Women and British Party Politics

Sarah Childs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134211579
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

Women and British Party Politics examines the characteristics of women's participation at the mass and elite level in contemporary British politics; as voters, party members and elected representatives respectively. It explores what this means for ideas about, and the practice of, descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation. The main focus is on the feminization of British party politics - the integration of women into formal political institutions and the integration of women's concerns and perspectives into political debate and policy - in the post-1997 period.

Not only specifically designed to bring together cutting-edge conceptual developments in the sub-discipline of gender and politics, with robust British empirical research, this book also presents reflections on how best to study gender and politics. The empirical findings which are presented through the extensive use of case studies derive from a range of research projects which were undertaken over a period of ten years, and which make use of a variety of research methods and techniques.

This book will appeal to all those with an interest in British Politics, Feminism and European Studies; and will provide the reader with an overview of the complex relationship between sex, gender and politics in a conceptually sophisticated fashion.

Epilogue

The view from the ‘Feminist’ of the House: The Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC MP, and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party*

If she could wave a magic wand Harriet Harman would transform the House of Commons into a Parliament with equal numbers of women and men forthwith. When she first arrived, over twenty years ago, and seven months pregnant, women comprised fewer than 3 per cent of the House. The young MP for Camberwell and Peckham never believed that it would take so many elections to see significant increases—relatively speaking—in the number of women MPs. Yet Harman is mindful that in the 2005 Parliament women remain a minority of representatives at Westminster, at fewer than 20 per cent; moreover, in the absence of sex parity, and when so many women MPs owe their election to Labour’s policy of All Women Shortlists, she maintains that women’s presence in the UK Parliament cannot be taken for granted.

Getting women elected is not, for Harman, an end in itself. If, in the past, women politicians had to claim that they could do politics as well as men, so that they would be allowed in; today’s women politicians, make a different claim: ‘we are bringing something extra, we are bringing our understanding of women’s lives’, our ‘difference’ to politics; the fact that ‘we are women is not an excuse, or a problem, it’s our cause’. In Harman’s view, the new generation of women politicians are politicians because they are women. The consequence of a parliament comprised of 50 per cent women? One that is ‘sighted on women’s concerns’; women representatives understand the ‘daily struggles’ women face.

Being able to act on women’s concerns in Parliament is, according to Harman, about numbers (although her subsequent comments make it clear that it is not just about numbers). Having a certain rarity value as a woman MP is ‘worthless if you cannot do anything’. Being in the party of government with 100 or so women means that progress for women can be m...