W@W Topic of the Month
May 2008
2008: Women and the Vote
2008 marks 90 years since the Representation of the People Act finally gave certain women the right to vote in in 1918. It is also 80 years since women won the right to vote on equal terms with men when the Equal Franchise Bill was passed.
While these achievements are celebrated in a national initiative '2008: Women & the Vote', it also reflects that women continue to be significantly under-represented in all forms of decision-making and political life.
In
Europe
One in four British MEPs are women. is represented by higher levels of women in the European Parliament than they are in the House of Commons.
In Britain
Currently in the UK, one in five of our MPs is a woman - only 126 female MPs in a Parliament of 646. Established and emerging democracies from every continent are ahead in terms of women’s representation in Parliament. There are still many constituencies in Britain today where a woman has never been elected. Since 1918, 4,365 men have been elected to Parliament and in the same period only 291 women have ever sat in the Commons. Across Britain, less than one in three Local Government councillors are female (pre-May 2008 elections).
In Scotland
Devolution heralded a more representative picture in Scotland. Significant proportions of women were elected to the Scottish Parliament in the 1999 (37%) and 2003 (39%) elections. Yet in the 2007 elections women took 43 out of 129 Holyrood seats, dropping to 33% of MSPs. Scotland fell from 4th place in world league tables of women in Parliament behind Wales, Rwanda and Sweden in 2003 to 13th place behind countries such as Argentina, Spain, Mozambique and Belgium in 2007. In Westminster and Europe too, Scotland's representatives are mostly men - 50 out of our 59 MPs and 5 out of our 7 MEPs are male. In Local Government, there was little change after the local elections in 2007, and only 22% of Scottish councillors are women.
In Highland
In the Highlands and
Islands all eight constituency MSPs are men and two of our seven list MSPs are women. In the 2007 Local Government elections, 37 (20%) of the 182 candidates in
Highland were women. Of the 80 Members elected to Highland Council, 25% are women, a slight drop from 2003, however the new Council appointed women to 38% of the Council’s senior and strategic committee positions.
A year to take action
The fact that there is still such a long way to go before politics becomes representative of the population as a whole resulted in the 2008 Year of Women & the Vote campaign which aims to put the issue back at the top of the Government agenda and to use the momentum to bring about change.
‘The significant number of women missing from positions of power is indicative of our failure to meet the economic and social challenges that confront us. Representatives in political and public life need to reflect the communities they serve. Our economic success and social wellbeing are being undermined.’
Sex & Power, EOC , 2007
Further information, sources and links
The Electoral Reform Society started its women's campaign in 2005 to explore how a change in voting system could deliver a fairer, more responsive political system for women in the UK.
Engender addresses issues and provides analysis of women's participation and capacity to engage in representative politics at all levels.
The Scottish Archive Network's Education (SCAN) features a Women's Suffrage in unit designed to support learning and teaching of History in secondary schools.
The Fawcett Society campaigns for more female councillors and MPs.
http://www.womenandthevote.com/
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/article.php?id=35
http://www.engender.org.uk/projects/38/Power_and_Participation.html
http://www.scan.org.uk/education/suffrage/topic1.html
http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/documents/New%20Representation.doc
Contributed by Rosemary Mackinnon, HIghland Council's Equal Opportunities Officer and Chair of the Women@Work Advisory Committee
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