The Glass Ceiling

Having promised a post on this, I thought this was as good a time as any to deliver. It's the inevitable 'women and politics' post.

Firstly, of course there is something wrong when a group that comprises just over half of Scotland's population could provide only just over one third of MSPs. And I sympathise: the LGBT community has only four 'out' MSPs. By rights, on the most recent figures, there should be eight. On more optimistic figures, there should be thirteen. Four is a bit of a let-down, though not as big a let-down as the zero that Scotland's ethnic minorities have to tolerate since the passing of Bashir Ahmad.

So on the numbers, Holyrood is whiter, straighter and more male than Scotland as a whole. Westminster, despite some ethnic minority presence, is certainly more male and straighter. Nevertheless, we do have to look past the numbers. Frankly, I would be just about happy to put up with a 100% heterosexual Parliament if I could be sure that any LGBT constituent could go to his or her representative and get a fair hearing. Similarly, any heterosexual constituent should be able to call on a gay MSP or MP and be listened to. The job of representing any area in Parliament should not be contingent on your sexual orientation. Or race. Or religion. Or, and this is where my post comes in, gender.

Because the row over the AWS in Airdrie and Shotts has re-ignited that old chestnut about how we engage with women.

As Jeff notes, the cause if equality is not helped if women are less likely to be interested in politics. Certainly that's something borne out in Scottish Roundups passim. Frankly, I think there's a possible chicken-and-egg issue here: women don't often see other women in major roles (and before a certain Prime Minister is brought up, Thatcher was hardly a great advert for Womens' Lib, particularly as she ended up behaving more like a stereotypical male than anyone else in her Cabinet), so don't see "people like them" where it counts, so don't see anything that grabs their attention, so don't get involved, so don't end up in major roles, so don't engage other women.

But Holmesian sociolinguistics comes into play: the politics we see the most of is the quick report from Parliament, with men shouting at each other. That's where the problem lies - Parliamentary debate isn't a big medium for female communication. Janet Holmes argued that men are public speakers, while women are private speakers. Put another way, men are more confrontational; women are more conversational. So right then and there, you have a male, confrontational environment: a sure recipe for women getting turned off.

That said, that's not the be-all-and-end-all of a Parliamentarian's job: he or she has to represent the community, and be a key local figure. Hence things like surgeries, where elected officials invite their constituents to call on them and raise issues affecting them. A lot of the time, this means people coming through the doors with problems, often big ones. To get through this requires no small amount of empathy. And women are better at that then men are. This means that there is a massive need for there to be women in elected posts: the Chamber may be off-putting, but there's more to being in Parliament that that.

So from a principled and a practical point of view, it's right for there to be more women in Parliament than there are.

But are All-Woman Shortlists the way to go?

While Yousuf puts up a thoughtful defence of the approach, I disagree.

Yousuf argues that cliques develop in local parties over tiem, and that means that if your face doesn't fit, you don't get ahead. He may be right, but an AWS doesn't get rid of the clique: all it does is piss off the bulk of your activists, who are saddled with a candidate they don't like. And we need only look to East Lothian to see where that leads. Imposing a woman on a local party by central diktat doesn;t say that women are just as capable as men: it says they need a leg up, a helping hand. Where local cliques are a part of the problem, an AWS isn't part of the solution, as it misses the point: it's not that the candidate is a woman that's the problem. it's that she's not one of the group. A man imposed on the same group would face a similar problem and the only way for either to succeed is to ingratiate themselves with the clique: if you try and break with a group, the group breaks you.

Basically, imposing rules from Headquarters doesn't open things up for anyone, male or female, black or white, gay or straight.

Besides, here's my main beef with AWS: it doesn't deliver equality at all. It merely aims for parity. True equality is only achieved when we stop focusing on the numbers, and when a candidate's gender, race or orientation isn't what we think about. Yes, I accept that women have faced centuries of prejudice in politics: even when women had the vote, attitudes like "You're a woman, how could you possibly represent X?" prevailed. I don't see how replacing that with "We think we need a woman to represent X, so no men allowed!" actually changes anything. It's still discrimination, it's still prejudice, it's still patronising, and more importantly, it's still seeing the gender first and the person second. We need to get past that.

So it's reasonable for people in Airdrie and in Blaenau Gwent to bristle at the thought of a woman being parachuted in from elsewhere. It stand to reason that a man from Airdrie will have a better feel for the community than a woman from elsewhere. Therefore, for as long as we have a constituency system, the Airdrie man is a better candidate for the seat than a woman from somewhere else.

But conversely, if there's a local woman who has a shot at things, and the only alternative is a man parachuted in from another part of the country, then for the same reasons that a local man is preferable to a woman from outside the area, the local woman is a better option than a guy from elsewhere.

And if there's a local man and a local woman, then it's for local Party members, who know them both, to judge who's the better candidate. And the better prospective Parliamentarian. It's not for the centre to decide that the woman needs a leg-up simply because she's a woman.

That's why I oppose the AWS approach: it doesn't prevent cliques shutting out anyone in a local party who they don't like, it doesn't bring true equality, it simply reduces the whole notion of Equal Opportunities to a box-ticking exercise, with the female candidate reduced to the status of Trophy Woman.

Yes, politics would be better served with more women are involved, but not like this. We need to find another way.