Professor Sarah Childs

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Professor Sarah Childs

• Gender and Politics Theory and Research

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Womens Political Presence Anne Phillips (1995)

1. Justice arguments
2. Symbolic representation
3. Representation of womens interests
4. Introduction of new values and concerns

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Women in Westminster,1992-2010

• By Sex

• By party

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Determinants of Womens Descriptive Representation

• Socio-economic womens participation in the
  public sphere and pipe-line professions
  social-democratic state
• Cultural measures of egalitarianism secularism
  date of womens enfranchisement
• Political proportional representation (PR)
  positive discrimination/quotas womens presence
  in party hierarchies left wing parties
  centralized party selection processes salience
  of womens vote

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Supply and Demand

• Supply
• outcome reflects supply of applicants
• Fewer resources time, money, ambition,
  confidence, experience
• Demand
• selectors choose candidates depending on their
  perceptions of the applicants abilities,
  qualifications and experience
• Direct discrimination
• Indirect discrimination what constitutes good
  MP
• Imputed perception that voters may discriminate

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Descriptive and Substantive Representation

• A substantial amount of circumstantial evidence
  nevertheless connects womens presence to
  policies that address womens concerns
  (Lovenduski 2005)

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Re-gendering politics by regulating political
parties

• Political parties should be more fully regulated
  in a feminist fashion to
• include women and
• be committed to gender equality in politics
• This can be achieved via
• Party registration
• Party funding
• Party organization

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appendices
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Speakers Conference

• To consider and make recommendations for
  rectifying the disparity between the
  representation of women, ethnic minorities and
  disabled people in the House of Commons and their
  representation in the UK population at large and
  may agree to consider other associated matters
  (in practice, sexuality).

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Recommendation 25

• all political parties registered under part 2 of
  the PPERA Act 2000 should be required to publish
  details of their candidate selections online
  every six months,
• sex ethnicity whether the candidate is willing
  to identify as a disabled person.
• The reports might also include the following
  information
• nature of the impairment
• sexual orientation
• Age
• Occupation
• educational attainment

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Speakers Conference Recommendation 24

• Parliament should give serious consideration to
  the introduction of prescriptive quotas, ensuring
  that all political parties adopt some form of
  equality guarantee in time for the following
  general election, should the parties fail to
  make significant progress in 2010 (emphasis
  added).

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Guiding Principles

1. Prescription (requirements) vs permissive
   measures (preferences and targets)
2. Goodness of fit target, type, and relative
   importance of individual regulations
3. Goodness of fit regulations and associated
   incentive or penalty.
4. Financial implications

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Making a Difference and Acting for women

• You cant say we have changed that, but you can
  say, weve worked six weeks on that andchange
  has come about.
• So is it women? I think so. Dont you think so?

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Acting for Women

• House of Commons
• Parliamentary questions
• Signing of EDMs
• Sex Discrimination (EC) Act
• Reduction of VAT on Sanitary Products

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Global rankings (www.ipu.org)

• 1st Rwanda 56
• 4th Sweden 45
• 7th Finland 43
• 8th South Africa 42
• 12th Mozambique 40
• 17th Belgium 38

• 20th Spain 36
• 37st France 27
• 58th UK 22
• 80th USA 17
• 89th Ireland 15
• 119th Brazil 9

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Women in National Parliaments, 1997 and 2010
1997 2010 increase
Nordic 35.9 42.1 6
Europe incl. Nordic 14.3 22.0 8
Americas 13.5 22.5 8
Asia 9.7 18.6 9
Europe exc. Nordic 12.3 20.1 8
Sub-Saharan Africa 10.8 18.3 7
Pacific 12.8 13.2 0
Arab States 3.7 9.2 5