Equal Power

Shortlisted for the Best Memoir by a Parliamentarian 2018

Jo Swinson

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781786491893
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786491886
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

Shortlisted for the 2018 Parliamentary Book Awards (Best Memoir by a Parliamentarian) Why is gender inequality so stubbornly persistent? Power. Even today, power remains concentrated in the hands of men right across the worlds of business, politics and culture. Decisions taken by those with power tend to perpetuate gender inequality rather than accelerate solutions. And those who see the problem often feel powerless: ingrained sexism and gender inequality can seem too huge to solve. Equal Power holds a mirror up to society, showing the stark extent of gender inequality while making the case that everyone has the power to create change. Whether you are a teenage student, a global CEO or a taxi driver, there is much we can do as friends, consumers, parents and colleagues to create a world of Equal Power. In this inspiring and essential book, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats and former Government Minister for Women Jo Swinson outlines the steps we can all take, small and large, to make our society truly gender equal.

1

POLITICS: A Woman’s Place is in the House of Commons

Gladys Eagar was born in 1913 in north London, the daughter of a print worker and a cleaner. Ninety-five years later, she visited the Houses of Parliament to watch the pomp and splendour of the State Opening. It was a wonderful day. She put on her favourite dress, bought a few years earlier for her grandson’s wedding. Her middle son, Peter, picked her up from the maisonette where she lived in Winchmore Hill. She’d been there since 1947; her husband, David, worked for the gas board, and the flat came with the job. Even long after he’d retired, they continued living there in the home where they had raised their three sons. It was above a gas showroom, which later became an office furniture shop, and a door on the side street opened onto the steep staircase up to the living areas on the first floor. David walked with a limp which worsened with age, so they’d had a stairlift installed. When he died earlier that year, she’d decided to have the stairlift removed. Every day Gladys ventured out along the Broadway to chat to the shopkeepers and buy provisions, climbing the stairs and managing an independence of life that most of us will only be able to wish for in our nineties.

That morning, Peter helped her into the waiting taxi and they began the journey towards Westminster. The streets nearby were heavy with police and iron security barriers, and they were stopped by a cordon on the Embankment, some considerable distance from the entrance to Parliament. Approaching a nearby police van, Peter explained to the officer that he was taking Gladys to watch the State Opening, and asked whether there was anywhere closer that the taxi could drop them. The kindly officer encouraged them to jump in the van, and she helpfully drove them both along the road right up to the door of the House of Lords.

Gladys had always been a royalist, and a huge admirer of the Queen, and she was in awe of the sense of occasion. Her seat was in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords, and she and the other invited guests there were shepherded into blocks of raised seating. She was a tiny woman – once 4’11” but the ageing process had concentrated her into a 4’9” stature. Struggling to see the events unfolding over the heads of those in front, she swapped with a taller gentleman so she could sit at the end of the row, with a perfect, unobstructed view down the gangway. At the allocated time, everything done with military precision, Her Majesty the Queen arrived in the royal coach, her crown and dress glittering, and made her way through Parliament. As she processed through the Royal Gallery, Gladys looked on with joy.

The span of Gladys’s life had seen huge change. When she was born, women were unable to vote. Her early years saw the devastation of the First World War, and one million more women entering the labour market,¹ many stepping up to do the jobs left by men who were fighting on the front line. The suffrage movement gained ground, and in 1918 women won the right to vote with some restrictions, enfranchising about 40 per cent of women.² The first woman MP, Nancy Astor, sat in the House of Commons a year later, although it would take almost four decades for women to be allowed to sit in the House of Lords (1958). The first woman minister was Margaret Bondfield, appointed in 1924, and she became the first female Cabinet minister in 1929, shortly after women gained the right to vote on the same terms as men (1928).³

By the time of the Second World War, Gladys had married and become a mother, nursing her infant son and cradling him in shelters as London was bombarded from the air during the Blitz, all on her own while her husband David was working away tending injured RAF pilots in a special burns unit. Again, the role of women in the war effort was a catalyst for wider social change, and increasing numbers of women entered the labour market, even after marriage. Gladys worked as a dinner lady for ‘pin money’, but the family model was still very much the husband as breadwinner. By the time her sons married and started their own families in the 1960s and early ’70s, women’s role in the workplace wasn’t seen in quite such limiting and patronising terms. Her daughters-in-law took up professional roles – one as a nurse, another as a teacher. In politics by this time, a total of seven women had become Cabinet ministers, though women were still very much the exception. Parliament was more than 95 per cent male. When the Conservative Party elected Margaret Thatcher as leader in 1975, Gladys had four grandsons and two granddaughters. Four years later, Thatcher became the UK’s first ever woman prime minister, and a few months after that, Gladys’s youngest grandchild was born. Another little girl, Joanne. Me. Twenty-five years later, I was elected to Parliament.

In my grandmother’s 101 years, huge strides were undoubtedly made towards gender equality in our politics, and many glass ceilings were smashed. Yet I remember what she told me after her visit to the State Opening of Parliament. She said she had ‘such a wonderful time, it’s like things used to be’ – the unfailing politeness and decorum, doors held open, people quick to offer assistance out of deference for age. I love that she had such an amazing day, and that the brilliant people who work in Parliament made it so special for her. But her remarks contained a wider truth that goes beyond courtesy and ceremony. There’s no doubt about it, Parliament and our political system is too much ‘how things used to be’ in all sorts of areas where it should have moved with the times.

Gladys sadly died in 2015, but there are still people alive today who remember a time when women were not even allowed to vote in Britain. That is how scarily recent such a grave political injustice is – and indeed in many other countries it took much longer to rectify. Women in Switzerland were only allowed to vote in 1971.⁴ In 2015 women in Saudi Arabia voted for the first time in local elections.^{5, 6}

There is a real danger that we fall into the trap of comparing now to days gone by and concluding that because things are better, things are fine. In the UK, women MPs comprise roughly one-third of the House of Commons. We have our second woman prime minister in Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon serving as Scotland’s First Minister, and the most powerful politician in Europe is German Chancellor Angela Merkel. But this is far from political equality, and these historic achievements can mask continuing underlying problems and a power imbalance in politics. Just as Barack Obama’s presidency did not mean the end of racism in the US, individual women getting to the top of politics does not mean that political power is shared equally between men and women.

Welcome to Parliament

Wandering the corridors of the Houses of Parliament as a new MP at the age of 25, I was deeply aware of having arrived at a historic institution. The building itself feels like a maze, full of doorways tucked away and secret staircases that seem to move, Hogwarts-style. The grandeur and dated splendour is both beautiful and dominating – it took me a long time to feel like I fitted into these surroundings. People were friendly, but with a firmness for tradition that could make you feel like an alien in your own workplace. I remember my friend Jenny Willott, also newly elected, telling me that she had been gently but pointedly told off by one of the doorkeepers. She had, apparently, done two things wrong. The first was to go into the House of Commons chamber wearing a coat. The second had been removing the coat while in the chamber. At times, it felt like you couldn’t win.

Over time I got used to the weirdness of the institution, and found my voice and place within it. It took me longer to study and start to understand how political power ebbed and flowed, however. I think I expected that power came with positions – for example as an elected MP, or a government minister. The truth is much more complex, so let me tell you what I have learned about the nuances of political power.

I hadn’t fully recognised, even as an opposition MP, all the constraints that ministers were working under: legal advice, government procedures, the need to secure collective agreement, party management. I naively assumed individual ministers could just snap their fingers and make a decision to accept an amendment to a bill they were taking through Parliament.

There are many places political power lies. Party leaders, of course – though there are more checks than you’d think on their ability to manoeuvre. Then there’s the machinery of government, including ministers, civil servants, ‘private offices’ and special political advisers (SPADs). Informal cosy coteries surround political leaders and have their ear. The government schedulers, who decide which bills receive precious parliamentary time, enjoy their upper hand with a mixture of high principle, low politics and smugness – and woe betide anyone who suggests that the provisional timetable should be revealed even within government, let alone to others in Parliament. Party whips still jealously guard their power and the mystery over decisions on permitted absence from votes.

Maverick MPs can at times hold the whole proceedings to ransom until ridiculous hours by making lengthy speeches. Rebellious MPs can hold significant power, but if they are disorganised or become serial rebels that power fades, unless the government has an ultra-slim majority, as this current Parliament now demonstrates. Sections of the media that can command large audiences hold significant sway, with their ability to splash away reputations and strangle new policies at birth, sometimes with a casual regard for the facts. The power of the wider party machinery varies between parties, but includes staff in key positions, committee structures, conferences, elected representatives in different bodies, and sometimes external affiliated organisations. And ultimately, of course, the voters have power: once every few years rocking up to a local primary school or church hall, and making a mark with a stubby pencil on a piece of paper to sum up all their hopes, fears and ideas.

With the exception of the voters, every other power base within the political system remains overwhelmingly dominated by men.

It wasn’t until 2017 that the total number of women MPs ever elected to the House of Commons finally overtook the number of men elected as MPs in a single general election.⁷ We have never had a woman as Chancellor or Defence Secretary. The reshuffle after the 2017 election left five government departments with entirely male ministerial teams, including the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice.⁸ Gender equality at the top of the civil service is going backwards – just three of the top sixteen posts are held by women, down from eight in 2011.⁹ Pick any political party you like – with the exception of the Women’s Equality Party – and go to their conference: you’ll see man after man taking to the stage. Just a third of councillors in England are women,¹⁰ with even fewer in Wales (28 per cent)¹¹ and Scotland (24 per cent).¹² Only 15 countries around the world are led by a woman, which is fewer than a tenth of the 193 countries in the United Nations.¹³

Governments at national and local levels wield huge influence over people’s everyday lives, making decisions on everything from health services to national security, taxation to transport, employment to education. The Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Assemblies in Wales, Northern Ireland and London, and councils up and down the country hold the people wielding the executive power to account. If these bodies do not reflect the society they serve, then they lack important voices and perspectives, and their debates and decisions are the poorer for it.

So far, so what? I’ve told you things you knew, or suspected at least. The interesting conversation is what is driving this power inequality between men and women in our political systems, and what we can do about it.

The barriers to greater participation in politics by women have often been described as ‘the 4 Cs’: cash, caring, confidence and culture. All of these do play a role, but I’d like to add a fifth ‘C’ – the closed club.

Cash

Politics can be pricey. Most people involved in politics are volunteers, and that includes political candidates. Travel, accommodation and registration fees to attend party conferences can easily run into hundreds of pounds each year. On top of that there are often training and campaign events or by-elections to go to, and party fundraisers with their endless raffles, requests for auction prizes, and sometimes even an expectation that candidates themselves should be able to write a fat cheque to help fund the campaign. But the biggest financial impact is no doubt lost earnings. Few successful candidates work in another job during the six-week election campaign, and many spend much longer than six weeks full-time as a candidate, without earning other income. One survey put the cost of a winning candidacy, taking all these factors into account, at over £40,000.¹⁴ The nature of the five-year political cycle encourages people to throw everything at their bid to win; unlike most job applications, if you don’t make it this time, you typically have to wait five years for the next chance. And, of course, there is no guarantee of success – I’ve known people remortgage their house and get into significant debt through a campaign, only to lose and find themselves exhausted, dejected and in severe financial hardship. This certainly affects men as well as women. But when men earn 19 per cent more than women on average in the UK, the financial barrier to politics is even higher for women. The Conservative Party is attempting to square that circle with bursaries for candidates who are less-well off,¹⁵ and the Women’s Equality Party offers candidates funding to help with childcare and other costs.¹⁶

It’s not just personal finances, however – the campaign has to be paid for, too. Fundraising often falls largely on the candidate’s shoulders: as the public face of the campaign, you’re asking people to buy into you as an individual, as well as the party. Over the course of 18 months or more, a parliamentary campaign can cost tens of thousands of pounds when you factor in staff, office costs, printing, postage and telephoning – and if you don’t have a large team of volunteers to help with delivering leaflets, stuffing envelopes and making calls then the cost can easily be much higher. I remember going on a training course about fundraising where one of the tips was to ‘think about your contacts, your friends, your family, your network – who would be able to write a cheque for £1,000?’. Let’s just say as a twenty-something, my list was devastatingly short. But this is even more of a barrier for people from lower-income backgrounds, and the socio-economic diversity in Parliament is worryingly going backwards.¹⁷ Anyone who has operated in the senior echelons of business and finance has an inbuilt advantage here – and they are disproportionately men. It’s like power squared. Those with financial power are better able to access political power.

Stricter spending limits on campaigning – not just a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Politics: A Woman’s Place is in the House of Commons
• 2. Childhood: Learning the Ropes
• 3. Bodies: Blood, Sweat and Tears
• 4. Parenting: It Takes Two to Tango
• 5. Work: The Unlevel Playing Field
• 6. Culture: The Space Race
• 7. Sport: The Gender Play Gap
• 8. Violence
• 9. Men: Equal Power is a Win-Win
• Conclusion: Towards Equal Power
• Acknowledgements
• Endnotes