David Cameron has had over four years to ensure he has placed leading female Tory MPs in senior positions within his cabinet but has left it until now to actually do anything about it.
So it was absolutely right when Labour’s shadow homes secretary, Yevette Cooper, said that it was just a ‘last minute worry’ for David Cameron, and that he had shown to have a real blind spot over women and that he was doing too little too late. He has, of course, just three women in a cabinet of 27 people. This is woeful and frankly not good enough.
It is quite clear that Cameron is, with less than a year to go, quite worried about how the lack of women in his cabinet will look to the electorate. As Cooper said, if he was in anyway serious about having women in his cabinet he would have invited them four years ago.
Meanwhile, The Tories also showed their lack of regard for women when senior figures within the party dismissed plans by Nicky Morgan, the party’s spokesperson on women that it would look at and consider its position on all women shortlists following the next election.
Senior sources were revealed to have downplayed her plans and said: “It was categorically not going happen”. It’s disappointing when any political party shows it has a lack of interest in encouraging women to participate in the political process, but it’s especially disappointing when the party is also supposed to be running the country. Just 16% of Conservative MPs are women, this is compared to 33%for Labour. And still just 22% of people in the House of Commons are women.
At the same time as we discuss the issue of female representation domestically, Jean-Claude Juncker has been criticised for failing to encourage women to commissioner posts. He said last week he would do all he can to encourage more women to the positions. It’s quite easy to say these things, but (as I asked last week) what actually is he doing to make this happen?
Juncker will announce his full line up of commissioners next month but he will surely be concerned if only a handful of these are women.