It was not a good day for women in David Cameron’s party yesterday. He illustrated that he is in no way committed to any form of gender parity after the number of women in his cabinet rose by just two.
This is a particularly poor showing for Cameron as he has simply restored the number of women in his cabinet to the level it was three years ago at the end of 2011 when he had just five women on board.
What is particularly disappointing (but not very surprising) is that back in 2009 before Cameron was in power he had promised to ensure a third of his cabinet would be women by the end of his first parliament. So five years on has he kept to his pledge? The short answer is no. There are now 23 Tory female ministers – before today there were 20 – that represents just short of 24 per cent of Tory ministers in total.
Even if you add in those women who have the right to attend cabinet, that has only increased by three, from five to eight.
It’s pretty clear that this is all a rather woeful attempt to prepare for next year’s election to show the electorate he is serious about women. However, it’s such a marginal improvement that one could be forgiven for thinking it’s just window dressing; it’s not really a serious attempt to address gender disparity within government at all.
Have you noticed that ,as far as I can tell, there have been no LD changes in govt.?
Hardly working together as partners are they?
I would imagine the Libs are trying to distance themselves from Cons.
Precious little chance of more women LD ministers-as there are so few LD women MPs.
NUT Gen Sec silly to ‘rejoice’ re Gove.A passee would-be near Trot I am afraid. She only became Gen Sec because the Gen Secretary died…and she stepped up. ATL Gen Sec did a much better job on radio.(A shame as I am in NUT..)All three teacher union leaders are women. Sweet reason will get them nowhere with a woman Tory Sec of state.
As Gove is a bully I would imagine he will make an excellent Chief Whip.He may be charming and polite but I would think blackmail would be right up his street. He has abolished his Scottish origins totally in order to be a Surrey MP and I am sure he can reinvent himself .
The whole question of why women are now more ‘left’ than men is fascinating ;but I doubt that many really wonder why. In my bones I know it must be something to do with how class and education has changed .The 44 and 68 generation (i.e us) has produced a class change. My own hunch is that those people who became educated but who came from a left/Labour background took their values with them ’into’ the middle class.
Although I cannot find the link there was a great piece in Liberation or le Monde on how the FN vote was very much skewed toward s those who were ill-educated .I bet the same is true of UKIP. As a very moderate* euro-sceptic** (in the proper sense of the word) I know that something Labour and all the European social democrats need to address is the appeal that the FN had in being anti-globalisation .
Equating free movement of capital with the free movement of labour is ridiculous. Capital is infinitely more powerful .That is why we exist!!
However quite how the Europhobes in the Tory party and UKIP would do anything about it is the point. Would a UKIP or Tory led govt outside the EU deport all non UK citizens? Would they introduce residence/work permits to all non UK citizens, including those of Ireland. ?
I am sure somebody has the answers!! All the best, David
*Moderate is a word I don’t like to use because it reminds me of Woy Jenkins.
** Phobic=Farrage, Cash,etc. Sceptic= ?, Phile= New Lab , Fanatics= Jenkinsites, Giscard d’Estaing, Lib Dems.,Denyers= people who don’t realise that Maastricht only just got thro in France ,etc.