Last year marked 100 years since 8.5 million women received the right to vote in the UK – but the struggle isn’t over yet.

Within the UK and internationally there is still not a level playing field within politics. Nearly 50% of the global population is female, whilst only 23% of MPs are women (The World Bank, 2018). Considering that one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations is achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, surely something should be done? (United Nations, 2019).

Since the Representation of the People Act of 1918, we’ve only had 2 female prime ministers and 400 female MPs. When you compare this to the 4500 male MPs elected since then, surely alarm bells should be ringing? (Cunningham, 2018).

However, not all is doom and gloom for women in politics. As shown in Figure 1, the general election of 2017 saw a record number of female MPs elected – although this varied between the parties. 45% of Labour MPs were women, compared to 21% of Conservative MPs (BBC News, 2017). So how is Labour encouraging more women to enter Westminster?

Perhaps it is because the Labour Party has long been associated with the marginalised groups of society, or that one of their key aims is for a Parliament that is representative of the people it serves (Smart, 2015). One reason that stands out predominantly to me is the way in which women MPs are perceived in the media. Theresa May has illustrated this in recent months, with an over-emphasis on her personal attributes rather than her decisions. It may lead to women being put off wanting to join the Conservatives as the current female political leader is being undermined. Whereas, with the Labour Party there is no female leader and thus no-one to be negatively perceived in the media.

Gendered mediation refers to the apparent inequality within media representation of the genders. It occurs when the media reinforces the stereotypes of gender norms which exist in society (Williams, 2018): for example, when the media focuses on male MPs and their views rather than females, discouraging women from standing for political roles. The Labour Party has policies that are trying to break this divide – for example aiming for all media boards to be representative of the people of the UK, with enough women and ethnic minority citizens (Jeremy Corbyn, 2018). Maybe this is the reason why women are more attracted to Labour than the Conservatives.

A potential way of reducing this inequality between the different parties and to make Parliament more representative of the people which it serves is the introduction of quotas. A quota would involve having a set number of women within each party, essentially forcing the destruction of the gender gap in politics.

Now that we have looked at women’s involvement in politics on a national sphere, let’s look at what the situation is like worldwide. There are currently only 3 countries which have more women than men in the lower houses of Parliament – Rwanda, Cuba and Bolivia (Thornton, 2019).

Quotas have played a key role in the transformation of Rwandan politics. Back in the 20^th century, only 18% of the parliamentary seats in Rwanda were held by women. However, the Parliament of 2003 decided that at least 30% of elected politicians had to be women – leading to a surge in female participation, with Figure 2 showing how 61% of their Parliament in 2018 was female.

Therefore, more and more women are getting involved in the UK government, but the gender divide is still apparent. Perhaps the UK should look to the international community, like the system of Rwanda, for advice. Or, as highlighted in the video below, perhaps gender stereotypes need to be broken down:

Maybe the way in which women are viewed in traditionally male roles needs to be changed – with a potential solution being greater education within schools to try and eradicate stereotypes.

So I ask you, what would you like to see change within the next 100 years? By 2119, could divides in political engagement have become a thing of the past?

BBC News, 2017. BBC News: Election 2017: Record number of female MPs. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40192060
[Accessed 26 March 2019].

Cunningham, E., 2018. London Live: 100 years of women in politics. [Online]
Available at: https://www.londonlive.co.uk/news/2018-11-21/100-years-of-women-in-politics
[Accessed 26 March 2019].

George , R., 2019. Gender norms and womens’s political participation: Global Trends and findings on norm change. [Online]
Available at: https://www.alignplatform.org/resources/2019/02/gender-norms-and-womens-political-participation-global-trends-and-findings-norm
[Accessed 6 April 2019].

Jeremy Corbyn, 2018. Labour: We can fix our failing media by setting journalists and citizens free to hold power to account. [Online]
Available at: https://labour.org.uk/press/corbyn-can-fix-failing-media-setting-journalists-citizens-free-hold-power-account/
[Accessed 2 April 2019].

Smart, A., 2015. Labour List; Why it’s time the Labour Party elected a woman leader. [Online]
Available at: https://labourlist.org/2015/05/why-its-time-the-labour-party-elected-a-woman-leader/
[Accessed 30 March 2019].

The World Bank, 2018. The World Bank: Women in The World. [Online]
Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sg.gen.parl.zs
[Accessed 26 March 2019].

Thornton, A., 2019. World Economic Forum: These countries have the most women in parliament. [Online]
Available at: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/02/chart-of-the-day-these-countries-have-the-most-women-in-parliament/
[Accessed 5 April 2019].

United Nations, 2019. Sustainable Development Goal 5. [Online]
Available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg5

Williams, B., 2018. Media coverage of the UK’s female prime ministers has become more gendered from Thatcher to May. [Online]
Available at: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/news-article?id=1916bb6e-7686-468a-a13b-fa9bed558df7
[Accessed 1 April 2019].