‘Britain’s first-past-the-post system is the world’s worst system for gender equality.’

Women remain hugely under-represented in parliament in Britain. In the 2019 general election, a record 220 women were elected but still only made up one-third of the 650 Commons members.

Across the political spectrum, 4,515 candidates are fighting for a seat in the next parliament. But out of the candidates running for election, just 31 percent are women.

This was the finding of analysis by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS), an independent organisation that campaigns for democratic rights. The group’s candidate name tracker finds that the most popular name for a candidate at this election is David, with 104 candidates called David. John is second with 84 candidates, and Paul a close third. It is not until 11^th place when the first female name crops up, with Sarah being the name of 43 candidates running for this general election.

While this may be due to women having less diversity in their names than men, as the ERS notes it is less easy to dismiss that out of the 4,515 candidates standing, only 31 percent are women.

The analysis dissects the proportion of women candidates in each political party. For the Conservatives, just 34 percent of selected candidates are women. For Reform UK, the figure is just 16 percent. 29 percent of SNP candidates are women, while Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems have 31 percent and 29 percent of selected women respectively.

Labour and the Greens have achieved the most gender parity in their selection of candidates, with 47 percent of Labour candidates being women, and 45 percent of Green candidates being women.

“It is a great sign that Labour and the Greens have come close to an equal split in their selection. However, it is also difficult to point at progress when the total percentage of women candidates standing in this election is lower than the 35% of women currently represented in the Commons,” writes the ERS.

The campaigners point to how Britain’s first past-the-post (FPTP) system is holding back gender equality in politics by adding a barrier to getting women elected in parliament.

In FPTP, voters cast their vote for a candidate in their constituency, and the candidate with the most votes wins. This winner-takes-all basis often leads to the same person holding on to a ‘safe seat’ for a long time, sometimes decades. As men historically held nearly all seats in Britain, ‘safe seats’ tend to still be held by men.

According to the ERS, ‘seat blocking’ is one of the reasons why FPTP is the “world’s worst system for gender equality.”

In 2018, the ERS found that of MPs who were first elected in 2015, 45 percent were women, equating to near gender parity. But of the 212 MPs who were first elected in 2005 or earlier, 80 percent were men.

Under proportional representation (PR), where the number of seats a party wins is directly proportional to the number of votes it receives, women are nearly twice as likely to get elected than they are under a majoritarian system like FPTP.

Compass, campaigners for a more equal, democratic, and sustainable future, also advocate for PR to be introduced to address gender imbalances in British politics. The group notes how every country with more than 40 percent female MPs has proportional representation in place rather than FPTP.

Research shows that governments with greater female representation are more likely to address issues of particular concern and importance to women. This in turn leads to positive policies on issues such as pay equality and parental leave.

Compass is calling on the next government to be bolder with electoral reform, stating:

“Electoral reform must come as part of a larger package – we can’t rely on transforming our politics with the voting system alone – but it would be a crucial step towards overcoming some of Westminster’s embedded biases and building a politics that better represents, and serves, all of us.”

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward

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