Tag Archives: Gender

Wales needs a larger Senedd, but a closed list system is not the best way to achieve it

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The Senedd in Wales recently voted to support plans to increase its membership, following the report of a special committee, which endorsed proposals put forward by Labour and Plaid Cymru. Laura McAllister argues that the need to enlarge the Senedd is clear, but that proposed changes to the voting system are flawed and could undermine public support for reform.

That the Senedd marked its twenty-first ‘coming of age’ birthday by seeking to recast itself with a fundamentally altered institutional shape should surprise few familiar with devolved politics. Wales is often referred to as the land of commissions and inquiries. Each of these inquiries into the most ‘unsettled’ devolution settlement has recommended that the Senedd should increase from its current 60 Members (MSs) to a figure between 80 and 100. The story of these inquiries can be found on the Senedd website.

I chaired the Expert Panel on Assembly Electoral Reform in 2017, which was charged with looking at the size of the Senedd, its electoral system and extending the franchise to younger voters. Our Panel’s recommendations were that:

  • The number of members should be increased from 60 to at least 80, and preferably closer to 90. We concluded that this was needed because the Assembly (its name was changed to ‘Senedd Cymru/Welsh Parliament’ in 2020) had acquired a much greater role than the one it had in 1999, and also that its powers were expected to expand further. We concluded that the Senedd could not be expected to continue functioning optimally and delivering for the people of Wales if it remained at its current size.
  • That a new electoral system should be introduced to accommodate this increased size and to make the relationship between votes cast and seats won more proportional. Our favoured system was Single Transferable Vote (STV) accompanied by prescriptive, legislative gender quotas, though the Panel also regarded a Flexible List system of proportional representation (PR) as a viable alternative.
  • That the minimum voting age in Senedd elections should be reduced to 16 as a means of boosting democratic participation.  We regarded it as essential that the lowering of the voting age should be accompanied by high-quality education about politics in schools and other places of learning. This last recommendation was enacted through the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act 2020 and came into force for the 2021 Senedd elections.

There was deemed insufficient political consensus to advance our first two recommendations around size and electoral system change in time for the 2021 election, despite a report from the Senedd Committee on Electoral Reform chaired by Labour MS Dawn Bowden, which almost exactly replicated our report’s recommendations. This committee did acknowledge that time had effectively run out and instead called for legislation early in the Sixth Senedd to increase its size to between 80 and 90 Members from the 2026 election, with all MSs elected by STV.

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The 2019 election campaign shows that abuse, harassment and intimidation of candidates is getting worse, especially for women

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The 2019 general election saw more women run for (and win) seats in the House of Commons than ever before. However the level of abuse those women received was also higher than ever, and affected them disproportionately compared with men. Sofia Collignon explains what we can learn from the data about the experience of female candidates.

After parliament voted in November 2019 to trigger an election – which took place in December – a record number of women presented themselves for office, as 37% of candidates were female. This is an improvement of eight percentage points over the number of women standing just two years earlier, in 2017 (29%). Perhaps more relevant is that a record number of female candidates actually went on to become MPs (220), comprising 34% of the total number of members of the House of Commons (+5%) and making up a majority of both Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs. The increase in the number of women standing for office and winning a seat is undeniable progress for the representation of women in the UK. But this positive scenario becomes more pessimistic if the violence experienced by women in politics is considered.  

Drawing on data from the Representative Audit of Britain (RAB) survey of 2019 candidates, this blog post summarises the degree to which women and men candidates suffered harassment and intimidation while campaigning for the 2019 general election in the UK and the nature of the abuse they experienced. It shows that women are distinctly affected by abuse, harassment and intimidation in two ways: the frequency of the abuse and the motivation behind it. 

The frequency of abuse

The analysis of RAB 2019 responses indicates that 49% of candidates reported that they suffered some form of abuse, harassment or intimidation while campaigning. This is an increase of 11 percentage points compared with 2017. The proportion is significantly higher for women (61%) than men (44%). It is particularly worrying to notice that, despite multiple initiatives, the findings of a 2017 inquiry by the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) and frequent media coverage, harassment against women increased by 16 percentage points, almost twice the increase observed among men (see Figure 1). Not only were more women standing for office, but they were also reporting more acts of intimidation, threats, physical and psychological violence. 

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Do men and women communicate differently in the House of Commons?

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Screenshot_20200813.153441_Photos.jpgScreenshot_20200813.153452_Photos.jpgThe evidence supporting the idea that male and female legislators have different communication styles has mostly come from interviews with legislators rather than analysis of speeches given in parliament. Analysing speeches delivered in the UK House of Commons between 1997 and 2016, Lotte Hargrave and Tone Langengen found compelling evidence for differences: women are more likely to evidence arguments with personal experience, discuss policies in a more concrete way, and are less adversarial than men. They argue these findings have important implications for how political communication styles might improve public engagement with politicians, offer a different focus to the discussion, and improve democratic legitimacy.

As countries respond to COVID-19, media outlets have widely reported that female leaders seem to have a leadership style that is better suited to responding to the crisis than that of their male counterparts. In academic literature too, the claims that male and female legislators might have different approaches to ‘doing politics’ have long existed. A key dimension upon which men and women are said to differ is with respect to their communication styles. So far however, the evidence base supporting this idea of gender differences in styles is mainly rooted in the testimonies of politicians themselves. In these interviews, women are said to evidence their arguments differently, have more concrete orientations when discussing policies and politics, and to be less adversarial or aggressive. 

In our newly published paper in the journal Politics & Gender, The Gendered Debate: Do Men and Women Communicate Differently in the House of Commons?, we build upon these insights. Specifically, we set about measuring whether there are differences in the communication styles of male and female legislators in the UK House of Commons through analysis of almost 200 parliamentary speeches delivered between 1997 and 2016 on three policy areas: education, immigration, and welfare. 

Speechmaking is an important setting for analysis, as it is one of the most visible elements of a politician’s job, and receives significant media coverage. Speeches therefore have important implications for how policies are discussed and informed, how the public engages with political elites, and how legislators represent their constituents.

In our paper, we measure three distinct indicators of style. First, argumentation captures the strategies men and women use to evidence their arguments. We test the argument that women tend to make greater use of personal and anecdotal experience, whereas men focus more on facts and numbers. Second, orientation captures how men and women focus their discussion of issues and policies. Women are said to be more likely to orient their discussions to concrete and specific groups and people (such as single mothers, low income families or students), whereas men are said to orient their discussion of policies and politics in terms of abstract issues (such as the economy, the system, or the state). Third, adversarial language captures behaviour such as insulting others or engaging in political point-scoring, which men are thought to use more often.  Continue reading →

Female leaders can amplify the voices of other women in politics

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avatar.jpgIt has long been said that women in politics act as role models and influencers for the women that come after them. But what is less clear is whether or not there is a causal effect on the impact of female MPs as a result of having female ministers in charge of government departments. Jack Blumenau has analysed two decades of parliamentary data and argues that women don’t just inspire other women, they amplify their voices and increase their impact on parliamentary debates and outcomes.

In an interview in 2013, Betty Boothroyd – the first female Speaker of the House of Commons – paid tribute to her political mentor, Barbara Castle. Castle holds an important position in the history of British political feminism not only because of her promotion of seminal legislation such as the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts, but also because she was the first woman to lead a series of important government departments, including Overseas Aid, Transport, and Employment. In her interview, Boothroyd pointed to the important effect that Castle’s leadership had on her own career: ‘She was my role model because I felt, well, if Barbara can do it then I can do it.’

As key figures in the legislative process, female cabinet ministers seem natural candidates to be “role models” to other women in UK politics. Historically, women have been under-represented in cabinet positions and so the appointment of a female cabinet minister might help to break down gendered sterotypes about the policy areas to which women are entitled to contribute. Similarly, there is also evidence from previous research that female politicians employ a distinct political style which is more cooperative and encouraging than that of their male colleagues. If these behavioural differences persist amongst leadership figures, the appointment of a female cabinet minister may promote a culture that is more conducive to, and encouraging of, the participation and influence of other female MPs.

In a recently published article, I investigate whether there is systematic evidence for the type of female leadership effects described by Boothroyd. In particular, I focus on the relationship between female cabinet ministers and other female MPs in UK politics, and look for evidence of these effects by examining parterns of participation in nearly 15,000 parliamentary debates between 1997 and 2017.

Parliamentary debates matter because they represent the main opportunity for MPs to express their positions on different policy options. If some types of MP routinely speak at greater length than others in debate, or are systematically more influential in their spoken contributions, then this could have important consequences for the representational function of our parliamentary system. Continue reading →

Levelling the playing field: gendered electoral financing of women candidates

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images.000.jpgRainbow.Murray.2015.jpgdownload.001.jpgWomen are under-represented in almost every legislature worldwide and politics is easier to get into if you have a wealthy background. Ragnhild Muriaas, Rainbow Murray and Vibeke Wang discuss their new book, which examines the effectiveness of financial incentive mechanisms to increase women’s representation in politics. They conclude that money, both as a barrier to women’s inclusion and as a potential lever for boosting their presence, is an area that requires greater consideration both from scholars and political actors.

It is a well-known fact that women are under-represented in nearly every legislature around the world. It is also well known, although perhaps less commented upon, that politics is dominated by those from wealthy backgrounds. It is, in effect, a rich man’s game. When these two concepts are linked, it is often in a way that unfairly criticises women – for example, by highlighting that gender quotas often favour the introduction of wealthy women into politics without addressing wider issues of diversity and inclusion.

In our book, Gendered Electoral Financing: Money Power and Representation in Comparative Perspective, we take a different approach. We acknowledge the ways in which money drives politics, and in particular, the ways in which lack of money can act as a gendered barrier to women’s access to politics. As money is part of the problem, we focus on ways in which it could also be part of the solution. Specifically, we examine what we term ‘gendered electoral finance’ (GEF): using money as a means to facilitate women’s entry to politics, either by supporting their campaigns directly or by incentivising parties to do so.

Our work examines a range of case studies, both in developed and developing democracies, to consider the different ways in which money presents both barriers and possible solutions for increasing women’s presence in politics. We focus primarily on candidate-centred systems, ie countries where candidates are elected individually rather than through a party list, and where the bulk of the pressure therefore lies with the candidate. We find that barriers and solutions can vary quite significantly depending on the political system in place. What remains a common theme, however, is that money plays a very important part in understanding why politics remains stubbornly gendered in favour of men. Continue reading →