WalesHome.org

The Assembly has a proud record of gender equality. Is the balance about to tip back towards men?

MEN “cannot be left to run things on their own”, declared Harriet Harman in this week’s Sunday Times. Defending her intention to change the internal rules of the Labour Party, she claimed Labour “owed it to women” to have a woman in one of the two top jobs. Only by doing so, she argued, could her party ensure the concerns of women voters were reflected fully when decisions were being made. This is a big, bold idea which has once more made people think about how positive discrimination is best used to ensure that women not just attain but also retain positions of prominence in political life.

One place where this call is bound to have an impact is Welsh Labour, where a leadership election is shortly to begin. There is a strong and far from peripheral school of thought that when Rhodri Morgan stands down later this year that there should be a female candidate on the ballot paper. Since 1999 Labour in the Assembly has looked and felt more female than any other party group. Without a doubt women have been well placed to articulate the concerns of women voters in terms of policy development and delivery. The current Assembly Labour team is composed of ten men and sixteen women. In both previous Assembly elections, Labour elected a majority of women to its Assembly teams too. Indeed, between 2003 and 2005 there were more Labour women in Cabinet in Wales than men, held up at the time as a key international achievement.

This prominence and input is partly why an argument has been put that a woman should stand when there is a vacancy for the leadership. The most prominently touted name to carry such a flame is Edwina Hart, who has yet to make an announcement either way, though Jane Hutt is a pivotal figure in this argument too. Indeed, Ms Hutt, who has been a Cabinet member in Wales since 1999, indicated in April that she was considering standing when a vacancy arose. Her comment was perceived and understood in the context of ensuring that Welsh Labour remains clearly prominently female in appearance. And because Labour is very female and it is the largest party, the Assembly is too, with 28 out of 60 current AMs being women.

Such an achievement did not, as Laura McAllister argues in her excellent article “Time to talk about Women Again” in this month’s Institute of Welsh Affairs magazine, “happen by accident or osmosis, nor is it permanent.” Gender balance has been achieved in Assembly terms because of clear steps and policies adopted by two of the four parties, Labour and Plaid Cymru.

Prior to the original Assembly elections in 1999, and at selections for the Scottish Parliament in the same year, Labour used a pairing system to ensure that of every two constituencies one man and one woman were selected. Constituency seats were sometimes voluntarily, and sometimes less voluntarily, ‘twinned’ with a neighbour to produce the desired gender balanced result. Such a step was not taken lightly. Indeed, reflecting on this period, Rhodri Morgan provided one of his most memorable analytical quotes when he said: “Forced twinning of Welsh constituencies was as popular as Saddam Hussein’s attempt to twin Iraq with Kuwait was – in Kuwait.” That is not to say he opposed the policy, but that he recognised what a bruising experience it had been.

Although controversial and damaging – Labour’s loss of Blaenau Gwent can ultimately traced to this policy – twinning was the most significant step taken by the party to ensure that women were selected and elected in 1999. And it was a step they sought to build on in the subsequent Assembly election in May 2003, when it used all-women shortlists in three of the eight most winnable seats, and in three of the least winnable. On a Westminster level, the party also used all women shortlists for some of the 2005 candidate selections in Wales, reopening the debate in the party which had consistently failed to select many women candidates for previous General Election contests. The Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party is now a little more representative than it was before the last election, but is nowhere near approaching gender balance.

But even though Labour has done well to achieve positive discrimination in the past, there are now worries about how this will be matched in the second decade of the Assembly. This concern is being articulated particularly in respect of how Labour selects its constituency candidates for 2011. The three selections in critical seats have so far all returned male candidates. Alun Davies is to fight the top target of Blaenau Gwent, while Mick Antoniw and Vaughan Gething will contest Pontypridd and Cardiff South & Penarth respectively. In the context of gender representation, the latter two selections are notable because the new candidates will attempt to succeed two female Labour AMs who are standing down, Jane Davidson and Lorraine Barrett. Val Lloyd in Swansea East and Irene James in Islwyn have also recently announced their intentions to depart, with no indication as yet that there will be a system in place to ensure gender balance in the selection of their successors either. With Brian Gibbons standing down in Aberavon and also the probability that Rhodri Morgan will not restand in Cardiff West, there will thus be a minimum of seven winnable seats for Labour that will have new candidates for the next Assembly election. Supporters of positive action believe it is vital that a system is put in place that ensures that at least some of these selections return women candidates, fearing the real possibility that without remedial action that the proportion of female Labour AMs will fall back starkly at the next Assembly election.

Gender representation and positive action is of course not just a preserve of Labour. A continuing debate confronts Plaid Cymru which successfully increased female representation in the first three Assembly terms by ensuring that the lead candidate on each of its five regional lists was a woman. Bearing in mind that only Helen Mary Jones and Elin Jones have ever won first past the post Assembly seats as Plaid women, this shows the party needed to do something to ensure better gender balance. However, that policy has now been dropped, having allegedly served its purpose, prompting some to predict that the next Assembly eleciton could return fewer Plaid women AMs as a proportion of its intake. For some in Plaid, this issue is far from settled.

The number of women in Welsh politics is also an active issue in the Welsh Conservative group in the Assembly at the moment too. The party has never introduced any form of positive discrimination for its Assembly selections yet has quite clearly failed at each election so far to introduce a significant number of women AMs to the Assembly. None of the 1999 were intake were women, only two of 11 were in 2003 and in 2007 this fell back to one of 12. Group leader Nick Bourne recently tackled the issue head on with a series of proposals on his blog including that for regional lists the first available vacancy should be a woman or ethnic minority candidate. To say that this suggestion has sparked a lively debate in the Welsh Conservatives is putting it mildly. He will now take these concerns and suggestions to the Conservative Party’s Welsh management board for their consideration. It is surely time for the party now to have a frank and honest debate.

In contrast, the Liberal Democrat group in the Assembly has always been gender balanced between three men and three women, without any form of positive discrimination having been used. And the party elected in Kirsty Williams the first ever female Welsh party leader back in December 2008.

Indeed, only in the Welsh Liberal Democrats can the issue of gender representation be said to be settled at the moment. It remains an issue in Plaid, is emerging as a key concern for the Conservatives and is a central discussion point in Welsh Labour both in terms of future candidate selections and in terms of the election for Rhodri Morgan’s successor, whether or not a woman candidate ultimately stands.