Twenty-nine per cent Women Councillors after a Mere 100 Years

Abstract

Just over 100 years ago, 5 pioneering women and 1 quite exceptional one became the first legitimately elected female members of English county and county borough councils. While obviously important, the Qualification of Women Act 1907 that enabled their election was far from the only one to have influenced women's electoral involvement in local government. Their first real opportunity had come in 1870, when the remarkably female-friendly electoral system introduced in Forster's Education Act enabled women to become elected members of school boards — one of the very first being the `quite exceptional' woman mentioned above, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. The first part of this article examines the rules governing women's 19th-century voting and candidacy rights, and concludes that they were a decisive factor in determining both the extent and nature of women's participation in public life. The second part examines the comparable modern-day rules surrounding electoral systems and gender quotas and suggests that they are similarly influential in determining — or limiting — the representational diversity in our elected governmental bodies. With women comprising just 29 per cent of English councillors after more than a century, the time has surely come, the article concludes, to follow other countries in their utilization of electoral quotas.