With a number of women announcing their intention to retire at the 2015 election, female representation has been in the news. In this edition of Lex Elects we take a look at the MPs standing down and the party’s efforts to recruit female candidates. We also explore the potential impact of women voters on the result in 2015 and look at female candidates to watch in 2015.
Could 2015 see a fall in the number of women in Parliament?
Labour’s long term policy of having all-woman shortlists has been successful in increasing the party’s number of women MPs. In the current Parliament a third of Labour’s MPs are female compared to 16% of Conservative MPs and 12% of Lib Dems. For both Labour and the Tories, the concern is that the election in 2015 will see a move backwards in terms of female representation. While commentary has focused on the number of Conservative female MPs that have announced they are standing down, in fact eight per cent of both female Labour and the Conservative MPs have so far announced they will be retiring.
The focus has largely been on the “Tories’ women problem” because many of the Tory women standing down have only been in Parliament since 2010, including Laura Sandys (South Thanet), Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) and Jessica Lee (Erewash). The deselection of Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) received widespread coverage, although she may yet have the chance to regain her candidacy if the party decides to hold an open primary system. The retiring Labour MPs are mainly longstanding. Among those standing down are former Ministers Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) and Deputy Speaker Dawn Primarolo (Bristol South).
Clearly selection of women is now a priority for all the parties. The Lib Dems have already selected three female candidates in seats where the sitting Lib Dem MP is retiring and Labour are continuing with their policy of all-women shortlists. So far around a third of candidates in the few safe Conservative seats where the sitting MP is standing down are women, which is reasonable, but will hardly bring about a radical transformation.
Do the Tories have a problem with women voters?
Research carried out by Populus has found that contrary to assumptions, the Conservative party does not have noticeably lower support among female voters. As Lord Ashcroft recently noted, “The Conservatives don’t attract too few women. They attract too few of everyone.” One ray of hope for the Tories is a recent YouGov poll which found that while the Tories do less well with women under the age of 40, they have higher support amongst women over 60, who traditionally are more likely to turn out on polling day.