What do you think it would take to create a way for women to aspire to being a politician and confident that they won’t have to change their style to a culture of “maleness”? (And what does that mean, anyway?)
Bethan Jenkins, the youngest female Member of the National Assembly for Wales wrote an interesting post in the Our Kingdom blog addressing these questions: We Need a Positive Vision of Women in Politics
One of the enlightening points she makes is that the statistics show that women are highly unlikely to be elected more often without changes to the party processes (my emphasis added throughout quotes):
Although training and nurturing women to become candidates is essential, I believe that positive discrimination systems must be in place if we are serious about women playing a key role in the political process. This argument is supported by organisations such as Fawcett, who work avidly in highlighting the importance of such mechanisms: they are unaware of any country that has succeeded in increasing the level of women in politics without such mechanisms in place.
And she gives two examples of ways in which political parties have successfully applied “positive discrimination” to increase the number of women in the Welsh Assembly. Given that almost 50% of the Assembly is women, it’s easy to see the contrast between the success of these strategies and the Tories…
Plaid Cymru with its ‘zipping’ policy - whereby the members selecting candidates on a list are required to alternate men and women, and Labour with its ‘twinning’ policy - whereby two constituencies select their candidates jointly, with a requirement that one man and one woman be selected. The Tories on the other hand have no such positive discrimination mechanisms for selecting candidates: and their current group consists of 11 men and just a single female.
Contrast this success with this quote from Jeffrey Hansen-Carlson, a British Columbia NDP candidate:
One per cent of the Canadian population describes themselves as homosexual; 25 per cent are non-white, 55 per cent own dogs and 17 per cent smoke dope. Do we need to draft policy to ensure these quotas in the House of Commons are full, too?
I am certain our quota of homosexual, non-white, dog-owning and dope-smoking politicians is full, but the underlying lack of common sense remains unchanged.
It will never stop.
[...]
Each [party] has stopped short of something that would resemble Ann McLellan’s ambition.
Each party provides equal opportunity, an environment where a capable woman is given all the options available to a capable man. This is enough. Anyone – male or female – that wades into this debate beyond agreeing we need good politicians is missing the point. [...] We have no need for a fulfilled quota of women in the House of Commons if the only thing that brought them there was politically motivated cowgirl.
(For more of his interview and Amanda Reaume’s sharp analysis of the underlying (and not so under) attitudes, pop over to Antigone Magazine.)
Bethan Jenkins notes that these kinds of strategies and the family-friendly work week of Assembly Members isn’t enough though:
However, while I believe that it has been positive that so many women are elected to the Assembly, the perception still exists that female politicians must conform to a masculine ‘power crazed’ stereotype that is often created of politicians, if they are serious about achieving their goal, or of becoming a leader of a political party. Female politicians have to work that much harder to be accepted and respected both politically and socially, and must battle with a more or less male dominated political culture, even here in Wales. Until institutions start to adopt gender equality mechanisms worldwide, I believe that we will continue to battle with a stereotype of politics that is male focused and power driven. It is our role as elected female representatives to try and change this perception, and to develop a positive and encouraging image of women in politics.
I have to agree about the culture of parliamentary political systems as being non-female friendly and that’s certainly something I’ve been trying to address in my own blog posts. (I don’t think it is particularly male-friendly either, but that’s another post…).
But what do you think? It is the just the job of elected women to work for change in this area? Or could we all be demanding that politicians conduct themselves differently – in a more positive and inspiring way? I think that’s a heavy load for our female representatives to carry all on their own — but where they have 50% (!!) of the seats, it does seem to represent a wonderful opportunity to start a meaningful shift. How could we support women in creating this kind of change? What should that change look like?
Please do share your thoughts….
Filed under: Creating Change, Political Women, Positive Strategies
