‘Lass War’ still has a long way to go to reach true equality
he’d be swapping his MP’s job for one with Sellafield, the local nuclear decommissioning authority. And it was in January, when he formally ceased being an MP, that serious history was made.
For the very first time, sitting male MPs (454) were outnumbered by the TOTAL number of women MPs EVER (455) – that is, in all the 99 years since women got the vote.
Happily, feminist history being made by the action of a male didn’t last long. For on March 1 Copeland’s victorious Conservative MP, Trudy Harrison, was sworn in as the 196th female MP in this Parliament and the 456th ever.
Recalling that it was the Commons of just 20 years ago that MP Tessa Jowell famously reckoned contained more Johns and Jonathans than its 60 women MPs, it obviously does constitute progress.
Even if Jowell did slip in the odd Jack or Jimmy, her point was made: the fewer than one in ten women was a national embarrassment.
And many would see the 30 per cent that today’s 196 women MPs represent, and the resulting 47th position in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Women in Parliaments listing (just adrift of Italy and Sudan), as little less embarrassing.
Or, as the Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee recently put it, “a serious democratic deficit”.
It’s a description the committee would surely apply to English local government, too, since the numbers now are virtually the same. When Jowell did her John count, women members of England’s principal councils totalled over a quarter.
Since when, while the proportion of women MPs was tripling, that of women councillors increased at the snail-like rate of one per cent every three years, to an overall 32 per cent.
Which brings us to the next big English local elections – those in May for the elected mayors of the West Midlands Combined Authority and five other CAs.
What part will women play in the governance of these new bodies?
To which the present answer would have to be: precious little. Otherwise there’d be no need for “The People’s Powerhouse”.
You may have caught the recent story. The Northern Powerhouse (NP) – former Chancellor George Osborne’s large-scale, Manchestercentred devolution and economy booster – was holding its annual glitzy international conference.
The NP’s consciously macho name alone is enough to goad some, and the conference advertising did the rest, oozing clichés about delegates’ £450 + VAT opportunity to “network with the key players, potential business partners and stakeholders in the Northern Powerhouse economy”.
For, unfortunately, it seemed that all the key movers and shakers – and certainly all 15 originally advertised main speakers – were male.
Cue an outraged “Lass War”, with conference delegates picketed by women activists in Osborne-style hard hats and high-vis jackets, and the enterprising chief executives of Doncaster and Wigan councils, Jo Miller and Donna Hall, organising an alternative, properly inclusive “People’s Powerhouse” in May at Doncaster Rovers’ Keepmoat football stadium. One certain agenda item will be the Fawcett Society’s recent analysis of women’s representation, or under-representation, in the Northern Powerhouse.
Of the 134 “senior leadership roles” across the seven CAs – council leaders and mayors, CA chairs, chief execs – only 28 per cent were occupied by women, including just one CA chair – with even that 28 per cent owing much to non-politicians: the 40 per cent of women CEs like Miller and Hall.
Here in the West Midlands the seven-borough WMCA figures are even more unbalanced: 96.2 per cent male, to be precise: seven constituent authority and five non-constituent authority leaders – all male; (currently) 11 CEs – ten male; three LEP chairs – all male.
In addition, like most CAs, the candidacy signs are that we’re heading for a male mayor. Our five out of six males – the exception being Lib Dem Beverley Nielsen – reflect the national picture.
Of the 33 declared national mayoral candidates, 27 are male (82 per cent), including 12 of the 14 Conservative and Labour candidates.
All one can say is it’s a good thing International Women’s Day is about catalysing change, as well as celebrating it. Chris Game is a lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies, at the University of
Birmingham