GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN THE UK

Women’s representation in UK and national parliaments: change since previous election
United
Kingdom
House of
Commons
Wales Scotland Northern
Ireland
29% 42% 35% 28%
2015
Increase of 7%
2016
No change
2016
No change
2016
Increase of 5%
Sources: UK – Sex and Power report, 2015; Wales – In Brief, Assembly Election 2016: Women’s Political Representation, 2016; Scotland – Holyrood, Analysis: the
representation of women in the Scottish Parliament, 2016 and https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/scotland-blog/2016/may/12/holyrood-2016-scottishparliament-gender-gap;
Northern Ireland – NI Assembly Research paper NIAR 141–16: www.niassembly.gov.uk/globalassets/documents/raise/
publications/2016-2021/2016/general/14616.pdf
The new governments for Scotland and Wales were
also a relatively ‘blank canvas‘ with no incumbents
in pre-existing seats, although as cross-cultural
research has shown, masculinist cultures permeate
parliaments, and women had to campaign hard.
In Northern Ireland, efforts to advance women’s
equality in public life include a gender equality strategy.
Concerns were raised by a number of our stakeholders
that there is a risk of complacency developing
particularly in Westminster (the London home of the
UK Parliament), which mitigates the sustained effort
required to maintain progress. This may be a reflection
of underestimating how hard-won the gains for equality,
made by political parties, civil society organisations
and others, have been to date. The Sex and Power
report on the 2015 elections to Westminster set out
key recommendations to government, political parties,
civil society and the media.
SUCCESSES
In relation to politics, enabling legislation was
introduced and extended by the UK government in the
form of the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act
2002, amended by the Equality Act 2010. This permits
political parties (whose role is key) to use quotas or
other positive-action measures such as all-women
shortlists in the selection (not election) of parliamentary
candidates, until 2030. Such measures have achieved
significant gains. The highest-performing countries tend
to be those that use quotas. Positive-action measures
address the implicit bias in recruitment and selection –
the ‘demand’ – reflected in the recent findings of
the Fawcett Society’s Sex Equality: State of the Nation
survey, where six in ten respondents agreed that men
in top jobs won’t make way for women unless they
have to. There are ‘softer’ but less expeditious methods
which can be used by political parties to increase
women’s representation, mostly addressing the ‘supply’
of candidates. The House of Commons Speaker’s
Conference on Parliamentary Representation in
2010, the Women in Parliament report Improving
Parliament in 2014, and an independent report
The Good Parliament in 2016 all made proposals for
change. Innovations to note include the newly formed
Women and Equalities Select Committee in Westminster,
a promising mechanism to mainstream women’s
equality into legislation, and the Women’s Equality (WE)
Party, the first party in the UK to make women’s equality
its purpose, founded in 2015. In the London Mayoral
election 2016 the Women’s Equality candidate
attracted one in 20 of all votes cast. Candidates also
ran in Wales and in Scotland, where one candidate
commented: ‘We may not have won a seat but we
have certainly won influence’.
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