’ that she says that she does. Phew! Although I’m still not sure what a ‘Hockey Mom’ is and I know that’s only because I haven’t been paying proper attention.

I have struggled to describe my feelings about Sarah Palin being selected to join McCain on the Republican ticket. What is not surprising is that she and I agree on practically nothing, apart from what constitutes a flattering pair of glasses. Her glasses may end up being the most popular thing about her.

So, I was never going to find much common ground with the anti-choice, pseudo feminist (boy, is she suffering from false consciousness!!) Republican VP choice. No, Sireee!

But, my real interest is not really in the lack of common political ground that she and I share but in the impact that a serious female vice presidential candidate will have on women, women in politics and any increase in women’s power.

Personally, a candidate being a woman has never been enough to secure my vote; she still has to be good enough. I am aware, though, that what and who I might consider the ‘best’ candidate and the ‘good enough’ candidate may be different from other people’s views. I suspect that my selection criteria are not all that traditional.

And I still think, on any set of criteria, it is far too easy for a mediocre man to win over a good woman in politics. It is my experience in work and politics that you have to work much harder and smarter to be taken seriously as a woman than you do as a man. I long for the day when there as many mediocre women in politics and boardrooms as there are men – then we will know we have real equality!

And even before you get to the point of trying to be taken seriously, there are still many de facto barriers to entry and participation and, let’s face it, good old fashioned prejudice. This ensures that we only attract and put a tiny proportion of the talented women out there into positions of real power. We are much better at discerning talented men from mediocre men than we are discerning talented women from mediocre men.

But would having a female VP be good for women in general? Would her breaking the glass ceiling as a serious VP candidate be good? In the same way that I believe Hillary being the first serious candidate for presidential nomination, has been good for women? In the way that Condoleezza Rice going around the world frowning at male presidents and leaders from all over the world has provided a role model for young black women? Whatever their politics, you have to admit that just having them on, doing their stuff on the TV in the background must impact the way people think about women’s abilities, surely?

Or would the fact that she has been pulled in as a vapid symbol, lacking in experience, knowledge and so lacking in any real comprehension of the complexities of life that she looks for her answers in religious dogma? And like Margaret Thatcher, it is perfectly possible for a woman in power to be no friend of other women. I was worried that because she is one of the most high profile women in the world all her personal failings would be translated into women’s failings, using the same logic as this rather brilliant cartoon from xkcd! (via Feministing)

This has been my major concern. Because she is not good enough, because she is a sort of anti-role model, I’m terrified that all women will be tarred with her brush.

And then I have also struggled with some of the sexism that has been meted out to her. Sexism that is flung at her may just stick on us all. Each time one woman suffers from sexism, we all do; whatever side we’re on.

So, ‘consternation’ is how I would best describe my feelings about Sarah Palin. One of the contributors to the women against Sarah Palin blog says:

“I am all about women stepping forward and taking our rightful place among the leadership of this great nation. However, not this woman, not this time”.

But surely, if we want women in power, we have to accept that we won’t always get to choose our favourite women, like when democracies choose governments and political parties that we ourselves wouldn’t choose? You can’t just throw out democracy because you don’t like the choices being made and perhaps you can’t just decide to wait for women to be in power until one comes along that you can agree with.

Urgh! I am in a dilemma and in a bind and what I really want to know is what sort of heuristic is Sarah Palin being (see the talented Mr Stockley for an explanation of that one!).

What will, come November 5^th, whether she is in the White House or not, be the gut feeling that Sarah Palin’s candidacy speaks to, the short cut that she helps us make?

Does the voter who does not have the time or inclination to sit down and look at policies, or will young people only just starting to become politically aware, look at her and think that it is reasonable and normal for women to be in positions of power and if she can do it so, then so can any woman.

Or, will the most memorable thing about the first serious female VP candidate be that is she a token woman only there because of her ability to procreate and still look good and the Republican’s cynical ploy to pick up the female voters who wanted Hillary to be the first woman president in the US? Will people think that we’d be better off with a more experienced man? Does she undermine not only women’s candidacy but also their role as voters?

BBC picks up on the NYT Blogher fiasco

The BBC's iPM programme has picked up on the furore taking place on the net about NYT putting an article about the Blogher conference in the fashion and style part of the paper. Everyone from the Huffington Post to the BBC is now on the case! Hooray!

Wha'ts more, the NYT have been dealing with the complaints in a particularly gauche manner.

And why am I telling you about this again? Because it 'twas me that wrote into the iPM programme to tell them about the indignation springing up all over the blogosphere!

BBC's iPM programme on Saturday evenings is a spin off from the PM programme and picks up on stories from its listeners and bloggers writing in to alert them. Jennifer Tracey the reporter who picked up the story has blogged about it, and if you think it's one that should b followed up then please go and add your comments and thoughts about how women's blogging is treated by the mainstream media.

Women blog more than men but it seems are still relegated to the ghetto of the fashion pages when it comes to talking about it; why is that?

Watch this space..

...no, this space, where I've asked the BBC's iPM to look into the gender gap in political blogging and why women's blogging events are relegated to the fashion pages of the New York times.

The original NYT article is here, and ensuing furore can be found here, here, here and here.

We're looking for female political bloggers in the wrong place...

..because when the New York Times writes about women and blogging they put it in the Style and Fashion section, not business or politics!!!!!!!!

Hat Tip to The F-Word, who tipped Every Dot Connects, who picked up the 'story' from The Brand Box.

As Every Dot Connects says:

"Well, hello! Yes, there’s a glass ceiling. And instead of addressing the question, the New York Times editors are part of the problem. A story about men who blog, especially if they had built the kind of powerhouse network the BlogHer folks have, would have run in the business or technology section of the newspaper. But women’s accomplishments in the blogosphere are celebrated in Fashion and Style"

FFS etc, etc, etc

Why we need women to be in power...

…and working in journalism*, and the police, the army and the courts and more or less anywhere. And I mean In positions of power not just support.

This is an excellent article by Linda Grant on Comment is Free.

She is talking about her work in investigating claims of mass rape in Bosnia during the Balkans Conflict. She identifies it was the first time that rape was generally recognised as a weapon of war at the same time that the war was going on and that it was women being involved that made that happen: She says:

“What was different in Croatia and Bosnia was that this was the first war that had been monitored by women's organisations, which received reports and collected data.

It was also, perhaps, the first war in which women were, in increasingly large numbers, gaining high profile positions in journalism. After the piece came out, I was contacted by Veronica Waddley, then features editor of the Telegraph (now editor of the Evening Standard)”

I know that many people say that it doesn’t matter what gender or race a person is, they can still represent all humanity. And in theory, I agree. I wouldn’t like to think that I would discriminate in my compassion for others, on the basis or their gender or race.

However, I note that in practice, that it just doesn’t work like that; it has needed women getting into positions of power to start recognising that rape is used as a weapon of war. It did take the increases (however paltry) to the number women in parliament in 1997 to bring in some of the flexible working, maternity and childcare legislation and provision over the last 11 years.

So, although in theory it doesn’t matter what groups are in power and what their gender is, in practice is seems to. This is why diversity is so important. Diversity is important, to have not just a woman’s experience but both men and women’s experience when making decisions on things.

To me this is so important that I am not prepared to wait until there is equality ‘naturally’. I don’t think that will ever happen; we need to rebalance it in women’s favour.

I appreciate, some men out there may not feel particularly advantaged: there are always those who have the merit of being the right colour, the right class, having the right amount of money and having gone to school with the right people. However, as can be shown through the numbers, the biggest advantage there is in politics, in business, in anywhere where power exists, is to be male.

And I can’t see how this is going to change, given the stagnation that has happened in the numbers of women being elected into parliament without some form of quotas. In the Liberal Democrats we do in fact have gender quotas for most bodies, from the FE & FPC, to selection committees, shortlists to PR election lists; why do we refuse to bring them in for the most vital, the most likely to effect positive change for millions of women? Why do we not have them for winnable parliamentary seats? Why do we not have a good long look at how we define the various roles in the party, especially those of PPC and agent to make them fit women’s lives more easily instead of insisting that women’s lives fit them?

In the Labour party they do use All Women Shortlists (AWS) and their women’s organisations have real strength within the party, are taken seriously and listened to by both men and women.

It always makes me very sad to see how few men turn up to the usually very interesting fringes that Women Liberal Democrats put on; we’re supposed to believe that they are able to represent all our experiences but they don’t both to do the most simple things to find out what they are.

Even in the Tory Party, Cameron at least goes on Woman’s Hour and sounds like he wants women to join and take part. I listened to the Women’s House podcast when he was on a few months ago – I tell you, he was very compelling! When are our leaders going to be going on Women’s Hour asking for the listeners to get involved?

Nick Clegg has said that if we don’t sort it out within two parliaments then we are going to have to look at AWS again. Well, from the data that the Electoral Reform Society has come up with that’s not going to happen in the next parliament so that only leaves one more. Why wait for the inevitable? Why wait another parliament of nothing changing when bringing forward change would make a real difference for millions of women’s lives? Why should all that be sacrificed for the sake of the ambitions of 30 odd male approved candidates? I know that the sacrifice of the individual for the group does not fit with our liberal values but I think we are cutting off our nose to spite our face if we don’t do this. I truly believe that more diversity will lead to better lives for all.

I’m very interested to see what the newly incepted Speakers Conference comes up with; I do hope it is going to deliver real action and not just wishful thinking! I’m also looking forward to hearing a bit more about what the Bones Commission in the Lib Dems has to say about sorting this problem out. I’m kind of hoping that it will and that will explain why Nick has been so quiet on this topic over the last 7 months.

*How many lobby correspondents are women, by the way…have you counted recently? Quite a few national newspapers don’t have any women reporting from the press gallery. I went to a press gallery lunch the other week that Nick spoke at and I’m trying very hard to remember but I don’t think there were any questions by women and was told that most of the women in the room were not in fact journalists but invited as the guests of journalists (as I was). So a lot of men asking other men questions about things that interest men.




A plea for more women

to stand for Federal Party Committees.

Along with various other things, this note came through the post from the Women Liberal Democrats. I was rather taken with its to the point and concise argument. so, I have TYPED IT OUT(!!!) below. And added some links so that you can easily see what they're on about.

The number of women seeking election to the Federal Policy and Federal Executive committees has declined in the recent past. As a result the responsibility of ensuring that a female viewpoint is expressed falls very heavily on just a few women. Is this fair? The women who get elected do a great job, but they really can't be expected to cover everything. The Party constitution provides for a quota of elected women on the committees - if sufficient numbers of women are nominated. In addtion to the members who are elected by conference representatives there are also nominated members on all Federal Committees. The maority of these nominated members are men, which means that the committees always have a predominately male perspective reflected in the decisions they make.

The elections are held every two years and 2008 is such a year.

Will you stand, or find another woman to stand?

You don't have to be an expert.

The year starts Janaury 1st. The committees meet several times a year and the period of election is two years.

Members also have the opportunity to participate in Working Groups on particular policy issues.

The list of members for these committees can be viewed on the party website, please take a look, see how few women are really at the heart of the decision making process of the Liberal Democrats'

From my calculations, only 21% of the Federal Executive are female and 22.3% on the Federal Policy Committee are female. The commonly held view is that it takes at least 30% of any group to be female before any change in culture takes place.

Women make up 40% of all liberal Democrat members.

The Federal Finance & Administration committee is better with 25% of it's membership as women but really this committee is key - if you want to know where the power lies, then yo have to look to who has control over the money. It is clear that in the Lib Dems, it is men who have control over the moeny.

The Federal Conference committee does best of all, with 33% of the memeberhip female, which when you take out the non-voting members of the committee rises to 40%. Which is exactly in line with the propotion of Liberal Democrats that are women...hooray!

Now, I would say, that if you have decided that being a PPC is not for you on account of wanting some sort of life over the next 1o or 12 years, then this might be an alternative, that is slightly more sustainable.

After all, this is where all the money is held...money like the Rowntree Fun that was given to us to help increase our diversity in terms of sex and colour!

It'll also be an interesting couple of years as the Bones Commission is implemented.

So, I would encourage all women to stand for these elections. I'm going to!!

Well done WLD for bringing it to our attention!

Why can't politics be more like the church?

Less than 15 years since the introduction of women priests, 1 in 4 vicars are now women. At that rate in less than 15 years 50% of vicars will be women. A statistic that was a total surprise to me as I listened to Woman's Hour, on the way to the office this morning. They will reflect the community that they work in.

Why, therefore, have women found it so hard to make a breakthrough in politics? In 90 years we have only managed to ensure 19% of MPs are women, we have plateaued for the last 11 years, and as I mentioned in my post yesterday, according to the Electoral Reform Society, if the Tories get in we will be going backwards.

Have all the women missing from politics become vicars instead?

No real chance of electing more women into Parliament at the next election

I'm sorry if I'm being a bit slow as this joyous titbit of news (not) first came out from the Electoral Reform Society last week, but I was jet lagged and clearly missed it.

But this is terrible!!

Unless Labour get a 2% increase in their majority (excuse me while I fall off my chair laughing)we won't see any real increase in women in Parliament at all. in fact, even if Labour do get an increase, the increase in women is only by 3 percentage points!!

If the Tories get any sort of majority, whether working or not then the number of women in parliament will fall by about 8 from 2005. And the trend has already started, as we have been replacing female MPs with male MPs in by elections since 2005.

I remember a couple of years ago chatting with one of my local activist colleagues about the all too slow increase in women coming into parliament. He told me that it was going in the right direction and in any case, it was going to be an exponential increase from then on in.

This is clearly not the case and it wasn't the case then.

As Ken Ritchie fromthe Electoral Reform Society says:

“Which ever way you spin it, the next election simply cannot prove a watershed moment for women in politics. Progress has always been hard fought, and the parties are simply not picking their battles.

“1997 was in many ways a false dawn for equality. In the last decade where we’ve needed concerted effort, we’ve seen stagnation. The modest numbers of women in parliament have been taken as a permanent breakthrough. In place of an upward curve we have seen a plateau, in what remains a male dominated institution".

So that's it for the next general election. For those who are interested the Lib Dems in the Electoral Reform Society reckons we're going to get 2 or 3 more women into Parliament from our 2005 levels. That is in effect 3 or 4 as we have reduced the number of women to 9 over this latest parliament.

If one was feeling generous one could say that going from 9 to 12 was a massive increase in terms of percentage increase, but all it does is put us in line with the average in the rest of parliament.

But I'm not feeling generous and we need to be thinking in whole number multiples of increase not percentages..if we wanted to have at least 30% of Nick's 150 MPs in the next two elections to be women that would mean we would have to quintuple (!!??) the number of female MPs. Given that we're not doing that this parliament we're really looking at the next one to sort it out. Rob Blackie did a great of analysis of the nuts and bolts of the scale of the endeavour on Lib Dem Voice last week.

Or are we going to give up and say it's too hard?

The Campaign for Gender Balance has been 'encouraging' and 'training' women since it was set up and if these figures are anything to go by, it's greatest achievement is to stop us from going too far backwards. I support this work (mainly via a standing order) as I'm sure that there are women who need encouragement and training and it is certainly better that we do that then we do nothing a go backwards.

At the same time, part of me rails against this as the approach because it assumes that no one else but the women in the party have to change. If only women would think differently about themselves and undertake a bit of improvement (read: be a bit more like men...oh yes, I can hear the soundtrack to My Fair Lady ringing in my ears now), then it would all be fine!

It's an approach that could be read as intensely patronising, idenitfying women as the problem and it is an approach, as Beatrice Barleon, the ERS women's officer refers to as 'tinkering around the edges'.

I do keep going on about it and am even thinking of changing my blog title to 'Cassandra' but we have to start changing ourselves to make the job of PPC more attractive and feasible for women. We have to stop asking women to change. Instead, we have to start looking at the way we do things, the different 'roles' within the party and the orthodoxy of what makes a 'good' PPC. To do that, we need to look at many other roles within the party. We have to look at broadening the remit of the Campaign for Gender Balance.

Or, we just have to admit to oursleves as a party that we are happy with a situation where men still hold the vast majority of the power and continue to organise ourselves accordingly.

Hillary isn't the only woman in the Democratic Party

Should Barack Obama pick Hillary as his VP? On balance I think not; the narrative that Obama won on was that of a change, a new way of doing things. Hillary, as a Clinton, quite clearly doesn’t embody that narrative (and it’s in the rules of narrative that you have to embody it). To have a Clinton as VP would undermine his narrative and would endanger his election. Plus, it would be very awkward in the White House.

I always veered towards Barack Obama but I was very well aware of importance of Hillary’s position; the first woman to have run a serious campaign for the democratic nomination. I understood, in the face of the misogyny that she endured during the campaign, why she had to keep going. Why it was so important not to let the (largely male) party grandees pat her on the head and tell her to let the man through unimpeded. Even as someone who has leant towards Senator Obama during the campaign, I can see that a woman with a similar CV would’ve been laughed out of the race straight away.

So, do those of us who long for real diversity in politics have to sigh wistfully and just be grateful for all the ways, just by standing for the nomination, that she has made a difference to politics and women’s place in it; as candidates, as voters and as commentators. Politics, in the US in any case, has changed forever as a result. Should we just wait out the next 4 years?

Well, no.

An article from The American Prospect website has got me thinking. Just because Hillary would be the wrong Vice President, it doesn’t mean to say there can’t be a woman Vice President. As Dana Goldstein points out, in the VP contenders women make up 2 out of 3 of the top choices (if you discount Hillary herself). Goldstein goes on to say:

“We've experienced unprecedented interest from male politicos in women's participation in the electoral process. And demands for women's leadership have been given their fairest hearing to date in the United States, with Democrats nationwide expecting Obama to give close consideration to female vice-presidential prospects -- not only because there are a few wildly successful and talented women who would be great at the job, but also as a gesture of good will toward the feminist energy that animated so many Clinton supporters”.

And so:

“…in addition to Clinton herself, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas are among the top three most frequently-mentioned vice-presidential prospects, trailing only Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia.

The Vice President is a funny old job and can be fairly made into whatever the holder wants it to be. However, the VP must be good enough and at no point would I suggest that anybody without the right qualities to become the Vice President should get there just because of their symbolic value.

But if they were to meet the criteria and have a symbolic value, as a role model to half the world population, wouldn’t that be a good thing?

So, I’m going to count up the differences that Hillary has made for women in politics and hope those differences translate from the US to the UK. But I’m also going to hope that Barack obama, a symbolic candidate in his own right understands that value of role models and that leadership of change, of cultural change comes from the top.

The Danny Alexander Interview

It was a cosy and intimate affair in the Leaders office for our interview with our Work & Pensions spokesperson and Nick Clegg's chief of staff, Danny Alexander earlier on this week. Chocolate Easter Eggs in lieu of the traditional doughnuts were handed out and the Millennium Elephant took his position on the coffee table (separating me from the chocolate but then that is probably a good thing!!).

Now, whilst the notes I made on the answers to everybody else's questions are copious, my notes on Danny's responses to my own questions are a little threadbare. I am a very active listener, you see, and this requires me to be looking at the person that is talking to me rather than taking notes. If I am going to make a habit of this interviewing lark it may well be worth investing in one of those dinky little dictaphones – or investigating whether my iPhone does the job (surely it does??). So, I'm afraid there'll be no verbatim quoting in this posting!!

As Danny is in charge of preparing the manifesto my questions focussed on what he thought was the Lib Dem narrative, our manifesto and also what we were planning on doing on making our policies attractive to women voters.

His somewhat predictable but slightly frustrating response to the questions about the role and structure of the manifesto (I wasn't the only one asking, by the way, Alex started it) was that it wasn't just him writing the manifesto and there was a whole manifesto sub committee on the Federal Policy Committee and he wasn't going to start second guessing them. He could however report that there is going to be a pre-manifesto document, that will be much shorter and stake out the 'mission' of the party. That's perhaps a safe line to take, especially knowing Lib Dem activists who sometimes seem to me to be unable to countenance any actual leadership by the elected representatives put in charge of these things but I found a little disappointing.

This is a failing in my interview technique, I guess, I'm sure I could have been more aggressive but I was disinclined to be so (seeing as he's one of our own; and I've never done it before and it would have felt rude). However, I do need to develop Eddie Mair like tendencies, rather than John Humphries, because on reflection I think it's possible to provide ones own thoughts about how it should be without usurping the role of the committee that you are chairing.

The pre-manifesto will have themes such as being anti-establishment, pointing out how Labour and Tories work for vested interests and the Lib Dems are the only ones arguing for a dramatic change. Picking up on his remarks about themes I asked him what he thought the narrative should be, and here I make no apologies here for my lack of notes as compelling narrative should stick in the brain without them, but it went a bit like this:

Politics and the country is being run by both Labour and the Tories to deliver what a whole series of vested interests want and not for ordinary people like us. When David Cameron says that society is broken he is wrong; it is politics that is broken not us. Only the Lib Dems are radical enough to break up this cosy consensus.

Which is fine as far as it goes and rather similar to the manifesto themes and not quite tugging on the emotions enough to be a narrative. For my money I would like to see not just an analysis of what happened in the past and what is happening now but some idea of where voting Lib Dem and a Lib Dem government will take us in the future; I want our narrative to give me a glimpse of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I want to know what's in it for me as a voter not just that the Lib Dems are radical and anti-establishment.

It is however further than we have got for many years in defining a narrative for ourselves. The interview originally with Nick was meant to mark his first 100 days; we will be seeing Nick finally at the beginning of May and I hope that he doesn't leave it much longer than that before he defines what the future is going to be like!

If you read back over previous blogs you will see that I have been very excited by how important the women's vote has been in the US Democratic primaries and how both candidates have had to court the women's vote. The Tories have noticed this and published a policy paper to address issues that impact women such as rape convictions, equal pay, childcare provision; and David Cameron was rather compelling on Women's Hour on how much he wanted to welcome women into the party (whether the rest of the party is so keen remains to be seen). I wanted to know whether the manifesto group were thinking of doing anything special given how important the women's vote could be in the next general election.

I think if I had required Danny to give a one word answer to that it would had to have been 'No'. He started off by saying he thought women were just as concerned as men about mainstream measures; which I don't argue with but in the end I think he understood that I was talking about presentation and packaging of those policies to make it clear to women what's in it for them. He mentioned something else about family friendly policies in the workplace and childcare, given that being able to work and get childcare is key to lifting oneself out of poverty.

Firstly I get a bit narked when politicians conflate family friendly policies with women friendly polices; after all, what about women like me that don't have children, of which there are more and more? Plus men should be just as interested in family friendly policies.

Secondly, my feeling was that his lack of thought around marketing ourselves to women was just a lack of thought rather than an antipathy to it. I think we will really miss out on a lot of votes if we ignore the women's vote. After all sorts of other organisation absolutely understand that if they want to reach a certain section of society they need to mould their message to appeal to that group. That's not patronising that paying due respect. But then until we, as a party, start understanding that campaigning is not the same as marketing I don't think we'll be getting much further on that one.

Then came the most joyous part of the interview for me: Helen Duffett, one of my fellow interviewers, started to ask Danny about neo-natal care and classes and their funding and availability. There followed a few minutes of sharing experiences (not mine, see above comment on no children) of neonatal classes and how important they can be to new mothers, families and those wishing to avoid post natal depression – especially relevant given all the work that the Lib Dems have been doing on the lack of mental health services.

These sorts of conversation are rarely held outside WLD or at least in mixed or majority male fora; it was a new experience for me!

I would like to thank Danny very much for standing in for Nick at such short notice and giving us an hour of his time. I do think that we are closer to defining our narrative than we ever have before and I get great comfort from having spoken to Danny. I think there's more work to be done though as I fear we're still confusing themes with narrative and they are very different things.

I had not met Danny before and I found him very pleasant and rather modest. When asked by Millennium Elephant (on behalf of Stephen Tall who couldn't make it so had written in with a question) whether being Nick's Chief of Staff was like being Leo McGarry in The West Wing he first of all suggested that the team that worked for him were more talented than the West Wing team but that his job was much more to do with administration.

Well, I think Danny could afford to be a little less modest and still not be in danger of being arrogant; I think Nick is really quite lucky to have him!

London Conference getting it right on Gender Balance

I went to one of the best London Spring Conference's in years on Tuesday night. Let's face it, it was a great line up with both Brian Paddick and Nick Clegg speaking. As Jonathan Fryer says on his blog, Nick is doing really well in endearing himself to the membership with humour and just a general feeling of accessibility, like he did at the federal Spring Conference in Liverpool.

Many people say that whilst David Cameron may come across well on TV and Radio, in the flesh he is completely lacking in charisma. Well, Nick comes across well on TV and is even better in the flesh!!! I may not currently be a cat owner, but I used to be!

But, what was really good to see at the London Spring Conference were the number of women being elected or on candidate lists, or otherwise involved in the Lib Dems in London, including myself! In fact, you could almost say there was a lack of gender balance at Hamilton House last night; in favour of women for once!

First we had four recent council by election winners from across London, all women; the Baroness Sally Hamwee chairing a session; Jill Fraser, a Lib Dem councillor in Camden introduced Baroness Sarah Ludford MP and then during the policy consultation session, myself, Chamali Fernando and Caroline Pigeon were all involved in facilitating what was an excellent discussion.

So, we have a had a good year, getting in more diverse councillors, getting great women like Dinti Batstone to number 3 on the Euro List, and getting 2 out of the top five places in the GLA list.

This truly was a celebration of the fantastic female talent that we have in London; surely nobody can suggest that there aren't enough women who are 'good enough' in London?

Blog Awards: Chuffed of Crystal Palace!

I am naturally quite a smiley person but I think on Saturday night I took grinning to new widths when I heard my name being announced as the winner of the Campaign for Gender Balance Best Blog Post and had the, unique in my life time, experience of being presented with a little trophy cup!!

Other winners, as those who have been following these things know already, were People’s Choice Best Lib Dem Blog winner, Lynne Featherstone, Judge’s Choice Best Lib Dem Blog Alix Mortimer and Best non Lib Dem blog Betsan Powys.

Now, back to the cup…I have never, ever received a cup for anything in my entire life, ever before!!! I was tempted later on that evening to take this gorgeous little cup down with me for dinner at the Malmaison, but thought that sort of behaviour was more reminiscent of a six year old rather than a thirty six year old and not Malmaisonish at all. Still, I did sleep with it on my bedside table, so loath was I to let it out of my sight!!

The recognition for the blog post, was quite nice to receive too, no sorry, it was very nice, sublime, in fact, and I am dead chuffed. I was particularly interested to hear in the Lib Dem Voice podcast published last night, some of the comments that were made by the judges about my post; it was very handy to have the feedback about accessibility and also the good use of photos. I was obviously present when these comments were first made but my attempts at looking serene while waiting to hear the result meant that processing any other words but my own name was beyond me.

I am very pleased that it was a post on a topic so close to my heart and one that was acknowledged as controversial. I am going to take Mary Reid’s advice and let Johanna Sumuvuori MP know that meeting her led to me writing this post and that led to an award!

Meeting up with the other bloggers was great, if a little surreal as we all felt we knew each other already. I was also particularly pleased to see that the audience had plenty of men in it. I don’t want to live in a ‘women only’ blogging ghetto; I even caught sight of a certain fluffy elephant!

If you haven’t listened to it so far, do listen to Alix’s acceptance speech on the LDV podcast. It is natural for many liberals, I think, to question the need for a separate Campaign for Gender Balance Blog Awards, however as Alix pointed out, although some of us may have all the confidence we need to start blogging, others, whose voices are just as important, may need more encouragement. If nothing else, these awards have made the most confident conscious of that fact that not everybody has that attribute, which may be an invisible barrier to them getting their voice heard. Why is that a gender issue? Well, you just have to look at the outcome: the still relatively few numbers of lib dem women bloggers compared to male ones. It is not that women don’t have anything to say, they are just worried that nobody will want to listen.

Throughout the whole process, from having one of my blog posts nominated, to getting short listed and of course to winning a category, I have been tremendously encouraged. I hope that the posting that won can hold its own amongst both men and women as a good blog post but I am sure over the last few months I have become more confident in defining my own blogging voice that is unashamedly female, feminine and womanly as well as liberal and democratic!

Blimey! Quotas for Board Directors!

Or: is Norway just a very good country to be a woman in?

This article from Guardian Unlimited caught my eye, unsurprisingly this morning! It looks at a new law brought out in Norway, which states that 40% of a company’s directors must be female; yes, my eyes nearly popped out of my sockets too! Apparently all but 12 companies have done it!!

There is a strong economic case for diversity in business and Norway at least recognises that ‘lack of experience’ (read: lack of supply) is not the only reason why in 2002 only 7.1% of board directors were female.

Are quotas the answer for us in the UK? Well, I suspect not. We have yet to recognise the benefits that diversity brings and we just don’t have the same culture of action in favour women’s equality that they have in Scandinavia. Although, its fair to say, that the debate in Norway’s was framed in terms of economic necessity rather than gender equality but I don’t see much evidence of even that level of sophistication in the diversity debate, if there is one, in the UK.

However, one comment by Marit Hoel, a Norwegian sociologist and the Director of the Centre for Corporate Diversity, made me smile as it reflect some of my own impatience with women’s position in business but also in terms of their representation in politics. She says:

"I would have preferred the quota to be voluntary - but that would have meant waiting another 35 years”.

Yes, 35 years, I’ll be 71 and hopefully settling down to lots of book reading and pottering, although with less money and pensions than my current male equivalents, of course.

Often when I am voicing my frustration at the slow progress being made in increasing the number of women in positions of power in politics, let alone in parliament I am told (most often it has to be said by men who are somewhat younger than me) to be patient as it’s all going in the right direction.

Well, it’s not going in the right direction for a start, we have 2 less female MPs now than we had after the 2005 general election and female membership of boards is at a 9 year low.

And as for being patient, it will take 200 years before there is equality in the UK parliament. I think it’s fair to say, even with medical advancement as it is, I’ll be long gone before then; so will hundreds of other skilled and talented women, already around, but sadly missing from the green and red benches. So telling me to be patient, that things are progressing OK, is a bit like telling me to give up and forget it.