A big win for fairer politics: Why Section 106 matters How many women stand for election every year? It’s hard to tell. That’s because right now, parties don’t have to publish information on the diversity of their candidates. However, last month, the Minister for Women... Posted 19 Feb 2025
Slow progress as women finally make up 40% of Parliament The 2024 General Election saw in a Labour Government and a brand-new cohort of MPs (335 new MPs) elected; but with all this churn how representative is our House of Commons? Before the election we... Posted 10 Jul 2024
Candidate selections reflect the barriers for women in politics Last week, all UK political parties confirmed which candidates they were standing in each constituency for the 2024 general election. Including independents, a total of 4,515 candidates will be fighting for a seat in the... Posted 20 Jun 2024
Pursuing parity: New report examines gender quotas across different electoral systems Throughout history, the political landscape of the United Kingdom has been predominantly shaped and governed by men. The struggle towards gender parity across the United Kingdom has been fought tirelessly throughout the 20th century. Women... Posted 08 Mar 2024
Voters prefer decisions made by panels balanced between men and women Men still dominate political decision-making in the United Kingdom. Women hold just one or two seats on prestigious select committees in the House of Commons, like Defence, Foreign Affairs, and Justice. No women sit on... Posted 21 Nov 2023
Proportional representation helped women get elected in 2022 In January 2023, the global proportion of women parliamentarians just was 26.5%, indicating that there’s a way to go before we have equal numbers of men and women in parliament around the world. While quotas... Posted 27 Jul 2023
10 years since the Equality Act was introduced, parties need to come clean on diversity It has been 10 years since the Equality Act (2010) received Royal Assent, providing Britain with a legal framework to protect the rights of individuals and advance equality of opportunity for all. Sadly, not all of... Posted 08 Apr 2020
Euro elections show how Westminster’s first past the post holds back women Elections to the European Parliament take place today across the UK. As we’ve talked about in a previous blog post, the UK’s 73 MEPs will be elected using proportional representation (PR). In Great Britain, the... Posted 23 May 2019
Time is running out in this Centenary year – why are the government waiting to tackle the ‘political gender gap’? In November, the Electoral Reform Society helped coordinate an unprecedented coalition of campaigners and politicians in calling for government action on the ‘political gender gap’. Marking the centenary of women’s right to stand for Parliament,... Posted 14 Dec 2018
Women in Westminster One of the chief reasons why people are increasingly alienated from our politics is the fact that Westminster looks so little like the people it is there to represent. At the moment, barely one in... Posted 13 Mar 2015