Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Where are the women?!!
Party politics aside, the new Clegg-Cam cabinet apparently will have only one, or possibly two women in it. Of course, when the important jobs have to be divided up between parties they are given to the men in suits.
There are 139 women MPs in this parliament, that's over a fifth and a record number - there should definitely be more in top jobs. I've been listening to the radio all morning and haven't heard a single mention of this glaring discrepancy.
There are 139 women MPs in this parliament, that's over a fifth and a record number - there should definitely be more in top jobs. I've been listening to the radio all morning and haven't heard a single mention of this glaring discrepancy.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alison P on
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Totally agree Maddy.
I had exactly the same thoughts last night watching all those shiny faced excited new boys in power.
I mentioned it to a colleague this morning and he said that apparently the Lib Dem Chief of Staff is a woman. So there we go... I await the announcement of the cabinet posts with interest.
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Permalink Reply by Kit on
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The Con-dem Cabinet
Total ministers – 29 (24 Tories, 5 LibDems)
Women – 4
BME – 1
Openly gay – 0
Public schoolboys – 16
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Permalink Reply by Birdy_Too on
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This from the freedom and fairness coalition? The three most powerful people in the country are white, male, hetro, privately educated, from one class (upper) and from the same privileged school.
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... and perhaps most significant of all: 20 out of 29 educated at Oxbridge
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Permalink Reply by Mr Growbag on
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"... and perhaps most significant of all: 20 out of 29 educated at Oxbridge"
I agree. Having so many of our leaders come from two of the world's leading universities will definitely be a benefit. Whatever else we think of them at least we can rest assured that they're intellectually up to the job...
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13% of cabinet members are women compared to 21% of total elected MPs.
3% of cabinet members are from BME groups compared to 4% of elected MPs.
Therefore the cabinet is only 8% "unrepresentative" of Parliament in terms of women, and 1% in terms of BME groups.
In a perfectly representative cabinet that would translate to 6 women and one person from a BME background (I'm rounding down - technically there should be 1/3 of a person more BME representation) - one of which is bang on, the other of which doesn't seem a particularly vast margin of error (2 people) assuming you agree that cabinets should be appointed on a talent not a quota system.
Based on the numbers the problem doesn't seem to be that the Tories and LDs are sexist or racist as people seem to delight in inferring; rather that fewer women and fewer people from BME groups are becoming MPs than white men. Make of that what you will.
*NB, please feel free to correct my maths if I've really stuffed up. Data is from Wikipedia's page on the 2010 election.
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I don't want to get all statistical but I don't think the way you've worked this out really illustrates the problem. 8% unrepresentative of women doesn't sound like a lot - but in reality what it means that one in five MPs is female but only one in eight of the cabinet. Another way of looking at this is to say that the number of women in the cabinet is only 62% of what you'd expect to see if everyone had an equal chance of being selected (13% divided by 21%).
But totally agree with your point about what this actually translates to in terms of numbers in the cabinet!
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Thanks for that, Alison - maths and stats are not my strongest area and that's an better way of representing it - although the 62% of what you'd expect to see figure makes it sounds a much bigger gap than two people (the opposite of the way I described it I suppose!) I guess that's why it's important to look at things like this in a variety of ways so to get a balanced view.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Are the girls here?
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Permalink Reply by Narendra Makanji on
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Same question could be addressed to the outcome of Haringey Borough Elections. Even in this self-acclaimed diverse borough, only 22 out of 57 councillors are women. The Black and Ethnic Minority representation is even more wanting.At least Tottenham Constituency- in which HoL is included- has returned a Black MP.
Ironically, this Forum does not seem to welcome this, judging by the amount of slagging off that Black and ethnic minority reps seem to subjected whether they are David Lammy or Gina Adamou or Brian Haley.
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