What the 2015 Sex and Power report has to say about the Liberal Democrats

The 2015 Sex and Power report published by the Counting Women In coalition came out this week. It looks in detail at the number of women candidates put forward by each party and the number of MPs elected.

It's not fun to read if you're a Liberal Democrat for obvious reasons. It's not just that we have an all white middle aged male party in the Commons, it's that we're not making nearly enough progress to redress the imbalance. The proportion of women in our target seats should be much higher than 50/50 if we are serious about improving gender balance.

What's particularly galling is a graph that shows that our number of women MPs elected peaked in 1987 and we've been going yo-yoing ever since at a much lower level.

This is what the report had to say about us:

• 2015 was not a good election for Liberal Democrat women; all those who stood lost, including all the incumbent women MPs. Thus the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Group in the House of Commons now has no women members.
• The Liberal Democrats fielded a total of 630 candidates in England, Scotland and Wales, of whom 166 (26.3 percent) were women. The Party does not run candidates in Northern Ireland. Following convention, it also did not contest the Speaker's seat, and there was no Liberal Democrat candidate in Gower.
• The Liberal Democrats do not use any form of positive action for their Westminster parliamentary selections, and have, throughout their history, had low levels of women MPs. In 1987, prior to the merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democrats, the two parties had five women MPs between them; in 1992 the new Party had just 2 women (out of a total of 20 MPs). The record high of 16 percent in 2005 represents 10 women (out of 62 MPs).
• Following the fall in 2010 to 7 women, the Liberal Democrats took steps to encourage the selection of more women candidates, but did not revoke the 2001 conference decision not to use positive action in the form of AWS. A Leadership Academy was established to try to increase and support the numbers of women coming forwards, and there was indeed the biggest increase in the percentage of women candidates since 1992. However, none of the seven Liberal Democrat women MPs elected in 2010 had a majority of more than 7,000, and in an election in which even relatively large Liberal Democrat majorities were vulnerable - Vince Cable, for instance, lost a majority of over 12,000 in Twickenham - they were not able to survive. As a result, for the first time since 1983 there are no Liberal or Liberal Democrat women in the House of Commons.
• Although the Party is often viewed as being anti-positive action per se, this is not entirely the case. Zipping systems44 are used for European and devolved elections, where the electoral systems make taking such action easier and a little less contentious.
• However, even prior to the 2010 election the Liberal Democrats had indicated, in evidence to the Speaker's Conference, that they could reconsider their opposition to positive action, but although the debate continued during the course of the Parliament no conclusion was reached. The recently elected new Liberal Democrat leader has already indicated that he favours AWS and zipping mechanisms.
• The Liberal Democrats did replace retiring MPs with higher numbers of female candidates. 11 of the 56 Liberal Democrat MPs chose to stand down at the 2015 election - 9 men and 2 women. They were replaced as candidates by 5 men and 6 women. In the one seat with a majority of over 10,000 the replacement candidate was male, but men and women were pretty evenly distributed through the list. None of the 11 replacement candidates were elected.
• In the 27 'target' seats in which the Liberal Democrats needed a three percent swing or less to win, the party fielded 11 women and 16 men. None were elected.

We are going to have to seriously up our game if we don't want next year's report to be just as grim reading. The members in North East Scotland spectacularly failed to reselect our outstanding Justice Spokesperson Alison McInnes at the top of the list and, given our current poll ratings, it would be a challenge to elect two in that region. The party's abysmal record on gender balance has prompted Scottish Leader Willie Rennie to call for specific measures, including zipping and all women shortlists and he'll take the proposals developed by his working group to Spring Conference next year. That doesn't help us for this coming election, though.

We know that radical improvements in gender balance can be made, and quickly. Labour's all women shortlists transformed their parliamentary party and changed the political agenda up to a point. It was this week's announcement from the SNP of their candidate lists that show that it can be done. They have selected 42% female candidates in constituencies and 45% on the list. Of the top 4 places in the 8 regions, more than half, 17 of the 32, are women. That's a massive improvement from 2011 when just over a quarter of their candidates were women. If they can do it, with the right political will, so can we. The thing is, I'm not sure the party actually feels enough shame for the predicament in which we find ourselves.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

Read more by Caron Lindsay or more about counting women in or gender balance.