Editorial: Women in Politics

Abstract

A recent headline in the Guardian newspaper stated 'Britain holds poor record for women in public life' and the author went on to demonstrate that, in terms of the percentage of women in national parliamentary assemblies, Britain ranks 10th out of the 12 European Community countries. This is hardly news to most women in Scotland who arc only too aware of their exclusion from formal arenas of power. If the reporter had pursued his investigations he would have discovered that women in Scotland fare even worse than women in England in terms of political representation. For example, although the representation level of women in the House of Commons stands at just under 9 per cent for the UK as a whole, this rate falls to only 7 per cent for Scotland where just 5 women were elected to represent Scottish parliamentary constituencies from a total of 72 seats at the general election in 1992. A brief examination of the position of women in other public arenas mirrors this poor representation in Parliament. A Gender Audit published by Engender, the new campaign and research organisation for women in Scotland, draws attention to the fact that Scotland's first woman judge was appointed in 1992 (on a temporary basis), 30 years after the first woman judge in England and Wales; a pilot survey of twelve top Scottish businesses revealed only one company with a woman on the Board of Directors; excluding Children's Panels women have less than 20% representation on public bodies; only 3% of headtcachers in Scottish secondary schools are women; and there arc no women editors or depute editors in the Scottish national press. By way of contrast women are grossly over-represented in low grade, low paid, insecure jobs, and many more women than men live in poverty in Scotland. This is a dismal record for a country which often prides itself on its egalitarian and democratic culture and values, and reflects another example of the cultural contradictions referred to in Lindsay Paterson's editorial in the last issue of Scottish Affairs.