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Women in Public Life

The noble Baroness, Lady Gale, has a splendid record of promoting women, as is attested by the wonderful balance of men and women achieved in the Welsh Assembly. We all congratulate her on that and we all know of her huge contribution there. At the same time, I recognise that the Government have over the years genuinely tried to promote the cause of women and tried to make things better and easier for them and more available to them. Years ago, I played a bit part in the then recently founded Liberal Democrats as the person organising the selection process for candidates in the English party, which is, of course, by far the biggest of the three parties making up our joint party. I became increasingly aware that the problem for women is not so much getting elected, because women tend to attract more voters than men overall, but getting selected. I was quite amazed by the number of excuses that could be made by the chairs of committees: ““Of course I am absolutely in favour of more women in Parliament, but this constituency is too big, too small, too rich, too poor, too urban, too black, too white””. Any reason that you could think of was a good reason for not promoting the woman who had to be on the shortlist—we have, or we had in those days, a vague quota system. Perhaps we should not be surprised that the current proportion of women in the House of Commons is only 20 per cent, but it is an absolute disgrace after 90 years of voting for women and women being allowed to become Members. Incidentally, in 1906, when Finland escaped from Russian control, it gave women the right to vote and the right to stand in its first parliament, to which women were indeed elected. We have a long way to go in some ways. I was sad to note that the same sort of poor proportion applies in local government, albeit a little better than in the House of Commons—30 per cent rather than 20 per cent. I have quite long experience in local government of various forms. In my experience, women have been brilliant chairs of committees, excellent leaders of councils and very good at heading hospital committees and school governing bodies. Where would school governing bodies be if there were no women? They would not be filled. Those are all important positions in public life. Why do we care whether there are more women, fewer women or not enough women in Parliament? There are two reasons. Women are today at least as well educated as men; indeed, they are probably slightly better educated and more successful in the educational process than men. Why are we not profiting from the input that we have made as a society into women’s improvement in education by ensuring that they are promoted in the right way? It is a real sadness that in big companies there are fewer women in the governing bodies than there were a few years ago. Things are not getting better in that field; they are getting worse. Also, women’s perspective on life is not the same as men’s. They do things in a different way—a way that men find unsympathetic. If you get five women together talking about something, they say, ““Oh, that’s a good idea, we’ll do that””. Within 10 or 15 minutes, you have the beginning of a plan to address the problem. It is much less formal; it is much less about, ““He’s the boss and I’m his inferior””. We do not think in that way, especially in this House, where, by definition, we are all equal. Women could contribute to better legislation and better administration by bringing some of those feminine ways of doing things, based on good education, alongside the male way of doing things. If I could give the Government one word of advice—I know that they will not accept it—it would be to introduce proportional representation. Do not laugh. The best way of getting more women into elected bodies is to have proportional representation.