17 September 2023 , 23:01
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Feminist campaigners today blast efforts to boost gender equality at Westminster.
A stinging report from the cross-party group for Women in Parliament outlines a string of recommendations which have been kicked into the long grass in recent years. The study - Open House: Where Next for Gender Equality in Parliament? - is the first audit of a decade’s worth of reports into gender equality in the corridors of power.
It claims 92 recommendations spanning 36 different themes have been made to 29 bodies since 2014, but only a handful have been adopted. Key proposals left to gather dust include deploying measures to tackle sexual harassment and bullying, it says. The report was drawn-up by researchers from the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership and the Fawcett Society.
Fawcett Society chief executive Jemima Olchawski said: “Without truly equal representation in the halls of power, women’s views and priorities will never be adequately addressed by our democracy. We make up over half of the population but just 34% of our Parliament, despite so much work already done to move us forward.”
Global Institute for Women’s Leadership research fellow Minna Cowper-Cowles said: “If we want a democracy that represents the needs and interests of the whole population, we need to make sure that women are accommodated and supported in Parliament. This report is a comprehensive guide to the actions that are needed to put these changes in place.”
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Conservative former Cabinet Minister Maria Miller, who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Women in Parliament, warned there was “still a long way to go to make Parliament a truly equal place for men and women”. She added: “To have women in Parliament, not as a minority but as 50% of our elected MPs, is incredibly important - it’s important for representation, for better and more diverse policy outcomes and to bring the full perspective of human experience to the corridors of power. The constituents of every MP are 50% female and they deserve their voices to be heard in Westminster.
“Over the last decade there have been plenty of high-quality, useful reports on how we can both recruit more women into politics and how we can change the workings of Parliament in such a way that barriers to participation are removed and men and women can thrive equally in an already strange and pressured environment.”
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