The generalissimo, as General Francisco Franco, the Spanish
dictator, liked to be known, would have been bewildered by the spectacle
that unfolded last week in a courtyard at the defence ministry in Madrid.
A solemn-looking young woman dressed in black trousers and a cream blouse was
addressing the troops from a podium. “Viva España,” she told them. “Viva el
rey [long live the king].” Meet Spain’s first female defence minister,
37-year-old Carme Chacon.
It was not only the gender and tender years of this new minister that so
shocked the illustrious assembly of generals in the front row: Chacon is
from Catalonia, a region that has been demonstrating the same separatist
urge of the rebellious Basques, albeit without stooping to terrorism.
What is more, she was described in the press as an “eco-pacifist” who had
expressed “antimilitarist” views. Oh, and she is seven months pregnant.
Not that she is letting that distract her: yesterday she visited Spanish
forces serving in Herat, Afghanistan.
The image of Chacon reviewing the troops resonated well beyond Spain, focusing
attention on a curious situation: how had a supposedly macho country like
Spain put so many women into positions of power only three decades after
emerging from fascist rule?
Scandinavian countries have for years been a beacon of female representation
in politics. Now traditional male bulwarks appear to be falling elsewhere in
Europe: Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has stacked his cabinet with
the “Sarkozettes”; the Germans have done their bit by electing Angela Merkel
as the country’s first female chancellor; and even Silvio Berlusconi, known
for his unreconstructed chauvinism, has pledged to put more women in power
in Italy. Spain now has more women in its cabinet than men.
Britain may have produced the “Iron Lady” in Margaret Thatcher, but to look at
a photograph of Gordon Brown’s cabinet is to be confronted by a sea of dark
suits and ties: only six of the 23 ministers are women.
Since 1918, when women first became eligible to stand for parliament, there
have been 4,365 men elected to the Commons and just 291 women. Only 20% of
MPs, or 125 of them, are women, putting Britain 16th in the list of European
Union countries.
The death last week of Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Labour MP who was the so-called
“Mother of the House”, did not help. Both of her grandmothers were
suffragettes who campaigned for women’s right to vote, and she is said to
have hoped that her daughter would inherit her seat. Insiders say that is
unlikely.
Women are, however, well represented in the Labour party compared with their
Tory opponents. During the party’s leadership contest in 2005, Theresa May
famously declared that there were more men called David in the shadow
cabinet than there were women. Like May’s infamous “nasty party” comment,
the remark has dogged the Conservative party, which still boasts the most
embarrassing statistics on female representation at Westminster.
Under David Cameron, the shadow cabinet finally has more women than Davids
(six females to four Davids), but the pace of change is glacially slow. In
October 1931, 13 women were elected as Tory MPs; at the last election three
years ago, that number had increased to 17. At the current rate of progress
it will be another 400 years before there are as many female as male Tory
MPs.
All but the most diehard chauvinists would acknowledge that to have a
parliament that is more representative of the people is a good thing. What
has gone wrong? Why are British women not making the progress in politics
seen elsewhere and how should it be put right? FIRST, a reality check.
Britain may not be as far behind some of its European neighbours when it
comes to women in parliament as the photographic and anecdotal evidence
suggests. In fact, France and Italy have even fewer female MPs than Britain
in percentage terms.
Indeed it is worth noting that in America, where Hillary Clin-ton is
attempting to become its first female president, only 16% of members of the
House of Representatives are women.
What the French and Italians have learnt is the value of putting women in
prominent positions. It is more to do with electioneering than with
enlightenment.
Few have expended more energy on importing women into the cabinet than
Sarkozy. He was galvanised by the challenge of Ségolène Royal, the Socialist
candidate in last year’s presidential election. She was the first French
female to have a real shot at winning the presidency and Sarkozy was
terrified that she would sweep the board with women voters, depriving him of
victory.
When a news magazine published a photograph of him surrounded by 18 of his
closest collaborators and pointed out that not one was a woman, he realised
that he had to do something. Amid great fanfare, he appointed a woman as
deputy head of his centre-right UMP party. He promised sexual equality in
his cabinet and was as good as his word when elected: seven of the ministers
in a cabinet of 15 were women.
Not only that. In what some analysts called Sarkozy’s political masterstroke,
some of the ministers he selected, besides being women, were Socialists or
members of ethnic minorities. Rama Yade, the 31-year-old secretary of state
for human rights and youngest of the “rainbow government” team, was all
three.
“These women are being built up like icons,” said Joëlle Garriaud-Maylam, a
senator in Sarkozy’s UMP who believes that some of the women might have been
selected more for their “nice-looking faces” than for their qualifications
as ministers.
She complained, nevertheless, that “the glass ceiling remains very strong in
France” and “chauvinism seems to reinforce itself”. Whenever an effort is
made to bring more women into politics in France, “you often end up not with
the best women for the job but with the ones who are not a threat, who are
extensions of political men, who help them to rise, whom they can trust as
family members or close friends”.
Berlusconi, the other Euro “king of bling”, was typically upfront when he
expressed the reasons behind his newfound belief in promoting women.
Speaking at a rally in Rome before last week’s general election, he said:
“Women, we love you - especially women voters who make up 53.6% of the
electorate.”
His previous government had only two female ministers in it but this time he
has pledged to select four, with Stefania Prestigiacomo, 41, a former equal
opportunities minister, seen as a shoo-in when he announces his cabinet in
the coming days.
Already Berlusconi has helped to reshape the Italian parliament in his own
distinctive fashion: his sponsorship of several actresses, models and
showgirls who had previously appeared on different parts of his television
empire helped them to be selected by his party and get elected as MPs.
One was Mara Carfagna, a 32-year-old former television star and topless model.
Berlusconi had flirted outrageously with her at a gala dinner last year,
saying: “I’d marry her if I wasn’t married already.”
Last week Carfagna played down her chances of being included in the cabinet,
even though she was being mentioned as a favourite by the Italian media. “I
know what my limits are,” she said, while pointing out that before appearing
on television she had been awarded a law degree.
As in France, the rise of young and inexperienced protégées has ruffled
feathers in the rank and file.
“I have always been against the landing of showgirls in the lower house of
parliament,” said Maria Burani Procaccini,a senator in Berlusconi’s party.
She was one of the few who had dared to protest publicly when Carfagna was
elected two years ago.
“Some of them,” she said of Berlusconi’s protégées, “have yet to demonstrate
that they have something up there [in their heads], and they could
demonstrate it by starting to dress in a manner appropriate to parliament.”
She was referring to the plunging décolletés and short hemlines favoured by
the young newcomers.
Margherita Boniver, a centre-left MP, dismissed such quibbles as “the usual
way of discrediting women in politics” and added: “They don’t deserve such
derision.”
Amid all the fuss, the fact remains that only about 17% of Italian MPs are
women.
WHERE Britain is certainly not flattered by comparison is with Spain and the
Scandinavian countries.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapa-tero, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, knows as well
as anyone that women can win elections but, unlike Berlusconi and Sarkozy,
he is a true believer. Not only does he call himself a feminist, a brave
gesture in the land of bullfights, black lace and machismo, but - braver
still - he behaves like one.
He has done more than any other European leader to tackle the scourge of
domestic violence. He has also passed a law making it compulsory for
electoral lists and even the boards of companies bidding for public
contracts to be composed of at least 40% women.
Chacon was one of nine female ministers appointed last week to the first
majority female government in Spain’s history. With her innocent looks and
bulging stomach, she was, as one newspaper editorial put it, his “secret
weapon in the battle against machismo”.
A curious row erupted between Italy and Spain after Berlusconi ventured the
opinion that Zapatero’s government was “too pink” and added: “He will have
problems leading them.”
Spain reacted with fury. “Many of us women would never belong to a government
headed by Mr Berlusconi,” said Magdalena Alvarez, minister of infrastructure.
However, not everyone was applauding the “Zapaterror”, as some conservatives
call the revolution that has also resulted in legal gay marriage. The
creation of a ministry of equality was seen as surplus to requirements by
Zapatero’s critics. “What more equality do you want than having more female
ministers than male ministers?” asked one newspaper editorial.
The Scandinavians lead the world when it comes to putting women into political
jobs: 14 years ago Sweden introduced a policy quaintly referred to as
“varannan damernas” - literally, “every second to the ladies” -
named after a Swedish ballroom tradition when men and women take turns at
choosing their dance partners. Elsewhere this policy is known as the
“zipper” system, reflecting its alternation of male and female candidates on
party lists.
Norway and Finland quickly jumped on the bandwagon and today have governments
with a majority of female ministers. Ten of Norway’s 19 ministers are women
who run three of the most important ministries: finance, oil and defence.
Gender equality is always among the top political issues in Sweden, which has
the highest European representation of women in parliament (47%) and where
the level of female participation in the wider workplace is one of the
highest in the world.
In Norway the cause of equality has been extended into the business arena.
From January, laws that require 40% of the boards of state-run companies to
be women were extended to publicly listed firms. Dire consequences were
forecast, but so far there has been no obvious fallout.
Germany, the economic powerhouse of the European Union, is also near the top
of the tables for female representation, with 32% of Reichstag members being
women. Six female cabinet ministers are headed by Merkel. WHAT can be done
to speed things up here and make British politicians more representative?
Campaigners across the political divide agree that the selection process for
parliamentary candidates is crucial - the models used in Scandinavia and
Spain have worked.
They can work quickly, too.
Spain has jumped from having women accounting for 20% of parliamentarians at
the turn of the century to 36% now, according to the Inter-Parliamentary
Union. In Argentina, women got the vote only in 1947 but already
state-sanctioned quotas for candidates have produced a parliament comprising
40% women.
Cameron has fought hard to address the Tories’ problem through his
controversial “Alist” of priority candidates for winnable seats, introduced
in 2006.
Half of the 100-plus names on the secret list of hand-picked candidates vetted
and approved by Tory Central Office were women. The list also included a
high proportion of black and ethnic minority candidates.
The list caused a bitter backlash within the party. It triggered claims that
dedicated white male Tories with solid political records had been overlooked
in favour of candidates with almost no experience or party credentials in a
drive for political correctness.
Cameron stuck to his guns, but the Alist has been only a partial success. A
string of local constituencies refused to bow to pressure to choose
candidates from the list, opting for local men instead, and so far only a
third of the candidates selected for seats are women.
The Conservatives are not the only party to have faced resistance from within
their own ranks. The perils of trying to force candidates on recalcitrant
local constituency branches were starkly illustrated in Blaenau Gwent during
the 2005 general election.
When Labour’s ruling body, the national executive committee, decided that it
wanted more female MPs in Wales and ordered the local party to pick a
candidate from an all-women shortlist, Peter Law, the most popular local
candidate, ran as an independent in protest.
In a shock upset, he won - leading Labour to lose its safest Welsh
constituency by more than 9,000 votes.
Experts point out that efforts to address the situation are endlessly hampered
by the “legacy issue” - the number of long established male MPs
in safe seats. It is a problem that the youthful Scottish parliament and
Welsh assembly have not yet had to contend with. Almost half of Welsh
assembly members are women and a third of the MSPs.
The culture gap also needs closing. According to the Fawcett Society, which
campaigns for equality for women in politics, the male-dominated clubby
atmosphere at Westminster is one of the four key factors in addition to the
selection process which discourage women from standing for election, the
others being child-care, cash and confidence.
Research by the Fawcett Society suggests that the traditional image of an MP,
and the confrontational style of British politics with its emphasis on point
scoring, are off-putting to many women.
“If anything the situation is getting worse,” said Katherine Rake, director of
the Fawcett.
“Today’s politicians have a big job on their hands to make the argument to
women as to why they should be interested in politics. In general, women are
far less interested in the ‘events’ of politics - prime
minister’s questions, party conferences, that sort of thing. What they care
about is their schools, hospitals, clinics.”
Women candidates complain that their competence is more likely to be
questioned than their male peers and that they are more likely than male MPs
to suffer hurtful comments about their appearance.
“I remember the first time I did a TV appearance, for a party political
broadcast promoting cycling, there were all these comments on the website
about my size. It was a real shock. I got over it but it is really, really
tough,” said Emily Thornberry, Labour MP for Islington South &
Finsbury.
There is also the issue of working hours. This affects male MPs, too, but
mothers will be particularly put off by the retreat of the more
family-friendly hours that were introduced to great fanfare in 2003.
If some find the parliamentary life unattractive, there are still many women
who are engaged in the political arena. A large number of influential think
tanks are headed by women, many of whom were put off becoming MPs.
“Some women in parliament end up feeling very isolated and unhappy. In many
ways it is better to be in politics in my position because you get to choose
your own voice,” said Catherine Fieschi, head of Demos.
Lisa Harker, who runs the Institute for Public Policy Research as a job-share
with Carey Oppenheim, agreed: “Think tanks give far greater flexibility.
They are more collegiate, we work as a team.
“Carey and I job-share, which is another step away - can you imagine a
job-sharing chancellor or prime minister? Maybe one day.”
WHILE that day may be some way off, there is one overriding reason why the
British political parties should get their act together in terms of women’s
representation in parliament: self-interest. What better way to attract
female voters than to tell them your party will put more women in the
Commons?
This is not an insignificant consideration with the next general election
expected to produce a much closer result than the past three.
According to research by the polling firm YouGov, female voters are also much
more likely to fall into the “swing” category. “On almost any political
question you will find that there are more ‘don’t knows’ among women and
more entrenched attitudes among men,” said Peter Kellner, its chairman. He
said his firm saw a much bigger swing among women voters away from Labour
after Brown pulled out of an anticipated snap election last autumn.
With such swing voters being crucial to the next general election, it would be
little surprise to see the parties taking heed of the recent successes of
Zapatero, Berlusconi and Sarkozy.
Additional reporting: John Follain, Holly Watt
Winning the vote and power
- The first stirrings of the female suffrage movement began in the American
colonies as they were about to declare independence. In 1776 New Jersey
granted the vote to everyone worth more than £50 and a few women exercised
their right. It was, however, repealed a few years later.
- In the mid-19th century a few of America’s western territories granted women
full voting rights, but New Zealand, in 1893, was the first country to grant
women over the age of 21 the vote.
- In Britain, a combination of the suffragette movement and a recognition of
women’s contribution to the first world war effort saw women over the age of
30 granted the vote in 1918. They had to wait another decade to receive the
same rights as men. In America, the 19th amendment gave women full voting
rights in 1920.
- The trailblazer for female politicians was Finland. In 1906 it passed laws
allowing women to vote and to stand for parliament. In elections the
following year, 19 women became MPs.
- The first woman to be elected to the British parliament was the Countess de
Markievicz, who stood for Sinn Fein while in Holloway prison in 1918. She
never took up her seat. That honour went to Nancy Astor who succeeded her
husband, Waldorf, as the member for Plymouth Sutton in 1919 when he was
elevated to the House of Lords. She held the seat until her retirement in
1945.
- A number of women had served in revolutionary governments, but the first
woman to be a minister in a democratically elected government was Nina Bang,
the Danish minister of education from 1924-6.
- South Asia has a strong tradition of female leaders tied to its tendency to
favour dynastic succession. Sirivamo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka became the
world’s first female elected prime minister in 1960. In the 1990s she was
president while her daughter Chandrika Kumaratunga was prime minister.
- Rwanda now tops the global list of countries for female representation in
parliament, with 39 out of 80 members being women. The 1994 genocide left a
big gender imbalance in Rwandan society and more recently quotas have been
used to increase women’s role in politics.
British women have more self respect. Who would want to mix with liars, thieves and cheats?
judy, Liverpool, England