Mainstreaming Gender: The UK election

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Last night was a night of upsets, drama and tumbling records. It was also an historic night for women in Parliament.

 

First, the good news.

 

A record number of female MPs have been elected, so three cheers for that.

 

With at least 400 seats declared, more than 30 per cent of MPs are women. That's right - one in three MPs are now female. Still out of kilter with the equal gender split in the country at large, but a big improvement on the 22 per cent elected last time round. So perhaps the message on gender parity is beginning to get through in Westminster.

 

But - the bad news - we now have a hitherto mainstream party without a single woman in the Commons.

 

The Liberal Democrats, already humiliated on a national scale for betraying their promises and principles in government, are also now a laughing stock when it comes to equality - something that's supposed to run through the party like the lettering in a stick of rock.

 

One by one, the few women they had - seven in the last Parliament - were ousted.

 

Jo Swinson, once tipped as a leader of the future, fell to the SNP in East Dunbartonshire. Then came the Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone, despite her diligence as a local MP in Hornsey and Wood Green, and her majority of nearly 8,000. Likewise Jenny Willott, whose 4,500-vote majority was transformed into a 5,000 lead for Labour.

 

By contrast, and somewhat surprisingly, Conservative women who had been heading for oblivion clung on.

 

 

Education Secretary Nicky Morgan massively increased her majority in Loughborough, and defence minister Anna Soubry did the same in Broxtowe. Only the employment minister Esther McVey paid the price for becoming the poster girl of Conservative-led welfare cuts in Wirral West.

 

The Tory women were lucky - spared by Labour's abject failure to make a comeback in England. But David Cameron shouldn't kid himself that he's any more progressive on gender than his erstwhile coalition partners. In fact, according to data from University College London and Birkbeck, the Tories fielded proportionately fewer women candidates than the Lib Dems - 26 per cent compared to 27 per cent.

 

No, the true revolutionaries last night were the SNP. Led by a woman who smashed records left, right and centre (well mainly left let's face it), 36 per cent of their candidates were female - better than Labour and second only to the Greens, who failed to make their much-vaunted Westminster breakthrough.

 

Among their legion of new Parliamentarians Mhairi Black, a 20-year-old Glasgow University student who will have to juggle her final year of studies there with her duties as the youngest MP since 1667.

 

Another, Kirsten Oswald, only joined the party last year. Now she's MP for East Renfrewshire, ousting the Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy.

 

Then there's Lisa Cameron, also a new recruit to the nationalist cause. An NHS consultant by trade, she saw off a 14,500 Labour majority, and turned it into a 16,500 majority of her own. Such swings in a general election are nigh-on unprecedented.

 

The SNP has a valuable lesson for the other parties. It listened to the people of Scotland, it heard their disaffection with Westminster politics, and with politicians and their promises. And, above all, with Nicola Sturgeon at the helm, it is making politics at last look more representative.

 

Neither Labour nor the Lib Dems have ever had a female leader. And yet they'd both describe themselves as progressive. As they lick their wounds, and no doubt search for a new leader, they should look north of the border, and reflect on how they managed to get it so wrong.

 

But for now - we women can allow ourselves a little celebration: one in three MPs are female. Slowly but surely, our Parliament is becoming more representative of the country it claims to reflect - at least in terms of gender.