Women’s equal representation in Parliament matters for a host of reasons. From the simple fact that 50% of us are women – to research that points to improved decision-making when women are involved in leadership, and that people like decisions made by mixed groups.
Our Parliament made a positive step toward equal representation at the 2024 General Election, with more women MPs elected than ever before, but there’s still room for improvement. The lack of women in Parliament is the result of many small decisions that have blocked the road to equal representation in our politics.
Women’s Representation in the House of Commons
In the House of Commons, there are currently 263 MPs who are women, out of 650 MPs in total. That means that we now have the highest ever proportion of women MPs, at 40%.
But though 40% is a record high, it’s still a far cry from equal representation. And globally, we’re lagging behind: the UK ranks just 27th in the world ranking of women in parliament.
Meanwhile, across the different parties, there are varying levels of representation. 46% of all Labour MPs are women; in the Conservative party, 24% of MPs are women, and for the Liberal Democrats, the figure is 44%. So, there’s no parity in sight at party level, either.
Under-representation begins long before MPs take their seats
The root of this imbalance in the House of Commons starts before we actually head to the polls and vote for MPs.
This is because candidates (excluding independents) standing in election are chosen by political parties. So the fact that we have such poor representation in Parliament, even though 50% of us are women, is largely the result of parties choosing to stand male candidates in winnable seats.
In the 2024 UK General Election, not a single party choose a gender equal slate of candidates. Overall, just 31% of candidates were women.
If there aren’t enough women for us to vote for in the first place, then we’ll never get equal representation. That needs to change: parties need to do more to build representation into the candidate selection process. Fortunately the UK Government is now taking steps to address this, now that they’ve enacted a piece of legislation that we’ve been pushing for since 2018. Political parties will now be required to release diversity data about their candidates at every stage of selection – which will make it easier to hold parties to account on representation, and to identify where the barriers to women lie.
However, beyond ensuring that enough women are actually being selected, they also need to stand in seats where they have a chance of winning. There’s no point having half of your candidates as women, if they are all challengers in seats they have no chance of winning.
Women’s Representation in the House of Lords
In the House of Lords, women’s representation continues to be pitifully unequal.
There are 829 Members of the House of Lords. Just 258 of them are women. That’s just 31% of all members of the House of Lords who are women.
This is an especially troubling figure given that it’s not the result of an election, but appointment. Since the Prime Minister has the power to appoint anyone they want, we could easily have a House of Lords made up with 50% women.
Unequal representation amongst our lawmakers is being forced on the public.
Women’s Representation across Parliament as a whole
Looking at our parliament as whole – both the House of Commons and the House of Lords – women’s representation is lacking.
Across both chambers of parliament, women make up only 35% of members of the Commons and the Lords
But the work toward a gender equal parliament can’t end there. There are other measures that can be used to aid women’s representation in our politics, such as gender quotas.
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