Women's Fight for Political Equality is Still On!

50:50 and Women in Public Affairs (WiPA) Celebrate Emmeline Pankhurst’s birthday together in Parliament.

By Emma Simpson , Social Media Lead, 50:50 Parliament

The House of Commons, committee room 10 was packed for our event with Women In Public Affairs (WiPA).?The buzz was palpable as our fantastic cross-party panel of female?MPs and Helen Pankhurst?talked frankly about why equal representation is so important for our democracy.?We were there?to celebrate the 165th?birthday?of Emmeline Pankhurst and to encourage everyone to support 50:50 and inspire women?to stand for elected office.

It worked, this was Karen Spinner ’s reaction to the event:

My friend suggested I attend the WiPA event in conjunction with 50:50 Parliament as she knows I have an interest in finding out more about public office. I’ve been involved in a few local community campaigns.

I left the spirited evening feeling in equal parts inspired and overwhelmed.

While women make up a majority (51%) of the British population, only 35% of MPs are female (and this figure might even decrease at the next election for a host of reasons). This lack of representation robs women of agency at the highest level, narrows our ability to shape and influence legislation and leads to the creation of policies that at best exclude, and at worst harm, women and girls. The panel highlighted the handling of the Covid pandemic – almost exclusively orchestrated by the four white middle-aged men we saw on our screens every evening – as a prime example of this.

Representation of women and girls at the highest level matters because it impacts all our lives, whether we follow politics or not. But I couldn’t help but reflect that the themes we touched upon – exclusion, male dominance, lack of collaboration and a toxic environment – are experienced by women in all workplaces. Who among us hasn’t had to endure these challenges repeatedly throughout our careers?

Politics is a problem – but so are many U.K. workplaces.

This is why it’s so important to push, push, push for women’s rightful representation, to actively support them into senior leadership roles and to put meaningful policies in place (and not just femwashing nonsense around International Women’s Day).

Best moment of the night came when the wonderful Helen Pankhurst asked the group:

'How many of you are feminists?'

(Every hand in the room goes up).

‘And for how many of you is this an important part of your identity?’

(Every hand in the room goes up).

Surely that gives hope for the future?”

50:50 Parliament founder and director, Frances Scott started by thanking Jess Phillips MP (Labour) for hosting the event and asked her why it was so important for women to have equal seats and equal say:

During the pandemic it was so very obvious that there were just rooms of men making decisions, nothing was put in place in regard to childcare in the early days of the pandemic, nothing was said about domestic violence until six weeks into the pandemic. That is just unimaginable if that had been a room of women making those decisions. Women have to take positions of power in order for the women in the country to have power and agency…

Conservative MP and Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Caroline Nokes began by saying that in the 13 years she has been an MP she has seen an improvement in the working conditions for women in Parliament and this is because as the number of women MPs increases they campaign to improve and modernise Westminster.

50:50 Parliament director and founder, Frances Scott then went on to ask?Caroline?what action could?the Conservative Party take to address the lack of women on the government benches. Of the four largest parties in Parliament, the Conservatives have the lowest proportion of women MPs, at just 24% following the 2019 general election.

Being an MP is one of the best jobs in the world … but it’s a brutal truth that there is a lack of women…it’s about the challenge of getting selected, which is just tougher as a woman. The stark reality is you have to be better as a woman to get selected, in my party we (women) predominantly get selected for tougher seats, more marginal seats, we serve one whole parliamentary term less than our male counterparts and that’s a real problem because it removes the ability to grow a career. I spend a lot of my time saying “what are we actually going to do to the selection process to make it less difficult for women to get selected.

When SNP MP, Anum Qaisar, was asked about her experiences as a female MP she was able to give an insightful intersectional perspective. There are 59 seats in Scotland and Anum Qaisar is currently the only person from an ethnic minority to hold one of those seats.

Not only am I woman, I am a young woman and I am a young woman of colour and I am a young woman of colour who is Muslim.

When I walk around the parliamentary estate, all I think about is the women who have come before me. Every time I find it challenging, I think about the women in my family who would never have got the opportunity to be here. I have experienced my fair share of racism and Islamophobia whether that’s from other members of Parliament or parliamentary staff. It is a challenge, I’m not going to lie, however please do stand because we don’t want to be the only women here, we want you here with us.

As with Jess Phillips, Liberal Democrat MP, Munira Wilson cited the pandemic as an example of why we need more women in positions of power.

During the pandemic you had four men in a room: Boris Johnson; Matt Hancock; Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, making a lot of the decisions on how the lockdown and how all the rules ran. And who were overlooked the most??Young children and their parents and it was particularly women who carried the lion’s share of the burden of caring for children as well as juggling work. Mothers were beside themselves, pubs and zoos opened before schools did. This demonstrated to me why not having a single woman in that small decision-making bubble was so catastrophic for some of the decisions that were made.

When asked about the toxicity that women who enter public life face, Munira said that actually she personally had not suffered this. She acknowledged that others do, but also pointed out that Parliament has put systems in place to protect MPs and that more is being done to help overcome these problems. Jess said that she is passionate about strengthening legislation surrounding violence against women and girls. This passion helps her overcome all the toxicity that she has faced.

There was also discussion surrounding the need for men and partners to play an equal and supportive role in family life if women are to progress in public life and politics. Women need men on their side to fight the battle for political equality.

We were in the House of Commons to celebrate Emmeline Pankhurst’s 165th birthday, and that we did. One guest, Gill Whitty-Collins , commented:

What would Emmeline think about the fact that nearly one hundred years since the equal franchise act and we are no way near 50:50 Parliament? She would be appalled!

Helen Pankhurst, Emmeline’s great granddaughter and Convenor of Centenary Action Group, gave us great insight into some of the radical suffragette’s vision for the future:

For her it wasn’t about men and women being the same or, despite age; or faith; or religious backgrounds; or ethnicity, being the same, its actually about diversity. The more diverse representation we have, the better representation our society has, the stronger Parliament is and I think that goes way back to when Emmeline was campaigning, having different lenses on different problems was what she really wanted to see.

Helen asked the guests in the room if they were feminists and nearly everyone put their hand up, which?led to these inspirational words:

Whatever party you are involved in, please remember the point that we started with. Which is that you are also feminists, you are saying this system needs to change in terms of its understanding of gender and diversity issues and that is absolutely pivotal.

Helen also pointed out that in 5 years it will be the centenary of the “1928 Equal Franchise Act” giving all women the right to vote in the UK. Surely on that special anniversary we should be aiming for equal representation. 50:50 by 2028!

We still need 100 more women to be elected at Westminster for women to achieve rightful representation.?So please take action! Reach out to everyone to let them know about 50:50 Parliament and ask them to support us by becoming a?Friend of 50:50?and encourage women to stand for elected office by clicking?#SignUpToStand?on our website. We are a friendly network here to help them along the way to Westminster or their local council chamber.

We?would like to thank Crestview Strategy for sponsoring the celebrations after the event.

50:50 Parliament is a charity working to build a better democracy.

Please support our work by becoming a?“Friend of 50:50”?and making a small donation?here.

50:50 is a friendly network here to help women progress in politics at a local and national level.

We are an inclusive, intersectional campaign working with all the political parties to empower women with our

#AskHerToStand?and?#SignUpToStand?programmes.

When women click?#SignUpToStand?we:

– send them an interactive Personal Political Profile

– allocate them a 50:50 Buddy

– invite them to weekly party specific Bite Size meetings

– and offer bespoke support to women from diverse groups.

In the corridors of power, men still outnumber women by 2:1.

We invite everyone, men and women, to support our work and join our mailing list at?www.5050Parliament.co.uk