Throughout history, the political landscape of the United Kingdom has been predominantly shaped and governed by men. The struggle towards gender parity across the United Kingdom has been fought tirelessly throughout the 20th century. Women were given the right to stand as MPs in 1918, some women got the right to vote in 1918, the suffrage movement won the vote on the same terms as men in 1928, and the first woman prime minister was appointed in 1979.

Due to coordinated efforts of campaigners and activists, over the last 100 years an increasing number of women have assumed roles in politics. This shift is particularly evident in the increase in women Members of Parliament (MPs) who, as of February 2024 totalled 226 out of the 650 MPs, (35%). However, whilst the number of women MPs has increased, there is still a long way to go in order to achieve gender parity in elected bodies in the UK. 

Gender parity around the world

Across the world, as of 2nd Feb 2024, there are only 6 Parliaments (Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, Rwanda, Andorra and the United Arab Emirates) which have gender parity in their lower or single house. 

Other countries have achieved gender parity previously, such as Wales in 2003, however these have fallen back into male majorities in recent years. Globally there is an increasing number of women parliamentarians; in 1995 women made up only 11.3%, whereas by the end of 2022 women made up 26.5% of parliamentarians. However, whilst it is positive that there is an increasing number of women members, 2022 showed the slowest progression of women’s representation in parliaments in 6 years, only increasing 0.4% from the previous year. If this rate continues, it will take over 80 years for gender parity to be realised globally. It is evident that there is more work to be done before parliamentary gender parity becomes a reality.  

Quotas are a key mechanism to enable gender parity. In 2022 there were 18 countries which had a change in parliament where legislated gender quotas were in place in the single or lower house. In these countries 30.3% of the total number of MPs are women. In comparison, in countries with no gender quotas (19) which had a parliamentary renewal e.g. change in parliament, only 22.2% of parliamentarians elected were women. There is an 8-point percentage difference in gender parity achievement between countries with quotas and those without.  

How would a quota be implemented?

There are multiple types of gender quotas, and the ease and effectiveness of implementation can differ across voting systems. Our new report, Pursuing Parity: Examining Gender Quotas Across Electoral Systems, explores the different quota mechanisms through which gender parity can be achieved, examining the benefits and the potential drawbacks of the approaches. It then assesses the ease and success of quota implementation across majoritarian and proportional voting systems. Following this, we’ve created country case studies of several of the approaches that explore the mechanisms in action. 

Pursuing Parity illustrates how implementing gender quotas and moving to a proportional representation voting system (PR) can help speed up the progress of achieving gender parity in elected bodies around the world and at home.

Read our new report: Pursuing Parity

It is a quiet scandal that 105 years after women first won the vote they are still grossly under-represented in Parliament. Women make up just over a third of MPs in the Commons and the state is yet more dire in the Lords, where they account for around just 28 per cent of peers sat on the crimson benches. This is indicative of the story of gender equality in Parliament over the last century: one of glacial progress where it is treated more as an optional aspiration rather than a basic requirement of any healthy democracy. 

However, an unexpected opportunity is presenting itself that could give this limited progress towards a gender-balanced Parliament the shot in the arm it needs in the form of the proposed reform of the House of Lords. The upper chamber has historically lagged behind even the Commons’ slow progress admitting women. Whereas the first female MP took her seat in the commons in 1919, just a year after the 1918 Representation of the People Act first gave women the right to vote, the first female peer was not able to sit in the Lords until 1958. To this day, there are parts of the Lords that are still all male, such as the 92 sitting hereditary peers who take their seats by birth-right. On the current pace of change we may not see a gender-balance upper chamber until well after 2050. 

This is not just an affront to equality, it also had practical implications for the country. The 800 peers each have a life-long right to sit in the Lords and shape our laws, which gives them significant influence over how we are governed. Yet, that influence is overwhelmingly from the male perspective meaning women are still being governed largely by what the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst called ‘the laws that men have made’. The fact that in the intervening century progress to proper representation for women in parliament has only been achieved in a partial sense is a travesty.  

Lords reform presents an opportunity to right his historical injustice far more directly. Late last year, Labour unveiled its plans to abolish the current appointed House of Lords and replace it with a new, smaller elected chamber. The proposals, authored by Gordon Brown and endorsed by Keir Starmer, include significant reforms to reshape the composition and purpose of the appointed House of Lords, which the Labour leader described in its current form as “indefensible”.  

The plans also seek to embed representation for all parts of the UK in the southern England-dominated Lords. That could be delivered by a proportional electoral system, which would accurately represent the votes of the whole country in the second chamber.  

Yet the move to a proportional electoral system could also allow for gender balance to be baked in as a legal requirement via gender quotas.  

The Welsh Government is already looking to bring quotas in for its 2026 elections to ensure it always has proper representation of women in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament). Bringing in quotas for a new elected Lords would ensure that at least one of our houses of parliament would have equal representation of women. Not only would this be a realisation of the ambition voiced by all major political parties – but it would also mean better laws that properly reflect the experience and needs of women across the country. 

The reality is that gender equality in parliament is within our grasp, it is a matter of political will. The proposed reform of the Lords is an unprecedented opportunity to move the dial forward in a way that makes up for a century of grindingly slow progress and ensures at least one half of parliament meets that basic democratic requirement by the time of the centenary of the next great suffragette victory, the 1928 Representation of the People act that broadened the franchise to all adult women. And for the first time in its history, the House of Lords could become the engine of gender equality in our democracy rather than a brake on it. 

Do you want to make our second chamber an engine of gender equality?

Add your name to our call for a fairly elected House of Lords

A driving force for most people who believe in electoral reform is the belief that seats should match votes and that the broad and diverse communities that make up the United Kingdom should have their political voices heard through effective representation.

This International Women’s Day we’ve been thinking about what voting reform might offer women in the UK – and why it should be a priority for all political parties who claim to support equality.

We all know there are not nearly enough women in the House of Commons and that, even in 2022, power continues to rest predominantly in the hands of men. Just 35% of MPs are women, and while that figure is at an all-time high, it shows just how far Westminster has to go. That’s also true at local government level, where most mayors and council leaders are also men. This gender imbalance is not only unfair (and out of date in the 21^st century) but it’s also bad for the development of effective public policy – too many voices, experiences and perspectives being cut out of decision-making leaves us all worse off.

An often overlooked contributor to this situation is Westminster’s First Past the Post (FPTP) voting system. We are regularly asked about whether moving to proportional representation would make any difference. Evidence from the UK would suggest so – both Scotland and Wales, with their Additional Member System, have always had a higher proportion of female representatives – indeed in 2003 the Welsh Assembly became the first legislature in the world to elect an equal number of women and men.

For a further example of the benefits of proportional representation to political equality we only have to look to New Zealand. In addition to being the first country in the world where the franchise was made universal, with equal votes for both women and men, Aotearoa New Zealand also voted to ditch FPTP in the early 1990s.

The use of proportional representation in the nine general elections since then tells a fascinating story not only of women’s participation and representation, but also of the impact they have been able to make.

At the last FPTP election in NZ only 20% of MPs in the House of Representatives were women. At the most recent proportional representation general election that figure grew to almost 50%, a remarkable improvement.

Nowhere has that impact been seen more positively than in the office of Prime Minister. For 61% of the time that New Zealand has used proportional representation, a woman has served as Prime Minister. Jenny Shipley (National), Helen Clark (Labour), and incumbent PM Jacinda Ardern (Labour) have governed for 16 years between them. All three have worked with a variety of different parties and independent MPs in a variety of parliamentary arrangements to deliver good government. Indeed, New Zealand’s political stability in the 21^st century remains the envy of many other established democracies.

There are many great reasons why we should elect the House of Commons using proportional representation. The Electoral Reform Society has long argued for the merits of the Single Transferable Vote. We know that it would make our election results better reflect our actual political opinions on these Islands rather than the antiquated stitch-up of FPTP. But it would also bring a wider variety of voices to the corridors of power. The rights and aspirations of women deserve a voting system that can deliver for them. Worth reflecting on this International Women’s Day, especially in such turbulent times.

Sign our petition for a House of Commons where every vote counts

This International Women’s Day it’s worth thinking about the state of women’s representation in British politics – and what’s holding it back.

Despite 220 women being elected as MPs in the 2019 General Elections – the highest number of women MPs in history – women remain hugely under-represented in Parliament.

Just a third of MPs are women (the picture is even worse in the unelected Lords), and while that’s progress on previous elections, equal representation is being held back by Westminster’s warped voting system.

Under the First Past the Post system, we have single-seat constituencies on a winner-takes-all basis. This often leads to the same person holding on to the one ‘safe seat’ for decades. It’s no surprise that this is very often a man when historically men held nearly all the seats.

This ‘seat blocking’ is one of the reasons why First Past the Post is the world’s worst system for gender equality. A proportional voting system with multi-member seats would help end seat blocking, by adding more competition. Constituencies would be represented by multiple MPs, meaning no one could secure a monopoly on local representation.

That means more opportunities for diversity in our politics, including fairer women’s representation.

As the Fawcett Society noted in 2012: “There is a distinct gap in women’s representation in countries with single-member constituency electoral systems [compared to] those with PR systems. When there is only one seat per constituency to be won as in the FPTP system, appealing to a broader base of voters is seen as riskier for parties”. It’s a finding that’s been repeated in studies worldwide.

In 2018 the ERS found that, of current MPs who were first elected in 2015, there is near gender parity – 45% were women. Yet there were 212 current MPs who were first elected in 2005 or earlier: and of them, 80% were men. That’s a huge bloc of long-standing MPs who are unlikely to budge anytime soon.

When each constituency has just one seat, only one MP can be elected to represent that area. This in itself quells diversity and competition.

Since the majority of seats rarely change hands between different parties, once an MP is elected to represent a ‘safe seat’ there is often little chance of them losing a subsequent election.

Combined with the fact that incumbent MPs are very rarely deselected, it means ‘safe seat’ MPs have unrivalled job security. And, as the research shows, the longer an MP has held their seat, the more likely they are to be men.

This represents a constant drag on women’s representation – unless there are real structural changes – like switching to the far fairer Single Transferable Vote to elect MPs.

A situation where hundreds of seats are ‘blocked off’ for men isn’t one fit for the 21st century. We need our democracy to be dynamic and competitive to achieve gender equality.

As well as proportional representation – ending the reign of ‘seat blocking’ – parties also need to open up about their candidate diversity.

Section 106 of the Equality Act

Section 106 of the Equality Act (2010) would require political parties to publish diversity data on candidates standing in elections to the House of Commons, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly.

However, 10 years on and the government has yet to enact it. As a result, there is no official information on the diversity of those standing for election at any level of government.

As the ERS noted last year: “We already know that women register to vote, and vote, in equal numbers to men. However, we do not have all the data to help explain when it comes to standing for election why the playing field is not equal. Transparency of information is the first step towards solving this inequality.”  Parties could also provide stronger mentoring, funding and practical support for women candidates.

What’s clear is that Westminster’s out-dated structures aren’t giving us the fair representation Britain needs. That’s bad news for all of us.

Tara Azar is a Communications Placement Student at the ERS from the University of Nottingham.

Sign our petition for a fair voting system in the UK

There can be no doubt that in order to see more women elected to our political institutions, political parties need to stand more women candidates. 

Yet there is no official information on the diversity of those being selected for election at any level of government.

Without knowing who is putting themselves forward and getting through the selection process we don't know where the problems are, so we don't know the best way to fix them. Click To Tweet

Without knowing who is putting themselves forward and getting through the selection process we don’t know where the problems are, so we don’t know the best way to fix them. To improve accountability, and act as a source of pressure to improve, transparency about the diversity of candidates is essential.

Equality legislation already exists which would make this information transparent. Section 106 of the Equality Act (2010) requires political parties to publish diversity data on candidates standing in elections to the House of Commons and devolved administrations. The problem is that the government has yet to enact it.

Today the Equality and Human Rights Commission has published a report calling for Section 106 to be brought into force. This report details how fragmented and inconsistent diversity data is at present, making monitoring the diversity of British politics impossible.

The EHRC report makes four straightforward recommendations to ensure consistency and transparency across the data, and they include a recommendation that local government should also be included in the legislation. We welcome this step. With women making up only 33% of local councillors, only four out of 16 elected mayors, and no directly-elected metro-mayors, the issue of women’s representation extends well beyond the national level.

The Women and Equalities Committee’s 2017 report on women in the House of Commons also urged the government to bring Section 106 of the Equality Act into force. The Speaker’s Conference on Parliamentary Representation called for it too, back in 2010. The range of cross-party voices from Parliament to civil society is growing louder.

The legislation is ready to go – now it is time for the government to deliver on its own commitments.

The House of Lords is back in spotlight this morning, last night having again challenged the government’s Brexit plans by voting 336 to 268 for Parliament to be granted a meaningful vote on the final deal. This coincides with a BBC series Meet the Lords which is providing plenty of fodder for those who believe our second chamber is in need of reform.

Watching peers go about their daily work in Meet the Lords the lack of representativeness is stark, especially regarding age (most are over 70 years old and just 29 are aged under 50), but also geography. 44% of peers live in London or the South-east. Given the quasi-federal nature of the UK, following significant devolution from Westminster to Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish institutions coupled with the Prime Minister’s emphasis on an industrial strategy that works for the whole country this failure to reflect all nations and regions of the UK gap sits oddly with the direction of our constitution – and our economic ambitions.

But it is the upcoming by-election (another oddity in a largely appointed chamber) for a successor to Lord Lyell who died in January that especially deserves our attention on International Women’s Day. All the candidates to replace Lord Lyell are men.

Women are ineligible to succeed to the majority of hereditary peerages and the parents of any successor must be both married and parents by blood for it to pass on excluding gay couples or those who choose not to get married. Parliament reserves 92 places for hereditary peers, of whom there are currently 91 men and 1 woman. And it is 2017.

Even royal succession laws have overtaken this absurd and unfair practice. The Succession to the Crown Act 2013 removed male bias to ensure that royal sons no longer take precedence over their sisters, even if they are first-born. The Lords is lagging behind by continuing to pick their peers from a tiny pool of aristocrats and the implications for gender equality are glaringly obvious. Many are diligent in their contributions to the work of the House – and contribute as many hours as some of their appointed counterparts – but from an equality perspective, this is even worse. It is a real job, with real influence, from which women are effectively barred.

Regardless of the worth – and work – by individual members, to allow anyone to inherit a place in Parliament is an embarrassing state of affairs. It puts a brake on achieving a chamber more reflective of Britain today. Which is disastrous, when we know that politics and people are driven further apart when institutions fail to reflect society.

Temporary measures, such as quotas or party funding incentives to even the playing field and achieve gender parity often court controversy; and yet we are seemingly content to tolerate a situation where reserving 11.4% of the total number of places in the House of Lords are effectively reserved for men.

The Prime Minister has a strong track record of championing women’s representation in her party. In 2005 she co-founded the Conservatives’ Women2Win group with Baroness Jenkin of Kennington, that has successfully supported many women into Parliament. The parliamentary ‘ping pong’ over Brexit will soon be over and the bill passed into law, but the unfinished business of House of Lords reform will remain. Now at 806 peers, Theresa May will have to tackle the unsustainable size of the Lords.

Be Bold for Change is this year’s International Women’s day theme. Scrapping hereditary places – a blatant handout of political offices to male aristocrats – would be a fitting place to start in dragging our constitution into the 21st century and proving that politics is serious about tackling the deep-rooted gender imbalance that continues to plague its institutions.