Women(have)2Win

As a young woman involved in politics I’m far from ignorant about the difficulties faced by our fairer sex in what is still an extremely male dominated area. My CF branches at University and at home have, including myself, only three regular female faces. Conference was equally male dominated (a party of eighteen from our constituency had just three women) and I often felt slightly out of a place as a very young woman not accompanying a husband or working under an MP.

The lack of female presence in politics is something that needs to be seriously rectified; it’s something that I feel very strongly about. But no matter what female friendly initiatives have been done it hasn’t seemed to affect the numbers of women in politics. Even the measures taken to select more women didn’t encourage close to enough onto the approved list of candidates; unfortunately this seems more to do with perceptions about the world of politics and women’s reluctance to participate in such a testosterone fuelled environment.

Or so I thought, until a friend pointed out that in the seven recent conservative primaries, only one of the candidates selected by the public has been a woman. So it seems that it might not just be women who are reluctant to join politics – the voting public also appear to be reluctant to let them join too.

Theresa May - shadow minister for women and

co-chairman of the fabulous initiative women2win

As a response today David Cameron announced an initiative to get more women into political power – remove the choice in future candidate selection by imposing all-female shortlists.

Now I am all for making it easier for women to get into politics, but this isn’t helping women into politics. It’s shoving them forward with one hand while holding men back with another. Any sort of discrimination is unacceptable, whether it is positive or negative, and ideas like this will do nothing to help female politicians. Quite the opposite.

I want my local MP or PPC to be selected based on their suitability, not their breasts, and I find it slightly patronising when ‘initiatives’ such as this one are suggested. Yes, we need more female politicians, and yes we need to do something to make this happen; not by shoehorning women into positions of power.

To help women achieve their potential as politicians we need to help them move forward, not hold men back. And ideas like the one proposed today will do nothing for the former, and heaps for the latter.