The UK Labour Party has long utilised All-Women candidate shortlists in an aim to ensure that female representation in the House of Commons increases. This has always been controversial, however it has been responsible for a noted increase in the number of female MPs in general and female Labour MPs in particular. Here, Mary Nugent and Mona Lena Krook dispel some of the myths around All-Women Shortlists, and show that gender quotas do not pose a threat to ‘merit’, and that the diversity they have fostered has brought about a number of important democratic outcomes

Krook, Mona Lena

Nugent, Mary

LSE Research Online

By Democratic Audit UK 2016-2-19Gender quotas do not pose a threat to “merit” at any stageof the political processdemocraticaudit.com /2016/02/19/gender-quotas-do-not-pose-a-threat-to-merit-at-any-stage-of-the-political-process/The UK Labour Party has long utilised All-Women candidate shortlists in an aim to ensure that female representationin the House of Commons increases. This has always been controversial, however it has been responsible for anoted increase in the number of female MPs in general and female Labour MPs in particular. Here, Mary Nugentand Mona Lena Krook dispel some of the myths around All-Women Shortlists, and show that gender quotas do notpose a threat to ‘merit’, and that the diversity they have fostered has brought about a number of importantdemocratic outcomes. Harriet Harman, often credited as the architect of AWS (Credit: Andrew Skudder, CC BY SA 2.0)Diversifying leadership and ensuring representatives look more like voters is a longstanding issue for politicalparties: Labour’s shadow cabinet reshuffle earlier this year prompted complaints of women being sidelined in theparty, and just this month Liberal democrats announced new provisions to for candidate selection for women andminorities.All-women shortlists (AWS), Labour’s gender quota policy for MP selection, is the most significant provision toensure women’s representation in the UK. Introduced in 1993 following the failure of ‘softer’ measures to tackleshockingly low numbers of women in the Labour Party, the AWS policy establishes that at least half of all ‘winnable’Labour seats are open only to applications from women.Numerically, the AWS policy has been a great success. It contributed to a doubling of the number of women in theHouse of Commons when first used during preparations for the 1997 election. Nearly twenty years later, the share ofwomen among Labour MPs is 43%, compared to 21% among the Conservatives and a depressing 0% among theLib Dems.Despite these achievements, AWS – as a method of change – remain consistently controversial. Even HarrietHarman, a key architect of the policy and a consistent champion of women, admitted in a speech in 2014 that “noone likes all-women shortlists.”1/4Yet many of the claims made about AWS have not been subject to systematic analysis, making it difficult todistinguish between “myth” and “reality” in debates over gender quotas in the UK. Seeking to gain some clarity, weidentified and empirically tested nine of the most common claims about AWS in our paper “All-Women Shortlists:Myths and Realities,” published recently in Parliamentary Affairs.We find that not only is there no loss of ‘quality’ associated with the use of gender quotas, but AWS may in fact resultin better candidates being selected. The real enemy of meritocracy in British politics is not gender quotas, butrather, unwarranted male dominance. Here we evaluate three of the most common myths associate with AWS.Myth 1: AWS select ‘unqualified’ womenVocalizing a sentiment held by many AWS detractors, Edwina Curry has suggested that women elected via AWS areunqualified to be MPs, as “women who’ve come through this route have skipped several steps so their skills may bedeficient.”Criteria regarding the skills and experiences that make someone “qualified” to be an MP are very much debated,with the attributes demanded of elected representatives varying across parties and over time.At the heart of these criticisms, however, is a belief that AWS promote women who are inexperienced and not yetready to be in politics.To test this claim, therefore, we collected data on the number of years in other elected positions – in local, county,regional, or EU politics – prior to entering parliament, comparing women elected via AWS to their non-quotacounterparts, male and female, across the three main parties for every parliament from 1992 to 2010.We find that women elected by AWS were no less experienced than other MPs when they entered parliament. Infact, women elected via AWS tend to have spent more time in a prior elected position than their Labour colleagues,male and female, in every year except 2010.Interestingly, the data also show that AWS women had significantly more experience, on average, than ConservativeMPs, male or female, in every parliament in this period. In 2010, for example, the mean years of prior experience ofAWS women was 6.8 years, compared to 4.4 for Conservative men.Research from other countries helps explain possible reasons for these gender differences. A survey conducted byFox & Lawless in the United States found that women tend to underestimate their own qualifications, sensing a needto accumulate more experience before they feel qualified to enter politics.Gender quotas can thus serve a “mobilizing capacity,” as suggested by Geissel & Hust, inspiring qualified women tocome forward as candidates and enabling parties to recruit and elect untapped talent. A study on Jordan, forexample, shows that introducing a quota drew women into the political arena who would otherwise not have run foroffice.Myth 2: AWS only elect white womenAnother criticism of AWS questions the diversity of women elected through the policy. Diane Abbott, the UK’s firstblack female MP, for example, noted at the Speakers Conference on Parliamentary Representation in 2010 that “all-women shortlists have, in effect, been all white women shortlists.”We test this claim with data obtained from the Labour Party, tracking the share of candidates identifying as black,Asian, or minority ethnic (BAME) at each stage of the selection process in the run-up to the 2015 general elections.Comparing the selection results in AWS and open seats, we find that the share of BAME applicants in both types ofseats was similar, around 20%. However, BAME candidates were much more likely to be selected in the final stagein AWS constituencies: 16% of AWS seats ultimately chose BAME candidates, compared to just 3% in open seat2/4selections.While earlier elections did result in AWS candidates who were overwhelmingly white, data from 2015 thus indicatethat this pattern is changing, with a positive impact on BAME representation overall.In this case, it appears that efforts by Abbott and others have increased awareness on the need for more diverserepresentation, enabling AWS – among other instruments – to be a vehicle for encouraging others types of diversityin parliament.Myth 3: AWS women ‘underachieve’ in the House of CommonsA third common criticism regards the supposed performance of women elected via AWS. During his campaign forConservative party leader, Iain Duncan-Smith stated, for instance, that “All-women shortlists have not been asuccess for Labour because instead of getting people who are of high quality, what we’ve actually got in is peoplewho haven’t really performed as politicians for the Labour Party.”As there is no agreed-upon criterion for measuring the “performance” of MPs, we employed a range of differentmeasures. Drawing on data from TheyWorkForYou and The Public Whip between 2010 and 2014, we examinedperformance – comparing MPs by gender, AWS status, and party – in relation to five parliamentary activities: writingquestions, speaking in debates, attending votes, rebelling against the party, and responding to constituents.The findings are particularly striking in the area of parliamentary questions. Labour MPs ask more questions thanother MPs, but the subgroup asking the most questions by far is women selected via AWS. The contrast isespecially striking when compared with the activity levels of Conservative MPs: the mean number of questionsasked per year was 78 for women elected via AWS, versus 37 and 33 for Conservative men and women,respectively.In each of the other four areas of parliamentary behavior, we find that differences between the activity levels of AWSwomen versus their non-quota colleagues are statistically insignificant.Our analysis thus reveals that there is no evidence to suggest that women elected via AWS fail to fulfill their dutiesas MPs – and, indeed, on some measures they are amongst the most actively engaged.From myths to realitiesThe most common criticisms of AWS, in short, do not find any empirical support – among these three claims, or theother claims that we examine, in our paper.Our research indicates that AWS do not facilitate the entry of unqualified women or lead to the election of sub-parMPs. Rather, Labour’s AWS policy has reduced the barriers for well-prepared women to stand as candidates andproduced diligent and active representatives.Quotas thus do not pose a threat to “merit” at any stage of the political process. Instead, fostering diversity hascontributed to a host of positive democratic outcomes. The Liberal Democrats should be enthusiastically embracingthe move towards all-women shortlists, and the Labour Party should not be apologising for its transformative andeffective policy solution.—This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit UK or the LSE. Please readour comments policy before posting. —3/4Mary Nugent is a Graduate Student at Rutgers University.   Mona Lena Krook is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University 4/4

Gender quotas do not pose a threat to “merit” at any stage of the political process

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