In November 2023, 50:50 Parliament hosted a networking session in London where several female MPs delivered speeches as part of their “Ask Her to Stand” movement which looks to encourage and empower women to stand for office.
The whole premise behind the Ask Her to Stand campaign is that women historically need to be asked to stand as opposed to men who are typically more likely to put themselves forward. This is due to parliament traditionally always being a male-dominated arena which unfortunately is still the case today – 430 of the 650 MPs elected at the most recent General Election were men.
With another general election set to take place in the next 12 months, 50:50 Parliament (who recently appointed their first CEO) want to see more women on the ballot sheet. As part of this event, the following MPs all delivered speeches about their experiences as women in politics:
- Mims Davies
- Anneliese Dodds
- Wendy Chamberlain
- Kirsten Oswald
A ‘magic moment’ isn’t going to come
Mims Davies, a conservative MP since 2015 and a current Minister of State for Disabled People, Health and Work spoke about how you can never truly be prepared for parliament so waiting for a “moment” where you think you’re ready is pointless as it will never come. She said:
“This is the most dysfunctional and weird office you’ll ever be in but boy, do we need women to be part of it. When you start, you may not feel like you’re ready and don’t think there’s a magic moment where you will feel like you are because men don’t – they just wake up one morning and think ‘I’m going to do this’.”
“We typically wait to be told that we’re ready for it so ask that person to stand, give them that support and confidence to do it. I don’t care who you stand for or what you do, just come and part of it and shape how our politics is done and we can work together – you’ll never regret it.”
There are some things that only women can do
Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, spoke about her inspiration in politics, Harriet Harman, and how women are needed in politics to tackle crucial issues like sexual harrassment and childcare. She said:
“I think it’s really important when we advance this agenda that we pay tribute to those who have come before us. One of my huge idols is Harriet Harman – she is a woman who ensured that she focused on devlering for other women she had the chance to serve,
“Harriet said that while men, providing they are feminists, can change things, ultimately there are somet things that only women MPs can do and I think that’s true. We need to have representation in parliament because if we don’t then we won’t have our voices heard on important issues.
“If you don’t have women parliament, you won’t have those voices always arguing for childcare costs and flexibility that works for women in the workplace or arguing for action against sexual harassment in the workplace. You won’t have those voices of women who have experienced domestic violence.”
Watch the full video here:
Educating young people
Wendy Chamberlain, the Liberal Democrat MP for North East Fife, spoke about how she was first asked to stand as part of an all-women shortlist for the Liberal Democrats. In 2019, she became the first woman to be elected as an MP for North East Fife, something she describes as “depressing”.
Chamberlain spoke about a recent trip to a primary school and how educating young people on equality can set women up for a brighter future in politics. She said:
“Just last week, I visited one of the primary schools in my constituency, and some of the questions came up were things like ‘do you like Rishi Sunak?’ and ‘have you met Boris Johnson?’ but when I asked them how many women had ever been elected as MPs the answers were interesting.
“I got things like 2800 so when I told them that all the women elected over the 100 years wouldn’t fill the House of Commons they were shocked. This is obviously something that we need to change and that we need to change drastically.
“When I go back ten years ago and think about the challenges I was facing in the workplace, those challenges haven’t really changed. But, I think the conversations we’re now having about them have because of the number of women we now have elected.
“I’m always very conscious of using the word luck when I talk in a room full of women because I’m sure men never think about their luck. But sometimes, it is about luck and what you do with it.”
The importance of representation
The final MP to speak was Kirsten Oswal, a Scottish National Party MP for East Renfrewshire. She used the recent COVID inquiry as a prime example of why female representation in parliament is something that should be considered a necessity. She said:
“It really does matter if we don’t have women’s voices at the heart of democracy, whether that be in our local communities or here in Westminster. If we don’t have women, then that means we don’t get the things that matter to women on the statute book.
“We’ve heard about some of that recently in the COVID inquiry. People didn’t know what was going to matter to women, because we were not in the room and I think that’s a really, really big point for us to to grasp. If we’re not there, then we can’t influence things and things will never change.
“All of our political parties are doing the work to try and improve matters. It’s really important and it’s really welcomed, but we need to keep up this. I’m really proud of the steps that the SNP has taken in terms of equality and in terms of women’s representation in particular, but I know that we need to keep on the going.
“If it isn’t a continuous focus then we will fall back and things will go in the wrong direction rather than us actually building some capacity and having sustainable change. If we don’t have sustainable change, then this is really all a bit pointless, isn’t it? It needs to be something that is is built in and hardwired into our democratic systems.”
