Quality | 2010.02.18
Political reform: Votes for women | Editorial
Changing the culture of the country\'s most public workplaces is much harder than it seemed in 1997
David Cameron\'s slot on yesterday\'s Tory central office grid probably just said "media lovebomb". On GMTV he talked about the sexualisation of children with the urgency of a father who disapproves of his young daughter\'s enthusiasm for Amy Winehouse. In Shortlist ("the magazine for men with more than one thing on their minds") he was the posh bloke you could talk to about darts. And finally on BBC Radio 4\'s Woman\'s Hour he was what another politician might have called a pretty straight kind of guy, lightly toasted and warmly buttered by Jenni Murray. The Cameron brand is a lovely bit of marketing, just not the same thing as the Conservative party, as the polls are beginning to show. But then the real challenge at the next election could be less about persuading the voters to prefer one lot of policies to another than persuading them to vote at all. Meanwhile women, whose support kept the Tories in power for most of the 20th century, deserted the party in the 1990s and are not only reluctant to return to the Tories, but at the moment seem more reluctant than men to vote for anyone.
Around the world, women politicians (and particularly women party leaders) have been welcomed as change-makers. After his election in 2005, Cameron was quick to identify their failure to progress in his party as an all too visible indicator of its refusal to modernise. He has bludgeoned enough change through to guarantee that, if he wins this year, the number of female Tory MPs may jump from 17 to 60 . But even that would very likely mean fewer women in the Commons than there are now, for Labour women are disproportionately found in less safe seats, and they will bear the brunt of defeat. Worse, in Scotland and Wales, where campaigners once believed critical mass had been achieved, the numbers are already drifting down and are likely to fall further in 2011. It is becoming clear that changing the culture of the country\'s most public workplaces is much harder than it seemed back in 1997.
Now proposals for reform of the expenses system and of the Commons (which MPs debate on Monday) show how easy it is to perpetuate old barriers and, worse, raise new ones. The idea, from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority , that MPs should only have one-bedroom flats is bad news for all those with children, but it will be worse for women, who still do most of the caring. And although the Wright committee\'s ideas for parliamentary reform have much to recommend them, if they succeed in returning power to the old-fashioned testosterone-driven late-night debating chamber of the Commons, it will do nothing for its appeal either to women or voters. Creating a fairer society is going to be an election theme. They know where to start.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/19/women-politics-editorial
