Conservative Legislative Recruitment

Abstract

The Daily Telegraph — a newspaper whose columnists and editorials have often not been shy in being critical of the Cameron Conservative party — heralded the election of 48 Conservative women MPs, on May 6^th 2010, as the Party having taken ‘huge strides towards gender balance’.¹ The representation of women on the Conservative benches following the general election was, indeed, unprecedented and welcome. At 15.7 percent of all Conservative MPs, women’s 2010 presence is a clear advance on the last couple of Parliaments, when their proportion flat-lined around 9 percent. Nevertheless, this advance requires some perspective. To talk of the proportion of women ‘soaring’ is misplaced. The party was starting from very low numbers, just 18 Conservative women MPs had been elected on general election day five years earlier. For the Tories to more than double its women MPs in 2010 should not have been too difficult. The party needed to select fewer than 20 more women in seats it would hold or win. In the event, they gained 30 more women MPs, but the total number fell short of the party’s own, widely-stated projection of some 60 women, as it failed to win an overall majority on election night .² They missed doubling the percentage of women MPs too. And in the party’s retirement seats, unexpectedly greater in number following the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009, women were selected for only one quarter of its vacancies. Even amongst the party’s newly elected MPs, where expectations could, and should have been greater, the percentage of women is just 22 percent. Compared with the current parliamentary Labour party, who lost 90 seats at the 2010 election, the Conservatives remain in a poor second place. Labour has the highest number and percentage of women at Westminster, with 81 women MPs, constituting 31 percent of the parliamentary Labour party — more women MPs not only than the Conservatives, but of all the other parties added together.