Tori Peck is Co-Director of Women2Win
As Tammy Wynette almost sang- sometimes it’s hard to be a Conservative woman.
It shouldn’t be. When Margaret Thatcher smashed that final glass ceiling for women in politics, the rise of women in our Party should have been unstoppable.
But 45 years later we have instead seemingly created our own ceiling with women’s participation in every part of our party never exceeding 2:1. Of most concern, at the last election we actually went backwards. For the first time in our history, we returned a lower percentage of Conservative women MPs than went into the election.
Either we are a Party where women do not want to participate, or we are a Party that makes it too hard for them to do so. Whichever the reason, something needs to change, and it needs to change now.
It matters because if women do not want to stand for us, they will not vote for us.
It matters because we are losing out on talented candidates who want to represent our Party but are not given a fair chance. And we are missing out on a huge number of Councillors, activists and members if we do not increase the number of women at every level of the Party.
If our next leader is serious about growing our Party in size and impact, creating space for new Conservative ideas and talent and making us more electorally appealing; growing the number of women to match the number of men must be a priority.
Whilst there are well recognised reasons why women may face more barriers in standing for Parliament, it hasn’t stopped Labour or the Lib Dems nearing equal representation. This is a uniquely Conservative problem that must be fixed by action that is true to our Conservative values.
Until the late 90’s it was the dependable Conservative women’s vote that secured so much of our electoral success. We will not return to this unless there are more women creating policy, shaping communications and advocating for our values from CCHQ to council chambers to branch committees.
The lack of women at every level of our Party is not a stand-alone problem. It is analogous with our decline among younger voters and members, and our failure to maintain connections with the mandate that backed us in 2019 as well as the huge swathes of voters that previously trusted us with their vote but who couldn’t bring themselves to this time.
It also speaks to a Party structure that is neither successfully embedded in, nor representative of, local communities.
At Women2Win, we remain committed to doing our bit to get women elected. Our record speaks for itself: increasing the number of women MPs from 9% when we started to 24% today. At the last election we trained 85% of women candidates.
We were founded in 2005 at a time when a new leader of the Opposition was willing to acknowledge we have a women problem. The next leader of the Opposition must go further to commit to fix it. That is why we have written to the final two leadership contenders to ask them to commit to three simple steps we know will make a difference;
1) To resource the outreach work needed to find new, good women candidates that represent Conservative values in every part of the country.
2) To commit to having as many women on the candidates list as men, all qualifying for the candidates list on merit and ability, providing Associations with more good candidates to chose from.
3) That any review into the Party includes consideration of the lack of representation of women in every part of our party and that any recommendations made are given equal attention and commitment as all other recommendations.
Successive leaders and Party Chairs have set well intentioned ambitions and spoken warm words about getting more women. As we hurtle towards the centenary of women having the right to stand for Parliament in 2024 other major parties have almost reached 50% women.
It was a Conservative woman MP who was the first to sit in Parliament but 100 years later just a quarter of those who sit on our benches are women.
Lip service is no longer enough.
This must never be a box ticking exercise, artificially inflating figures to mask underlying problems (we aren’t the Labour Party). Every woman candidate I know would be horrified to think that she had been selected on her gender, not her ability to do the job. But at the same time, many have experienced their gender being the only reason they weren’t chosen.
Entrenched problems are never fixed overnight, but this period of renewal and rebuilding affords the opportunity to make real change once and for all. So that we never go backwards again.
Leaders must lead from the front to deliver change. But everyone across the Party has a part to play. Because if we are to regain our reputation and record as the most successful electoral force in Britain, it requires us all to (altogether now) – ‘stand by our (wo)men’.
