Money, Sex and Power Week 9 Remedying the Democratic Deficit: Blair’s ‘babes’ and the feminisation of UK politics

Lecture outline  The democratic deficit – what is it?  Does it matter who represents us?  What has been done to remedy the democratic deficit?  Have women’s issues and concerns been integrated into political life? Has politics been feminised?

Democratic deficit – what is it? Political representatives don’t reflect the social composition of the electorate Representation complex concept  1. Symbolic  2. Delegate/representative  3. Demographic Demographic representation important for idea of democratic deficit

Demographic concept of representation  Composition of legislative assembly should reflect composition of society/community – should ‘describe’ it  Like a statistically representative sample  Quantitative concept of representation  Assumes that members of social group are only ones who can represent the interests of that group (women, ethnic minorities)

Female suffrage  Campaigners argued that once women had vote they’d be able to bring about change  Political equality would bring about other forms of equality  A change in numerical representation would bring about change in policies that affected women  Descriptive representation would lead to substantive representation

Problems with descriptive representation  No necessary link between social background/group membership and political beliefs  If taken to extreme get situation where no one can represent anyone else because don’t have exactly the same social background  Despite this, elected assembly that’s unbalanced in social composition still seen as less than democratic  Most legislative assemblies extremely undemocratic if measured in this way

Unrepresentative UK Parliament  Age: average age of MP = 50 (Hackett and Hunter, 2010); average age of UK population in 2011 is 39.7 (ONS, 2013)  Gender: women = 50+% of UK population but only 22% of MPs  Occupation: parliament is mainly middle class in terms of jobs MPs have done. In 2010, only 4% of MPs have ever held a manual job.  Education: 34% of MPs have had a private education compared with 7% of UK population. In 2010, 20 MPs went to Eton and 19 of these are Tories.  Ethnicity: 2011 Census, 14% of the UK population belonged to non-white ethnic minority groups (ONS 2011). In 2010 parliament, only 4.1% of MPs were from a non-white ethnic background. There are 15 ethnic minority MPs in the Labour party, 11 in the Conservative party and none in the Lib Dems.

Effects of women’s under-representation 1. ‘Unfinished democracy’ (Haavio Manila, 1985), simply undemocratic 2. Affects legitimacy of a democratic system, alienates those who don’t people like see themselves in the system (young people etc.) 3. Women and men may have different interests 4. Scope and form of politics restricted 5. Inefficient use of human resources 6. Socially unjust

What is to be done? 1. Do nothing and wait for time to take its course 2. Equality rhetoric 3. Equality promotion 4. Affirmative/positive action

All-women shortlists  In UK 1 st past the post electoral system  Discriminatory and non-representative compared with Proportional Representation  Women candidates often seen as an electoral liability, given marginal seats  Gender divide reinforced by media, women’s contribution trivialised  With PR more women would be elected (Scotland and Wales)

Remedying the democratic deficit  Labour introduced women-only shortlists in 1993  Challenged in court by two male applicants  SDA 1975 ambiguous but challenge upheld  2002 amended SDA (Election Candidates) Act  Became legally permissible to take positive action in selection procedures

Increasing the number of women candidates  Important as SDA (Election Candidates) expires  Result of all-women shortlists used by Labour was that the number of women MPs increased  1997 proportion of women MPs went from 9% to 18%, 120 women MPs - ‘Blair’s babes’  2005 election - Lab 27.5%, Lib Dem 16.1%, Cons 8.6%

What differences have women made?  Domestic violence policy developed  National Childcare strategy  Other women friendly measures  Intervening on ‘women’s issues’  Does this imply a feminisation of politics?  Two possible interpretations

Feminisation of politics? 1. UK politics still male dominated and masculinised (See Cowley, 1999 and Childs, 2001) 2. Has been a feminisation of UK politics, women simply being there makes a difference (Ann Phillips)

Voter turnout  UK seen a considerable drop in voter turnout  2001 general election 59.4% turnout, compared with 2005 when there was a 61.4% turnout and 2010 with a 65.1% turnout  Younger people, working-class and ethnic minorities more disillusioned with conventional politics than white, middle-class, older people

Summary  Democratic deficit – political representatives don’t reflect the composition of the population  This is important for equality and social justice  For women’s descriptive representation and that of other minority groups to be translated into substantive representation  And on grounds of legitimacy

Is politics feminised?  Little evidence of feminisation of politics  Political institutions are culturally masculinist  Institutionalise a particular form of masculinity  Some evidence that Wales and Scotland more feminised